Chapter 6



The tremors started without warning, beginning in her hands and quickly working their way up her arms. Buffy’s eyes seem to grow dull and distant once again as she began to shake. Blindly she reached out to clutch at the material of Spike’s cloak as she tried to steady herself.

Spike, confused by her actions, looked down at the hands fisting in his clothing. “Buffy?”

She didn’t answer. Instead her eyes remained fixed on a point above his shoulder as she grew light in the head and began to sway dangerously on her feet. Tremors were quaking through her whole body, and her teeth were beginning to chatter with the force of them.

Spike held her tightly as he called out to his sire. “Angelus!”

“Buffy?” Angelus called as he quickly moved across the room to his childe. “She’s going into shock from the ritual.”

Angelus pried Buffy away from Spike and took her into his arms as her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she fell limp into his arms. Even in her state of unconsciousness, the shaking didn’t stop. Her skin was icy and covered in a fine sheen of sweat that made her feel clammy to the touch.

“We should get her to her room. Dru and I will draw her a bath and help her into bed,” Darla said as she moved forward to stand beside her mate. “Dru, honey, will you get the door?”

The brunette vampiress floated forward and opened the small door that led from the ritual chamber. Angelus followed behind her with the limp form of his childe safely encompassed within his arms.


*****


“I’ve never seen a vampire go into shock,” Spike said after a long period of silence. He lifted his head to look at his sire who was calmly sitting across from him.

Angelus lifted his head to gaze at his childe’s agitated form. The younger vampire couldn’t sit still, his knee had been bouncing up and down on the ball of his foot for the last ten minutes before he gave in and finally stood up to start pacing.

“It has been known to happen before. Buffy was put through a high state of stress tonight—it’s part of the reason most clans don’t practices the ritual anymore. There are very few reasons for an Embracement ritual to ever actually take place; the amount of stress it puts on a vampire—the childe especially—can have dire consequences.”

Spike stopped pacing to turn and look at his sire. “You knew this and you still went through with it? When was the last time our clan performed the ritual? How did you know she would come back from it?”

“I didn’t know. None of us did.” Angelus spoke softly, yet still the firm edge of authority could be heard within his voice. “The last time the ritual was performed, Simone was the childe. Not even the Master had witnessed an Embracement, much less undergone one.”

Spike’s expression turned horrified.

“Not since Simone? How do you know this is not just some side effect then?” He shouted, flinging his hand back towards Buffy’s unconscious form stretched out under the covers of her bed. “What if she doesn’t wake up, Angelus?”

“Then she doesn’t wake up,” Angelus answered simply.

Spike gave him an astonished look. “How can you be so nonchalant about the well-being of your own childe?

Angelus gave a commanding growl pulling Spike back into line. “You know damn well that I care about what is mine, childe. I speak the truth. If she doesn’t wake up then there is little we can do about it, but I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do everything in my power to try.”

Spike held his sire’s gaze challengingly for a moment before conceding. His body visibly sagged as he let out an unneeded breath and slumped back down into his chair.

Angelus’ voice softened as he continued. “Spike, part of the reason Penn’s childer were tested so on coming before the council was to test the strength of their demon on the knowledge that Penn likely wouldn’t be around much longer to play the role of sire. You saw how Buffy handled herself on pure instinct alone. She is a fighter by nature. With some training, she has the potential to be unstoppable. She showed us that night that she had what it would take to physically withstand the pain the ritual evokes. What would have happened if she had been like that other girl that came in with her?”

Spike frowned as he let his eyes travel to the small form huddled under the bed covers on the opposite side of the room. Every now and then she would twitch slightly, as though the tremors from earlier had died away and only the after shocks were still affecting her. If she had been the other girl she’d likely be dead. If she had been the other girl, he doubted he would have cared so much.

“She did remarkably well to endure it as she did; not many would have had a demon strong enough. She’ll pull through.”

“You don’t know that. Not even the Master could know that,” Spike answered, never letting his gaze shift from Buffy’s inert form.

“Maybe not, but I believe it.”


*****


Buffy’s eyes flickered rapidly underneath her eyelids as she lay remembering a time long past. Memories which were not hers to begin with, but she could do nothing to stop. They was stuck on repeat within her mind—images flying through too fast for her to pick up more than vague images and shapes at a time.

A woman tied to the same stone slab she had been chained to no more than an hour earlier. Her back warped in the same arc of pain, the same picture of terror painted across her face.

A looming shadow hung over her.

A ring of flames.

A burning body.

Blood.

Dead glassy eyes drained of all life and a high pitched wail that echoed throughout her mind which had the same effect that nails have when dragged down a blackboard. Bone rattling and blood chilling, till all that remained was an icy pit of terror inside one’s stomach and the slight feeling of nausea.

The images kept flashing through her mind, without any particular order. She didn’t know which came first or how to piece them together.

“We revoke the right…” The echo of a male voice filtered through her mind out of sync with the images she was seeing before fading once more.

Instead of slowing down, the images seemed to be flowing faster and faster around her till they were only a blur of speed whipping around her past her mind’s eye. The echo of a voice passed around her and floated in the atmosphere.

“No! Silas—SIRE!” The female cry of pain echoed mirrored the ones that had fallen from her lips earlier in the ritual chamber.

“We revoke your right,” the male voice was rising in volume. “We revoke your right to sire this protected childe!”



“Do you willing relinquish all rights to the responsibility of her protection and understand the consequences of this action?”

