Buffy The Vampire Slayer – Broken Origin II:

Author: Dev Nine-Asher

Standard Disclaimer Applies

Chapter Three

The first night after she'd followed Spike on his hunt, Buffy was walking out of Restfield back toward the center of town.

Though an air of menace seemed to hang over everything in Sunnydale after dark, she could still appreciate the simplistic beauty of the little place. The tree-lined streets were picturesque, the lawns and facades of the Santa Barbara-esque homes well-kempt and tidy. It was all very historic.

The further she walked into town, though, the more her admiration for the landscape faded. In reality Sunnydale was like a big toy jack-in-the-box of death, wrapped in pretty paper and bows.

She had to admit that during the daylight hours it was hard even for her to remember she was standing over a Hellmouth. She didn't know exactly what a Hellmouth looked like, and she fervently hoped she never would.

Buffy shuddered as she thought about her new home. Demons, vampires, witches; a town full of oblivious people – and one Slayer to watch over it all. It would have sounded pretty cool if it weren't so scarily true.

A cool tingle swept up from the base of her spine as she neared the square. She paused near an alley beside the Sun Cinema, standing in the faint green glow of the neon-lit sign above.

Spike was here. She knew it without turning to look.

She also knew he'd gotten far closer to her than she ever should have let him come. His presence hovered over her, nearly smothering her though he wasn't even touching her.

"Wondered whether or not you were gonna' show your face tonight, Slayer," he murmured near her ear. "Have a nice lie-in?"

Buffy took a hasty step away from him, heat rushing through her as she recalled certain events of the night before.

"I had a long night," she told him defensively. A really long night…

"Yeah? See anything… interesting?"

Buffy nearly choked. "No. No…n-not really."

She kept walking, throwing an uncertain look over her shoulder to see him shadowing her. Her first sight of him after the night before sent a crazy thrill racing through her. She'd gone to sleep shortly after he'd come in at dawn, and he'd been gone by the time she'd woken, long after dusk.

Spike didn't say anything else, so she just kept walking, making her way down Main street, secretly envying the small crowds of people out enjoying the balmy summer night. She found herself dropping her eyes to the pavement whenever she passed a clutch of girls or guys around her own age – she felt unworthy, a sense of shame she could drown in - and for some reason it didn't have anything to do with her lack of stylish clothing.

After a few minutes of waiting for Spike to just go off on his own, or at least catch up to walk beside her, she stopped in her tracks and turned around to look at him.

Spike stopped, raised a questioning brow at her, and then sighed. "What?"

"Why are you walking so slow?" Buffy snapped in frustration. She needn't have asked, though. She knew why he was going so slow. He was stalking, checking out the crowds for loners, people who habitually clung to the fringes of society …

Potential victims.

"Just allowing the ladies to admire me, pet."

Spike smiled harmlessly, but it would be obvious even to the casual observer that there was nothing harmless about him. His eyes looked unnaturally blue against the white pallor of his face in the flickering light coming from the windows of a T.V. repair shop.

Buffy made an exaggerated gagging sound and turned around to walk again.

Subconsciously, though, Buffy's pace slowed to match his. She caught herself studying him from the corner of her eye. Her gaze traveled up his long, strong, denim-clad legs, revealed by the movement of his duster in the warm summer breeze as they walked.

There was a lot to admire…

"Ugh." Buffy shut off her internal dialogue before it got her into trouble. Spike obviously already thought he was God's gift to women. He'd never let her live it down if he knew she thought he was hot.

Speaking of…

"Oh, my God," Buffy suddenly muttered in disgust.

Spike slid a curious glance at her.

"That girl over there is looking at you like she wants to screw your brains out!" she blurted angrily under her breath.

And she was. There was dark-eyed blonde standing in line in front of the movie theater, and she was totally ignoring her date in her quest to keep her eyes on the vampire as he and Buffy passed.

