“Sire.”
Angel looked down into the wide, mesmerizing eyes of his new childe.
Willow was in her vampire face, her eyes golden and glimmering and shot
through with streaks of brilliant, shimmering emerald green. A slow
smile crossed his lips despite his apprehension, and he felt himself
beginning to relax a little bit.
To Angel, in that moment, this precious childe was worth all that
creating her had cost him.
And if she listened to her sire’s instruction and did as he told her,
it was still possible that he would not have to lose anything at all.
“Childe,” he said softly, simply, smiling warmly into her eyes.
Her seductive smile changed slightly, almost imperceptibly, and Angel
could see amusement on her face that was bordering on mockery. She rose
up to press her lips against his, parted and needy, her tongue daring
past their border and running teasingly along Angel’s own trembling
mouth.
Oh, how he had wanted this…for so much longer than anyone knew!
“Sire,” she whispered again, the words a cool, unneeded breath against
the sensitive skin of his jaw. “Sire, I need…I’m…I’m…”
“What?” Angel gasped as her light, teasing kisses moved down his
throat, her fangs nipping playfully at his skin here and there. “What
is it, Willow, you’re what?”
She drew back suddenly to meet his eyes, her own flashing with a
mixture of danger and seduction as she whispered her response.
“*Hungry*.”
And without waiting for permission, without asking whether or not her
status allowed it, Willow’s needle-sharp little fangs darted forward,
latching onto her sire’s throat and piercing his skin, drinking
greedily from his borrowed blood.
At first, the powerful drawing of her need was the sweetest pleasure
that Angel had experienced in over a hundred years. The desperate need
of a childe for her sire was something that was rivaled by no other
sensation he had ever found. Angel savored the pulling feeling as her
fangs worried his flesh, and the eager childe drew strength from her
sire’s body.
Too much strength.
After a few brief moments, Angel began to feel a little
light-headed…and a lot worried.
“Willow,” he whispered, his hands rising sightlessly to grip her arms
and push her back. “Willow, that’s enough for now…”
“No, it’s not!” she growled, drawing harder from the twin wounds on his
throat, smiling around the mouthful she held of his flesh when he let
out a moan of mingled pain and pleasure at the sensation.
“Willow…it’s too much,” he insisted, his voice slurred slightly and
beginning to sound distant and detached. “It’s too much…”
Willow ignored his words, drawing one more deep draught of her sire’s
blood, before pulling back to look at him with an expression of mild
curiosity, untouched with concern.
“Oh,” she murmured sympathetically. “Are you feeling weak, Sire?”
“Yeah.” Angel nodded. “Yeah, you can’t…can’t take too much all at
once…or it’ll…it’ll…do that…”
“Make you weak?” she finished for him.
“Yeah,” he replied, trying to nod again but giving it up when he found
that he hadn’t the strength left to do so.
“Awww,” she crooned, running soft fingertips through his disheveled
hair. “I took a little bit too much, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” Angel whispered.
“But you’ll recover…right?” Willow frowned, a look of false concern in
her eyes.
Angel swallowed hard, gasping for unnecessary breath as he tried to
summon enough strength to respond. “Yeah…with blood…and a little time…”
“How much time?”
His dizzy head kept him from noticing the hard, calculating note to her
voice.
“A day?” he guessed.
“Good,” she murmured, satisfaction in her voice.
Angel raised his head with an effort, giving her a look of confusion at
her words. A day seemed to him like far too long to be like this. He
felt sick, dizzy, his head fuzzy and disoriented, and the helplessness
of feeling like that was not a pleasant thing at all.
For him.
“Good.”
His childe smiled down at him with cold satisfaction, lowering her lips
to his throat again, teasing the wound she had made with her fangs,
before biting down hard and deliberately tearing through his flesh.
Angel’s back arched with pain, though he was too weak to cry out with
it.
Willow smiled down at him, unfazed.
“That gives me plenty of time to play.”
*************************************
“Ow.”
“What’s the matter, Slayer?” Spike dutifully asked her, though he
already knew very well what was the source of her discomfort.
Since Buffy had awakened about twenty minutes earlier, she had said
“ow” at least as many times.
“My head hurts. And stop talking. You’re making it hurt.”
“No,” the vampire replied in a slow, overly patient tone of voice.
“That would be the bottle and a half of bloody expensive liquor you
just poured down your throat. Not *my* fault if you decided to behave
like a soddin’ lush.”
“Shut up,” Buffy muttered, a distinct whine to her voice at this point.
“You’re not helping.”
“Wasn’t trying to.”
“Oh, *do* shut up, both of you!” Giles snapped from where he sat in the
chair across from the sofa. “Or *I’ll* be the one with a bloody
migraine!”
Surprised by his outburst, the Slayer and the vampire, seated at either
end of the sofa, as far from each other as they could get, both fell
silent.
Buffy had awakened from her alcohol-induced nap in a foul, cranky mood
and had wasted no time in deciding that it was Spike’s fault.
Indignant, hurt, and defensive, Spike had determined that he would not
allow the affection and comfort that he wanted to show her to be tossed
under her feet and trampled like so much garbage.
He had a bit of pride left still.
Just a bit -- but it was there.
After a few brief, awkward moments had passed, Jenny Calendar spoke up
quietly, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
“Someone needs to call Xander.”
Those simple words were heavily sobering to the little group, drawing
their attention back to the painful, dreadful fact that was hanging in
the air among them, clamoring for their determinedly averted thoughts.
They had failed to find any trace of Willow.
