Chapter Six
"A vampire?" he asked slowly.
Buffy nodded. "Spike was a vampire and I – I am a vampire slayer."
"And you were lovers?" he asked carefully.
Out of all the questions he could have asked, Buffy was surprised he chose that one. She nodded again.
"And how the bloody hell did you manage that?"
"Very carefully," she replied, her heart clenching at the memories of their tumultuous relationship.
He smiled, a cold, hard smile, and then he stepped away from her. Her hands fell to her sides. "Miss Summers, I'm not sure what your game is. I'm not sure what you want from me. But my book, these are my own ideas, these are my characters and my stories. And I do not appreciate what you are implying!"
"Implying? I'm implying something?" she asked in confusion.
He nodded in fury, pointing at her angrily. "Oh yes! You're implying that I stole these stories from you somehow! I don't know where you're getting your information. Morgan is my creation! Oh sure, the Grigori are in the Bible, as are the Nephilim and their fate. But everything else – the Orders, Rain and Morgan – their love story – these are my creations!"
Buffy bowed her head, praying for patience. "William, I'm not saying that you stole these stories or these characters from me or from anyone else. They are your stories, sure, they're different, but the basis of those characters, of that story, it's yours even more than you think."
"What are you saying?"
"Your character Morgan is based on me," Buffy said, moving towards him. "Rain's character is based on Spike. Their relationship, their tangled, tormented love is ours. Yours and mine."
"Get the hell out of this house," he said harshly. "Now. You'll be hearing from my lawyer."
Buffy gaped at him. "You have a freaking lawyer?"
He straightened and pointed to the door. "Get out!"
"William!"
He turned to the door, where Dahlia stood, looking every single one of her eighty years. He hurried to her side, took her elbow and helped her to the wingback by the window.
"Dahlia, what do you need? Are you okay?" he asked, bending over her in concern.
She waved his concern away. "No, William. I am fine. Sit down." She looked over at Buffy. "Miss Summers, sit down. It is nice to finally meet you."
William straightened and stared at Dahlia. "What's going on here? Dahlia, how do you know this woman?"
"Sit down, please, William," she said, her voice shaking.
He sat down in the matching wingback and Buffy sat back on the settee.
"You know what I am," Buffy stated with surprise.
Dahlia smiled. "I have always known who and what you were. I have wanted to meet you for many years, but there was never an opportunity." She looked over at William. "And then, when William showed up at my bookstore, I knew it was only a matter of time before you did also."
She fumbled with the locket at her neck and finally untied the chain and carefully opened the locket. She handed it over to Buffy.
"Miss Summers, this is my granddaughter Savannah," Dahlia said. Her lined face was soft with remembered love and the remnants of grief. "She was my only grandchild and I practically raised her myself. Her mother died in a car crash when she was four and so she spent her time living here with me and with her father in Miami. Until she was twelve and he remarried and started a new family, and then Savannah just lived here all year round." Dahlia sighed, nodding when Buffy handed the locket to William. "She was a beautiful girl, smart, popular, athletic and good natured. And then, one night, it all changed."
Buffy's breath caught.
"She became secretive," Dahlia continued. "Her grades started slipping, her friends stopped coming around. I caught her sneaking out at night and I confronted her, like any proper grandmother would. And that is when I found out the truth." Dahlia looked up and stared at Buffy, her blue eyes faded with age and regret. "Savannah was like you, Miss Summers."
William shook his head, "Dahlia, you're tired. It's been a long night –"
"I will beg you to watch your tongue young man and let me speak!" she snapped.
He sat back in shock and shut his mouth.
"She was a slayer?" Buffy said.
Dahlia nodded. "One night she did not come home. I sent Isaiah out looking for her at dawn. He brought her back an hour later. One of those demons, a vampire, had outsmarted her." Dahlia looked at Buffy. "Miss Summers, may I ask a personal question?"
Buffy nodded.
"How old are you?"
