Chapter 5
... If you are going through hell, keep going...
Winston Churchill.
Edward Frost was a firm believer in the Slayer. Not just the physicality, but also the concept itself. The single girl chosen by fate to carry the sword for her generation. To lead the charge not only literally, but spiritually, figuratively and mythologically. To be the figurehead. A Boadicea, a Joan of Arc, for every age.
If their war had been an open one there would have been a grand statue on every street corner, a celebration of every Slayer. Everyone would know their names. Great legends would be written. Books, songs, movies... But in a combat zone where battles were fought far far away in the long cold filthy dark, in nameless corrupt places and against foes long since made mockery by The Enlightenment there were no statues. There were no monuments. No names.
The greatest heroes of all time doomed to a silent life and a lonely death. Discarded and forgotten. Repeatedly. Each and every generation. Just thinking about it gave Edward a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach: there was a terrible horror in it and no mistake.
He was determined to be different though. Since he could recall he had been consumed by that idea. He would be a witness. He would remember. And so he had read the Watcher's diaries. All of them. Repeatedly. When his contemporaries had been reading comics, when they had progressed to James Bond and even when they finally dropped the written word in favour of pictorial articles in stolen magazines, Edward had stayed true. Endless hours spent reading and rereading each diary. Hiding in backrooms, closets, under the house, up trees, in wooded groves and in the dark shades of numerous gloomy graveyards, to avoid disturbance, and searching. Always searching. Dissecting and probing each page, each paragraph, each phrase, each nuance for clues to his holy grail: the One Slayer. The first. The one from whom all others inherited their gifts. And the most forgotten of them all.
She was in there. If only he could force his eyes to see her.
And he would. One day all the pieces would fit and he would see her. One day. He would. It was his homage. It was his gift, and though pitifully inadequate, it was the only one he could give.
Though they were not available to those outside of the High Council Edward had obtained Rupert Giles' diaries as well. All five years worth. And he had been intrigued by what he had read. Many diaries were dull affairs, report card analysis and mission reports, and it took hours and hours to glean anything useful from any part of them. This one was different though because Giles was different. And so was his Slayer.
Or maybe he thought that way just because these were the only Slayer/Watcher pair he had ever met face to face?
Or maybe it was being forced to stand in the Watcher's lounge room for many, many very long minutes waiting for, wishing desperately for, the furniture to stop bumping about upstairs, whilst a strange man with cold calculating eyes pinned him to the spot, daring him to do more than blush about it?
Then again, it was likely the moment that the Sunnydale Slayer had padded into the house and he had found himself struck dumb with awe. There was no fanfare, no announcement, and no preamble. She was just - just there. Right in front of him. The Slayer. The Chosen One. Standing not two feet from him, casually redoing her long blond hair into a single braid and tucking it into her black jacket. Leaning her hip now against the back of the Watcher's couch. He stared. Here was his imagination made flesh, but all those hours dissecting and scrutinizing Giles' diaries, constructing a picture in his mind, had not prepared him in the least little bit for the reality. Words were failing him...
And she was right there!
Right there. Radiating energy and vitality. Smelling faintly of rosewood and sweat - and not two feet from him. Edward Frost could not breathe. He could not move.
She was exquisite.
His chest ached, deep and tight and penetrating.
Oh my god, she was incredible.
And the world narrowed, a thin darkening tunnel with the golden haired Slayer glowing like the sun at its heart. A point of light in the dim mortal banality of the world.
The pain in his heart, spreading beyond his chest now, was intense.
She was so -
"Breathe you twit!" A sharp male voice struck his ears just as a hand slapped the back of his head. He lurched forward with a sharp exhalation and the vice around his chest disappeared. He recovered himself quickly, but the embarrassment burned his fair skin an unfairly vivid crimson.
"What's with Tweedle dweeb over there?" The Slayer's voice floated behind her as a new man, that could have been none other than her Watcher, steered her out of the front door. Oh Lord, you unbelievable prat! He berated himself until even the tips of his ears felt like they might combust. You stupid, stupid idiot. If a wish-demon had suddenly materialized right then he would have immediately requested a deep dark bottomless pit to open up at his feet.
