Disclaimer: If you made it this far into the website, chances are you know durned well who owns the copyright on Buffy, Spike and the rest of the gang, and that it ain’t me. No copyright infringement intended. This is, as ever, fanfic impure and simple, or, as I like to think of it (due to the parallels to romance novel fiction) femfanfic. It is one (somewhat deranged and obsessed) femfan’s vision of the possibilities of the Buffyverse created by Joss Whedon.
Rating: NC-17. Completely and absolutely. If you somehow made it pass the screens and buffers while underage, you should STOP NOW! If you want something exciting to read, try Poe, Lovecraft, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and learn how really good, scary horror fiction is done. That’s what I was doing at your age, and odds are that’s what Joss was doing, too. Come back when you’re legal.
Background: I have no compunction about blaming this on ~mere~. In fact, every piece of fanfiction I’ve written is, directly or indirectly, all ~mere~’s fault. See, she sent me something in e, while I was working on some legit fic I wanted to pitch to Archway for their juvenile Buffy tie-in line. But there was this one small, yet critical, scene between Buffy and Spike that had erotic overtones I didn’t think appropriate to juvenile fic. After reading what she sent to me, I confessed to ~mere~ my admittedly twisted desire to see Spike and Buffy together…to which she responded that she and her internet wifey, Ccool, had the same issues. The next thing I knew, the story started clawing its way out of my guts and wouldn’t stop. Thus began the opus before you. And once it was born, the other stories insisted on being conceived and labored over as well. Thankless ba$tards in more ways than one. Later, bec, the sister I never had, gave support and feedback, because she had similar issues. (More about bec’s particular issues in the third story "Puppy-dog Eyes")
Original disclaimer: This story is rated NC-17, and is intended for our adult female audience. Especially ~mere~, Ccool and bec. It takes place between the episodes "The Dark Ages" and "What’s My Line?"
All Too Human
by
Margot Le Faye
Time – Just after "The Dark Ages"
Sunnydale was burning. She had failed, ultimately, in her duty as Slayer, although it could be argued that her very success had precipitated the crisis. Ironic to think that the world might be going about its usual business if only Buffy hadn't killed Drusilla. But she had. In front of Spike, who only reached his lover in time for her ashes to drift through his hands and scatter irretrievably across the cemetery.
For one instant, Spike was vulnerable, so overcome by pain and despair that he made an easy target for the stake Buffy held scant inches from his heart. But his face was, in that instant, so human in it's anguish, so eloquent of raw, inconsolable suffering that Buffy was held immobile by a hideously unexpected and inopportune pity.
One instant.
In the next, rage overcame grief. "You bitch," Spike snarled, leaping forward to knock the stake from Buffy's hand and send her flying into the mausoleum behind her. He dove after her, but her Slayer's reflexes allowed Buffy to recover her footing with feline grace and speed. She was ready for him, or thought she was. But when he attacked she found that his normal vampiric strength was so enhanced by a berserker's frenzy that she was forced into a totally defensive battle. For several minutes she fought a holding action, just trying to stay alive. And then she tripped over the uneven edge of the tombstone behind her, and he pinned her to the earth before she could recover her breath. Spike's face vamped out. Buffy found herself looking into the merciless saffron flames of his eyes, and she knew she was going to die at that moment.
Now, she wished she had. Because her death, in that moment, might have appeased him. Her death, alone, would never satisfy him now.
Angel saved her, racing across the length of the graveyard. His roar of anger alerted Spike, who was almost maddened enough by his loss to throw himself at the other vampire.
Almost. At the last possible second he gave another snarl, released Buffy and fled. Angel let him go --another fatal, inevitable mistake-- and ran to the fallen Slayer.
"You all right?" he said as she groaned and sat up.
"I think so," she said, taking stock. Nothing seemed broken. "Just the usual bruises," she assured him. He reached down to help her back to her feet. "At least I got Drusilla."
Angel went still. "She's dead?" he asked quietly.
"Well, yeah," she said, her voice uncertain. Angel looked away for a moment. When he looked back at her, his gaze was steady, calm.
"She didn't deserve what happened to her," he said as quietly as before. "The years of madness, being a demon. It was my fault." Buffy was disturbed by his melancholy. She knew how deeply he suffered for the things he had done before his soul was restored. And what hurt him, hurt her. She offered what comfort she could, moving closer to him, and setting a tentative hand on his arm.
"Angel, did any of you deserve it? Weren't you all some other vamp's victims at the start? I mean, did you know what Darla was, when she made you?"
"Of course not!" His tone was vehement. Buffy nodded understandingly. She had been pretty certain of that, but hearing Angel confirm it was still a relief.
"Well, what about Spike?" she went on. "I'll bet even he didn't know what Drusilla was offering him when they hooked up."
"No," Angel admitted. "He only knew he loved her."
"Okay, then," Buffy said, her voice becoming determinedly more cheerful, as she stroked her boyfriend's arm reassuringly. "And the real Spike --William, I mean-- he's been dead for years. His soul is resting in the whatchamacallit--"
"Aether," Angel supplied, faint amusement creeping back in to his voice and expression.
