Spanderverse: Dracula
CH 5: The Night Begins
Monday passed slowly for Buffy. Sometimes it seemed that the only worthwhile things she did always occurred after dark. Whether it was being with Riley and making him yell her name, or whether she was staking the critters of the night, those were the moments that counted. She was in her fourth class of the day, thankfully her last. She was having trouble concentrating on all of this bookwork though and she didn't know if it was because of the subject or just the professor. She didn't know why she'd let Willow talk her into taking a full class load, which forced her to choose a history class. She'd always hated history in high school, but she made it through with a C, and then she turns right around and voluntarily takes another one!
I bet Willow cast a 'make Buffy miserable' spell. She probably is sitting in the campus coffee shop over a mug of hot cocoa and laughing her head off over Buffy taking 'Literary History of Pre-Shakespeare Britain'. God! Will this guy ever just shut up? Ugh, he just drones on and on. I am so bored! That does it, I'm giving Willow a Buffy-sized butt kicking for talking me into taking this snore-athon.
Of course, when Professor Griggby released the class with another reading assignment, Buffy forgot all about beating Willow's butt. Suddenly she just wanted to see her best friend so she could put the verbal smack-down on Professor Bore-me-to-Tears.
As she reached the top of the stairs and started down the hallway toward her and Willow's dorm room, not that she stays here much anymore, she noticed Riley loitering outside her door. She put on a warm smile and shifted her books, subtly getting the point across to Riley that he should take the load from her. Of course, with the Slayer strength, it wasn't really necessary. They weren't that heavy, but Buffy liked it when he did the little things for her.
Riley dutifully took the hint, with a sardonic smile on his face. Twitching an eyebrow let Buffy know that he was onto the game, he just didn't mind playing it either.
"Hey, honey. Tough day of knowledge seeking?"
"Oh, god. Don't get me started. At least not yet," Buffy added, "I want to sit down with Willow before I start my bitch-session. She's the one that insisted I had to take a frickin' history course."
"Oh, well, if you're having trouble, maybe I can help. I was pretty good at history once upon a time."
"Could you not talk like you're a thousand years old? It makes me feel like I'm dating my grandfather, or something," Buffy laughed.
Making their way into the dorm room, Willow greeted them both warmly.
"Hey, Will. Why didn't you let Riley in?" Buffy wondered.
"Oh, I forgot even to knock. I mean, your not here so often anymore Willow. I just assumed that you'd be at class or at Tara's."
Willow gave a laugh. "Well, actually I needed to switch old clothes for new clothes. I've been debating with myself over doing laundry, or just waiting for the clothes to clean themselves."
"Who's winning?" Riley asked her good naturedly.
"I think the debate is just about over and the 'don't do laundry' side has definitely creamed the competition."
"Well, I'm glad you're here Will," Buffy said, "your just the wicca I wanna wackah."
"Huh? Oh! Monday, right? Lit History again?"
"Have I told you I want to kill you for convincing me to sign up for that class? Right after I slay the evil boredom monster, Griggby the Snoozer."
The best friends shared a laugh and then spent the next twenty-five minutes gossiping about their day. Buffy making a big show of the injustice of it all that Willow skipped her classes today, without including Buffy in the big strategy.
"Is Tara alright?" Riley interjected before they could go on another gossipy rant.
"Oh, she will be. It's just a stomach thing. She said she didn't sleep so well last night."
"It must be going around." Buffy added, "I woke up this morning feeling a little wore out, too. Oh! Riley, how did the interview go?"
"I think it went really well. I got the usual 'We have a lot of applicants to see' routine, but I could tell the ambulance service was impressed with my medic training. Another 'thank-you' to Uncle Sam."
Willow had a knap-sack filled with clean clothes and was slowly making her way toward the door. "So, definitely going for a paramedic position, then?"
"Ah, we'll see," Riley said, not sounding very eager, "I gotta find something to do between vampire-stakings."
