The tale to the noir

14. Fool for love

The night was still. The typical quiet before the tempest.
Willow was watching the hardly noticeable fading of the darkness from her bedroom window. Strangely, she wasn’t asking herself what Buffy was doing. She was thinking about the fact that the human eye couldn’t perceive the infinite changes that occur during the passage from dark to daylight.
And maybe it was even harder to notice when the daylight began to turn into the dark…

Or to understand that what you’ve always taken from granted was just an illusion. Darla smashed the last piece of furniture in the residence and then sat down on the floor; her hands were bleeding. She knew Faith wasn’t there. That lousy little bitch was probably with that dirty old bastard, the dear Mayor. But the rage that was torturing her wasn’t due to them…

He didn’t, couldn’t know exactly where this torment came from: maybe from the endless agony of his grandsire, or from the fact that Buffy was still downstairs caring for him…or from the convulsions that Drusilla was still suffering, whimpering and struggling, although he had been holding and cradling her in his arms for hours. It’s like I’m floating on a sea without a shore, Spike told himself.

He was floating on a thick and clammy ocean; bitter molasses that prevented him from moving, thinking…and then, someone came…hot, nearly burning skin…Someone who was shaking him rudely, regardless of the waves of that clammy ocean…
Angelus opened his eyes, suddenly sober. Inside he was frightened, because he knew lucidity came when the end was approaching.
Buffy was in front of him: she gasped, her hair disheveled. So she hadn’t been just a dream…A kind of ancestral instinct for survival invaded him: gasping, he pushed her away and leaped out of bed, falling on his knees…the red gash the arrow had made was shining on his chest and it was surrounded by purple veins. He could feel it, the poison was winning, and it wanted him to be aware of that…
With an immense effort he stood and stumbled over to the fireplace. “Are you here to end what your companion started...?” he asked Buffy, holding on with his hands. The deadly poison had infected his back also, penetrating inside his tattoo. “Or are you here just to watch? Sit down then…it’s coming…”
She forced him to turn around and he was amazed by her expression. She was crying, like in that supposed dream he had had before, and he thought those tears were for him…she brushed her hair away from her neck, and then she nodded. “Do it. Bite me, Angelus…My blood is the cure. I’ll save you”
The lucidity…that lucidity that announced his death…maybe it was leaving him…
“What?”
Buffy smiled softly, an incoherent smile on her desperate face. “It’s logical…You taught me that: vampires and slayers are the same, because they’re bound with the same power. Blood. Only the slayer’s blood can cure a vampire…” she came closer, offering her soft neck like a fruit. “It’s logical. It’s right”
Oh yeah…Angelus came closer instinctively...yeah, it was weird but logical… “I won’t stop…if I bite you I won’t be able to stop…you do know that, right?”
Her little hands were brushing his chest, stopping sweetly on his wound. “I know”
“You’ll die…” he insisted weakly, without knowing why. The roar of the dark ocean was booming in his ears…louder and louder…
“To die…” Once again he was amazed by the steadiness of her eyes.
“Every time you kiss me I wish I could die…every time you touch me…every time you’re inside me…” She looked at him, steady, sure. “I love you Angelus”
Finally she told him. And she had never been so sure of her words before. So sure of herself, as if she had only turned on the true Buffy, the real one, at that time. She was in love with him, yes. Maybe it had happened immediately, when she saw the old portrait of him for the first time. Or maybe it was because of his unique musky scent, mixed with other secret essences. Maybe it hadn’t occurred at one precise moment, but even before he arrived, during her lonely patrolling, she had flirted with the night, knowing that the darkness was bringing him into her life. And when Willow had revealed to her that the cure for The Killer of the Dead was her blood, well…this perfection had almost moved her to tears.
Angelus was faltering and he looked at her amazed. Buffy caught his face. “I love you, do you understand?” she cried, pulling him closer. “I love you and I’ll die to show you that!”
With a sense of relief, she felt him turn under her hands. “Good boy…” she whispered to him, sweet as a mother. “Good boy…like that…Close your eyes…Close your golden eyes…”
She led him to her neck and the pain was immediate, anticipated but unexpectedly intense. She felt his teeth slashing her skin, penetrating into her neck their entire length, and she felt also her warm blood dripping from her shoulder. Everything lasted for a moment, because Angelus held her more strongly and he bit into her more deeply with a violent push…and all the pain was erased by something purer and more incomprehensible. Ecstasy. Even if it was a quite miserable word…
They fell down, the vampire and the slayer. Buffy looked for something to fix her eyes on, but she couldn’t see anything. All Buffy’s nerve endings were focused on Angelus’ teeth and mouth, and there wasn’t space for anything else apart from that switch of death and life between them. He was becoming stronger and stronger, and now he was sucking her blood, moving his head and growling like a predator that enjoyed his meal. That low and sensual sound, so catlike and animal, excited her too much. She opened her legs, wrapping them around his pelvis; her nipples were firm and she clung to him, arching her body and her neck, digging her nails into his nape…because she wanted to be taken completely, to be drained…If that was death, she wanted to go on with it…go on…
…go on my love, go on…don’t stop…you’ve promised me, don’t stop…
This wasn’t just feeding. Nor was it just a way to cure him. Angelus was sucking that little blonde creature, full of life, and it was like getting drunk, like feeling a constant, dazzling stream of adrenaline and pleasure…none of his countless victims had ever reacted so completely to his bite…with no one else had he shivered….shivered with emotion…he sucked and sucked her, tasting her…Hoping that…that it would never end. That…
But the switch, the predictable, very well known switch occurred, timely and unmerciful. Buffy’s grip loosened, her blood pressure slowed down. Angelus raised his head, rubbing his forehead against her temple, covered with cold drops of sweat …her heart was stopping and her green eyes were glassy and misty, her lips were opened and waxen…
Kill her or turn her, the vampire thought, now, immediately, these are the only two possibilities…the only ones. The most reasonable ones…he looked at her under his body, pale, too pale: her hair was strewn over the floor, her face had a childlike expression, but he could already see in it the woman she was…
The most reasonable…reasonable…
With a sudden movement he pulled away from her and stood up, strong and full of energy again. His desperate cry echoed in the mansion. “Spike! Damn it! Spike!”