Now, hours later, he found himself short of breath again. Staring again too, but this time at the ominous blackened doorway where the Slayer had plunged through into... What? Hell? Calling for someone named Dawn. Screaming for them with such fear and anger and urgency that Edward felt faint. Something that could make a Slayer tremble was not something to be taken lightly. His journal twisted in his hands.
"Buffy - NO!" Giles lunged after her, fingers clawing uselessly at empty air. "BUFFY!"
Oh my god. She was gone. What was she doing?
"Hold on pal. Stop!" It was the man with the cold eyes. Ethan Rayne. He suddenly lunged past Edward and grabbed at the Watcher's shoulder preventing the loss of another member of the team.
"Let me go Ethan."
"Don't be stupid Ripper." Ethan barked in to Giles' ear. Without hesitation the Watcher reached up and grabbed, as he swivelled, finding the pressure points in the wrist holding him. Squeezing.
"Fuck, you bloody idiot - !" Ethan cried out, releasing him.
"I said let me go!"
"To do what Ripper? Rush in where bigger fools than you have gotten themselves killed? Great plan. You'll be so much more use to your precious Slayer as a corpse." The Englishman gingerly shook his wrist. "And I am going to be so much more use like this!" He brandished his paralysed fingers. "Thank you so bleeding much."
"What the hell do you suggest we do then? Hold a bloody committee meeting?" Giles roared. "You stay away from me you fucking-"
"Stop this!" It was the woman, Anita. Edward liked her. She had kind eyes. "Stop this both of you. Is this how its going to be? You two fighting like a pair of imbeciles until we all get killed?" She was not quite yelling, but the tone was as cutting as if she had screamed in their faces. And it got the desired result. Both men withdrew, still eyeing each other angrily, to their corners. What was the Council thinking, sending Ethan Rayne on this mission? Edward wondered.
"This is going to stop right now: it's already old and we haven't even started yet!" Anita went on.
"Fine." The Watcher said after a beat. "Ethan-?"
"Sure, we can kill each other later. What's a few hours between old friends after all?"
Edward noted the reflexive clench of the Watcher's jaw and was immediately consumed with curiosity. What was the history between these two that insult and injury were instinctive and reactive? He started scribbling in his notebook, shaking hands making his notes scrawl across the page. Questions, questions, questions. Why was it that all his research and observations ever produced was more questions?
"... Frost!" The Watcher's voice sliced the air and Edward jumped, dropping his pencil. "Move it!" Giles, cool and calm once again, was one step from plunging into the tomb. His axe was poised in one hand and his torch in the other. One step behind him Ethan was brandishing a beautifully crafted sword, and Anita a crossbow, already primed and ready to fire.
"My pencil-" Edward started and shut his mouth. Pencil - not important. Important: he was going to be left behind. Alone in the dark cemetery. "Right!" He managed to fall into step just as Giles flicked on the torch and plunged into the blackness. A moment later Edward was gone too.
Into the valley of death...
Buffy hit the tomb floor running and was promptly knocked on her ass, her sword wrenched painfully from her hand. The vault was not as silent or as dead as she had thought. It was alive, insanely alive. A roaring gale was trapped in there with her and it threw her to the ground like she was no more than a gnat. Chaotic, directionless winds whipped her hair and clothing. Grit and sand whirled and lashed at her. Instinctively, Buffy threw up an arm to shield her eyes. Gusts of foul smelling dust blew and snatched across her skin. Where it hit it stung like a zillion ant bites, and for a moment it was all she could do to hold her own, so she stayed down protecting her eyes and trying to orient herself. She fumbled with her coat, trying to find the zipper to get at her flashlight, but found only Mr Pointy. She pulled the stake free.
And somewhere in here was Dawn...
"DAWN!" She screamed, but the gale ripped the word from her lips, crushing it. There was no way her sister could have heard her. Buffy pushed upward onto her knees. A stray blast of air thumped into her back and she nearly toppled to the floor.
