Another chapter! Sorry for delay was heading home in traffic hope everyone enjoys!
Chapter Five
“Wait!” Buffy stumbled. The weight of her backpack worked against her and she shifted slightly trying to balance. Spike hared around the bend in the caves, a blur of peroxide and black, a constant flow of invectives marking his hasty passage. Spike was so focused on the chaos follower that he was unaware that she wasn’t behind him. “Stupid vampire – stupid Irish caves,” she grumbled. With a resigned sigh she shrugged off her burden, and then started chasing after Spike.
She put her head down and ran, twisting and ducking down the narrow passage. She could hear Spike swearing in the distance and gritted her teeth, put on a final burst of speed, only to barrel right into Spike and send him flying. They landed in a sprawl of legs and arms, her face buried in his neck. All her brain could registered was that he smelled good. Her brain shut down as his arms reflexively came around her back, steadying her against his lean form. ‘Oh, nice.’ She pressed her hands against his muscled chest for a brief tantalising moment and then reluctantly let them slide onto the ground.
Suddenly Buffy’s lust clouded senses cleared, and she heard the sound of water dripping and mocking laughter that echoed around the crystalline cave.
“Oh my poor unobservant dear, you must have walked straight past your precious Giles’s soul when you arrived. Did you honestly think I would lug around something so valuable around? My superiors have plans for it?” Ethan taunted as he hefted his bag. “Oh well, better luck next time. Or hopefully not.” He shot them a triumphant smile as he reached for the coin. It lay, gleaming brightly, in the Formorian idol’s hand.
The two blonds disentangled themselves and pulled each other to their feet.
“Ethan!” Buffy leapt forward to get to the bane of her watcher’s life. “So help me!” she exclaimed.
“Too late,” and like the proverbial Cheshire cat he began to vanish. The swirling clouds built up and then with an ear-popping crack he was gone. The coin clattered to the ground as Buffy skidded to a halt in the same spot Ethan had just vacated.
“Noooooo!” She fell to her knees, her hands scrabbling on the hard stone, her fingers blackened by the soot that was all that marked his passage.
“Bollocks, you slimy git!” Spike bellowed angrily as he lunged forward, his arms grasping at air
Spike came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off angrily and picked up the coin. Her free hand dashed tears from her cheeks as she screamed out her frustration. The entire trip was a nightmare… Giles going all freaky, parts of souls being ripped out, ending up in Angel’s village of the damned and now this failure.
“Why isn’t it working for me?” she cried out, her voice filled with frustration and burgeoning tears. Buffy nearly threw it away, but then a pale cool hand wrapped around her fisted fingers and urged her hand down.
“Dunno, slayer.” He slowly peeled her fingers open; his thumb lingering in the palm of her soot-stained hand as he plucked the coin from her hand and examined it. It had an image of a snake of some sorts etched into on side, the same compass symbol as on the first coin, on the other side and what looked like runes carved all over it and running around the edge. He frowned at the symbols and then flipped the coin along his knuckles as he pondered their meaning. “It’s got different scribbles on it.”
“What?” Buffy squinted at the rapidly moving piece of gold. “Let me see.” She held her hand out and raised a demanding brow. Spike flipped the coin in the air a few times and then when she stomped her foot he handed it to her with a wicked grin.
“I’ll go get your pack,” he offered, and then headed off down the way they had run, deftly dodging the rock formations as he went.
“Uh, yeah – thanks,” Buffy replied absently as she traced the small image of the serpent. Her shoulders slumped when she realised they were stuck in a cave in the middle of nowheresville without anyway of getting home.
“We’re so screwed!” She sighed mournfully and placed the coin back in the goat headed idol, before flopping to the ground and covering her eyes.
She had let Giles down.
~~~~~~~~~
“Bloody lightweights!” Ripper shouted after the three girls as they ran from the apartment and took refuge in the courtyard. “Running off like scared little girls! I only asked if you two would let me watch.” His voiced was filled with wicked glee. The last few hours had been entertaining. He had gotten progressively more outrageous with his comments, trying to see how far he could push his three captors. The two wiccans had been easy enough to shock though; the other was more than his match though. He liked her there was an open frankness combined with a naivety that just made his mouth water and his cock harden.
Willow leant tiredly against Tara, her red hair tangling with blonde as she vented her frustrations. “He is just so pissy and innuendo-ey all the time!” She sighed happily as Tara stroked her hair, soothing her with a touch. “And can I add gross to the watching of us, as if! Giles will be so upset when he is back in control.”
Anya cocked her head to the left as she examined her fingernails and then rolled her eyes plopping down on the raised edge of the small fountain she stretched her legs out and crossed her ankles. “Well we are keeping him confined in that pokey place with little in the form of entertainment – maybe we should rent him some porn or something to keep him occupied? Any time Xander is bored I pop in something a bit raunchy and it cheers him up immediately.”