In more than a century of non-life he had seen a huge number of absurd things. Really absurd. To begin with, he had been forced to dig his way out from his grave with his own hands.
That one had been fairly impossible to surpass . Until today, at least.
Until the day he was forced to help his grandsire to bring one of his victims to the hospital…
Spike lit up a cigarette, and a couple of patients that were walking up and down the squalid pale green corridor, looked at him in a really bad way. He just ignored them. He could happily put out his fag on the forehead of the first bloke who dared to reproach him.
But he pushed it under his boot as soon as he saw Angelus coming, along with a doctor. She was talking passionately to him and, bloody hell, Spike could understand why. With that badly buttoned up white shirt, the uncombed hair and that so-sincere tense expression, Angelus looked the perfect image of what he pretended to be. The older brother of Elisabeth O’Connor. A panic-stricken handsome guy.
Either he was a better actor than De Niro, or it was the first case of a vampire possessed by a supernatural entity. Spike bet on the latter. Because, bloody hell, there was something different about Angelus, in the tired way he walked towards him, in the so human way he was kneading his neck and rubbing his eyes…black and troubling eyes, yes, but…but…
“How’s Buffy?” he asked him.
“Fine. Being a slayer means that she is already OK. The doctor says that she’ll be discharged in an hour…” the other answered, sitting down on a little plastic couch against the wall, and smiling with…relief?
Spike looked at him, shocked. “Maybe you have that poison still in your veins. You’re the Scourge of Europe, remember? And you brought her to the hospital…do you get it? To the hospital…” his voice lowered, skeptical.
“Stop repeating it like a parrot” Angelus replied, avoiding his eyes. “I’m not deaf…”
Spike bent towards him. “No, you’re not deaf. And you’re not…you’re not yourself, fuck it. You don’t do this kind of thing.”
Finally Angelus looked at him. “Yeah, I saved her…and you’re happy, don’t deny that”
Spike shut up and he clenched his teeth. Of course he was, damn it.
A few hours before, when he found Buffy looking like a corpse, so cold and pale, he had wanted to kill his grandsire…then he felt surprised when Angelus took her in his arms, forbidding him to come closer, holding her like a precious doll. A fast and peremptory order: “Get the car. Hurry up”. And an angry roar against Drusilla, who tried to protest softly.
Dru…he felt a bit guilty about her…he didn’t care about her reaction. He didn’t care about anything. Except to rescue Buffy.
He admitted it. “Yes, it’s obvious I’m glad…But we’re not talking about that”
Angelus laughed, shaking his head. “Well, that’s clear…Let’s analyze my contradictions. OK. But let’s not talk about yours…”he looked so tired. “The day is coming…the car we came here in, the one you stole downtown, it’s not good for us now…call one of our people and tell him to come here with a black window car. Then take Buffy home. Her mom should already be gone, but be discreet”
“Wait…I take her home?” Spike stood up, confused. “By myself? And where are you going?”
“I’ve got something to do” Angelus answered, crossing his arms; his dark eyes were fixed on an empty space.
“Something to do? Like? Shopping in the sun?” Spike asked. No, it was too much, it was ridiculous. And he had also told him to be discreet…! He stood in front of him, legs spread, hands on his hips, waiting for an explanation.
“William” Nothing else. Only his real name, pronounced with measured, controlled and evident anger. Angelus didn’t call him by his name often, and not with that tone. If that happened, it meant that he must be really, really annoyed.
The blonde vampire surrendered. “OK. OK, as you wish, my king” He took his mobile from his pocket and went nervously to the toilet, to make the call - and probably to smoke a dozen cigarettes - in peace. When he got near the corner, he turned around: Angelus was still sitting on the little plastic couch, in the same position.
Maybe the real poison is the Slayer’s blood, Spike thought.