Chapter Two: Research
"So, do you do this a lot then?" Ron asked, struggling under the weight of the grimoires Remus and Giles had given him to carry.
"Research? Oh yeah," Xander replied, grappling with his own stack of tomes. "About once a week, something comes up that requires an all-night book session."
Ron grunted something under his breath.
"You could do with learning a little of our hosts diligence, Ron," Hermione tutted, taking a book from Remus and flicking through it at high speed. "Just imagine if you'd actually done the work for your NEWTs instead of wasting your time on Quidditch!"
"Hermione, you did the work, I copied off you, I passed my NEWTs and got a contract from the Cannons. Everything worked out, right?"
Hermione rolled her eyes, and stalked off to where Willow and Harry were poring over ancient Watchers diaries.
"So, are they together, or do they just hate each other?" Buffy asked. Ginny's face creased into an amused grin.
"Very together. Today, anyway," she replied. "Ever since their sixth year, when Harry locked them in the changing rooms after Quidditch practice rather than listening to them arguing again."
"Quidditch?"
"It's the main wizarding sport. Like basketball on brooms, apparently."
"Oh."
Buffy's eyes moved away from the petite redhead and settled on the green-eyed wizard across the room. As she watched, he nudged his glasses further up his nose and leaned a little closer to Willow, who was pointing at a passage in her book. He nodded, and scratched a note on the pad of paper beside him.
"He seems pretty intense," she said absently.
"That's one way of putting it," Ginny replied, sneaking a look at Harry over the top of her own diary before turning back to the dry remembrances of a centuries-old Giles predecessor. "Single-minded, too. Ever since Professor McGonagall and Madam Hooch were killed on Christmas Day nearly three years ago, Harry's just been..." She tailed off, a haunted look crossing her features. "He'll kill Voldemort, it's been prophesied that one will defeat the other and every time they've fought Harry's come closer, but now there's this new prophecy..."
Buffy frowned, opening her mouth to ask about the new prophecy but Giles cleared his throat and drew her attention.
"Yes, well, I believe we all know our tasks. Everything we can find on the Master, everything we can find on Voldemort - are you all right?" he asked as Ron flinched. Ron shrugged and Giles continued. "Ever since the book-burners destroyed my collection of occult literature we have, of course, been struggling, but the Watchers diaries date back centuries, more than long enough to chronicle the rise of the Master and of Voldemort. Yes?"
Xander had raised his hand.
"We know all about the Master, right? I mean, Buffy dusted him, we partied, what's the diff?"
"The, ah, diff is that he is now accompanied by Voldemort. We should be looking for any reference to magic being used to enhance the powers of vampires, of previous alliances between wizards and vampires, anything of that ilk. Yes?"
Willow had raised her hand.
"It might help if we knew the difference between the magic used by us and the magic used by you guys," she said, looking at Hermione and Harry.
"As I understand it," Hermione replied, after first looking to Remus and receiving a nod in reply, "wizarding magic draws on the inherent magical abilities of the witch or wizard. Only someone born with magical blood can perform this type of magic, and they can perform it with only a few words and the right wand movements, sometimes not even that."
"Our magic," Giles nodded, "is very, very different. Anyone can, theoretically, draw power from alternate dimensions and forces far beyond that which we can imagine. The greater the power we draw upon, however, the greater the drain upon us. It can be addictive if abused, and is dangerous to the user's mind and body. Wand magic can be tiring to the user, but is clean and otherwise unpolluting. Yes?"
Oz had raised his hand.
"I'm going to the doughnut shop," he said, as calmly as ever. "Do we want glazed or jelly?"
"Both, thank you," Giles replied, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Now, can we actually do some work?"
For a time, there was only the sound of riffling pages and the steady breathing of the nine people in the room. When Oz returned with doughnuts and coffee, he picked up a heavy book and joined the silent reading, the calm of the room broken only by the occasional slurp of coffee and Xander's frantic attempts to stop a blob of jelly falling on his brand new shirt.
