Pandemonium – 4/?

Prologue – Prelude (The Family Trip)
Chapter 1 – Luci in the Sky with Demons
Chapter 2 – King Kill 33°
Chapter 3 – A Place In the Dirt

 

Chapter 04 – Down In The Park

Buffy had picked one of the upstairs bedrooms; not the biggest for it looked too much like her mother’s room, not the smallest. The one she had picked was just right. Two windows and a steelframed bed, a closet she had no use for and a vanity.

She remembered a time when she used to stick pictures of her friends and family into the frame of her vanity mirror. That was a time long gone.

Flirty summer dresses were forgotten. Trips to the beach weren’t part of her favorite passtime anymore. Now she wore practical clothes and combat boots, and she only went to the beach if there was something to kill.

Her formerly shiny honey-blonde curls were now pulled back into a tight braid, the only make-up she wore was a dusky shadow around her eyes.

All of the other girls she had once known would have covered the scar that ran through her lips with tons of concealer and lipstick. Buffy didn’t. She wore it something close to pride. Getting hurt was part of her job, part of who she was.

The Slayer.

*

It was some time after midnight when Buffy geared up again. She had spread her little belongings throughout the room. All of her clothes were in one neat pile on one of the chairs, her weapons were arranged in the same immaculate fashion on the vanity.

Once more, she slung her small crossbow across her shoulders. Two wooded stakes went into handmade pouches on her belt to both sides of her hips. At last, she clipped a knife to her belt in the small of her back.

One last look into the mirror comfirmed Buffy’s fatigue. The travel through the country had left it’s marks on her. Because of her weaponry, she couldn’t take the plane, and a trip by bus and train wasn’t very comfortable.

Now a few strands of her hair had gotten loose, framing her pale face; and her eyes were not only circled by make-up. She couldn’t care less about how she looked, it didn’t matter. Good looks didn’t slay vampires.

She did.

***

If it wasn’t for the slight stench of decay that hung in the air, SunnyHELL could have been the perfect little city.

Spike had been all over the world. He had been to demon towns, vampire towns and all sorts of evil strongholds. But he had never seen a place like this.

There was not a living soul to be seen, not even a stray dog or a cat. They had probably sported as a late night snack for some lesser vampire or demon.

All the shops and cafés, the few bars and the hardware store on the main street were boarded up and barred shut. The movie theater had long since closed up shop.

As he came by a grocery store, Spike caught a glimpse of their business hours: 9am – 3pm. All well in the time when the sun was up. The sign even read that the shop was closed during bad weather.

This town wasn’t deserted, boarded up and left behind. The people hadn’t fled, they hadn’t been killed by what went bump in the night. They had adjusted.

They had gotten used to the fact that the town was no longer their’s alone, that they shared it with the vampire. The humans occupied the day while the night belonged to the undead.

A sick symbiosis from hell.

While a good scare here and there was fun, this was just… wrong.

It wasn’t how things were supposed to be.

One of the Master’s goons had given him a descriptions on how to find Restfield Cemetary and more specifically the du Lac mausoleum. It was a very, very detailed description. If the guy had been a tax adviser in his former life?

Spike almost chuckled at the thought as he pushed the heavy iron gate to the graveyard open. He had lost count of the cemetaries he had been to in his existence. After a while, they all looked the same, no matter what confession or religion it was. Every society burried their dead in one form or another.

This, too, had the typical stone tombs and angels, a mausoleum or crypt here and there, and there was even a pyramid. But something was off about this place. It took Spike a minute to figure out what it was.

The unusually large number of fresh graves.

This town probably saw a funeral at least once a week. It must’ve been close to a mystery that they still had a priest to do the service.

Whistling the tune of some punk song, the vampire strolled between the headstones, twirling a crowbar from his trunk in one hand. Finding the du Lac mausoleum was an easy task, but something else caught his attention before he had a chance to break open the lock.

The sounds of a fight. Fists against flesh, muffled grunts, air forcefully escaping lungs.

His interest peaked (what vampire in his right mind would miss out on a good brawl), he zeroed in on the sounds. It wasn’t difficult to locate for one of the opponants was throwing a great tantrum; colorful curses, grunts and moans.

Sometimes Spike wondered how some people could be turned into one of his kind. He considered it a gift, the VIP access to a world with fewer problems and so much more fun.

Before Drusilla had turned him, he’d been a twit. A fool for love with slightly too thick glasses and unruly hair. Not exactly the kind of guy you looked after on the streets (and if so, people would laugh at him). But Dru had looked after him, had turned around for him. She invited him into this world, offered him a ride on the best rollercoaster in the world. She had seen his potential, what he could be. She had set him free.