"Well, I think it's great. I gotta get back to Tara. She seems to be feeling better and we're going out to dinner tonight."
"I was hoping we could eat together tonight, Will." Buffy had a small pout on her face.
"Sorry, Buffy. Tara and me have this whole night planned out. You should call Xander, though. I think he gets lonely with us out here and him back in the town proper."
"Actually, that sounds like a plan to me, Buff. I could use a little bit of guy company," Riley added.
"Ok. Why don't you call him and Anya. And if you can fit it in without it being obvious, tell him no vamps are welcome."
"Buffy…" Willow said in her 'let's not start this again' voice.
"I know. I know. It's just that I don't know what Spike is up to and I don't want him trying to hurt me by hurting my friends. He and Xander were always ready to kill each other. Seeing the two of them being beer buddies, or whatever, is giving me a wiggins."
"I know. On the good side though, if Spike does do anything, it can't be too serious with the chip. And, it'll give you the excuse you need to beat his bottom for him." With that, Willow was out the door.
Riley put his arms around Buffy, giving her a long kiss on her lips. "I'll give a holler to Xan. You start deciding on what you're going to wear. I know it takes awhile." Riley took a few quick steps away from Buffy playful slap.
"I can't help it that people look to me for their fashion tips," Buffy joked.
"Well, for what it's worth, I think you always look stunning. Now, let's see if I can subtly tell Xander that Spike isn't welcome without him slamming the phone on my ear."
"Just ask for Anya. She'll make sure that Spike is nowhere to be seen." Buffy grabbed some shampoo, conditioner and a towel. "I'll be right back." With that, she was on her way down the hall.
When Buffy returned from her ten minute shower, she drew a red 'star' on the message board hanging outside the door. This star she filled in, the girl-sign that one or the other of them shouldn't come barging in. Buffy doubted it would be necessary, considering Willow's plans, but better safe than embarrassed.
Opening the door, she found Riley with his shoes off and lying back on her bed. Perfect, she thought.
"Talked to Anya. Xander and her will meet us at 'Risotto's' at six-thirty. Anya was in the mood for pasta, and you didn't mention that you wanted anything in particular."
"Italian's good. But, actually, there is a little something that I really wanted." With this Buffy dropped her towel, revealing her freshly scrubbed and very nude body. Her nipples stood to attention, partly from desire, partly from the chill of the room. She walked toward the bed and could see Riley's crotch already beginning to bulge.
"Well, I did already carry your books in for you. I guess it's a really good thing that I'm such a giving kind of guy," Riley said, his voice growing husky.
"Definitely good for me," Buffy whispered an inch from his face, just before capturing his lips with hers.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Xander and Anya sat in the restaurant, waiting for Buffy and Riley. They had called earlier and claimed that something wonky was up that they wanted to check out, and could they postpone dinner until eight. Xander had agreed, thinking that the only thing that was up was probably Riley by the tone in Buffy's voice. This was a thought which tried to produce a visual in Xander's brain, but he successfully and violently thought about baseball until his imagination stopped visualizing. Not that Riley wasn't a great guy, but Xander had no desire to see, nor imagine his nether regions.
He'd tried to take the opportunity to show Anya a little (wait, not little, not little at all) of his own nether regions after the call, but she was in another one of her moods. Apparently, he'd mentioned Spike one time over his daily quota and it threw her into a bitca-fit. Xander didn't understand what the big deal was about him and Spike. So, they were friends, and they spent a lot of time hanging out. It was just a guy thing, that's all. Was it his fault that Anya didn't have a coffee clutch or something where she could hang out with the other girls?
Anyway, she'd gotten snotty, then he had gotten mouthy and now they were sitting at a table and not really talking. He'd offered her the bread basket, and talked about how good the rolls were. She thanked him, a little too enthusiastically perhaps, and asked for more wine. They were both desperately hoping that Riley and Buffy wouldn't be delayed by yet another shag-session (as he whom I'm not allowed to mention, would say, Xander thought) or a slayage mission.