"Slayer." A rich, dark growl right in her ear. An ominous rasp. What the hell? She spun around, rising to a crouch, bracing her feet wide apart. Mr Pointy stabbed into the thrashing, roping wind. There was nothing there. "Been waiting for this, oh yeah."
"Spike?" She called out, wincing and raising a hand to her eyes as airborne grit peppered her face. "SPIKE!"
"BUFFY!"
"DAWN! WHERE AREYOU? I CAN'T SEE YOU! TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE!"
A growl.
Footsteps. Feet slapping hard against the stone floor, impossibly distinct above the gale. Someone, something, was coming up fast. She squinted desperately. Nothing revealed itself. Then a voice -
"Oh my god, what have you done?"
"Giles?" Buffy called out. Then the running thing was upon her and she couldn't see a damned thing. She spun 360. Nothing. And the footsteps ran on. And were gone.
"... Sanguisa..."
She whirled around again and staggered. Mr Pointy lashed out at nothing.
"... Please don't die..."
"GILES!"
Someone screamed.
"... Don't die, not like this... Not like this..."
A slow, lazy laugh to her right. No, her left. Behind? Front? No, her right-
"... Slayer..."
"SPIKE!"
"... Inflammate e moritificus..."
Flesh struck flesh - somewhere...
Then it was all happening at once. A disconnected melee of distress and violence. Coming from everywhere, from nowhere. And all aimed at her.
Metal hits stone. A voice cries out. Footsteps pelt past, racing into nothingness. Dawn. Spike. The wind pushing and pulling at her with increasing violence. Growling. The roar of the gale. Giles. Laughter, cruel and sharp. Faster and faster.
"... Rupert..."
"ANITA!" The Slayer whirled around again. Nothing. What the hell? Terror welled up inside and she slashed wildly at the wind. Laughter. "STOP IT!" She screamed.
"... Oh god..."
"... I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, Ididn'tmeanit, didn'tmeanit, didn'tmeanit..."
"Been waiting for this, oh yeah."
Feet on stone.
"STOP IT! STOP!" The Slayer felt her cry become a shriek in her throat. "DAWN - WHERE ARE YOU?"
The hard clip of metal on stone.
"... Odisse..."
"... Come on Ripper..."
"... Been waiting for this-"
Footsteps. Gaining.
"NO!" Buffy ran, straight ahead with no idea where she was going or what she might run into. It didn't matter, she had to break free. The voices, the sounds, followed. She ran faster.
"What the hell is your elder and crankier doing down this end of the cemetery?" Spike paused in the grassy walkway between two rows of crumbling vaults. He looked around with a suspicious squint. "There's nothing here worth the effort."
"Are you sure this is where she went?" Dawn stepped up beside the vampire and curled small fingers around his coat sleeve. She shivered. "I don't like it down here - its freaky."
"Its a graveyard 'bit - its supposed to be freaky! This is where the freaks live. And yes, I am aware that that came out wrong..." Then he looked down at her, at her hand, and frowned slightly. She did not let go of the duster sleeve. No way in hell was she going to get left behind if he took off. He looked back down the corridor and spoke again - "yeah, this is where the trail ends alright."
Dawn looked around. What was Buffy doing down here? The wide walkway that rolled out in front of them was filmed in strange sickly grey shadows. And it was silent. No traffic buzz, no wind, no animal sounds. Nothing. She didn't like it. It was just creepy. Either side of them the stone tombs were jammed together like badly spaced teeth, each one in turn ashen and shrouded with darkness. On the ones closest she could just make out lichen and decay peppering the stonework. Even that looked pale and bleached. Spooky...
Then it struck her: it looked dead. That was what was wrong with it all - everything looked like a corpse. From the moon washed grass, to the tombs, to the silent air, it was all dead. Spike was positively pulsing with life by comparison. A ripple of cold dread ran down her spine. She let go of Spike's sleeve to grab his entire forearm and hug it to her. Dawn suddenly wished she were home in bed still cluelessly fuming over Buffy.