Spike lazily lit up a cigarette, not even bothering to follow her narrow-eyed stare as he continued to strut along. "Line forms to the right, baby," he said with an absent smirk. "Why, you jealous, love?"

Buffy wanted to roll her eyes and hit him. "Hardly," she said with as much loathing as she could muster. She clenched her fists as she noticed the girls sultry gaze drop directly to the vicinity of Spike's butt. The girl's mouth made a little moue of disappointment when she realized the flowing leather covered his rear, but it didn't keep her from lifting a brow and biting the corner of her lip in appreciation as she continued to look him over.

'Bet she isn't even really blonde', Buffy snarled inside her head.

To keep from growling, she shoved her hands into her sweatshirt pocket and encountered a stake, which reminded her of what she'd been up to this evening.

Earlier in the day, she'd been dismayed to find that her 'new' stake – not to mention her only stake – had gone missing. It hadn't been all that great of a loss, though, as dull as it had been. Going out to the old caretaker's mulch pile to find wood debris had given her something to do, and fashioning a ready supply of stakes had been relatively easy with the knives she'd taken from the school.

She'd known a moment of conscience when she'd pulled out one of the knives, recalling her promise to herself not to steal anything else, but what else could she have done? Besides, she'd reasoned, they were going to a worthy cause.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Spike leering at a pretty girl standing in line outside of a bar. Her hand curled around the newly sharpened stake in her pocket as her eyes narrowed.

A very worthy cause.

"I've got something to show you, pet," Spike said just as she was about to say something threatening. She looked at him with both eyebrows raised, and he frowned.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Sorry," Buffy said insincerely, "but how am I supposed to look when a mass murderer says 'I've got something to show you'.?"

Spike rolled his eyes impatiently. "A vampire is a killer, not a murderer. Well, not most of the time. It's all about intent and premeditation, yeah?"

Buffy stared at him. "There aren't enough words to explain how very wrong you are."

Spike's answering smile was more of a sneer. "Flattery will get you nothing.

"I found a nest last night after I left you." He pulled back his duster to reveal her sword tucked within.

"Figured you might want this."

Buffy felt a sinking feeling in her chest. Apparently Spike's plan for annoying her this evening included him dragging her around for another fun-filled round of demon slaughter.

"A 'nest'?" she asked weakly, reluctance slowing her pace as he walked on ahead of her. In her experience with the gray, dinosaur-looking demons back in Los Angeles, she'd learnt that nests of any kind were to be avoided.

"Let me guess…you're not talking about cute, fuzzy little baby Bluebirds, are you?"

"I still can't get over the fact that there really are monsters," Buffy was saying later as she and the vampire strode down Armstrong Valley Drive toward Shady Hill Cemetery.

"Like, who'd have thought there'd be demons wandering around under our noses? Who'd have thought there'd be demons in a park, of all places?"

Spike, predictably, wasn't impressed. "There are monsters everywhere, love…and they're not all of the supernatural kind, either."

Buffy was inclined to believe he was right, in this case. Sometimes the monsters were all too human.

A few minutes later she was looking up toward the sky, trying to distract herself by admiring the lacey patterns the moonlight made through the tree leaves lining the deserted, quiet drive, when Spike drew to a halt beside her. She reluctantly turned her attention back to the vampire and cautiously followed him as he made his way through a wicked-looking black iron gate.

"This is it."

They stood in the cemetery, a myriad of desolate buildings surrounding them. It was one of the older burial grounds in Sunnydale, and it looked it. Rusty black wrought iron fences were bent and twisted around sunken graves, with broken and weathered headstones peeking out of the weedy, unkempt grounds. It looked huge and endless and as if it had come right out of an Evil Ernie comic – or as if it should have a sign on the front gates that said 'Sorry, We're Full-up'.

"Are you scared?" Spike asked as he led her towards a tumble-down crypt in the middle of the cemetery.

"Probably not as much as I should be." She hesitated at the threshold of the crypt, eyeing Spike warily as he moved aside in order for her to enter through the narrow door.

