Vices of My Blood
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Spike let loose with a low growl that reverberated in his chest when he heard a knock on the door. All he wanted to do was curl up with Buffy and watch her sleep. Was that so much to ask? He lay there for an extended moment just watching her drift off to sleep peacefully following the wondrous first orgasm she experienced . . . with him!
When the knock came again, he grumbled as he sat up and pulled himself to the wheelchair. He was pleasantly surprised when he discovered that he had some feeling in his legs again. Buffy’s slayer’s blood was slowly but surely healing him, making him whole again. Now, if only I could find a way to help her get her strength back, he thought as he wheeled the chair closer to the door and bid the visitor to come in.
Dalton scurried inside the room, but stayed close to the door. His master had become rather testy of late, and no amount of penance could soothe him lately. Master Angelus had set Master Spike on edge and on edge is where the blond vampire stayed. “Sir . . .” the bookish stuttered over the question. He wanted to alert Spike of the arrival of Master Angelus and Mistress Drusilla, but Spike cut him off.
“Yeah, Dalton, I need you to do a couple of things for me. One, the Slayer needs female necessities. She is having what humans normally call a monthly flow, and I’d just as soon try to keep it at bay from my sheets. Also, she’ll need more clothes, intimate apparel and the like. Two, I need that book we took the Eligor ritual from. I want to look up the possible side effects of the ritual.” Spike handed Dalton the list of items to retrieve from the store. When the vampire tried to make a quick exit, Spike stopped him with a warning, “Dalton, I hope I won’t need to remind you to keep your mouth shut about this. Not a word gets back to Angelus about your activities. If I find out he knows anything, I’ll personally stake you myself.”
Dalton nodded. Just as he was about to make a hasty exit, Angelus appeared at the door. His hulking form seemed to take up the whole space of the doorway. That he was dressed all in black from his black cotton duster to his leather pants and boots made him an imposing figure in the doorway. Spike couldn’t suppress rolling his eyes at the grand entrance his grandsire made. Angelus was always the showman, all about keeping up appearances. There could be nothing less than the best for the dark vampire: the best entrances, the best dwellings, the best, most willing victims, the most appropriate torture technique for any occasion, the list went on . . .
Angelus growled at Dalton, making the bookish vampire jump two feet off the ground and dash from the room. When he was gone, Angelus turned to Spike. “Ah, Spike, not happy to see me?”
Spike gave his grandsire a bored stare. “When am I ever happy to see you, Angelus? I wasn’t happy to meet you, and frankly, over the century our relationship has become a little stale, don’t you think? I think you need an attitude adjustment of late, mate,” Spike suggested in his nicest cocky attitude he could summon.
“Is that any way to treat family, boy?” Angelus feigned sore feelings as best he could before he turned to more serious matters. “What did you just send Dalton on an errand for?”
Spike met his grandsire’s intense glare with one of his own. “I sent him to fetch more clothes and feminine toiletries for the Slayer. She is human, not that I would expect you to remember what that was like, Angelus, but as much as the demon in me loves the sight of blood, I don’t fancy sleeping in it much these days,” Spike snapped at older vampire.
“Wearisome mortals. They don’t relish the sight of blood the way we do, the way the crimson color runs over the tongue, how smooth it goes down the throat, smears and stains the sheets so gloriously like a bright ribbon of carnage. God, William, I miss the old days,” Angelus’ voice was wistful while lost in memory of the past.
Spike cringed. He didn’t miss them; the old days were fraught with excruciating pain, an over indulgent gorge on blood and sex. Most of what Angelus remembered now so fondly were the days and nights when the blood that stained the sheets was his own, brought forth from many a lashing when Angelus had worked so diligently to mold him into the sadistic vampire second only to his grandsire.
Angelus’ chocolate eyes drifted from Spike to the small blond girl curled up in the middle of the huge bed. He brushed past his grandchilde to move closer to the bed. Angelus gripped the bed post and stared down at the fresh, soft skin, seeing the rose blush of her blood color her flesh. Angelus smirked at the memory of what she felt like in his arms, crushing her warm body against his when he still had a soul, and instantly became hard. The Slayer had a knack for always doing that to him. She reminded him of Drusilla that way. His baby girl was sweet and pure and chaste when she had become his obsession.
Spike’s growl was territorial in nature when he felt Angelus had worn out his stay. He didn’t want his grandsire anywhere near the girl if he could help it. Angelus used to lord his stature with Drusilla over him in the early days. Now, without realizing what he was about, his demon had growled at the threat of another demon near his chosen mate. Chosen . . . mate . . .? What the bloody hell . . . ?
Angelus suddenly remembered that he had left Xander tied up and at the mercy of his vicious childe. He figured he had better go see that no more blood was spilled than necessary. He turned to face Spike, not bothering to hide his erection, before smirking and walking out the door.
Dalton returned with some clothes for Buffy and the spell book not long after Angelus had left. Once Spike had the book in his possession again, he dismissed Dalton with a wave of his hand. He flipped through the pages until he found the ritual he had used to heal Drusilla. He skimmed through it carefully to determine what he had missed in the ritual. He was so aggressive about wanting to heal his sire; he had only touched on the important details. He knew that using Angel was the right thing to do, and had even knew the possibility of bringing Angelus back, but why had it taken Buffy’s strength away?