Lunchtime and dinnertime came and went without anyone discovering anything startling in the old books. Although Giles had been right in proclaiming that the diaries covered the years of Voldemort's rise and the Master's six-century killing spree, the Watchers and their Slayers had not dealt directly with either opponent and so information was scarce or non-existent. Before the doughnuts had been finished, Hermione had moved on to a new book, with Ginny and Willow not far behind. The others read at their own, varied, paces with Harry and Buffy the last to move on, each finishing their diary at the same time and reaching for the last book on Giles' coffee table.
"You take it," Buffy said, standing up and stretching. "I should go and patrol." Harry picked up the book and immediately turned to the first page, his gaze already intent on the scrawled writing.
Xander jumped up. "Want some company? We're out of doughnuts, so-"
He looked around, and caught Giles glaring at him.
"I'll stay here and continue reading about people who have no relation to what I should be looking for."
He sat back down, and Buffy grinned.
"Its okay, Xand," she said. "I'll just make a sweep through the main cemeteries. There weren't any wild dog attacks yesterday, were there?" she asked of Giles.
He waved a hand at the local paper. "All dead people had intact throats and were either extremely old and surrounded by many close loved ones, or entirely despicable and beyond all hope of redemption," he replied.
"See? Happy deaths," Buffy smiled. Harry frowned after her as she left.
Buffy occasionally enjoyed patrol. She could think of it as a pleasant evening stroll through a balmy Californian night, and she hardly had to fear muggers or kidnappers. Sunnydale had a busy police force, but other than the petty crime carried out by Buffy's fellow teens, their main chores were collecting the latest corpse to suffer 'neck rupture' or 'wild dog attack'. The denizens of the netherworlds had chased the criminal underworld out of Sunnydale and so patrol was generally quiet, unless something supernatural occurred.
Buffy was approaching an alleyway on the route towards Sunnydale's third largest cemetery when a figure came flying out of the alley at approximately the speed of an Indy car, splattering onto the sidewalk in a messy heap. She slipped into the shadows for a beat and watched as a tall, blonde figure in a long coat strode out of the alley and lifted the sprawled figure easily into the air.
"Last chance, mate," the blonde growled as Buffy sunk her head into her hands in recognition. "The Slayer. I hear your lot had a run in with her and her mates last night, so tell me how you survived and I'll let you survive meeting me."
Spike's opponent trembled in his grip, mouthing silently as he stared down at the English vampire. Finally, he managed "Wizards! There were wizards! With wands and everything! It was like Dungeons & Dragons!"
Spike looked at the other vampire in disgust, taking in its acne-scarred countenance and nerdy clothes, his gaze lingering on the bow tie and pocket protector. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the newly sired vampire aside, sending him crashing into the alley wall with a crunch that promised serious damage to his face.
Spike lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, before turning and staring into the shadows at Buffy.
"Come out, come out, whoever you are," he crooned in a slightly off-key tone. Buffy drew Mr. Pointy from its sheath in the small of her back and stepped into the light streaming weakly from the alley mouth.
"Slayer!" Spike vamped up and stared defiantly at Buffy.
"And here was me hoping we'd seen the last of you, Spike," Buffy said. "Do you want to finish this now? Only, I have house guests and it'd be rude for me to keep them waiting."
Spike's feral countenance twisted into a thoroughly evil smirk. "Yeah, so I hear. Nice bunch of wizards. 'Spose they went to Hogwarts, right? Me and Angelus looked at cracking that place once, but they had all kinds of wards up to keep the wrong sort out. Still, I guess I can have a go now, get a few wizards working for me."
"Actually," Buffy said, "they're here to help me kill vampires."
"Oh, I'm sure," Spike said, twisting sinuously in place, a habit he'd picked up from his ex-lover Drusilla when he felt he had the trump card to beat whatever lay in his opponent's hand. "Here to help you kill the Master, right? And his mate Voldemort?"