"--and we just need his body to get the message that he's dead. Drusilla's body knows that. The demon is gone to wherever demons go, and the girl your demon killed all those years ago is resting, too." She paused and looked up at him from under her lashes, stilling the movement of her hand. Her voice softened as she said, "Your demon, Angel. Not you."
Angel's mouth quirked up in his lop-sided smile. "How did you get to be so wise?" he asked her, then leant down and kissed her. His lips on hers were cool, gentle. Hers parted beneath his, deepening the kiss as she brought both arms around his neck and raised herself up on her toes, savoring the taste of his mouth, his tenderness, the fire she sensed he kept carefully in check lest he take her farther than they ought to go.
She was going to have to work on getting him to stop checking that fire, someday soon, she thought to herself.
When he let her go, Buffy shrugged deprecatingly. "I'm not wise," she said.
And she wasn't. Wisdom would have been to take out Spike before going after Drusilla. Leaving the saner, more cunning of the pair undead and hurting had been her greatest folly.
Spike acted quickly. Whatever caution Buffy had begun to instill in him by defeating his plans again and again, was swept away by grief. To destroy the Slayer, there was nothing he would not risk, nothing he would not dare.
He called up armies, not merely less powerful vampires who were always willing to serve a strong leader, but other evils as well: effreet, lamia, rouge werewolves, sorcerers. Some of his new allies helped Spike raise demons from the bowels of Hell to aid him in completing an ultimate plan of revenge.
And then someone told him about the greatest demon of all.
The meeting took place in a modest apartment at the edge of Sunnydale's middle-class residential district. Ethan Rayne hadn't left town, despite Rupert Giles' warnings. He merely changed address and lay low until the right opportunity presented itself. Spike's current mission to destroy the Slayer at all costs seemed just such an opportunity. Rayne issued a cautious invitation, which was quickly accepted.
The living room blinds were drawn closed against the rays of the setting sun, and what little light leaked through the slats was too diffuse to worry the occupant of the wing chair set before the window. He sat relaxed, perhaps indifferent, booted feet planted firmly on the floor, black leather trench-coat open, hands lying casually on the chair's arms. A curl of smoke rose from the cigarette dangling from his mouth. Ethan Rayne was somewhat annoyed. The news he possessed was worth all Spike's attention, but the vampire seemed unimpressed. After one particularly laconic comment, Rayne's temper flared.
"For a vampire your age, you are amazingly ignorant, aren't you?" he said acidly. Spike glanced at him contemptuously.
"For a sorcerer, you're incredibly careless. Or are you forgetting that you're alive on sufferance? I'd really prefer to eat you human types."
"I thought you preferred veal," Rayne said, seemingly unmoved by the threat. In fact he was too smart to ignore it. The creature in front of him gave off a palpable chill, a concentration of deadly, implacable, evil energy. Rayne knew better than to underestimate his dangerous guest, but he also knew that to show fear was to invite death. Spike had never been long on patience. Rayne cultivated a disdainful attitude, betting he had the key to what the vampire wanted, and that, in time, he would be well rewarded for presenting it.
Spike hadn't heard anything of interest yet.
"You tempt me to make an exception," he said pleasantly, dropping the temperature of Rayne’s blood precipitously. "So, whatever it is you've got to tell me, get on with it." He leant forward in his chair to set his cigarette in an ashtray and pick up the bottle of red wine his host had wisely placed on an end table near him.
Ethan nodded. The threat was clear, but at least the vampire was paying attention, now. "All right. How much do you remember of your bible?"
"Bible?" Spike laughed, as he began to ease the cork out of the bottle. "Don't tell me that collection of superstition has anything useful to offer."
"That collection of superstition, as you call it, can offer the clues to the greatest powers in this world or the next." Rayne said dryly. "Do you remember the story of the Garden of Eden?"
Spike cocked his scarred eyebrow. "What, Adam and Eve? Original sin and all? Yeah, I remember." He had gotten the cork out, and took a long pull of the wine. "So what?"
"So. Did you know that, up until about five hundred years B.C., before what we call the Old Testament was codified, there was a story of another wife for Adam, a first wife, Lilith?" Rayne looked at his guest closely, trying to gauge Spike's reaction. The information he had just imparted seemed to amuse the vampire.
"Really? Another wife. Why, the old dog." Spike raised the bottle in a mocking toast and took another swig. Rayne smiled thinly.
"And did you know that Adam's first wife was not exactly pleased with God, or with His plans for her?" he went on. "Lilith wasn't made from Adam's rib, she was made out of the earth, right along side him. She didn't like the idea that God wanted her to be subservient to Adam. So she left the garden. Even though three angels with flaming swords tried to turn her back."
"Feisty wench, then. Go on."
"After she left, Lilith found someone who appreciated her view point, who was most sympathetic to her needs. Satan. She became his consort."
Spike poised in the act of setting the wine bottle back on the table. He cast an appreciative glance at Rayne. "Well, this is interesting. Satan's consort, eh?"