Was he planning something?

Her worries seemed to be unfounded, for he instantly moved in behind her in the darkness.

"Ready for your 'lesson', then?"

"Just let me grab my pen and paper." Buffy pulled a newly sharpened stake from her pocket.

"Right, then, let's get started.

"Vampires are like animals – "

"Thanks, Professor, but I think I've already read this lesson," Buffy piped dryly.

Spike gave her a silencing glare, and went on. "Sometimes they live in packs - sometimes they live alone. Look around. Just last night maybe a half-dozen, dozen vampires were right where we're standin'."

Buffy carefully scanned the one large room that made up the crypt. It did indeed look as if a nest had set up house here. There were moldy pieces of discarded furniture and blankets scattered around…and, she noticed with a growing sense of horror, that those weren't the only things the vamps had left lying around.

" I-It's a body!"

Staring at the corpse of a man left sprawled on the floor of the crypt, Buffy clamped a hand over her mouth, cursing her weak stomach.

Was she ever going to get used to the sight of dead bodies?

Spike of course, was unmoved. He looked merely impatient with her reaction.

"It's not a body…it's leftovers," he said calmly, bending over to check the corpses pockets. He pulled out the guy's wallet, and Buffy got a glimpse of a trucker's license before he finished thumbing through it, and tossed it aside.

Buffy dropped her hand from her mouth. "You mean it's a vamp? And just what are you looking for? Does feeling up dead people give you some sort of cheap thrill?"

"My thrills never come cheap," he said accusingly. He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from one of the vest pockets on the dead man, and straightened up.

"Ew, you're stealing from a corpse! Just how low will you go?!"

To her utter embarrassment, Spike looked straight at her and wiggled his eyebrows. "As low as you'd like, love…for a price, o'course." He curled the tip of his tongue over one sharp white incisor, and she went all melty inside.

'I can't believe I'm standing here getting all worked up by Spike, the Vampire Man-Whore...'

Buffy's brain couldn't take anymore. She been denying her strange attraction to him for too long, and his mean-spirited flirting was getting to her, fraying her nerves. Her feelings for Spike were a part of herself she had to fight. She simply shut down all thoughts of him as a male, and focused on the matter at hand, hoping it would last.

"Great. I kill 'em, and you fence their stuff."

She rolled her eyes at the suddenly thoughtful look on Spike's face. "Forget I ever said that. It's not like you wouldn't already do that without me anyway.

"So. How can you tell this guy's a vamp? He just looks dead…well, plain dead."

Of course it was pretty dark…

"Take a closer look at his face, Slayer," Spike said, motioning with his hand. "He's all fangy with the mouth."

Buffy almost made the rookie mistake of stepping in and leaning closer, but she caught herself and looked sourly at a grinning Spike.

"Let me guess. He's about to wake up."

"Now tell me you're not learning something new."

"Yeah, I'm learning not to trust a single thing you say."

"Finally. Thought you'd never cop to it," Spike growled.

Buffy smiled sweetly. "Aren't you proud I'm proving such an astute student?"

"Oh yeah, chuffed to bits, I am."

Waiting until the vampire turned away to check out the rest of the crypt, Buffy carefully inched her hand downward, claiming the unexpected prize she glimpsed only moments before. Luckily, the would-be trucker vamp didn't stir, and the folded twenty dollar bill barely peeking out of the corpses other vest pocket quickly made it's way into her possession.

She mentally apologized to the man laying on the cold, dirty floor, as she hid the cash in her bra. She tried not to think about the fact that not a minute ago she herself had been castigating Spike for 'grave-robbing'.

Buffy turned around to see what Spike was up to, and saw him watching her, arms crossed over his chest.

Had he seen her?

"What?" she asked challengingly.

"Nothing," he said carelessly. "But you may want to recall my tellin' you to watch your back."

Buffy frowned, and slowly turned her head, sure he was playing some kind of trick on her.

