Love In Vein: Book Three - Chapter 6

Buffy found herself again sitting in the little armchair by the fireplace, only this time she wasn’t feeling anywhere near as relaxed as she’d felt the last time.

Not that she’d felt relaxed then.

But this time felt a million times worse.

Her thumb idly played with the back of Spike’s ring and she found herself avoiding looking at Giles until she’d had enough time to gather her thoughts, and arrange her questions into order.

It seemed that every second she passed here, she was getting more and more questions cluttering her mind.

She ignored the tea offered to her by Lydia and cast her a look that said she would have preferred her not to be present.

“Will you answer my question now?” Buffy said the second Giles had finished taking his first sip of tea. She wasn’t in the mood to give him time to formulate the ‘right’ answers that he always seemed to search for when posed with a question.

He coughed slightly, betraying how flustered he was. “Certainly.”

Buffy gave him a look that said she wasn’t willing to wait for him to answer at a time he chose; she wanted him to answer at the time she chose and that time was now.

“Well?”

“Well.” He repeated and then picked up his teacup again and took another sip. “We knew about your vision because of Spike.”

“You already said that.” She interjected hastily.

“Buffy, if you gave me five seconds to gather my thoughts.” He snapped back at her and she sunk further into her chair, her arms folding across her chest as she stared at him. “Where was I?”

“The vampire.” Lydia said in such a harsh tone that Buffy realised she wasn’t going to easily forget the damage Spike had done to her.

After everything they’d done for her back in Sunnydale, she couldn’t bring herself to forgive him. Buffy decided that Lydia was a little too self-centred for her liking and moved her gaze back to rest on Giles.

“Yes, yes, Spike. He came here on a wet night, it was late and Lydia and myself were the only ones still awake. We had been working on…”

“I don’t care what you were working on, just get to the point.” Buffy cut him off.

“Spike came to us, he was muttering something about protection so we gave it to him. When he was settled, in the same chair you’re now settled in, he proceeded to tell us in broken sentences that there was something terrible coming. He’d seen an inferno.”

“Like I saw.” She mused to herself and tried to figure out just what was happening.

“Over the next few hours, he told us in somewhat intimate detail the things he’d seen and kept repeating the information about Cerberus and wanting protection.”

Something clicked in Buffy. “Willow. She had told you about the ability that Spike and me shared, about the fact I could see things through his eyes.”

“Yes, Willow had been keeping me abreast of the developments in the claim between you and Spike. I believe that what Spike had seen was directly related to the insomnia you were having. Willow said you had mentioned several times a phone call how tired you were and how you couldn’t sleep.” Giles paused to take another sip of his tea and glanced at Lydia. “When I decided that Spike’s condition was worsening and he was now becoming a danger to himself, I made no hesitation in putting forward that we contact you. I had hoped, like I told you, that he would make a recovery if given the safety he desired. The Council were against bringing you here at first.”

He paused again and let his eyes narrow on Lydia before taking his glasses off and cleaning them.

Buffy got the feeling that whatever had happened, Lydia had championed the opposition to Giles’ plan.

“But you convinced them otherwise, and here I sit. So you brought me here because Spike had seen the things I was seeing, he had witnessed my vision and repeated it to you.”

“Buffy, why didn’t you tell us?” He watched her as she lowered her eyes to avoid his gaze and suddenly became interested in playing with one of the buttons on her combat trousers.

After a few seconds of silence, she stared into the fire.

“I was scared. First Spike, and then the visions, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to frighten anyone, I just wanted it all to go away.” She knew it sounded stupid even as she said it. The chances of her vision going away was a million to one shot, but she’d believed so wholeheartedly that if she just ignored it then nothing would come from it.

She just couldn’t face an apocalypse alone.

Not again.

“Buffy, we’re your allies, your friends…you should have confided in us. The Council is meant to work alongside you, not against you.” Giles leaned forward and gave her a sympathetic look as she continued to stare at the flames.

