Chapter 7


He was happy. The darkness was still there, hovering on the edges of his consciousness, freighted with its weight of pain and guilt. He ignored it, drifting in this bubble of sensuous pleasure, their bodies easy and relaxed in satiation, lying on their sides, her thigh across his hip, her head in the curve of his shoulder. Her hands stroked him in long slides across his shoulders and back and torso, petting him as if he were a cat and, like a cat, he couldn’t help purring and arching to the caress.

“Was it like this before?” he asked dreamily.

“No. Never.” She looked up at him and the darkness was in her eyes too. “You wanted to make it so, right from the beginning. I wouldn’t let it happen.”

“Because I’m a vamp.”

“Yes. So many stupid issues. I blame myself. For not thinking, not seeing.”

“Don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

“It might if your memory comes back. I don’t want you remembering the way I acted.” Her arms tightened fiercely around him. “You might leave me then.”

“I don’t leave.” That came out of the depths, with absolute conviction.

“No. You never do, even when you should.” Her lips brushed his throat, her breath shuddering against his skin. “I’m not totally selfish. I want you to have your memory back, to be able to make informed decisions. I want you to be free. I used to be so scared of being left. Everyone I’ve ever loved has left me. But now I’ve grown. I’ve learned. I could bear it if you left. As long as you’re not dead. As long as you exist somewhere.”

“Buffy...”

“I just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.” Something in him said that he had never been happier, that this was new, her arms enfolding him like this, cherishing him, the love in her eyes, the sweetness and the wonder of it. His heart hurt him. “I don’t think I’ve ever been. I’m not going to give it up.”

“When you remember, all the bad things I’ve done will come back. All the years of them.”

“Won’t compare to what we have now.”

“A few short days of acting properly don’t make up for years of...”

“You gonna change then?” he murmured into her hair. “You gonna go back to the way it was and break up with me again?”

“Never!”

“Well, then. The rest of our lives is pretty fair compensation.”

She looked at him worriedly. “You might not want that. You might forget all this. No one knows how amnesia works. You might remember all the bad things and forget these last few days.”

“Then remind me.” He rolled onto his back and pulled her upon him, a light sweet whispery weight. “Jump my bones. This vamp’s easily distracted, remember?”

She laughed involuntarily. He kissed her, smiling.

“Tell me you love me, pet. That’s probably all it would take.”

Oh, she hoped so. Buffy wasn’t taking anything for granted. Not this time. So many things could still go wrong.

She watched him over the next few days. He seemed to be enjoying himself. Whatever doubts he might have had about himself, about her, seemed to have been dismissed. He had always had a talent for living in the moment and that seemed to be what he had decided to do. He was even enjoying training the SITs, his reservations about the school laid aside.

It had been decided not to waste his time with the SITs just starting their training. He was given the ones close to graduating, to put the final polish on them and get them accustomed to what a truly dangerous vamp could do. Buffy wondered whether Giles also hoped that one of them might accidentally dust him in the process. But Spike was too good for any of the SITs to take him.

She leaned on the railing of the mezzanine, watching them trying to beat him one on one and failing. She dropped in at least once a session to keep an eye on things. Giles, still worried about Spike’s vamp side despite the soul, insisted that the leader of each squad always be present when Spike was training that squad.

This time it was Kennedy, standing against the wall, pulling on a strand of her long black hair and frowning as she watched Spike take one of the members of her squad through her paces. She glanced up as she felt Buffy’s gaze. A flash of hostility went through her eyes, then she looked back to Spike and the SIT.

Always that hostility from Kennedy. She was Willow’s new lover, but anyone less like Tara Buffy couldn’t imagine. Tara had been shy, quiet and giving. Kennedy was brash, loud and a taker. Even before the battle at the Hellmouth, she had established herself as the foremost of the Potentials, turning drill-sergeant, chivvying and ordering them around. Here at the school, she had kept that up, using her access to Willow and her own aggressiveness to make herself the most dominant squad leader.

Kennedy wanted to be top dog. But she never would be, because there was always Buffy in her way. Buffy was acknowledged by everyone as the leader of the Slayers. Her experience and the reputation that she had earned over the years ensured it. It wasn’t that she sought the role the way Kennedy did. She just was. And Kennedy hated it.

Buffy sighed. She had never wanted to become some general responsible for scores of troops. She would have been happy to turn the job over to Kennedy, but neither Giles nor the girls would agree to that. Spike’s idea of Slayers scattered across the globe on their own suddenly seemed very attractive. She didn’t mind training the SITs, but she would have preferred to be independent again. She found herself looking back on her years at Sunnydale with nostalgia.