The trucker stood behind her, eyes glowing, hands curled into claws as he reached out for her…

After narrowly escaping a nasty bite-wound, and dusting the newly risen vamp in the crypt, Buffy followed Spike back outside – and right into the path of the vampires who were apparently returning to their 'home'.

There were five or six of them, and Buffy was suddenly shocked to realize she wasn't even doubting her ability to take them on – her instincts had again leapt to the fore, and before she even realized it, she had two stakes in her hands and was diving forward with no thought in her mind but to kill. If she'd been expecting a fight, however…

The lead vamp, a big guy who looked like he chewed up little girls for breakfast, actually flinched when he looked into her eyes, and almost knocked down his fellows backing away before he finally managed to turn around and run off.

"It's the Slayer!" one of them hissed, and before Buffy could move, the entire group was trying to follow their leader, getting tangled up in arms and legs before finally disappearing in all directions.

Openmouthed, Buffy stared after the vampires, a very confused frown crossing her features. Like an idiot, she was left standing with arms in the air, two wooden stakes dangling from her hands.

"Why are they running?" she hissed in Spike's direction. "I didn't even do anything yet."

Spike only shrugged.

Buffy rolled her eyes and dropped her arms. Instead of answering, she chose to take off in the direction of two of the nearest vampires, carefully ignoring the chill she got when she noticed thick tendrils of fog beginning to blanket the already eerie landscape.

Buffy ended up chasing down the last of the runaway vamps, and had them penned in a corner of the creepy old cemetery where the iron fence ended and a very high stone wall blocked their escape.

There were only two left, but within a few moments of tangling with them, Buffy knew they weren't going down without putting up a hell of a fight.

There was one female, who tried distracting her by lunging towards her as her partner came at Buffy from the back, but Buffy knew what was happening just as if she had eyes in the back of her head. She fended off the female by aiming a low side-kick at the bend of her knee, sending her crashing to the ground, and then turned slightly so that the vamp behind was attacking her from the side instead of the back. She sent a vicious back-fist into its midsection, and then came up with the stake to finish him off, but the female vamp had recovered and grabbed her wrist, knocking the stake from her hand.

Buffy immediately grabbed at the other stake, now tucked in her waistband, but lost her chance – and her balance – when the male vamp tackled her with his arms around her waist.

She was on the ground, struggling with two-hundred and fifty pounds of angry, hissing, hungry vamp, and barely keeping the female from gnawing on her throat when Spike stepped out of the mist nearby, walking onto a pebbled cemetery path with all the stealth of a wild animal. He just stood there, looking cool and dramatic, fog swirling in eddying circles around his legs and duster, watching her and her adversaries' frenzied antics with bored distaste.

The sight of him actually made her forget what she was doing for a moment, and she nearly got brained because of it.

Spike didn't make any move to assist, of course, and she made a mental note to attempt to throttle him later in his sleep. She wouldn't be able to kill him that way, but he sure as hell wouldn't look so damned hot with his eyes all blood-shot and bulgy, and his wicked tongue all swollen and dangling slack out of the side of his mouth…!

"Just what is that you're doing?" he finally asked.

"What does it look like? I'm trying to get myself killed!" Buffy huffed sarcastically, shoving the female vampire away with one hand, and fending the male off with the other. She punched him repeatedly in the face as her frustration mounted.

"That's not very smart, now, is it? Can't take care of the world if you can't take care of yourself, can you?"

Buffy's temper soared, and she grit her teeth, lunging up with her hips and forcing the vampire off. Ignoring the fierce aching of her ribs where the vamp had tackled her to the ground, she turned over onto her stomach, her hand scrabbling for the stake laying in the grass a few feet away. She jumped to her feet just as the two vampires charged her, and reached behind her back to yank her spare stake from her waistband. As they reached her, she flung her arms out, a stake in each hand, and caught her targets square in the chest.