When the other couple entered the restaurant, Anya nearly spilled her just refilled glass of wine and caused a small scene by nearly jumping up from the table. Waving enthusiastically so that Buffy, Riley, and possibly the crew aboard the International Space Station would know where they were seated.
As the couple approached, and Anya retook her seat, Riley glanced around at the other tables self-consciously. Xander reached for Buffy and embraced her, while at the same time reaching out a hand around her to shake Riley's. As if to outdo him, Anya stood from the table again, this time to stand on tip toe and place a kiss just a little too long on Riley's cheek.
Ok, maybe I'm being a little bit bitchy myself now. I'm pretty sure if Buffy thought Anya was making a play for Riley, even just to upset me, her head would be over at the next table by now, Xander pondered.
Anya greeted Buffy and recommended the wine. She then drained her glass in one smooth, and totally embarrassing to Xander, movement. Signaling for the waiter for her second refill, while she opened her menu, she animatedly asked Buffy about classes and Willow and Tara, and basically everything and nothing nearly all at once.
While it seemed obvious to Xander that this was going to be a rough night, Buffy and Riley seemed to be oblivious to the tensions at the table. Or, at the very least, they were putting on a good show for Xander's sake.
Things seemed to settle down after the other three occupants of the table also shared in wine or beer, in Riley's case. The meal itself was fabulous, though expensive. Anya had insisted on treating for the evening with her brand new credit card, of which, she was inordinately proud. It being a testament to her value within a capitalistic society, she'd said. Conversations cycled easily around the table from classes to Giles still sitting on his ass to Riley's interview to the Magic Shop where Anya had used her expertise to secure a job as a sales clerk. Although Buffy had been figuring a way of getting out of the restaurant within forty-five minutes when she'd first entered, and she had noticed the tension between Xand and Ahn, thank-you very much, it was actually three hours before the couples went their separate ways. Xander and Anya back to the 'basement of doom' and Buffy and Riley back to her dorm room.
"Wow. That was interesting. Did you see how much wine Anya was putting away?" Riley asked on the way back to the college.
"I know. Something is definitely going on in romance-land over there."
"Oh, yeah. I think Anya was close to drunk before dinner even started. And what the hell was up with that kiss she laid on my cheek? I thought she was going to suck my skin off my face. And, by the way? Nice restraint on your part."
"Thanks. It was tough not to knock her head off her shoulders when I saw that. It's obvious though that she was trying to upset Xander. They must have had a fight before dinner. Three guesses whose fault that was."
"Spike does tend to stir up a hornet's nest wherever he goes, doesn't he?"
"I shoulda dusted him when I had the chance. Now he's all chipped and I just can't bring myself to do it. It's like shooting a kitten or something. A really manipulative, evil, skanky, loud-mouthed, and overly bleached kitten." Buffy was flexing her fists and Riley didn't want her riled up. At least, not riled up like that anyway.
Taking her left hand in his right, he gave it a brief squeeze of affection. "I think Willow was right. I think Xander needs more time spent with you guys. I mean, you're his best friends. I'll start stopping by more too. Maybe giving him another guy friend to hang out with will make him see that hanging out with Spike isn't worth pissing Anya off, over."
"I know. I mean, about Will and me spending more time with him. It's just hard between classes and Slayerhood, and I don't want you to get left by the wayside, either."
Riley laughed. "I don't want that either. You can make me feel better about that possibility though when we get back to the room."