Penn was gasping for unneeded breath as his head rolled to look at the childe that was being torn away from him “I…” She was in so much pain. He wanted to go to her—protect her and comfort her. He could feel everything she was feeling within himself as they experienced the feeling of their connection starting to sever.

Penn screwed his eyes shut against her “I do.”



The looming shadow became a cloaked form leaning over two figures. He was shaking with the exertion of holding them against the stone laid out beneath them. The iron restraints that bound their wrists were held taut with tension. Long curly brown hair spilled out over the stone dais behind the woman who was shackled to it.

“NO!” One of the figures growled fiercely and bucked violently against the hand that held him down. “You can’t do this to me!”

His head whipped to the side to look at the woman bound beside him.

Buffy felt shock register through her—she had seen that face before.

The scene faded out around her and a new one moved in to take its place. The same night, the same event, only later in the ordeal.

Buffy watched, unable to stop the play of events as a knife was withdrawn and shallow cuts made on the inside of the woman’s arms. Blood blossomed from the wounds and dribbled down the pale skin of her arms and onto the stone beneath her.



Buffy could see the iron restrains bolted to the floor either side of them—old and rusted—as well as dark patches staining the stone that she was almost positive would turn out to be blood on closer inspection.



“Drained of the damned blood that animates her, so too is she drained of the bond that links her to your being.”

Buffy watched strangely familiar events unfold before her as the young woman was cut and her blood spilled onto the stone beneath her as she was drained of her blood—drained of the familial bond that linked her to her sire, just as Buffy had been drained of the blood that linked her to Penn.

Only echoes of the sounds from the ritual made it through to her—a distant scream, a pained cry, a heated curse for retribution as they tumbled from the lips of the woman’s sire.

Buffy watched as the cloaked figure took the vampiress in his arms and completed the ritual much as Angelus had done with her earlier. The ring of flames surrounding the three of them leapt higher before they smothered the body of the vampire beside them.

His shrieks were muted as the flames consumed him. It was the last word that fell from his lips that jolted her from her state of unconsciousness.

“Simone.”


*****


Spike and Angelus were by her side even before the room had swum back into a clear view. “Buffy?”

A cool wrist was placed under her noise and the smell of sire’s blood beckoned her. Without thinking she shifted into her demon’s face and bit down into the proffered wrist, allowing the rich blood to sooth her and give her strength.

A low growl echoed throughout the room.

She felt a strong hand run down the side of her head and brush her dishevelled hair back from her face as she fed.

“That’s enough, childe,” Angelus commanded softly.

Her demon had withdrawn before the words had finished falling from his lips. She looked up into the concerned eyes of both her sire and Spike. They were looming over her watching as if they were waiting for her to slip away from them again.

“I’m okay.” Her voice was croaky and barely audible from the strain the ritual had put on her vocal chords. She swallowed and tried again “I’m okay. I’m not going to pass out again.”

Spike didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure? You looked fine the last time too until you started doing a good impersonation of someone having a bleedin’ seizure.”

She gave him a small smile. “I’m fine, really.”

Each time the words fell from her lips, they held a little more truth. She didn’t feel faint, but the images of Simone’s Embracement were still fresh in her mind and a pit of nausea still clutched her insides. The image of the painting that hung in the entrance to the mansion appeared in her mind. She couldn’t be positive, but she thought she might now have a name to put to the face of Simone’s sire. Silas.

“You’re sure?” Angelus asked again.

She nodded. “Just a little worn out, I guess. What time is it?”

“A little after dawn.”

Her eyes widened in shock. She had been out that long? “You should have left me. You need rest, because both of you look like hell.”

Spike smirked. “And here I thought I was devilishly handsome no matter what time of day or night it was.”

His smile turned genuine when he got the desired effect and she gave him an amused giggle.

“Put your hormones away, please. It’s too early to watch this sort of thing,” Angelus’ light-hearted comments breaking the moment. “If you’re sure you’re okay, Buffy?” He paused to wait for her confirmation, given in the form of a nod “Then I’ll be off. Get some rest, okay?”

The door closed silently behind him leaving Buffy alone with the bleached vampire who seemed to have been her shadow for the last couple of days.

Spike gave her a look. “Going to tell me the truth?”

“What do you mean?” She asked, playing ignorant.

“I can tell your not okay, pet.”

Buffy smiled reassuringly at him. “I’m fine, honestly. I guess I’m just feeling a little off from the ritual, is all.”

For a long moment he just stared at her. She tried not to look away from his probing gaze. Those eyes that could strip you of all your defences until you were laid out bare before him. She didn’t want to know what he saw, or give him the chance to see anything at all but she knew that looking away would give him all the answers he needed so she held his gaze as best she could.

“You know where I am if you decided you want to tell me,” he said finally.

Buffy nodded gratefully as he got up from the bed. “Thank you.”

Leaning over, he placed a kiss on the top of her head before moving silently to the door. “Goodnight, Buffy.”

“Goodnight.” Buffy lay back against her pillows as the door closed behind him. Silas. For some reason she didn’t think Spike or Angelus would look favourably on her delving into Simone’s past. She couldn’t help it though. For some reason, Buffy was drawn to the woman she had first seen in the painting and the vampire she had been.

Silas was her first tangible lead in the search she had only just decided to undertake. He was supposedly the vampire that created Simone, and logically the first place to start looking for information on her. She resigned herself to searching the Aurelian library housed in the mansion for any texts she could find on him and his childe.



AN: Thank you to Andrea for beta’ing this fic for me and to everyone who has commented so far. Your comments have been fantastic :)