Chapter 15



It was a grim-faced Giles that answered his door just after sundown. “Come in, all of you,” he said as he opened the door wider to allow his guests entrance to his home.

He sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes as the group made their way across the threshold. The lack of sleep from the night before was weighing heavily on him. Fatigue drenched his limbs and his eyes were dry and each blink felt gritty beneath his eyelids. As such, it took him a moment to realise the group hadn’t moved beyond the entrance.

“Jesus, Rupes, did you bring the whole bloody library homes with you?” Spike asked incredulously as he stared at the transformation the small apartment had made in the few short hours since he had last been there. Boxes filled with books littered nearly every surface of the room. The floor and seats were cluttered with them, some balancing precariously on the arm of a chair while others were stacked three boxes high on top of one another. Old tomes were piled high on the coffee table and a singular pathway—leading first to the sole vacant seat in the room and then into the kitchen—was the only means of navigation around the room.

“No, these are only what would fit in my car and my partner’s car.” Giles said wearily as he allowed his eyes to scan over the books in the room.

The deep growl that resonated from the master vampire beside him drew his attention away from the books, but did little to ruffle him.

“I thought I told you that I didn’t want this trusted to anyone outside of the order,” Angelus growled.

“I assure you that Willow is quite trustworthy. Despite that, however, she is still no more aware of the issue than she was at this time yesterday evening when you had not yet even come to me. It is not uncommon to her for me to bring my work home with me, so I have little reason to believe that she would think something amiss,” Giles stated defensively.

Angelus looked unconvinced. “You’d better be right.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me? I think not. Not only am I a prominent figure in this town because of the work I do, but if you attacked me you would have no one who has anywhere near the resources or knowledge available to them to help you at the level that I can. So you see, Angelus, you can go about trying to be as scary as you like, but the fact is that you need me—Buffy needs me—and empty threats are just a waste of time that she doesn’t have,” Giles tersely retorted as he made his way over to the bottle of brandy he had opened earlier.

“I like him,” Darla said with a smirk as she broke away from the group and glided further into the room to take up residence in the only available seat. Angelus scowled at her and slammed the door moodily behind them.

Darla rolled her eyes at his antics. “We better get started,” she said turning to Giles. “Were you able to dig up anything during the day?”

Giles nodded. He gestured to the others to move some books and take a seat as he began to speak. “Their clan leader’s name is Silas Tizoc.”

Angelus frowned. “Sounds familiar.”

Giles nodded, “I dare say it would. As it turns out his history is more than a little entwined with the Aurelius Clan, you probably heard about him a time or two in passing. I haven’t had a chance to look at the information I have managed to find in depth, but his interest in your clan stretches back as far as I have been able to trace him so far.”

“And how far is that?” Spike asked.

“I have reason to believe that he is close to three thousand years old,” Giles replied steadily.

“That’s impossible,” Darla said. “No vampire has been recorded as far back as you are suggesting. The most only make it to a little over a thousand years.”

“Yes, I am quite aware of that. However, unless this vampire has taken the name of another vampire as his own, then we have no choice but to assume that he is, in fact, as old as the history leads us to believe.”

“So we read,” Spike said determinedly as he picked up the book lying open before him.

“We read,” Giles agreed with a nod.


*****


Buffy had slept through the day, a fact that shook her to the core. Her demon was still too young to resist the lure of sleep throughout the day once the sun had risen and she had succumbed to rest without realising it. It frightened her that she had let her guard down for so long. Since then someone had been in the room and drawn heavy curtains across the windows and moved her from the floor up into the comforts of the bed.

Her stomach rumbled loudly as she slipped out of the bed. She hadn’t eaten since before she had left the mansion to meet Dawn and hunger was gnawing at her. She felt the monster within her stir as it had that night so many weeks ago when she had been taken before the Master, only this time she didn’t try and rein it in. Buffy felt her face shift uncontrollably into that of her demon; it was time to get out of here. Food first, then escape, and she was going to need a change of clothes.

Her demon guided her actions as she silently made her way over to the door.

“Excuse me?” Buffy called as she knocked on the door. “Hello? Is there any chance that I could get some blood, please? Hello?”

Buffy smirked as she heard a rustle of movement outside her door. Extending her senses outwards she checked to make sure the guard was alone before quickly backing away from the entrance to position herself so that she would be behind the door when it swung open. Her demon was clawing at her in anticipation as she heard the key enter the lock moments before the door swung open and a minion stepped into the room.

“Miss Buffy?”

Buffy let out a low growl.

The other vampire stiffened and spun around a moment too late as she slammed the door closed behind him and pounced. A shocked gasp caught in his throat as her teeth found his neck and tore through the skin with an animalistic ease.

He struggled beneath her as she swallowed his blood down in mouthfuls, draining him quickly to the point when he hung limply in her arms. Buffy smiled as she felt his blood go to work in her body, renewing the strength that had been sapped from her from going so long without feeding.

Dropping the comatose vampire at her feet, she quickly went to work stripping him down, refusing to look at his skeletal form as she rid him of the pants and t-shirt he had been wearing. The shoes were too big to do anything other than hinder her.

Tearing at the strings of the corseted dress, she sucked in a deep breath as it fell loose around her and melted into a puddle of silk at her feet. “I’ll take jeans over that any day,” Buffy muttered as she quickly donned the minion’s clothes, thankful for the belt he had been wearing to help keep the pants up around her hips.