"I'm twenty-eight," Buffy answered, bewildered.
"And you became a slayer in 1997, correct?"
Buffy nodded and Dahlia smiled sadly. "My granddaughter was a slayer Miss Summers, but she was unlike you in one very important manner." Dahlia looked down at her hands, rubbing absently at an age spot. She sniffled and looked back up. "She was not as powerful or as good a slayer as you must have been to have lived this long. You see, Miss Summers, Savannah was chosen at the age of sixteen and she died at the hands of a vampire when she was only eighteen. In 1997, the year you were chosen."
Buffy gasped. "Oh, my God. Ms. Beauvais, I'm so, so sorry."
Dahlia waved her apology away. "Oh, it is not your fault, Miss Summers. You have got enough guilt weighing on those young shoulders of yours; do not add my tragic loss to it. I have had years to accept what Savannah was and to deal with her death. She was a very, very special girl."
Dahlia turned to William. "Miss Summers is exactly who and what she says she is, William. I have never lied to you, never had cause to. And I swear, I never will. This is the truth."
His face was ashen. He knew Dahlia, adored her caustic wit and her sharp temper. They'd spent hours together and he'd never once doubted her sanity or her sense of honor. He couldn't start now.
"How come you never said anything to me?" he asked. "All those nights at the store when I was tossing ideas and theories about, and when you were reading my manuscript, you never said a word. Bloody hell, Dahlia, my novel! It's all about demon hunters and the like and you never said a word?"
She smiled. "You gave me back my life those nights, young William. In your heroine Morgan, I saw glimpses of what my Savannah could have become with time and luck." Dahlia shrugged. "She ran out of both, but in your hands, in your words, I could visit with her again."
"How did you know about me?" Buffy asked.
Dahlia looked over at her. "Savannah's watcher, Nigel Clara, came to me and shared the particulars with me. I kept up with your exploits and adventures, Miss Summers, for many years. At least until the closing of the Hellmouth in Sunnydale; and then with the Council's collapse and all, Nigel and I lost touch."
William shook his head in disbelief. "It's incredible, this is." He looked at Buffy. "You are a vampire slayer? A real, bleeding demon hunter?"
Buffy nodded. "To each generation a slayer was chosen by the fates. When she dies," she glanced over at Dahlia, "a new slayer is chosen. At least that's how it worked until the closing of the Hellmouth when a pretty potent magic spell re-jigged the selection process. Now there are hundreds of us."
He rested his head in his hands, sighed and looked up.
"Where the bloody hell do I fit in to this?"
"William," Dahlia said softly. She opened her mouth, as if to say something and then reconsidered. "I was informed, by Nigel, that there was a vampire known as William the Bloody, Scourge of Europe. He became a vampire in the late 1890s."
"Spike," Buffy filled in. "He – he later called himself Spike."
"And you both think that this Spike – and I – are one and the same?"
Dahlia hesitated and seemed to be choosing her words carefully. William realized that while she certainly wasn't lying to him, Dahlia wasn't telling him everything either.
"Yes, William. I believe that Miss Summers is correct. I do not know how it happened, by magic or by fate, but you have been sent back, here, as a mortal."
"Why?"
She looked away from him, down at her hands and replied, quite simply. "I do not know."
He shook his head. "Dahlia, this isn't possible, love," he said gently. "I have a family. My mum and dad live in London. I just talked to them two days ago. I have an older sister and two nieces and nephews." He tapped his temple. "I have memories here of my life! I could not possibly have lived the life of a centuries old vampire up till a few years ago. What you're saying, it's mad."
"William, in a world where vampires and werewolves and demons exist, anything is possible."
"That world is of the imagination," he insisted. "It's all in my head and in books."
She shook her head. "No, William, it is all in your heart."
He sighed. "This is completely bent! There's no way that this could have happened, there's no explanation!"
"But there is," Buffy interjected.