He was always so impulsive he never thought to even look for the fine print on anything before he tried it. Then he found it, the fine print of the ritual:
When used on supernatural beings certain side effects can occur. This ritual may need outside conduits for power sources such as other demons, witches, warlocks, or other persons with supernatural ability. This ritual will leave the conduit weakened or with long exposure may cause death. (For information on the restoration of strength, see appendix C).
Spike zipped through the pages, past the index to the appendices of the book and then scanned the pages for strength restoration and found:
If the rites have been intoned properly and the ritual was finished with success, any being which has touched the conduit will have an almost immediate loss of strength.
Spike looked up at the sleeping girl. Well she lost her strength. He returned to the passage and continued to read:
The being which touched the conduit will have felt an electric shock while the conduit’s essence has passed into them. The essence they inherit will spread through the body, depleting the strength of the being until it has consumed the strength entirely. The only two ways to reverse the effect are to have the being wear the Gem of Amara, rendering them impervious to death or have the being consume the blood of the conduit or a familial component to the conduit.
Spike furrowed his brow in thought. The Gem of Amara was a vampire legend. Even if it was real he was in no position to run out and scavenge around the world for it. As for having Buffy drink from Angelus, there was no way on this cesspool of a planet he was allowing Angelus anywhere near the chit if he could help it. That would leave him, but he knew his slayer would never drink from him even if her life depended on it.
About the time that thought struck Spike, Buffy let out a pained but weakened moan. Spike wheeled the chair closer to the bed and climbed back up beside the small girl, cuddling her into his side. “Hey, pet, how do you feel?”
Buffy only moaned painfully. She was too weak to open her eyes or speak and the slight movement that it took for Spike to snuggle her body to him made her stomach churn. She didn’t expect to wake up feeling this weakened. It was like it was too much effort to even move her fingers on her own. “Spike . . .” his name came out from a parched throat.
Spike leaned over to the nightstand where he had left the basin and cloth from when he nursed her injuries. Dalton had brought it in some time ago following a wordless request; the minion seemed to know when things were needed . . . sometimes. He soaked the cloth in the water, brought to her lips and rang the water out into her mouth. “Here, Buffy. Swallow some of this. Once your throat is moistened it’ll be better,” Spike encouraged her to drink the stream of water that came from the cloth.
When she had swallowed enough water to speak, Buffy’s words came out in a hoarse whisper. “Everything hurts, Spike. It feels like I’m too drained to move and something is tugging at my insides.” She would have clutched Spike in desperation had she the strength to accomplish the task of curling her fingers around the collar of his shirt, his duster, anything.
God, please, what am I supposed to do? Let her die? Let this thing that has her in its unrelenting grip kill her agonizingly slow and painfully? Spike’s thoughts took a turn for the worse. He didn’t know if he could lay here and watch someone else wither away and leave him. He had watched Drusilla do this very same thing for a year before he brought her to the Hellmouth. He had watched as his Dark Princess became weaker with each passing day until she was nothing but a shadow -- a shell -- of her former self. He didn’t want to go through that again, not with the Slayer, not with Buffy. He didn’t know why he cared that she lived or died. Yes, he had tried to kill her many times, had even had the kill right in his grasp those few times, but for whatever reason, he held himself back and refused to kill her, refused to take the warmth and gaiety and light – Drusilla had referred to her as Sunshine – out of the world that so badly needed her. He needed her to live and smile and spar with him. He needed her light to warm him and encompass him and keep his own demons at bay.
Spike looked down at the girl in his arms. She was his. Whether he wanted to admit it or not the attraction and pull between them was too strong to ignore. Angel had had his chance to claim the Slayer for his own and never did. Spike would though. Not because it was an opportunity to get one up on his grandsire. But because he knew he didn’t want to be alone when all was said and done and Drusilla was no longer within his reach. The girl and the Slayer within her were wholly his. It would be against his nature not to take what was his, and if he didn’t then he surely wasn’t Spike.
“Spike . . .” Buffy’s voice came out hoarsely with a worried ring to it. “Am I going to die?” She thought she would be prepared for an early death being the Slayer, but she thought she would die in battle, fighting a vamp, not getting the strength sucked out of her by something unknown. She turned glazed eyes up at Spike.
“Pet . . .” Spike started to speak, to tell her all that he knew was going on with her. How do you tell her that she would die if she didn’t drink from you? A slayer drink from a vampire to live, how insane is that logic? “Buffy, after the Eligor ritual, you touched Angelus; the thing draining your strength entered your body through that contact. It entered your system and it will feed on your strength until there is nothing left. It will eventually kill you . . . in a matter of days or hours, I don’t know.” God, I hate telling her this. She shouldn’t have to die this way. “Pet . . . Buffy . . . there is a way to reverse the effects.”
Buffy’s eyes held a glimmer of hope before grimacing as another gut-wrenching pain clawed at her insides. “How can we reverse this?” she asked in a raspy whisper. God, please don’t let me die this way. She wanted to live, to seize the things that life had to offer, to explore the budding relationship that she had started with Spike in the cold, dank recesses of the factory, to restore Angel, to see her friends.
Spike turned so that he was face to face with Buffy, looking at her straight in the eyes. He wanted no misconceptions between them after he told her what he had read. Now was not the time to think of each other as mortal enemies, as nemeses. He had come to care for her too much over the past few weeks to only see her as a quick kill, easy prey. She was his match in every way he had discovered thus far. She gave as good as she got in fighting, in arguing, and in compromise. “To restore your strength, you have to drink from me.”