It would only be a matter of time before they realised she was gone. One look inside the room would be a big enough give away, there was nothing she could do to stop them finding out. Buffy worried her lower lip between her teeth as she glanced down at the vampire at her feet, maybe she could buy herself some time though.

Bending over, she hefted the dead weight of the motionless minion into her arms and carried him over to the bed. She dumped his body and the dress she had worn under the covers, with just enough skin and dress sticking out to make it look like she might be under there. She doubted it would fool them, but on the off chance it did she wasn’t going to leave the minion lying directly in front of the door.

Scooping up the keys that had been dropped in their struggle, Buffy walked over to the door with a heady sense of satisfaction and slid the key effortlessly into the lock.


*****


“Dear Lord!” Giles exclaimed softly as he leaned over the book he was reading to closer inspect the passage he had just read.

“What is it?” Spike asked as he moved to sit beside the Watcher.

Giles looked up at the blonde vampire in astonishment. “Silas was the vampire responsible for siring Simone, the Aurelius Clan Leader that preceded the Master. It seems your clans are more intertwined in each other’s history that I imagined.”

“He can’t be,” Darla stated in confusion. “Simone’s sire was cremated during the Second Turning that was used to bring her across to the Clan of Aurelius.”

Giles nodded. “It mentions that, however it also states here that he was resurrected a year after his death by a cult group known as Wolfram and Hart. They hoped to use him as means to bring about an apocalypse; however, Silas resented the fact that he was being used and in debt to anyone and later slaughtered half the team responsible for bringing him back.”

The group was silent as they digested the information they had just been given.

Spike frowned. “So Silas is linked to Simone. Is anyone else finding it strange how Simone’s name keeps coming up?”

“What do you mean?” Angelus asked as he moved to pull Darla into his lap.

“It just seems that I have heard more about her than usual ever since Buffy became part of the clan. The first thing she noticed when I brought her back to the Aurelius Mansion was the portrait of Simone’s turning. Then there was the Embracement—Angelus mentioned that the last time it was practiced Simone was the childe in question—not to mention Silas’s obvious interest in her. Knowing of his connection to Simone, what if he is seeing more than what is really there for some reason? What if he thinks Buffy is connected to Simone somehow?”

“You mean like reincarnation?” Giles asked.

“I didn’t think it was possible for vampire’s to be reincarnated,” Angelus said to Giles, “and even if Buffy was a reincarnation of Simone when she was human, she would have lost her soul when she was turned.”

Giles shook his head. “No, I don’t believe she would have.”

The three vampires shared a look as the ex-watcher got up and made his way over to the extensive book case on the other side of the room. “While I was working with the Council I did some extensive research on the mechanics of vampires and the process involved in their turning. See, I don’t believe that vampires are dead, rather just immortal.”

Spike shared a disbelieving look with his family.

“Just let me explain,” Giles went on, catching the looks that passed between the vampires as he returned to his seat. “I believe a soul is nothing more than something that animates us and that everything on earth has one, humans and demons alike. You know that all demons that walk in this dimension are a hybrid in some way or another with humans; pure demons are much larger and far more vicious than anything we have ever seen here on earth. That being said, I believe that during a turning, the demon soul and the human soul merge to form that of a vampire’s soul—a hybrid of the two species. Thus the human is able to keep their memories and the essence that makes them uniquely them. However, we all know a vampire is not human; therefore, a genetic change has to take place. I believe that the soul doesn’t cause the mutation of features; rather it is caused when they are fed their soon-to-be sire’s blood. You would know better than anyone that a vampire’s blood has mystical qualities—especially that of sire’s blood. As the blood enters the system it alters their genetics and physically turns them into what we know as a vampire.”

Spike frowned at Giles. “That makes a weird sort of sense.”

“Say your theory is correct—that the human and demon souls merge to create a new soul—and say that Buffy does have a reincarnation of Simone’s soul. Is there any way a person could be tested for the presence of someone else’s soul?” Darla asked.

Giles nodded. “There are numerous spells that can be used to determine the essence of someone’s soul. Some require no more than a simple incantation placed on a crystal.”

“Then let’s say Silas knew about these spells and did one to determine whether Buffy carried his childe’s soul,” Darla suggested.

Giles shook his head, “The majority of these spells need to be done in close proximity to the subject. He would have had to have been within her presence for it to work.”

“No he wouldn’t,” Spike said suddenly. “Not if he got one of his lap dogs to do his dirty work. Think about it, we run into Christian at the club and then the next night his clan comes a-knocking? There is no way that could be coincidence.”

“So Silas sends Christian out with the spell to find us, he hangs around long enough for it to work, then he runs home to his Master with the results. We can assume the test came out positive,” Angelus said getting into it. “So they took Buffy as, what? Revenge?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Giles said. “Silas loved his childe.”

“Maybe Simone didn’t love Silas though?” Darla offered. “Revenge of a scorned lover perhaps?”

“Whether it is love, hate or revenge, this vamp is obsessed and he thinks Buffy essentially is Simone or at least the closest thing he’ll get to her,” Spike stated. “We need to get her out.”


AN: Thank you Andrea for the beta, and to everyone else who has commented :D