"Oh, she didn't stop there," Rayne smiled, relaxing now that he'd started to get to the heart of the matter. "Lilith was worshipped down through the first millennium of the Christian era. And she was feared. She really doesn't like humans, you see. Not the sons and daughters of her first husband and the submissive woman he took up with after Lilith left him. She developed the amusing habit of taking on the appearance of men's wives, of seducing them, and of stealing their seed. From which she made monsters. And that is why she is known as Lilith, Mother of Demons."
"Mother! Fancy that," Spike's amusement was clear. Rayne's smile broadened.
"Eventually, in the days when people really understood what they were up against when it came to demons, she was banished from the earth. But she is still one of the greatest powers in Hell. Which, incidentally, is also why the demons that manage to come into this world won't perform the incantations that would bring her across from the other dimension. Once she gets here, they'll all be reduced to vassalage. She's that powerful."
"Is she, then?" Spike drawled. "Curiouser and curiouser. 'Mother' does sound a girl after my own heart," he conceded. "But not the sort who would fall for the old 'invocation and binding ritual' crap, so I won't get her help that way. She'd have to volunteer. And why would she care about my little problem with the Slayer?"
"Oh, she wouldn't in the general scheme of things. But you're wrong about using compulsion. Lilith can be forced to your assistance, just as any other demon summoned from Hell can be forced to obey the one who summons them."
"Are you sure?" Spike demanded. "I don't fancy pissing the likes of her off."
"Don't worry," the sorcerer said. "There were spells that could have bound Satan himself, long ago. Those are lost. But I have the spells to bind Lilith, all right. And I'll perform them for you. For a price."
Spike threw back his head and laughed. "Yeah, well. There's always a price."
A few days later, Spike stood over a fire burning on a huge brazier that had been set up in the abandoned warehouse that served as his headquarters. He had just sacrificed three newly made vampires --vampires made for this very purpose-- cutting their throats with a silver blade. As Ethan Rayne chanted in ancient Aramaic, Spike opened the veins of a fourth sacrifice, allowing the blood to fall into the crimson and gold flames. Which, as Rayne finished the chant, and as Spike repeated the ritual words he had been taught, turned black.
The scent of myrrh rose from the brazier. The flames burned higher, and took on form and substance, the figure of a voluptuous woman, her hair twisted in serpentine coils that fell, in coruscating darkness, to her bare flame feet. The outline shimmered in the heat, wavering and reforming. It was indistinct, and yet it seemed to Spike that she was dressed in some sort of linen sheath that came just above her full breasts, and that she wore armlets and an elaborate necklace, or pectoral, of beaten gold. He couldn't say how he knew this; everything was merely outlined in black flame. But he was certain she was arrayed in the finery of an ancient Sumerian princess.
His first clue that Rayne's calculations were off was when the protective pentagrams etched in blood around the brazier began to steam, then boiled away. The second was when the vampire standing nearest the brazier spontaneously burst into flame. Her voice, when it came, wasn't a sound at all, but an echo in Spike's own mind.
"Arrogant boy! What have you dared, and why?" The voice reverberating in his skull was full of icy rage. Mother, it seemed, wasn't happy. Spike realized that Rayne had miscalculated and that they were all about to be toast. Another glance at the human told him that he just might be thinking the same thing.
The irony of the situation got to him. Spike laughed. He could feel rage mounting within the flame creature before him, knew it wasn't wise, but couldn't help himself. His ability to see the absurdities of life had always been his besetting sin. Still, he had learned survival in a hard school, and knew intuitively when the conjured demoness had reached the limit of her patience. Then innate cunning took over, and he made a decision to abandon the plans Rayne had so carefully outlined. As the sorcerer spluttered in frightened protest, Spike fell to his knees in apparent submission, and spoke.
"Mistress of Hell! Mother of Demons! I, the least of your children have invoked you. I, the least of your children...to offer you the world."
The flames grew suddenly still. The voice in his head seemed a little less outraged. "Say on," Lilith invited him.
He told her everything. She considered his offer, and made one of her own. Spike hesitated, leery of the price, but the reward she promised was too tempting. And as he himself had told Rayne, there was always a price. Why balk at paying it? He took up the silver blade with which he had offered her the prior sacrifices, and cut into his own flesh. Once more vampiric blood fed the flames.
"I swear vassalage, to thee, Lilith, Mother of Demons, now and forever, through all the courses of time. My will subordinate to thine, my life offered freely. Grant my desire and our compact is complete. Deliver the Slayer utterly into my power, and I'll give you the world."
"Done!" the voice in his head crackled triumphantly. In the next instant, black flames shot from the containment of the brazier and engulfed Spike. There was a transient agony, replaced almost immediately by a feeling of vital, surging potency. It seemed that the fire no longer burned upon Spike's flesh but within his veins. He was filled with a dark, hellish power stronger than anything he had ever experienced as a vampire. And then he felt the touch of cool lips upon his own, and the scent of myrrh surrounded him.
"Well done, my most beloved child," the voice whispered. "Here is how I grant you your heart's desire..."