"Oh, my god! You're a machine!" Buffy laughed. She didn't appear to mind a bit.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
As the central clock tower of Sunnydale tolled the midnight hour, two men in a moving truck pulled before the abandoned Burnside Medieval B&B building. The side of the truck was non-descript as the two fellows within were not employees of the company that had been contracted to move the heavy crates in the back. There actually wasn't a 'company' per se. It turned out, through chance, that the first number the foreigner on the phone called was a small, single-man operation. The gentleman, using a cell phone for his 'business' was not an insured or bonded mover. Ian Dolsen was always meaning to get bonded, and open a real storefront shop, but any money he made from moving things always seemed to get spent on bills before he could save toward a legit business license. Of course, the fact that he seemed to drink away more of it than he spent on actual bills never seemed to cross his mind. He was considering himself pretty damned lucky to get this gig, and so he'd roped his uncle Calvin into helping him out on this 'lucrative' job.
"Jesus, it's been rainy lately. If it keeps up like this we'll have flooding for sure," Calvin said, getting out of the truck. He was yanking at his coat collar, trying unsuccessfully to keep the cold water from getting down his shirt. The rain had started only ten minutes ago, but already it was like a miniature monsoon.
"I better not catch pneumonia moving this shit, man. I'll sue the prick for making me come out on a night like this." Another thing about Ian, is that he was always looking for his 'big score'. He was always seeing those commercials of people on the TV for lawyer's offices. They never seemed to be hurt, but he'd be damned if some slime-pool attorney didn't find a way to stick it to some poor sap. They was always talking on the commercials about how they got a million dollar settlement because their little brats stuck their hands in someone else's yard and got bit by a dog or some shit. He wished he'd get hurt. Something that looked way worse than it actually was. And in front of all kinds of witnesses, of course. He was always half hoping that a city truck would plow into his own when he was driving around town. Everyone knew the government had more money than they could keep track of.
"Hey, Ian? You going to stand in the rain daydreamin' all night or you wanna get this crap moved?" Calvin looked annoyed. He hated the rain worse than Ian did.
As the two men began moving the first crate out, it seemed to weigh twice, or even three times as much as when they'd loaded it into the truck. Of course, at the warehouse, they'd let the hot-wired (another Ian skill) hi-loader take care of most of the burden. Now they were stuck with just the two of them and the crates were every bit as heavy as they had looked and more so.
As they pulled, Ian lost his end of the crate and it smashed down hard onto the tarmac at the back of the long-closed B&B. The crate flew open just a crack, but enough that dirt began to pour from it into a small pile. It quickly turned to mud in the rainwater that continued falling.
"Goddammit, Ian! I swear to Christ you're just about useless!" Calvin shouted. Calvin strained to push the crate upright before his legs buckled and he got himself flattened. "For fuck's sake, get your ass over here and help me tip it up before I get squashed!"
Ian was thinking of how he was going to explain the damage wasn't his fault when Calvin's shouted commands brought him back out of his reverie. Rushing over to the other end, he began pushing against the bottom of the crate, helping ease it into a standing position. This of course only made it open further.
While Calvin wiped rainwater out of his hair, uselessly, since the rain continued to fall, and swearing a blue streak, Ian walked back around to the now open crate. What he saw made him come to a halt. The interior of the crate didn't look like a crate at all, it looked like a coffin. And inside the crate/coffin there was a tall and slender man. His pale features showed the sure signs of death. Dirt and mud was piling around his feet, and he had dirt all over his shoulders and in his hair.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Dracula was furious!
The trip from the warehouse to the castle had been bumpy, but that was a byproduct of the road in this area which hadn't been maintained well. It was an annoyance, but nothing that he would allow to ruin the excitement of establishing himself in a new area. He was fantasizing about the first time he would take the Slayer; both as a vampire and as a man when he felt the truck stop and the mortals exit the truck. Tuning his sense of hearing, he could hear the men complaining about the current rain. This had made him smile, if he had his way, it would rain from sun down until sun up. Again he'd summoned the water and wind elementals to play to discourage the Slayer, wherever she was, from her usual patrolling.
The problems started when he failed to hear the mechanical device they had used to load the coffins into the truck in the first place. It had made his loading quite easy and had him believing this would be much simpler than he had thought. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the morons had not brought it with them and were trying to unload the crates by hand.