Spike’s scenario would give her that, once the last of the SITs had been trained and dispatched. She could have a roving commission then, go where she wanted while still being in contact with Giles and his Council. Kind of a troubleshooter, straightening out problems anywhere in the world. She liked that idea.

Willow came in the main doors of the gym, looked around, then located Buffy on the mezzanine and gave a tiny, beckoning jerk of the head. Buffy went down to join her.

“What’s up, Will?”

“I talked to Giles about the Wicca.”

“How did he take it?”

“He wasn’t happy, but I talked him around.”

“That’s great news!”

“I just have to work out a viable plan to get them all slotted into place with the others.” Willow looked at once rueful and pleased. “A lot of work, but it’ll be worth it. But then I got so blissed about him finally agreeing that I went and said the rest of it. Really boneheaded.”

“What do you mean?”

“I talked about Spike’s idea of dispersing the trained Slayers instead of keeping them collected in a group.”

“Whoa. And of course Giles didn’t like it.”

“To put it mildly.” Willow winced at the memory of how cold and hostile Giles’ eyes had gone. “He asked how I’d come up with the idea so suddenly since I’d never mentioned anything like that before. And I didn’t see the way he was looking and I was so enthused that...”

“That you said Spike suggested it.”

“Yeah. And he said...” Willow’s voice dropped into an imitation of Giles’ tone, an ominous, grating sound, “‘So it was Spike’s idea.’”

Buffy bit her lip. “Well, it was. But it was only a suggestion. You know Spike. He just throws things out there.”

“That’s what I told Giles, but...” Willow gave her an uneasy look. “You didn’t hear the way he said it. Or the way he looked. He was really mad, Buff. I could tell.”

“Do you think he’d hurt Spike?”

“I don’t know. What would be the point? The idea’s already out on the table. And it’s not like Spike could make it happen.”

“That’s true. But...” Buffy rubbed a hand worriedly across her forehead. “It’s just...It’s just that I don’t seem to know Giles anymore.”

“He wouldn’t hurt Spike just for a suggestion. He knows you wouldn’t stand for it, Buffy.”

“Stand for what?” Spike asked.

They looked around. The session was over and Kennedy was shepherding her squad out of the gym.

“Giles causing trouble,” Willow explained.

Spike dropped his forearms over Buffy’s shoulders and pulled her back to lean against him, his wrists crossed under her chin.

“He does, I walk,” he said simply.

“We both walk,” said Buffy, but he shook his head.

“Your life’s here, pet.”

“My life’s with you.”

He turned his head so that his lips brushed her temple. “Become rogue demon hunters, shall we? Might be fun at that.”

Willow looked at both of them with affection. There was a shine to them, a softness in the way they touched and smiled at each other. They had clearly become lovers somewhere in the last few days. She had never seen Buffy so happy. ‘If we Scoobies hadn’t interfered,’ she thought, ‘Buffy would have been this happy years ago.’

Was it the soul that had made the difference? She looked at the way Spike was cradling Buffy against him. No, it wasn’t that. Spike might be different after he had won his soul, but this care and tenderness had been there with Dru. Spike had always had that heart of his. We changed, Willow thought. If only we had taken our blinders off earlier; we would have saved them so much pain.

A sharp pang pierced her. Now she could understand Xander wishing it was Anya who had come back. Willow wished it was Tara. It was disloyal to Kennedy to wish that, but Kennedy had never truly replaced Tara in her heart, just in her bed.

There was an explosive crack of sound and a glare of white light. They all flung up their arms to shield their eyes.

“What the fuck?” exclaimed Spike.

Then the light was gone and a bunch of Chiriwan were milling about in the middle of the gym.

“Portal!” gasped Willow.

“Weapons cabinet, Spike!” snapped Buffy, uncaring how the Chiriwan had got there and at this moment concentrating only on how to remove them.

The weapons cabinet on the wall of the gym was locked. Spike smashed it in with the heel of his booted foot, snatched out a sword and threw it to Buffy. He grabbed one for himself just as a couple of the Chiriwan moved towards them. The others were already lumbering out of the gym, escaping into the corridors.

“We’ve got to stop them! Alert the full-Slayers, Will,” Buffy called over her shoulder as she moved to intercept a Chiriwan. “All the squad leaders. Tell them to grab a sword or an axe and get down here!”

There were already shouts of outrage coming from the corridors as the SITs realized what was in their midst. Not screams of fear, Buffy noted with satisfaction; just surprise and anger.

“Intruder alert,” Willow was snapping under her breath behind her, a mutter that might be soft to the hearing, but would be loud in the minds to which she was projecting. “Chiriwan. Squad leaders to Level 3 asap.”