Willow pulled a face at the mental image of her best friend watching porn and then gagged at the thought of her former crush Giles, also watching something like that. She shuddered. “Ewww,” Willow whispered.
“I don’t think that would work,” Tara deflected Anya away from that idea with a gentle shake of her head.
Willow cringed at the sound of breaking glass, “Okay, we need to go do some research for Buffy. You know to do the whole spell to get Giles all nice and watchery again and less the rebel without a clue.” With that both wiccans beat a hasty retreat, waving their hands as they ran off, leaving a very bemused ex-demoness behind them to baby sit the now cursing man.
Anya eyed the closed door resignedly.
“Cowards and deserters,” she called after Willow and Tara. “I think that we maybe could have kept him asleep for the whole time, but no, Tara said it was not fair. And to be honest I do not think that any of us were up for changing adult diapers.”
Her high heels clicked on the terracotta tile as she strode towards the apartment. Squaring her shoulders she put a hand on the closed door, cringing slightly at the Seventies music now blaring out of the usually calm home of the slayer’s watcher.
“So, Ripper, now they’ve gone, how about playing some poker or something?” She pushed open the door and stepped into the proverbial lions den. “We could play for money.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
“I’m not going into it!” Spike exclaimed as he paced back and forth in front of Buffy. She had been wheedling at him to spill for the last four hours. She was numb from the memory of Angel’s mortal name inscribed on a marker above his empty grave, and the abandoned village, but wanted to know. It was like all those rubberneckers who had to stare at car crashes…she had to hear it.
She needed to know.
Anything to fill in the hours as they waited for some inspiration about how to get to Ethan, if it meant hearing about Angel’s life then she could cope or so she hoped. Buffy was becoming a realist when it concerned her ex. He was not at all as advertised. ‘One romantic hero with the cute looks and the undying true love’. He had to undying bit covered as with the looks, but he sure as hell wasn’t a romantic.
‘Who the hell dumped the so-called love of his life in a sewer before Prom? And then who the hell swanned off to LA without aforementioned true love, all because it was becoming too hard! And cute looks? Pshaw, she was starting to learn to appreciate a man with a leaner body and sharper features, ack where the hell did that come from?’
Buffy leant back against, Herbert, well that was the name she had given the large statue and gave Spike her best pout, mentally suppressing anything else droolsome relating to cute guys with high cheekbones. She was so going to hell…
He spotted it and shook his head. “No. It’s bloody sods law we ended up here of all places. Slap bang in the midst of the poof’s past in all its unsavoury splendour and now you want me to start picking at that scab for you?” He whirled to face her. “Thought you’d put the nonce behind you?” He jabbed an accusatory finger at her.
Buffy opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a resigned growl. He looked over at her, his blue eyes filled with memories, one hand rose automatically and his thumb traced the scar embedded in his heavy brow.
“You won’t like what I have to tell you,” Spike warned her.
“But…”
“Demanding wench!” He kicked the crystalline wall, purple shards flying in all directions from the impact and then stalked back over to where Buffy sat, her recovered backpack next to her as she stared up at him with big solemn mossy green eyes. “You know sometimes its best not to get what you wish for pet.”
“I just want to know…”
“Stop bloody nagging.” Spike humphed at her, pinning her with a steely gaze and then flopped down onto the ground beside her, an image of resignation dressed in black leather and punk attitude. He rested his head on one hand and began to talk. His deep voice filled the cave with its whisky honed roughness as he finally revealed to the slayer Angelus’s first steps into the killing fields.
“Now remember, most of this I got from a Saki sodden Darla just after Peaches had ditched her scrawny backside in China… she was right bent out of shape after the hulking git refused to be a good puppy.” Spike lit a cigarette and puffed at it; rolling lithely onto his back, he folded his hands behind his head and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. “Dru and I woke up the next morning to find the old slapper long gone,” he recalled absently.
“Did the ponce fill you in on his human years?” Spike asked curiously. When Buffy shook her head, he chuckled. “Of course he didn’t. The drunken waster look didn’t really add to the heroic mould he was aiming for with the bright eyed ingénue he was intent on seducing with his broodiness.”
“Err…” Buffy failed to find a single reply that was worth voicing. Part of her wanted to smack Spike for ripping off the final Angel-shaped scales from her eyes, but the other stronger part was insisting on knowing more. She could tell that Spike wasn’t enjoying this, and that in some way, made it easier to hear. It also surprised the hell outta her. Buffy figured that Spike would have been delighting in telling her all of Angel’s nasty little secrets – hell even the not so little ones.
“Right, back to Liam. He drank his father’s wealth away in heavy bouts of indulgence. Whored around, probably had a nasty bout of the clap by the time Grandmum got her syphilitic fangs into the boy.”