Buffy's eyes widened momentarily, but she adapted.
"Working for someone else now, Spike?" she asked. "I thought you were above that."
"They're going to give me another crack at you, Slayer," he grinned. "Way I figure, that's got to be worth a bit of grunt work."
"And you could have saved yourself the bother just by coming to my house," Buffy sighed. "Or are you too stupid to remember where I live?"
"Oh, I know that," Spike replied, the alley light glinting of his fangs. "So do they. And believe me, Slayer, Voldemort doesn't need anyone's permission to enter a house. Just ask your new playmate with the glasses."
He grinned, loving his newfound power. Buffy shivered in spite of the warmth of the evening around her.
"Okay, Spike," she took a step forward, and brought Mr. Pointy up. "Enough talking. I'll get you out of the way, and then we'll take care of your bosses."
"Nah," Spike grinned. "We've got a plan we're sticking to, Summers, and it doesn't involve me getting into a scrap with you in some dingy little alleyway. The Master wants to turn you, and he would not be happy if I snapped your neck before he got the chance."
Spike flicked his cigarette end at Buffy's face, and she gasped as the hot ash caught her just above her right eye. By the time she'd blinked away the momentary blindness, Spike was gone. Seething, and with her eye stinging, Buffy headed for the cemetery.
By the time she'd returned to Giles' apartment, Buffy's mood hadn't improved. Wherever she went, it seemed as though Spike had beaten her to it. A demon nest in one of the cemeteries had been firebombed, and the only surviving inhabitant passed away seconds after Buffy's arrival. She headed south, and found a vampire lying in a back alley. It was missing half a leg after Spike had slammed a steel security door on its knee. Just before it passed out from blood loss, Buffy was able to wring the information that Spike was looking for information on Slayers from it. She staked it as its eyes shut, feeling illogically guilty about dusting it while it lay unconscious.
The next few hours provided much the same story, over and over. Spike was conducting a one-man assault on the demons and vampires of Sunnydale, and again and again his victims would repeat that he was after information on Slayers. After rescuing Willy the bartender from his own meat freezer, she was able to decipher "Slayers, Slayer," through his chattering teeth before he passed out from the cold. She left him in the hands of a fire demon she knew was a regular of the bar and headed back to Giles'.
"Slayers?" Remus asked, breaking away from a conversation about lycanthropy with Oz. "He's looking for information on you?"
"Well, that doesn't make sense," Xander replied. "He already knows pretty much everything about us, Buffy especially."
"Voldemort would want the most up-to-date information available," Harry commented, staring moodily at Buffy. "He doesn't act unless he's sure of himself. He's not fought a Slayer, so he wants to know everything."
"In any case, the Master has always enjoyed knowing his victims intimately," Giles added, halfway up the stairs to his bedroom. He leaned over the banister rail, passing a book to Hermione. "And his resurrection will most likely only have made him want to know all the more about Buffy."
"Not just about Buffy, though, right?" Ron asked. "I mean, if he's looking for information on Slayers, then he must be going after the other Slayers out there."
"Ron," Hermione replied. "There's only one Slayer at a time. I know it's been a very tiring few days, but even you-"
"But Xander said that there was another Slayer here until a week or so ago," Ron smirked, clearly enjoying knowing something Hermione didn't. "How many of you are there, anyway?" he asked, turning to Buffy.
"Well, there's just me," she replied. "Me and Faith, anyway, and she's all kinds of comatose."
"But… If she was bitten by a vampire, would she wake up?" Ginny asked.
Everyone turned to face her, curled up in a corner of the apartment. "I mean, Xander told me that she was in a coma, but if she was turned, wouldn't the demon inside her wake up?"
"And be mad as hell at you to boot," Xander breathed, running a hand through his hair as he looked at Buffy. "Is Faith still at Sunnydale Memorial?"
"Yes," Giles replied. As Buffy and the others turned to look at him, he shifted uneasily. "The Council is keeping an eye on Faith in case she wakes up."