So why would anybody turn… anybody? Some high school jock with an intellect only so much higher than toast. Some bottle blonde chick with a boob job who had probably thought this to be her ultimate ticket to immaculate beauty.

Pushing the philosophy aside, Spike rounded another mausoleum. As he had expected, the guy (as tall as he was wide) was dressed in a letterman’s jacket, a golden football pin adorning his chest. His face was twisted in a hideous grimace; he couldn’t have been much prettier when he’d been alive.

His opponant was a girl. The second Spike laid his eyes on her, he knew perfectly well that this was the Slayer. This… Buffy.

There was this unique energy radiating off her that marked her at the Chosen One.

The vampire couldn’t describe it, not even the poet inside him could find words for it. It set his senses on fire, made every cell of his body tingle. Every fibre of his being strained to reach for that energy.

He had tasted a Slayer’s blood a century ago. It had only been a few sips but the raw sensation had made him hard for three days straight. The best bloody aphrodisiac in the world. He wondered what it would be like to drain a Slayer dry, to drink her blood to the very last drop. It would probably kill him in an instant but at least he’d go down with a rock hard cock. Rigor mortis, baby.

While he hung after his thoughts, the Slayer had pulled a stake from a pouch on her belt, driving it expertedly into the jock’s heart.

Before Spike knew what he was doing, he felt his hands clap in a lazy applaus.

The Slayer wipped around towards him, her stake raised in a fighting stance. She was prettier than the ones he had encountered in the past but she was as much a warrior.

Green eyes were fixed on him in utter fury, her lips pulled back in a quite snarl. Cargo pants rode low on her hips, and she wore a grey tank top, hard nipples pressing against the fabric.

She couldn’t be older than eighteen. He had no idea how old the Slayers had been that he killed but she must be the youngest. Although he could already see the steel-hard fighter underneath, there was just enough baby fat left on her to make the slight resemblance of some high school girl.

With an amused grin, Spike leaned against one of the headstones, crossing his arms over his chest. This was going to be fun. “Nice work, luv,” he drawled, not hiding that he was leering at her, checking her out.

Buffy looked at him, clearly surprised by the sudden audience. Quickly, she gathered her composer again, tucking away the stake. Apparently, Spike wasn’t posing a thread to her. Little did she know.

“A Billy Idol wannabe. This town really is on a Hellmouth.” She quirked an eyebrow at him, resting her hands on her hips.

Spike chuckled under his unneeded breath. “Little Slayer’s got a big mouth. That’s a first.”

Buffy’s sceptical look turned into a frown. “Who are you?” Before he could answer, she raised a hand. “No wait, let me guess. You’re some Big Bad with the desperate urge to kill me this Saturday.”

For a brief second, Spike stared at her, his mouth slightly agap with the unsaid words. With a snap, he closed his mouth again. She was quite a piece of work, this girl. She knew how to talk back. She reminded him a little bit of Nikki, that Slayer he’d killed in New York.

Too bad that she had caught him off-guard. He hadn’t exactly meant to say that but it came awfully close to what he had had in mind.

“What? You’re just going to stand there or are you going to put up a fight?” Buffy challenged him impatiently.

“Not just yet, Slayer.” He pushed himself off the headstone, sauntering over to her. “Three times’ the charm, they say. You’re going to be my third Slayer. This is going to be something…”

Before Spike could finish the sentence, something crashed into his back, launching him forward and right into the Slayer. She stumbled backwards, pulling him along to the ground. The air was knocked out of her lungs when he landed right on top of her.

“…special,” he finally finished in a pant.

Her scent filled his nostrils, made him dizzy. And just for split second, her pelvis ground against his, brushing against the incresingly senstive mound. He could swear that he could also smell her arousal, a heady smell that made the hair in the nape of his neck prickle.

Just as he tried to wrap his mind around the thought that a Slayer was turned on by a vampire’s touch, she used all of her power to push him off, sending him sprawling onto his back.

From the corner of his eyes he saw another vampire who had thought it funny to attack them while they were having a civilized conversation. Must have been some young gun who had not a clue how to sense Slayers and/or vampires. Within a few of his dead heartbeats, Buffy had killed that one, too, before she focused on him again. If she had ever slipped from her hardass composer, she had collected herself again.

“Who are you?” she all but barked as Spike rose to his feet again.

The vampire grinned deviously, taunting her with a chuckle as he brushed a few stray leaves of grass off his coat. “You’ll find out on Saturday.”

Buffy propped her hands on her hips, clearly annoyed. “What happens on Saturday?”

One more time, Spike let his eyes glide over her, memorizing the curves and swells of her body. “I’ll kill you.”

With that, he disappeared into the darkness.

 

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/208074.html