“Ewww,” Buffy wrinkled her nose at Spike.
“No worries, pet. None of that carries on over when you get vamped. I should know what with her TB clearing right up…” he added quietly. “Darla vamped the piss head and once he got up from his dirt nap they had a party back there.” He jerked his thumb in the general direction of the village.
“What do you mean?” Buffy asked, with a hint of trepidation in her voice.
“He offed his family first, the littlest one first, then the mum.” Spike spoke steadily, not pulling any punches, if she wanted to know then so be it.
“I think Darla mentioned he kept daddy dearest to last. Think there were some issues there,” Spike added. “Then the two of them systematically hunted all the villagers down and ate them – well some of them, others they just toyed with until they stopped bleeding. From all accounts the bloodbath lasted a good few weeks. Suppose it was the beginning of their taste for playing with their food.” Spike hypothesised to a pale faced slayer. “Some of the poor sods clicked to the no entry rule, but Darla and Peaches eventually starved them out and finished them off.”
“God…” Buffy whispered. “A whole village?” So caught up in Spike’s grim tale she failed to notice the pulsing light emitting from the coin.
“Yeah, from what Darla said the local magistrate and the Bishop came down a few months later after reports of the whole place emptying out. The rotting remains were a grisly sight, from all accounts. Darla heard later that they pitched all the remains down the well, salted the earth and declared the place off bounds.”
Buffy swallowed the bile that had surged up her throat and rubbed her clammy hands together. Spike rolled his head to look at her, compassion filling his eyes at the huddled sight of her slim body.
“Told you it wasn’t pretty.”
“I know. But Spike, at least with you I know you will always tell me the truth, whether it’s sunshine and roses or fangs and dripping blood.” She reached over and placed a hand on his arm. “Thank you.”
Spike watched her through shuttered eyes, not sure what to do or say. Usually by now she would’ve smacked him good and hard, left him bleeding on the ground as she flounced off in righteous indignation. It had to be a first, a slayer thanking him. And, even more amazing it was Buffy.
“What the hell is that noise?” Buffy stood as a low humming nose began to fill the cave. “Spike, look!” she shrieked, pointing at the etched coin that still rested in the idol’s hand. A pulsing glow illuminating her surprised and hopeful face.
“Time to get out of here, maybe?” he asked as he rose and shouldered his and her pack.
Buffy turned a hopeful face to him. “Here’s hoping.” She reached out and grabbed his hand; with her other the small blonde grasped the coin. “I swear Ethan will not know what hit him if this gets us to what ever rock he’s crawled under now.”
Spike let her take his hand. “In for a penny I guess,” he joked as the now familiar storm clouds gathered over their heads, and tiny bolts of lightening wreathed the clouds. With a popping sound they vanished.
Leaving the once again forgotten idol of the Formorian gods to his solitary vigil in the crystalline caves. In the shadows, waiting. Waiting for the next chaos worshipper to appear at his carved feet.
~~~~~~~~
“I truly don’t understand this game.” Anya shimmied off her skirt without rising from her seat and tossed it on the floor next to her chair. “How does one win money by playing strip poker?” Her slim shoulders lifted as she shrugged at the older man with his rumpled hair, who sat across from her wearing a sock on his left foot and a pair of boxers. He reached for his glass of whisky and took a long drink. His eyes riveted to the nubile young woman sitting opposite him in her bra and stockings. He had been delighted when she had announced it wasn’t fair as she was at a disadvantage due to going commando.
Who was he to complain?
He stretched over, snagged the almost empty bottle and poured her another shot.
“When we finish I’ll fill you in sweetness,” Ripper gave her a devastatingly wicked smile and ran his hand down his bare chest and let his fingers hook into the top of his boxers. His eyes glittered in anticipation of her removing her bra next. He only had two aces ferreted away in the waistband of his boxers and was getting ready to use them in the next hand. He could just about make out the dusky pink colour of her nipples as they pressed against the delicate fabric. Ripper shifted slightly in his seat, trying to get comfortable, as his cock firmed up even more.
“Well, okay then,” Anya shuffled the cards and began to deal. As she leant over her breasts pressed against the pink lace bra encasing them. The soft flesh moved enticingly as Ripper eyed them and licked his lips. He was in heaven, a bit of Zeppelin playing in the background, a decent single malt to hand and a half naked beauty playing poker with him. What more could a man ask for? His mind filled with images of the two of them shagging themselves to death and he failed to notice the front door swing open or the shocked gasp emanating from their silent observer at the tableau of decadence.
“Anya!” Tara’s shocked voice from the doorway spelled the end to an entertaining afternoon for Ripper. “Put on your clothes! What are you doing?”
A/N The Formorians are a really delish group of deities that discovered during her research if you are interested in them here is a link Formorians
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/162160.html