"Come on." Spike suddenly said as he started walking again, pulling her along with him. She pursed her lips: like she would go anywhere else! "Might as well look around."
"Spike-"
"Shhh, I'm concentrating."
"There's nothing down here to concentrate on! Let's go back. I can finish that mural in your crypt and -"
SNAP!
Dawn froze, so did Spike. In the silence the tiny noise was like a gunshot. Neither one of them moved. Something was there. In the dark. Right next to them. Behind them. Oh god... MOM-
"It's a pencil."
"ARGH!" Dawn nearly jumped out of her skin. "Don't do that! And what do you mean it's a pencil?"
"A pencil." The vampire repeated, stooping to pick up the small broken instrument from under his boot. He sniffed it. Then stared at it, vamping out for a second. "I've sensed this bloke before: he was with your sister. Told you this was the right place now didn't I?" He looked at her, lips pursed with an unspoken - HAH! "Now where has she buggered off to I wonder?"
The tomb was so quiet, so wrapped in dull cold insulating stone, that it made Anita's ears buzz. That was her first thought as she followed Rupert inside. The second was that it was pitch black. No gradation from starlight to dark in here. It was as if the meagre celestial glow was blocked from entering, or was being consumed the instant of its penetration. Neither were particularly comforting thoughts.
Her third thought was not positive either, but this one was framed in a question: what was Rupert doing? One moment he was striding purposefully into the dark, the next he was on his knees, the hand that still clutched the torch held up to shield his face.
"BUFFY!" He yelled. Loud and harsh. Then he was trying to stand. And she did mean trying.
"Rupert!" Instinctively Anita lunged forward, but a hard, strong hand grabbed her bicep and she was kept back. She watched her lover fall back to his haunches.
"Hold on love." Ethan's smooth calm voice slid into her ear. "Wouldn't get to close if I were you." Then he was moving past her, careful and quiet, to circle the crouching man. In the wavering torch light their bodies were half made: shadowed and distorted. Ethan's sword glinted softly. Anita raised her crossbow and tried to penetrate the darkness, to see Rupert's attacker, but there was nothing there. "Well, isn't this odd?" She saw Ethan crouch down. "RIPPER!" The sound of a finger-snap.
"BUFFY! WHERE ARE YOU?" Rupert called blindly into the darkness. The raw sound twisted in her stomach. It was a tenor she had hoped never to live to hear again.
"Wh - what's happening?" A small voice at her elbow. Edward.
"Something unhealthy I'd wager." Ethan answered, not rising from his crouch. Anita moved quickly around them both. Rupert's face was in shadow, but she could see the faint glow of the whites of his eyes. Wild eyes. Unfocussed. Unseeing.
"Spike?" He asked. Then he was surging to his feet. The torchlight whipped around in a frenzy. "SPIKE!"
"Lookout!" Anita grabbed a fistful of Ethan's coat and pulled. Just in time. Rupert's axe blade slashed the air barely a breath from them. It was a wide, wild swing searching for a target. Ethan fell backwards into her legs and they both tumbled onto the stone floor. Rupert surged forward. They scuttled backwards. The axe scythed the air again.
"RIPPER!" Ethan's voice was shrill in the dead silence. "Bloody hell man - stop. STOP!"
"BUFFY!" Rupert called, turning away from them. The axe bit the air again and she saw Edward, briefly illuminated by the slashing torch beam, scramble away from the weapon. Then it struck her: he wasn't blind. He was just seeing something else. She dropped her weapon. He was somewhere else. And he was lost.
I am blind that cannot see...
"ANITA! WHERE AREYOU?" He called out into the dark again.
I am deaf that cannot hear...
"Anita what are you doing?" Ethan called as she lunged forward. Rupert was still facing away from her, making slow determined, effortful steps deeper into the gloom. She reached out and grabbed his shoulder.
Make me a window to my soul...
And the world shifted.
In place of silence there was the penetrating howl of a gale. Instead of stillness there was frenzy. Wild tumbling whirls of air thrashed her clothing and froze her skin. Dust and grit blew into her eyes, her nose and mouth. And the smell: dead, rotted, putrid and wrong. There was a flavour to it... Oh no.