"They have anyone nearby who can stand up to Spike, the Master and this Voldemort guy?" Buffy asked.
"Probably not," Giles conceded.
"Right, here's what we're going to do" Harry said, speaking with an authority Buffy hadn't heard before. "Buffy, Remus and I will watch over this Faith's room. Oz, Ginny, I need you watching the entrance. Willow, Hermione, see what you can do about a tracking spell for Voldemort and the others if they show up. Ron, Mr. Giles, Xander, you're going to need to provide backup in case they get past us."
He looked around at them, meeting evenly the mixed gazes of the Sunnydale contingent.
"Check it out," Xander broke the silence. "We've got a spare leader in case Buffy ever breaks."
Spike stood before Voldemort and the Master, a wide, fanged grin as prominent on his face as the blood was prominent on his hands. The Master waved a hand regally from his position on a raised dais. Voldemort had spent some time altering the interior of the factory, and the formerly burnt shell was now at least livable, although it was overheated, in Spike's opinion. Voldemort, on the other hand seemed to revel in the warmth, which Spike felt was probably related to his snakelike appearance. Spike preferred a comfortable room without fiery chandeliers dangling from the walls, flaming torches bracketed on the walls and crackling blazes spotted liberally around the room. A vampire's body temperature was the same as the room temperature, and Spike was beginning to wish he'd removed his trenchcoat before entering into audience with his employers, but to do so now would be a visible sign of weakness of the type Spike wished to avoid. The moment they think I've outlived my usefulness, I'll be dead, without the walking around this time. Better try and make sure they need to keep me around, then.
"There is a Slayer awaiting turning, then?" the Master mused, tapping his talons on his chin. He sat sprawled across one of the two chairs that were on the raised dais. Voldemort had the other chair, and sat in it upright and proud, his long, white fingers clasped around the pommels of the arms. Both were clothed entirely in black, the Master's light-starved features nearly as pale as Voldemort's own, their hairless heads gleaming dully in the firelight and the same sardonic sneer on their faces. Occasionally, Voldemort's forked tongue would flicker across the lipless edges of his mouth. Spike wondered if he could taste the fear in the air, the way the Master was said to be able to smell it.
Not that Spike was afraid. He had fought older and stronger vampires than the Master and un-lived to tell the tale, while wizards who thought that having a wand meant that they could tangle with vampires were two-a-penny in Europe. But the recruits that Spike had dragged from the bars of Sunnydale were cowering behind him, obviously intimidated by the legendary vampire before them. Of Voldemort, Spike thought, they had no fear and he wondered when the wizard would see fit to create fear in his new minions.
The Master snapped upright, his hands clenched on the arms of the chair, his body bent slightly, creating an air of someone about to spring forwards. One or two of Spike's recruits shuffled backwards slightly. Voldemort stared at them impassively.
"It was almost worth dying to come back to a world of such opportunity. You!" The Master pointed at a vampire who Spike thought might have been sired by Angelus barely a year before.
"Master?" the new vampire replied, the hint of quaver in her voice belying the calm air she was trying to portray. Nice try, Spike thought. Not that you could fool any of us, but you've got a little bravery in you. Time was, I'd have killed you for that. I wonder if the Master here'll do the same.
"Tell me, girl," the Master said, his voice soothing and hypnotic. Spike risked a sidelong glance at the girl, already under the Master's influence, and took refuge in his memory of the Sex Pistols first ever gig. It allowed him to resist the lure of the Master even as the girl and her fellow recruits fell into line. The Master's hypnotism was a useful trick, Spike knew, for it could instill order and bravery in even the weakest of drones, but his experiences with Drusilla's hypnotic powers had taught him that those under the 'fluence tended to be slow and easily tricked. Even as he watched on impassively, he wondered if the Master had thought his plan through to its conclusion. The Slayer would walk through the ragtag bunch of vampires before him without pausing.