Unable to sit still anymore, William stood up and paced over to the fireplace. He looked into the mirror hanging over the hearth and glared at Buffy. He blamed her for bringing this all down on his head. Just that afternoon his life had been perfect. Perfectly normal. He'd been a bestselling author coming off of a nation wide tour. He had a beautiful home by the ocean, a chick magnet of a car, a closet filled with Savile Row suits and an annoying but superbly competent Australian assistant. He had money and health and good looks. The only complaint he'd ever had and never voiced out loud to anyone, was the lack of a special someone to share all his good fortune with.
And then this woman had literally fallen into his life and turned it upside down.
"You have an explanation," he stated sarcastically.
"The Shanshu Prophecy," she answered.
"The what?"
"The Shanshu Prophesy," she repeated, striving for patience. "You do know what a prophecy is, don't you?"
"Yeah, I've read Harry Potter," he replied.
Buffy took a deep breath. "There was a prophecy that stated that a vampire with a soul would play a major part in saving the world from an apocalypse and his reward would be a return to his human form."
With each word she spoke, William's eyebrows rose higher and higher. When she was done, he held up his hand. "Let me see if I've got this Shanshu bugaboo correct," he said slowly. "First there has to be a vampire with a soul?"
Buffy nodded.
"Now, I've done my research," he said sarcastically. "And I know that vampires don't have souls. They are demons without souls."
"Yes, but-"
"I'm not done," he bit out. "Second, said ensouled vampire would have to save the world from an apocalypse. Last time I watched the evening news the world was going to hell in a hand basket, love, but I've yet to see the four horsemen!"
"The Sunnydale-"
"And last, but not least, why – WHY – would a vampire with supernatural strength and immortality want to become a real boy again?"
Buffy stared at him. To see him standing before her, looking so much like Spike, sounding so much like Spike, but spewing those words was torture. Buffy felt like he was peeling away each layer of her skin, flaying her open and poking at her battered insides.
This is what it must have felt like, she thought to herself, when she had stood there and told him that he was beneath her, that he was a monster, that she could never love him. This was what it felt like to have your heart ripped out of your chest and set on fire. She had done this to him; she had to find the strength to survive this karmic justice and set things right for both of them.
"William, in your book, what did Rain do to prove his humanity to Morgan? To prove to her that there was something noble inside him, that he was worthy of her love, that his humanity matched hers?"
William stared at her.
Buffy stood and slowly walked towards him. She tried to smile. "You see, William, that's how I knew it was you. When I read those words that only Spike had spoken to me, I knew it was you." She took his hands into hers and closed her eyes, remembering that heart breaking moment. "She shall look on him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love and he will be loved."
Their eyes met over their clasped hands.
"In the end, Spike, you earned your soul and you died saving the world to prove that you were a better man. To be the man you thought I deserved; to be the man that you thought I could love."
"Bloody hell," William whispered hoarsely. With a panicked look on his face, he pulled his hands from hers and fled.
Buffy watched helplessly as he left. Then she turned and looked down at Dahlia.
"Do not worry, child," the older woman said quietly. "William is a good man, an insightful man. He will see the truth in you and in his own heart."
Buffy bowed her head. "I never imagined it like this," she looked up. "I'm not sure how I imagined it, but it wasn't like this – I thought he'd at least, I don't know, be the same person."
Dahlia smiled crookedly. "If the Shanshu prophecy is to be believed, by his sacrifice Spike exorcised his demons and was returned to his human form. Miss Summers, William and Spike are two very different people. One is a poet and writer with a romantic soul; the other was a demon with vestiges of that romantic soul."
"He loved me," Buffy whispered. "With and without the soul, he was capable of loving me." She looked at the doorway through which William had fled.
Dahlia stood up and leaning forward, pressed a gentle kiss to Buffy's cheek. Buffy inhaled the scent of roses and talcum powder and closing her eyes imprinted the moment into her memories.
"If he loved you then, as a demon, just imagine, child, how much he will love you now, as a man," Dahlia murmured.
TBC