"... Sanguisa..."
A voice. Familiar and yet not. A whisper as loud as a scream. Coming from nowhere.
"Rupert." Anita pulled at the shoulder under her hand. It did not give, even a fraction. He was iron. "Rupert it's me."
"BUFFY!"
"Rupert its Annie."
"BUFFY - WHERE ARE YOU?"
"Been waiting for this, oh yeah."
Footsteps on stone.
"... Please don't die..."
"RUPERT! WAKE UP! PLEASE, YOU MUST WAKE UP! THIS IS NOT REAL. LISTEN TO ME RU!" Anita called again, hearing the desperation in her own voice. The wind blew in a sudden hard thrust that nearly knocked her from her feet. Her fingers started to slip. Then the shoulder under her hand flexed, muscle and bone shifting to accommodate the axe. A hard jab, straight out from his body, into the howling wind. And that did it. She lost her grip and was swept away to -
The tomb floor, the cool, calm darkness and the harsh wheeze of her own panting. Her head felt dangerously light and sparkles lit the darkness.
"What the bloody hell are you doing woman?" She heard Ethan's voice above her, and then his hands were on her arms, helping her up. She felt his fear, his anger, his hunger for greatness, and the stubborn, tightly held love that was always there in his touch. So much like Rupert and yet so different... Once she was standing he spoke again. "What did you see?"
"The Hellmouth. Its reaching out to him and he can't break free of it. He can't even see what's happening. He doesn't know that it's all illusion." She clutched at Ethan's forearms, feeling the wiry muscles. Feeling his resistance. "You'll have to use the protection magicks, now."
"Anita, its too soon-"
"BUFFY I CAN'T SEE YOU! ANITA! ETHAN!" Rupert was still in the tomb but they could no longer see him.
"Ethan, I can't help him. I can't even get through to him. You know what that means."
No reply. "Ethan-"
"You're sure you can't get to him. You're sure."
"I'm sure."
"What about a disruption spell? Maybe I can break through the illusion. I really don't want to use the protection magicks yet."
"Try it." She pushed his hands from her arms and back into his chest. "Do it. And hurry."
She could not see him, but strange almost-words purred into the air between them. They filled the space with curious vibrations that tickled her senses. It was sorely tempting to reach out and touch her old friend, to see what he was seeing, to experience it for herself, but she did not. Now was not the time indulge curiosities. Instead she held her breath and waited, heart tripping in her chest.
"What the hell?" From across the room: Rupert. From right by her Ethan's chant peetered out in a strained whisper. She did not need to make contact to hear the toll the incantation had taken.
"Rupert?" She called and was rewarded with the slicing yellow beam of his torch as it arced toward them. "Oh thank the 'Powers."
"Don't mention it." Ethan's breathlessly flip reply came from the dark in front of her.
"Anita? Is that you? What's happening?" The Watcher was approaching them rapidly now. The beam grew and grew until they were squinting in the glare. Anita raised her hand to shield her eyes. "Anita?"
"Ru, put that torch down. It's the Hellmouth: it was reaching out to you again. Didn't you hear me calling you? Didn't you feel my hand on your shoulder?"
"... No. Hell! I couldn't find you. I thought you had all been swept away."
"No, just you old man. Lucky yours truly was around hmm." Ethan said: cocky and out to get a rise out of the world once again. Rupert did not take the bait. "Well, at least we know what became of poor old Tilea - for all the good it does." Ethan went on.
"You've blocked the signal?" The Watcher said. "Disruption spell?"
"Yes."
"How long will it last?"
"Don't know. Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours." There was a sigh in the dark. "This place is not right: not for evil, not even for chaos. Its not following the rules at all and I can't tell how long I've wedged the door shut. Shit, the door is not even clear. I can see it but I can't feel it."