Buffy ducked the talons whipping at her, flung herself in a controlled slide past the legs of the Chiriwan attacking her and sliced her sword through the tendons at the back of its knee. The thing roared in pain and sat down abruptly. That brought its head to her level and she decapitated it with one stroke. Spike had already dusted his. They had both learned a lot from killing the ones in the park.

But there were still more out in the corridors. She grabbed a few more swords out of the weapons cabinet and ran out of the gym, Spike racing after her.

The corridors were a whirl of yelling activity. SITs were surrounding each Chiriwan, weaving around them in dizzying circles, ducking the blows as the roaring, rampaging creatures slashed at them. Only a few of the SITs were armed, but the squad leaders racing out of the elevators and stairwells certainly were.

“Twylla, Kim, Andrea!” Buffy threw them swords. “Hamstring them! Bring them down to where you can cut off their heads. You others, distract them!”

She and Spike flung themselves at Chiriwan. So did the squad leaders and the armed SITs, while the others spun around the beleaguered monsters, shouting to confuse them.

It took some doing, but finally the last of them was brought down. The melée ended with the Chiriwan no more than piles of dust on the floor. The tumult and the uproar ceased and everyone caught their breath. Buffy and Spike had accounted for two more Chiriwan, the armed SITS had brought down another and the full-Slayers had taken care of the rest.

But it hadn’t been without cost. One of the squad leaders had been badly gashed and some of the SITs had broken bones or were bruised from being knocked into walls. But they were all grinning in triumph, aware that they had all behaved as Slayers and were blooded now.

“I am so proud of all of you!” said Buffy fervently and they beamed.

“Someone aimed them at us,” Willow said behind her. “Chiriwan don’t group together like that. Just opening a portal wouldn’t get them falling through in a bunch. They were collected and sent!”

“Find out who sent them,” said Giles from where he was holding the elevator doors open, having rushed down from his top-floor office.

Willow nodded. “I’ll get the Wicca on it right away.”

Giles nodded brusquely and stabbed at the elevator buttons. The doors closed and the elevator carried him away.

He should have said something to the SITs, praised them, Buffy thought worriedly. They had done an exemplary job. Buffy had seen that preoccupied look on his face before when he was absorbed in some research, so she knew he wasn’t consciously ignoring the SITs. But they didn’t and a lot of them were looking hurt that he had been so curt and abrupt.

But then, Lord, she had made the same mistake that last year fighting the First, so worried and engrossed in plans that she hadn’t realized that a simple word of praise or encouragement, even a smile, would have been a bigger boost to the Potentials than all the tubthumping she had done.

“Okay, let’s get everyone patched up,” she said, “and then we’re gonna have a celebration. Forget about even guard duty, just lock down the whole place, break out the snacks and drinks and music, and let’s make whoopee.”

“Yes!”

Buffy grinned at the yell of approval that went up.

“We should ask Giles,” said Kennedy repressively beside her, scowling at the SITs flying off jubilantly in all directions to bring out hoarded stores of food and CDs.

“When it comes to the Slayers, Buffy makes the decisions, not the Council,” said Willow.

Kennedy frowned at her. “We’re being attacked. What if there’s another intrusion?”

“A couple of Willow’s Wiccas can keep a lookout,” Buffy shrugged. She glanced at the squad leaders and den mothers who nodded back to indicate that they would all keep an eye out on both the SITs and any outside trouble. “They’ll warn us. The rest can come join in the fun. Come on. Three hundred SITs can handle anything. Haven’t they just proved it?”

“It’s an unnecessary risk.”

“No. It’s a necessary one,” said Buffy flatly

Willow nodded. “It’s good for morale. And we can all use an afternoon off.”

Kennedy didn’t like it. But then Kennedy wasn’t a pat-you-on-the-back type. Kennedy was more a drop-and-give-me-fifty.

In no time at all, the place was rocking with the blare of voices and bodies gyrating to music at full volume with the bass turned all the way up so that the vibrations just about shook the Hall off its foundations. Giles turned up in shock to protest and was soothed by Buffy and Willow before finally fleeing the Hall entirely in his quest for peace and quiet.

“You gonna run out on me too?” Buffy yelled to Spike who was grinning and wincing at once, his vampire hearing severely lacerated by the noise.

“I don’t run, Slayer. Mind you, this is really over and above the call of duty, but I’ve got your back.”

“You say that from the position you’re in?”