Buffy backhanded her damp forehead after the vampires dusted, and frowned when she realized one of stakes had dusted right along with the vampire. She hissed out a painful breath, one hand roaming over her ribs, none of which seemed to be broken. She looked over to see Spike still standing there. She forced a careless smile.

"Impressive…huh?

"Oh, yeah, that was a very impressive show - of your sad lack of skill."

"Shut…up, Spike." Giving up her attempt to look unruffled, Buffy leaned over to balance herself on her knees, gasping for breath. "I dusted them…didn't I?"

"Yeah, well, one or two vampires are a lot easier to kill than ten. You might care to remember that."

Buffy took a deep breath, but choked. The damp air was still thick with vampire dust.

"I killed all six of them…just two at a time. Besides, I got the job done. That's all that matters," she said coolly when she finally recovered.

"What matters is that you stop throwin' yourself around like a tasty T-bone in front of every demon you happen across. If you want to live for very long, that is. Personally, I'd be the first in line to see you get your skinny ass kicked right off this plane of existence, but if I'm supposed to be giving you tips - "

Feeling sorely provoked, Buffy straightened up and brought her stake down towards his chest. "Here's a 'tip'!" she snapped, suddenly wishing nothing more then to see his dusty end.

Spike caught the stake between his palms in a flash, halting its descent. He jerked it from her hand and tossed it over his shoulder. "See what I mean?" he asked in disgust. "Can it with the puns, baby. You can't think too much, reacting is better; could be the difference between staying alive – and other things."

Buffy bared her teeth. "I was doing just fine until Captain Lou pinned me over there! Did you even notice how big that vampire – "

"You knew you could take him, else you'd never have gone after him."

"I lost my stake, and I couldn't reach the other one – "

"Another thing. Know your environment, know what's around you, know how to use it." Spike walked past her, bent down, and picked up a broken bar from the iron fence that had been laying right next to her the entire time. He slapped the heavy length into her hands and bent his head slightly to look into her eyes.

"Everything is a potential weapon in the hands of a Slayer - if you know how to use it." Spike shook his head at her, and then turned around as if to leave.

Buffy's eyes narrowed, and she took the rusty, black painted bar and tripped him with it. The vampire snarled and got up onto his knees, but Buffy stood behind him and, holding the bar between both hands, made as if to choke him with it.

Spike elbowed her in her sore ribs, and she yelped, bending forward and pressing a hand to the spot. Spike pushed the bar away from his throat so violently that she dropped it.

Unwilling to lose tonight, Buffy grabbed the collar of his coat just as he was raising up, and used the momentum to jerk him down onto the ground. He cursed as he fell flat on his back and she spinned around to straddle him.

"Got any more 'tips' for me?" she huffed, gloating as she hovered over him in triumph, her hands flat on the ground on either side of his head.

Spike pushed her off with a scowl, and flipped up off his back, gaining his feet effortlessly. His nose scrunched up as he looked at her scornfully.

"Yeah, here's a tip, Slayer – it's called deodorant. Rediscover it."

Feeling disgusted with herself, Buffy made a face and attempted to get up off her back the same way the vampire just had. Unfortunately, it didn't work half as well as it had for him. She got halfway up before something tugged nastily in her lower back, and fell back on her ass with a tail-bone wrenching thud.

"Wow, did that hurt," she groaned as she reached back to rub the offending muscle. She darted a glance at Spike. "Don't you dare laugh."

"Oh, I wasn't going to," he said coldly. "That wasn't funny at all – just incredibly sad."

Fuming, Buffy got up, feeling more embarrassment than pain. "Are we done here? I'd like to go and drown myself, if you don't mind."

"What's to mind? I'd enjoy seeing a good drowning. It's pretty entertaining, with the

gasping, thrashing, twitching, an' what-all."

Buffy ignored that last comment. "I'm going now."

"Come on, Slayer, don't ruin my fun – it's early yet. There's lot's more cemeteries to visit, y'know. Why don't we see what the evenin' brings…?

Continued in Chapter Four à