None of them wanted to give up hope completely, but no one knew where
else to look for her, either. Jenny had attempted a location spell she
had found in a book of Giles’, but it had failed to yield the little
redhead’s whereabouts. They had searched throughout Sunnydale by car
and on foot, with no success.
Willow seemed to have disappeared.
“I’ll call him,” Giles offered, and the sympathy in his voice caused
Buffy’s face to flood with embarrassment at the reminder of her recent
estrangement from her best friend. She did not argue as the Watcher
rose from his seat and crossed the room to the phone, Jenny at his side
to offer moral support.
Spike and Buffy were both very quiet for a long moment, neither really
sure what to say at a time like this.
Finally, Buffy broke the silence, tears in her eyes as well as in her
voice.
“This is what you were talking about before, isn’t it? When you said
Angel would take all my friends away from me? Destroy anything that
meant anything in my life?”
Spike nodded with a weary sigh. “Yeah,” he quietly admitted. “In the
visions…Angelus turned Willow…and things went downhill from there. The
boy…well, he turned against you, love. Because of what happened to Red.”
“You said he…you said Xander ended up getting…getting killed. In some
horrible way. Right?”
Spike’s silence was all the confirmation Buffy needed, but she was not
satisfied yet.
“How?”
Spike was quiet for a few seconds, and Buffy could see the conflict on
his face as he debated whether or not to answer the question. A part of
her mind began to wonder about that phenomenon in itself. Why should
Spike care if the answer to her question would hurt her? Why was he so
helpful and concerned all of a sudden?
Before she could give the matter any deeper thought, Spike answered her
question with a single word that made her heart drop like a stone into
the pit of her stomach.
“Willow.”
The dark tone of his voice told the Slayer more than she needed to
know. She shuddered at the vivid mental image she suddenly got of a
relieved, trusting Xander throwing his front door open and inviting the
creature who had once been his best friend into his home, only to have
the monster that Willow had become tear out his throat…and his heart
with it.
Her eyes widened with fear at the thought, and she looked up at Giles,
who was still waiting for someone to answer the phone at Willow’s
house, where Xander had been headed earlier . He met her eyes, but
before she could speak, he was talking into the receiver.
“Yes, this is Mr. Giles. No, I’m quite sorry, we haven’t seen her. Is
Xander Harris there?”
While he waited for the boy to come to the phone, Buffy whispered
urgently, “Get him to come here. Warn him that Willow could be…could
be…not Willow anymore. He’s only safe with us.”
Giles nodded as he spoke again into the phone, “Yes, Xander, it’s me.
You need to come over here as soon as possible.”
Satisfied that her friend was being suitably warned, Buffy leaned back
on the couch again, covering her face with her hands as she breathed
out a heavy, shaky sigh.
“What am I going to do?” she whimpered, not really expecting a response
from anyone.
“Well, the first thing you ought to do is bloody apologize to the boy.
I mean, it’s not really only your fault…but he sees it that way…and
there *were* things that could have been done differently…and, well,
let’s just say that in the version of the future I saw, you never
did…and he never got over it.”
Buffy looked up at the blond vampire, her eyes narrowing suspiciously
at his helpful, matter of fact tone -- not to mention the rather blunt
statement of facts that she was trying very hard to ignore at the
moment. “What do you care?” she demanded petulantly, looking away from
him, her lower lip jutting out slightly in the beginnings of a
defensive pout.
“I’m beginning to wonder that myself,” Spike drawled, rolling his eyes
and turning slightly away from her, an expression of defeat on his
face, which she was so pointedly not looking at.
A guilty pang smote the troubled young Slayer, and she sighed again,
turning back toward Spike. “I’m sorry,” she admitted. “I just…I’m
worried about Willow, and about Xander, and the fact that Angel’s gone
bad and most likely Willow has, too, and I’m gonna have to deal with
that because it’s just part of the lovely Slayer prize package for
which I was randomly selected…and I’m totally not used to the whole you
being a good, helpful vampire thing. Okay?”
By the time Buffy finished her nervous, rambling explanation, Spike had
turned to look at her again, surprised. He took in her pitiful
expression, her eyes large and sorrowful and welling with tears…
…and he never stood a chance.
“ ‘S all right, pet,” he assured her gently. “I know it’s a bloody lot
to get used to. I know ‘cause I’m getting used to it, too,” he added in
a rueful voice, shaking his head slowly. “I just…I really do want to
help you. I hope you believe me.”
Buffy studied his face intently for a long moment, before smiling
hesitantly through her tears.
“Yeah,” she confessed. “I do believe you. I could sort of tell by the
passing out drunk with an unchipped, deadly vampire and waking up
alive.” She frowned, aware that something was not quite right with her
wording, before correcting herself flatly, “Waking up at all.”
Spike tried -- and failed -- to suppress a laugh.
Buffy pouted at him, but the faint twinkle in her eyes gave her away,
even as she protested, “Hey! Quit mocking the person who could so
easily kick your ass, ‘kay?”
“Yeah. I was real bloody scared for my arse last night while you were
passing out on top of me!”
“Oh, shut up!”
“*You* shut up!”
“*That’s* mature…”
A knock at the door silenced their good-natured argument, which was
quickly becoming a much-needed outlet for their combined frustrations.
Buffy and Spike exchanged a look, before the Slayer met the eyes of her
Watcher.
“Um…that’s awfully fast to be Xander,” Jenny remarked, a warning note
to her voice.
“I don’t think it *is* Xander.”
Spike pointed out the suspicions that they all shared, his voice low
and dangerous, a soft growl audible just under the words as he rose to
his feet. Beside him, the Slayer’s instincts had told her the same
thing his had told him.
Whoever was at the door was not human.
Not anymore.