They were both sitting on the floor in the rec room, leaning against the back of a couch. The party had now spread to all three of the below ground floors. Buffy had pulled Spike back to rest against her, sprawled comfortably in the circle of her arms, his head in the curve of her shoulder. She had his back, not he hers. They both laughed.

Xander gave them a sideways glance as he passed. It was totally obvious to everyone that the two of them were lovers and Xander was still not really sure whether he was reconciled to that. The SITs were all taking it completely for granted now.

“Some...interesting dance moves,” remarked Spike, smirking up at him.

“All original and out of my own head.” Xander hunkered down on his heels beside them and surreptitiously passed Spike a flask.

Spike took a long slug. “Glenlivet.”

“For us grownups. On this job, one needs it.”

Spike handed back the flask, one eyebrow raised in amusement. “A real chore, that is. Being the only male in the middle of three hundred teenage girls and all those raging hormones.”

“It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”

“I feel for you.”

Several slender hands snatched Xander up and off into a cluster of dancing bodies. They both had to laugh at the expression of sublime satisfaction on his face.

“Not a bad guy,” remarked Spike.

Buffy looked down at him ruefully. Was it the soul making him so accepting of Xander? He would never have said that before. More likely it was the lack of memory. Xander had always been rude and insulting to him in the past and of course he had sniped back. They had never been anything but enemies. But Xander had learned his lesson during that last year after he had left Anya at the altar and then when she had died. He’d grown and changed as they all had. She thought that even without a soul Spike would have been willing to be friends back then if Xander had permitted it.

Her arms tightened around him. All of this was so much better than the way it had been. She just hoped it wouldn’t all vanish when his memory came back.

She was holding him with one arm over his shoulders and across his chest, and the other around his waist. He stroked her forearm over and over where it lay across his chest, his hand sliding back and forth from her elbow to her wrist in an absorbed, lazily sensual caress that sent little subterranean shivers along her nerves.

“Do you like it here?” he asked.

“I have to show my face here for at least an hour more. We can’t leave yet.”

He laughed under his breath. “Glad you’re thinking the way I’m thinking.”

She turned her head so that her lips brushed his neck just under his ear and smiled when she felt the responding quiver that went through him.

“Don’t you ever get enough of that?”

He slanted her an amused, sideways glance. “I thought you knew me.”

“I do. Hedonist.”

“Wow. A more than two syllable word.” He laughed at her and she grinned. “No, I meant this school. Do you like it?”

“I guess.” She thought about that. It was nice having friends around, solid support, a good salary. “Don’t you?”

“Too many people.”

“Yeah.”

Ever since the Potentials had first started turning up, she had been in the middle of a crowd of people. First the Potentials, then later collecting the SITs, then this Hall and training all of them. The responsibility. The lack of privacy. So many more burdens than she had ever had back in Sunnydale when she and the Scoobs had faced all those apocalypses.

“Being a rogue demon hunter has never been so attractive before,” she muttered.

She had just been going along with the flow before, as she always had. Now she thought that training SITs was not what she wanted to do.

It wasn’t how she had thought her life would end up. What had she really wanted? A normal life? A house with a white picket fence, two point five kids, a dog? That was just silly. She was what she was. The Slayer in her enjoyed conflict, enjoyed testing herself, living to the fullest. Fighting demons and apocalypses was fun. Normal would be dull for the kind of person she was. A normal life was not what she really wanted.

But neither was the school. So what did she want?

Family and friends around her and someone to love who would love her back, who would be lover and partner and dearest friend. She looked down at Spike. There he was. There he had always been and she had never seen it. Her equal. Her mate.

“I love you,” she said.

His hand tightened on her forearm. She could see the struggle in his eyes.

He didn’t know himself yet, who he was, what he was. How could he know what he felt towards her? And he wouldn’t say it unless he meant it. How many times had he said it to her before and she had rejected it, dismissed it as mere obsession? If he didn’t love her now, if he walked away, she would deserve it.

“I know you can’t say it back,” she said. “That doesn’t matter.”

“It touches something inside me,” he said under his breath. “It hurts.”

“I don’t want it to hurt you. I just wanted you to know.”

He turned his head to brush his lips over the inside of her elbow where it lay across his shoulder. She shivered at the touch of his mouth against her skin, bare under her short sleeve of her tee, dropped her head to press her lips to his cheekbone just in front of his ear.

He gave her a sudden, sideways, laughing glance. There were gold sparkles going off within the vivid blue of his eyes. She felt the prick of his fangs against her skin, the flicker of a raspy tongue within the hollow of her elbow. Then his fangs slid painlessly into the vein there.

“Spike! We’re in the middle of a crowd!”