She didn’t expect him to understand.

It was his fault after all, always telling her that she was alone in her calling, that her friends shouldn’t be a part of her battle against evil. Lydia was worse of course, giving her the police interrogation treatment about it during her visit to Sunnydale.

She let out a long sigh and picked up her tea for want of nothing better to do.

“Is that all then?”

Giles felt a slight twinge of anger as she skirted what he’d said, skipping over it as though the words had never left his lips. He leaned back into his chair and looked down at the stack of dossiers on the table. It was everything he’d been able to gather so far on Cerberus and its activities, and everything that had been recorded during the various Council members sessions with Spike.

It still wasn’t enough.

They had no clue as to the hunting patterns of Cerberus, or how it chose its victims. They had no idea of how to stop it if they ever did encounter it on patrol. Since Spike had first made mention of the mythical beast, they had sent two teams out each night. Each team was led by their best field officer and somehow Giles felt even that wouldn’t be enough to ensure the safe return of each member.

What they needed was someone born with the talent to hunt such a demon.

Someone like Buffy.

It had offended most of the senior members of the Council when he’d announced that she was coming to deal with both Spike and Cerberus. They had thrown question after question at him, making it clear that they were upset that he believed she would succeed where they had failed.

But he had to try something.

And after the countless hours of research on the subject and how to hunt the beast, he’d decided that they had no other option.

“Cerberus.” He said the one word quietly as though he feared the beast would hear it.

“What about it?” She sat a little straighter, her interest piqued by the way Giles had spoken its name.

“We need to find it. It must be stopped, Buffy.”

“What have you tried so far?” She sat up properly now and leaned forward so her elbows were resting on her knees.

Giles thought it was a very Spike like manoeuvre.

“Two teams head out each night. Not one of them has even spotted the beast during their patrols. I believe that with your knowledge of demons, and your instincts, that you may be able to succeed in hunting the beast.”

“This the beast that’s nearly the size of an elephant? How exactly can you miss it?” She ignored the black look that crossed Lydia’s face. “Don’t tell me…this is another reason behind why I’m not getting a good reception with every member of the Council bar you?”

Giles shot Lydia a look that said he was in command at the Council and that she should see to it that their Slayer felt more welcome.

“If you’ll excuse me…I have a meeting with the Council members early tomorrow and must get some sleep.” Lydia made her excuses, holding in the upset she felt over the silent reprimand she had received from Giles. She repeatedly told herself that she should be treating the Slayer better than she was, because Buffy was, after all, the sole reason for her job.

Without a Slayer, they were just a lot of people playing at being vampire hunters.

Their attempts to hunt Cerberus had proven that.

Buffy just smiled at her as she stood and walked out of the room, leaving her and Giles alone. She wasted no time in bringing the conversation back to Cerberus and hunting it. Over the past few months back in Sunnydale she’d been growing increasingly bored by hunting fledgling vampires and demons that just seemed too easy to defeat.

She needed something she could sink her teeth into.

In a non-Spike kind of way.

“So, when are we going out on patrol? I’m figuring change in scenery, something new to kill, a little challenge all combining to make for a happy Buffy.” She genuinely smiled for the first time in what seemed like an eternity.

When she looked at it from a different angle, things seemed to be on the up, rather than the down. She had Spike back, and she knew that with a little care and time he would be wholly back with her, and she had something new to hunt. Both of these were things she could throw herself into, giving her a purpose while she worked towards fitting together the jigsaw puzzle that was the inevitable impending apocalypse.

“We’ve done a vast amount of research already, there is only one more section of the library to go through now but I think it might hold the key to finding Cerberus. There has to be a reason its been eluding us all this time while still being able to add to its number of victims.”

Buffy pulled a thoughtful face for show. She was starting to flag now. The long flight and the emotional turbulence from seeing Spike again was taking its toll, and even the few hours of peaceful sleep she had snatched in her love’s arms weren’t helping.