Dracula knew this to be a bad idea. He had already ascertained by careful listening that there were only the two of them, and his coffin was several hundred pounds. Perhaps even four hundred once you added his own weight and the sacred dirt of the homeland into the equations. Dracula grimaced in his lightless box, his eyes glowing red in anger at the incompetence. They'd had the mechanical aid in their grasp, why not bring it?
As the men grunted and slid his box toward the back of the vehicle, he nearly screamed at them not to try unloading it by themselves. It usually took four or five gypsy men to lift his coffin during his loading and unloading, at least, when such clansmen were available. Dracula could see how this was going to end even before one of the cretins lost his grip on the 'crate' and he was quickly approaching a murderous rage over it.
When they, in fact, did drop him and the top flew open he was beside himself. And when he noticed the dirt quickly falling toward his feet and out into the rain, as they lifted the box upward, there was no power under heaven or on Earth that would save the men.
As one of the peasants came around his box, and stood looking at Dracula with his mouth hanging open, Dracula nearly flew out of his coffin. In a fluid motion from centuries of fighting, he slashed the man's throat with nails that were far too long for a human hand. At the same time, he side kicked the edge of his coffin, sending it falling backward into the man standing behind it. He heard a yell, and a gargled gasping for air, but ignored it as he turned to the man he'd slashed.
The little maggot was crawling around on the tarmac, clutching his throat as blood pooled in the rain and flowed with the water toward a drainage hole. Dracula strode over to him, picking him up easily. The man's eyes were bugged with fear and knowledge of his imminent death. Dracula allowed his features to fully vampirize; something he nearly never did, as it was beneath him to appear without his human face. As the man continued to weakly struggle, unable to breath through the slash in his trachea, Dracula bared his fangs. The man, turning blue from lack of oxygen, while paling from loss of blood tried to murmur a whimper, but all that Dracula could hear was the sucking/hissing noise of a slashed throat.
"It was a simple job, you incompetent boob", the Prince of Darkness hissed at the terrified and rapidly dying man. Dracula extended his opposite hand into a werewolves' long paw and slashed the man's abdomen wide open, allowing his guts to spill out onto the tarmac. With that he threw the remains away from him in disgust, at the man, not at his own actions.
Leaving his victim to finish his death, only seconds away at this point, he approached the second incompetent 'mover'. One of the man's legs was pinned and broken beneath the coffin. The lid had shut of its own accord fortunately stopping any more of the soil Dracula worshiped from being lost to the rain. The coffin was lying up across the man's crotch, abdomen and chest making it nearly impossible to breathe. He could see him struggling for a deep breath and receiving only small puffs of air. Soon, less than a minute for sure, he'd pass out and then brain damage would set in.
Dracula reached forward and with one hand pulled the coffin from the man's frame. Using no care and allowing the box to slide across the surface of the man's skin, left the fool with the most pleasant grimace of agony as the heavy coffin ground against the man's genitals and the snapped bone in his leg.
Once this was done and the man was left to catch what air he could; it appeared that one of his lungs may have collapsed by the way he struggled and wheezed, Dracula summoned the Brides to consciousness. As one they left their own coffins, still appearing as crates to all due to the glimmer still in effect.
They were dressed in diaphanous gowns of the finest silk. Though they were quickly soaking through in the rain, the Brides took no notice. Their eyes were only for their Lord and Master. He, who loved and treasured and cared for them.
Dracula smiled a ghastly smile, allowing his features to shift back to the human form he far preferred to the visage he had just worn. He looked down at the human, stuck in a place of shock and dulled fear that was having trouble reaching through his agony.
Dracula glanced back up at the women, his harem, he supposed. "This is yours to share, until I can go out for something a little more… satisfying." As Dracula turned away to begin the rather pedestrian task of moving the coffins into their new home, he heard the muffled cries of the man lying behind him. The girls giggled and slurped.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
End CH 5