He just gave her that sideways, sloe-eyed look and the draw started, that shining thrilling rapture singing through her every nerve. He wasn’t drawing strongly, just suckling, taking hardly a trickle from her, almost drop by drop. But pleasure shot through her entire body.

“God, Spike!” She cast a wild glance around. But no one had noticed. It looked like he was just kissing the inside of her elbow, an intimacy, yes, but no more than that. “Wicked!”

She felt his breath cool against her skin as he laughed around his fangs. He was shuddering too, his muscles tensing against her. Taking her blood was as much a turn on for him as it was for her.

Orgasmic. An extended, drawn out, unending orgasm. Her senses swam. She lost all sense of time.

Someone tripped over their legs. She came back to herself with a jolt and looked around. Spike lazily retracted his fangs from her flesh.

“You guys gonna go on cuddling forever or you gonna come dance?” asked Vi.

Cuddling! That couldn’t have been more intense and intimate if he had taken her right there. Spike was laughing. She could feel him vibrating with passion like a plucked guitar string against her. She was shuddering too.

“I think...we’ll just be leaving now,” she muttered.

“Yeah, the party’s gonna go on all night,” agreed Vi. “Most of the squad leaders have gone and the den mothers have taken over. I’ll probably leave in half an hour too.”

It was...my God, it was over an hour later! She gave Spike a wild glance and he grinned at her.

“See what a vamp can do for you?” he purred in her ear.

She had never thought, never experienced. She had never let him be the vamp he was. And even Angel had remained human that one time they had made love. The vampire side, the demon, had horrified her. But, God, what it could do!

“Wait till I get you home,” she muttered.

“Looking forward to it.” His eyes were shining.

That extended, excruciatingly sensual build up had set them both shatteringly on edge. Clothes got shredded in their haste before they fell into bed, naked and laughing, kissing ferociously. Raw, animal greed.

But it was more than that. Spike could feel it. It was passion and greed. But it was also love and tenderness.

He was beginning to realize how precious that was to him. The way she looked at him, the way her arms and body enfolded him, cherished him, the way she said she loved him. Something in the black void that was his memory rejoiced, some deep yearning fulfilled.

He took her deeply, groaning with pleasure at the resistance of those incredible Slayer muscles, feeling her sheath surround and clench fiercely upon him, her body arch and writhe against his, her nails claw down his back with that stinging pain that was not pain but intense stimulation. His fangs slid into her neck almost without his volition, the natural reaction to that stimulus, returning it, the draw of her blood taking them both higher into that mindblowing plane of agonizing rapture.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Oh, yes.”

He raised his head, the taste of her Slayer blood filling his mouth, singing through his veins, looked down and saw that complete, devastating love and caring in her eyes. It broke him—that look. It harrowed his soul. Something in him rose up violently to seize it to him, that surrender that was everything he ever wanted

“Mine,” he whispered. “Buffy, you’re mine.”

Something complicated flashed across her face—laughter, triumph, satisfaction.

“Yes!” she said intensely. “Yes. I’m yours.”

That was when he realized what he had done on taking her blood this time. Claimed her. And she had agreed. She was his.

Inside that darkness, something exulted, something nearly wept with joy.

“Now you,” he breathed, drawing her mouth to his neck.

“No.” She kissed his neck, wound her arms fiercely around him. “I won’t bind you to me until your memory comes back. I won’t chain you. I’m yours. I wanted your claim. But you might not want me when you remember everything I’ve done. You might want to repudiate the claim when your memory comes back. I want you to be free to do so.”

“Buffy...”

“I won’t use you. Not again. I’m yours. We’ll wait to find out if you’re really mine.”

Her mouth took his; her sheath clenched upon him. He lost the ability to think, could only feel, losing himself in the driving rhythms of their lovemaking until he heard her scream, joined her in that ecstatic, shattering climax that nearly turned him inside out.

Maybe he would stay, Buffy thought, watching him over the next few days. She had resigned herself to his loss, because accepting what might happen was less painful than hope. But now she was beginning to think that she hadn’t given either of them enough credit. Now she was beginning to hope.

He was adjusting to her; adjusting to the SITs and enjoying himself training them; even adjusting to the school, though she could see that he still had reservations about it. The SITs all seemed comfortable with having a vamp around. They liked him. But then Spike could be charming when he wanted to and when those he was trying to charm had no prejudices against him.

She thought he might stay now, memory or not. Everything seemed to be working out.

“Buffy!” screamed one of the SITs, racing into the secondary training room where Buffy was taking a squad through its paces. “Vi wants you in the gym!”

Buffy spun. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re killing Spike!”



TBC