"Go," the Master ordered. "Bring me more soldiers. Bring me an army of fighters with which to distract the Slayer as I take her successor and make her one of us."
Spike smirked as the vampires shuffled out, almost zombie-like in their gait. By the sheer weight of numbers alone, they would stand a chance against the Slayer and her allies now, although-
Voldemort spoke for the first time. "The vampires they create will not rise until tomorrow."
"Then we shall take this Faith tomorrow. If the Slayer suspects that we are moving on the hospital, she will defend it tonight, and tomorrow she will question her belief. Tomorrow we will strike, and if fortune smiles upon us then we shall find an undefended hospital, full of food to be eaten and even more recruits. If each vampire sires just two more," he smiled, his fangs protruding hungrily from his mouth, "then soon Sunnydale will be a town where a Slayer cannot hope to survive."
Voldemort stared unblinkingly at his co-conspirator, his red eyes glowing, Spike mused, like the hottest of coals burning in the hand of a pale young woman. Spike licked his lips as he remembered the time Drusilla and he had created the image for him to remember.
"Then allow me to make a small amendment to your plan," Voldemort said. Rising smoothly to his feet, he waved his wand at the departing vampires. Nothing much seemed to happen, other than the vampires standing a little more upright, and moving a little less slowly.
"Now they shall retain the nerve and courage you have created in them, and so will their offspring," Voldemort declared, sliding back into his seat, breathing a little heavily. "But they will no longer be dependent on your will, no longer subservient to you. They will think for themselves, and take orders from us both."
The Master didn't react for the barest fraction of a second; time enough for Spike to know that the bat-faced vampire had been caught out. Then a cool smile twisted his features still further. Spike looked at Voldemort.
Nice trick, he thought. But now the Master's watching you, mate. You'd better have a bit more than just hocus-pocus up your sleeve, or you're going to be blood on his hands and gristle in his teeth.
The Master continued his cold appraisal of Voldemort, even as the wizard turned to accept a whispered communiqué from Wormtail.
"My servant tells me that Potter, your Slayer and their followers have been seen moving towards the hospital," he told Spike and the Master. "It seems that fortune is indeed smiling upon us. They will watch the hospital all night, while your drones build us an army."
Their gazes met, and Spike took an involuntary step back. It seemed as though the temperature in the room had risen by ten degrees.
"Tomorrow, then, we shall fight, and after that, Potter will be a vampire under my command, and your Slayers will be vampires under your command, Nest. Something to look forward to, wouldn't you agree?"
The forked tongue flickered, the only sign of emotion on an otherwise impassive face.
To be continued...
Author's Note: I try and answer questions here, if possible. If nothing else I like to thank people for taking the time to review :-)
Mutant9257: Update Now ;-)
Harry/Ginnyfan4ever: Harry/Ginny? You know I'm a huge fan of that 'ship. Will it appear in this story? You'll have to wait and see. There will be one crossover pairing, though...
Emba Thanks! This whole story came from the idea I had of Voldemort using his resurrection spell to revive the Master and go after Buffy. As for other Harry/Buffy crossovers, I tried to do something different.
Lisa: I'm glad you're enjoying it. I've never written a BtVS fic before, but I'm a huge fan of the show. As my profile will reveal, though, this isn't exactly my first HP fic...
Lauren: The established couples are Ron/Hermione and Oz/Willow, of course. There'll definitely be a crossover 'ship, and Ron's going to help set it up, but more than that I won't say.
Emma Barrows: I'll try and update every week to ten days. This isn't a long story, though.
Kinky Usagi: Thanks! Wherever possible, I won't mess with timelines, although I've probably delayed Xander's departure on his road trip by a little while.
zayra Hope this was soon enough.
kid Not saying :-p
bess Done :-)
bill Hope you liked Spike's expanded appearance here. He's one of my favourite Buffy characters, along with Tara, so it was important that I got him as in character as possible.
Buffy Fan35: Here it is. A little wait 'til the next one now ;-)