Once It Begins

05 Welcome

Two hours later a black car rushes through the streets of Sunnydale. The passengers are both beautiful, both quiet and both suffering but their wounds are different ones.
Angel grits his teeth for the millionth time, teeth grounding noisily, it’svingving Cordy crazy but she doesn’t say anything anymore. She just stares out of the window, ignoring the vampire on edge.
Yeah, Angel is on several edges today.
He feels his true face emerging every so often and fights against it,
grounds his teeth to keep the human features in place.
He feels the bloodline’s call growing inside him,
hears his childe’s plead for help,
his o chi childe’s answer
and about fifty minions‘ subdued voices,
whispering their devotion and submissiveness to the head of the clan.
He hopes the minions won’t be too much of a problem. They only acknowledge and follow the head of the clan, tdon’don’t know about the soul or Spike’s chip.
Dru’s insanity is no secret.
And Darla is long dead.
Three members of the bloodline and none of them as intact as they should be.
None of them a real vampire.
But a clan nevertheless.
A raging anger rips through him and again he has to fight back the game face,
too late to not cut his lower lip with his fangs
but fast enough to not get the attention from the disheveled girl on the passenger seat.
Angelus, his demon, his energy is roaring at him,
roaring at the soul to get lost –
he wants out to play, wants out to hunt, torture and kill the person
who made his childe call out for the clan, for him.
The image of a blond girl.
Buffy, Angel knows.
Slayer is everything Angelus needs to know.
“Where did it happen?” He growls and Cordy jumps a little.
“A-a-a cr-crypt.” She stutters out under the intense scrutiny of the blazing golden gaze.
“Spike’s crypt?” Angelus kicks the soul hard – hitting the already guilty spot again and again. His childe should never have to live in a fucking crypt.

Cordy starts to scream when Angel’s car reels around the corner and runs over the cemetery gate. Unimpressed Angel steers the car to Spike’s crypt, parks it with the driver’s door only two foot away from the half open crypt’s entry.
The smell of his childe’s blood, even through the closed car eindow, and the vibrating in the bloodlink are overpowering Angel. He is out of the car and into the crypt without even a single thought about the blinding midday sun.
The picture, that greets him, lets him sink to his knees in pain.

Spike, his beautiful childe, without conscious, lying on his belly, face sideways. So pale, cheekbones sticking out, eyes closed, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, twitching limply, desperately lapping on the long dried blood on the dirty tiles.
The body hurt enough to go by instinct only.
Crawling over to his childe, Angel starts a whimpering, keening sound, reassurance for his childe and information for his clan.
He crawls over to the blond, cradles him in his arms. He rocks Spike back and forth, murmuring sweet nothings like “my beautiful boy, my baby boy, my favorite childe...”
His wrist is firmly pressed to Spike’s lips, nearly bruising his mouth with the urgency Angel feels to have the fangs biting in his flesh and his childe to drink from him the existence spending liquid.
Relief floods the older vampire when the first tentative movement of his childe’s lips caress his wrist.
“Come on, my boy. Drink your fill.” He whispers encouragingly. Spike moans and whimpers when he lets the fangs sink into the offered veins, tastes the first precious blood. Greedily he gulps down long swallows of sire’s blood, he hasn’t tasted for so long, too long.
The blond vampire feels his wounds closing, his weakness fading and when he is restored enough to be able to think again, he is on his feet immediately, wildly looking around, a never ceasing repetition of one word escaping his mouth: “Childe?”

Angel watches with a frown marring the forever youthful face, fearing the chip and now the injury eventually have driven his baby boy into madness.
“Come here, childe. Everything is alright. I am here now, your sire is here.”
Spike stops stunned, looking at the ensouled version of his beloved sire, eyebrow cocked, smirk in place.
“You finally gone round the bent, poof?”
Rage grips Angel so hard, he can’t stop himself even if he would attempt to.
One fast move, using all the enhanced speed he has and Spike is on the floor, Angel in full game face towering over him.
“Won’t you forget your place, boy!” He barks coldly.
Grimacing around his split lip, Spike says nothing.
After what feels like an eternity of staring each other down without anyone winning, Angel howls Spike to his feet by his collar, patting him down, ordering his clothes.

“Why did you call the bloodline?” No rage, no mocking, no emotion at all and Spike wonders who this is he is talking to. Not his sire, but close, not the crazy parody of Angelus from a few years ago, not the weak poof but souled nevertheless.
“Childe.” Spike gritts out.
“I’m your sire, dammit!”
Glaring, having no patience to deal with a slow minded, stupid Angel.
“*My* childe!”
“Stop it, Spike! You don’t have a childe...” Eyes growing wide in realization.
“He has still to rise.” Spike says and fixes his eyes on the floor not willing to get disapproval from the head of the clan this soon, even before his childe has a chance to proof his worth.
“Where is he?”
Spike shakes his head sadly, shrugs. “Dunno.”
“Why don’t you know where your childe is?” Yelling. “He will rise by sunset and he should not be without his sire! Don’t you remember how I stayed with you, only you, the first weeks...”
“Slayer took him away.” Spike interrupts harshly and shields his h as as good as he can against the memories his sire’s words bring up. He doesn’t want to think about the only time in his existence, alive and undead, he felt safe. Three and a half weeks of pure bliss aren’t even a good memory anymore, the bitter taste of lost and left they leave is too overwhelming to be ignored.

“Why would the slayer...” Angel trails of when realization sets in. “HARRIS? You turnedris?ris?” Wide wide eyes, golden ringed, barely caged mockery and awe.
e doe doesn’t see it, he keeps his gaze fixed on Angel’s shoes, waits for the blows, the outraged screaming of disapproval.
He is surprised, when the broad hand tenderly grabs his chin and lifts headhead. He looks into brown soulful eyes, contradicted by the dancing golden flakes.
“Damn good choice, boy.”



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