"I can't even see it." The anger, the frustrated distress in Rupert's voice was naked in the dark. "I can't bloody see anything. Everything is in shadow." His voice tapered off, "I'm blind." Anita reached out, but he pulled away. "Damn it. Where's Buffy? Did you see her?" The torch beam waved over the tomb, illuminating an empty room and the faint dirty brown suggestion of brickwork on the far wall. There was nothing else there. No sign of the Slayer. She was gone.
Again.
Rupert's torch slid over a gap in the far wall and it sucked dead the yellow torch light as it passed by. Doorway. There was nowhere else she could have gone. A distressed shudder rippled through her lover as if he suddenly felt the cold air as it wafted across his sweating face and found the gaps in his clothing to stroke his skin with icy fingers. She shivered herself. Then he was speaking again, with a voice like broken glass.
"We have to find her."
William did not like the dark, which was ironic in the extreme considering that the circumstances of his life had been as miserably dank and morbid as a shroud. All his years wrapped in the black cloth of mourning as countless friends and relatives gave up the spark to various fevers and chills, to misadventures of every pitiful sort, and the ever present consumption that rode about the dim foggy streets of old London town like the horsemen of the apocalypse. And always, always the mystifying black melancholy that accompanied him everywhere. The black stain on his precious fucking soul. An eternal bitter pill that rose up in his gorge at will until he was puking great geysers of inexplicable sadness and anger. Thoughts at once of murder and suicide both. An agony of contradiction that drove him deep into the darkness of the London night as it drove him deep into his own blackness.
Hours and hours in the dark, trying to hide from the gibbering thing that fed on his soul. Hours and hours at once seething and crying, screaming inside. Hours and hours of dying and dying and hating himself and the world and everyone in it. Chewing bitter bile. Inexplicable and ill deserved thoughts of murder consuming his mind in fire and rage. Dear mamma, dear papa in his bank clerk's uniform, and even dear sister.
A fantasy of pistols in the night.
Rage unleashed from its black mourning suit to paint everything in pain. Scarlet suffering. Hating and hating until it turned inward and murderous thoughts became terrible guilt. Terrible, terrible guilt and horror. Then tears. Fucking tears if you will.
So easy to fall under the cartwheel on these streets. Stumble out of the dark fog, blinded by his own, and slip. Oh horror. What a poor dear, crushed under the horses hooves. Smashed into the sewage stained cobblestones. Terrible. Terrible.
Suicide is a sin.
Suicide is a sin young man, shame on you for being so selfish. Be off with you and no more of that talk. Oh your poor mother. If only she knew the black thoughts of her only son. Only son mind you. Her only insurance against these hard times, what with dear father being so poorly. See him cough and cough until the scarlet comes. Not long for him now, until he ascends to his reward. Pious man like that. If only he knew the undeserving heart that beat in his own son's chest. His only son, mind you. His only hope.
And writing on the walls. The walls of old London town filled with pitiful chalk scrawls. Poetry. An outpouring of poorly crafted pain. On and on until the white powder is red and the dawn is come. At last. And with it the lifting of the veil over his heart.
Inexplicable.
Darkness melting like ice in the summer sun, leaving him drained and sleeping for days. Then everything is alright again. Alright. Poetry in his book now, in neat black ink. Love and passion; beauty and truth. The hand of hope guiding the pen. Anything is possible and it's all going to be alright. Better than alright in fact. Dear Cecily, my love ...
For the moment the long cold dark would be just a memory to haunt him.
And William so hated the dark. Frightened of it he was: like he was frightened of everything. Stopping and starting at every hint of shadow, be it the natural turn of day or the turn of the human condition. The human condition, hah! Oh, how little he had known about the human condition. How very, very little.
It was becoming impossible to put himself back there anymore. Being Turned had changed his memories to grey - well, grey-er than they already were. Sodding mortality... Yeah, remembering was one thing, but to re-experience the flavour was quite another. Why had he been afraid to fight back? Why had he retreated into a futile almost-existence, populated largely by his own imaginings? Why had he not embraced the darkness and kicked some bloody arse? He no longer knew the answers to those questions. If he ever had done...
Stupid William. Stupid, foolish boy.
The dark was not the problem; it was just the thing the doctor ordered. It was the playground: the romping rollicking field that concealed only possibility and freedom. Emancipation from everything that dragged at him, that bound his world in tightly held grief. The dark was passion unleashed. It was liberty of the most intimate kind. He had had to die to learn that. His princess saving him from a tiny and invisible life, skulking about in the shadows.
Ooh my precious boy, my dark prince; ooh the world is all fiery bright in your eyes now isn't it? Let Mummy see. Ooh. It dances like little fairies. Nasty little pixies in your eyes. My darling, naughty boy. She's all yours she is. All hot and tasty. Can you see? Mummy brought her to you special. Naughty little witch she is, our Cecily. Won't say no to our William now. Won't say nasty things. Go on. Ooh I can smell her fear. Like honey and spice and all for Mummy's darling. She remembers your name now, my precious boy, and she is yours if you want her...
"There ain't a thing to be bothered about Little Bit." Spike said as he looked about for the trail he now knew was there. "Not a thing. Just you stick by me and you'll see." Dawn did not reply nor did she let go of his arm, but that was all right, he was here for her. He would look out for her, guide her and teach her, proper-like. Like he himself had been, only better. He would. It would just take a little longer than Dru's method that was all - there were no chips back in the day, in Dru's daft pretty head. He would have to be more inventive, more patient, than his lovely Sire, but he was nothing if not patient with his girl already wasn't he? Indulgent. All tolerance-having and ever so gentlemanly.
And big sis? Well, maybe he wasn't so tolerant with her, but then she always got under his skin. She knew just what to say and just what to do to get him mad. Months of him fuming, arguing and seething, bound up in his black leather and invisible choke chain unable to stop or counter her. And inexplicably unable to leave her side. It wasn't right for a Lord of the Underworld to behave this way. Why didn't he just walk away?
But now thoughts of desertion were not an option. He had seen her soft underbelly and he was ready to give her what for. No biting though. There was no chance of ripping and tearing like in days of yore, but that didn't really matter anymore did it (oh bloody hell, on some deep level it sodding did, didn't it)? He wasn't a stupid creature and he had lived by his wits for all his long Undead life, surviving more adept and crafty foes than the Sunnydale Slayer. Defeating them too. There was more than one way to skin your Prey.
Oh yeah, she was going to get hers alright.
Everything always got so very lucid in the dark...
And there it was: the trail. Clear to his yellow eye, to his gifted senses. It was also very short. Within a handful of feet it disappeared into a ruined tomb doorway. Well, the Nibblet had been right - this was not the usual patrol at all. He inhaled hard. Yep, there they were: the Slayer, the Watcher, the pencil carrier, the strange (strange) woman and the familiar man. He could not place the scent but that new bloke had been here before. In this very graveyard too. Spike frowned, thinking.
"I don't want to go in there." Dawn's small voice suddenly came from down by his side. He could smell her fear, and his demon grinned somewhere deep inside. No more Bonny and Clyde tonight, just Mamma's little baby. He looked down and saw the wide round eyes staring at the open tomb. Dammit, he didn't have the time to take her somewhere safe. "Spike, let's go home. Please."
"Now then Little Bit, don't go all soft on me. You were right: the Slayer and her merry little band have gotten themselves deep into something interesting. Something they don't want you and me to know." He took her hands away from his arm and held both in one of his own. She was so warm... He looked at her. "They never want you and me to know, but we got a right. We've paid the blood price we have and it's our sodding right to know what's going on."
"Yeah sure, but-"
"But nothing baby-girl. And don't you be worried about a bit of dark now, not with the Big Bad by your side. Didn't get my reputation for leaving my princesses in distress now did I?"
"... Princesses?" Her hands gripped down on his with an increase in pressure so slight a mortal would have missed it. He didn't. Nor did he miss the interesting acceleration of her heartbeat: the delicious heating of already burning blood. Oh I'm going to pay for this.
"Come with me?"
A nod. Tentative, scared, but there.
"Alright then," he drew his hands away from hers and looped an arm around her shoulders, then forehead to forehead and a feral, conspiratorial grin, "let's go."