“Has anyone seen it?” She asked, stifling a yawn and wondering if there was a chance of getting some sweet, sugary coffee to perk her up. She remembered the time back in Sunnydale, in her house, when Spike had returned home to her and he’d given her a coffee packed with sugar so she could face the Scooby meeting.

Everything seemed so much simpler then, even though at the time it didn’t. She smiled as she remembered the times they had shared, and the poem he’d written for her. Looking down at her wrist, she stared at the intricate gold bracelet that encircled it.

She couldn’t forget how she’d felt when he’d given it to her. There had been so much love in his eyes, in his voice, that she had almost wanted to cry.

She still wanted to cry, but this time it wasn’t because she was happy, it was quite the opposite.

“Buffy? Are you even listening to me?” Giles frowned at her.

Her head shot up and she widened her eyes slightly. “Sorry…miles away.”

“I said, there have been no sightings by the patrol teams and no one witnessed the murders.”

Buffy frowned at that, trying to figure out just how so many people died without anyone seeing anything. Surely if you had seen a gigantic three-headed black dog coming after you, you would have ran? Or screamed? Or both?

“It’s quite incredible really, since the manner of the death was so gruesome.” Giles went on regardless of the fact that Buffy was staring blankly at the empty teacup in front of her. “The victims were severely mauled, their blood drained from them and there was evidence that it had been sucked directly from the multiple chew marks on their flesh.”

“Gross.” Buffy stated, not even noticing the look that Giles gave her.

He couldn’t see that there was much difference between how Cerberus killed his victims and how vampires did. They both seemed to feed off blood, rather than flesh, and they both drained their victims dry through puncture wounds.

Only Cerberus lacked the human finesse and went for a more dog-like approach of tearing the victim apart to get at its precious life force.

“Maybe it isn’t that no one has seen it…” Buffy remarked flippantly. “Maybe no one can see it.”

Giles looked astounded, his mouth hanging open slightly as he comprehended what Buffy had said.

“Then why didn’t it attack the patrol teams? If they can’t see it, then they…”

“Think about it, Giles.” Buffy interposed and smiled as she realised she’d bested her old teacher. “If you were a demon with a free meal ticket, would you attack the meals who were armed to the teeth, or would you go for the ones who appeared vulnerable? The ones who wouldn’t put up a fight.”

Giles was lost for words. A month’s worth of research had given him no clue as to how to hunt Cerberus and Buffy had discovered the answer in less than a day.

“Of course…bloody obvious really.” He muttered to himself and then stood up, immediately heading up to the section of books that would be most likely to provide him with the information he was looking for. “Cerberus probably has a way to cloak himself…”

“Or he’s just not visible to the people that aren’t evil enough to see him…I mean, if he’s supposed to be guarding the entry way to hell, why would someone good be able to see him?” Buffy just looked at him innocently as she received a pointed look from him.

“I seriously think it would be a little more complex than that, Buffy.”

“Well, maybe.” She said, not wholly convinced that it would be more complex. As far as she could see, if a demon belonged in hell, then why would anything good be able to see it? Surely it would prefer to stick to scaring those that were heading to hell.

Buffy froze.

The Council teams hadn’t seen it, but Spike had.

She shook her head, immediately discounting the idea that Spike was heading to hell. The reason he could see it was probably something as simple as the fact that he was a demon. He was already a child of hell.

Standing up, she stretched and looked up at the small balcony surrounding the room. She watched Giles as he rifled through the books that were stored up there, muttering to himself about things that she couldn’t quite make out. The whole of the Council seemed to be bursting with books, every room she’d been in had a bookshelf or five and she was starting to wonder how the Council never knew anything was happening. If they had all this information at their fingertips then surely they should knew more about Cerberus than the fact that he was the guardian of hell and a dog with three heads.

Giles hadn’t even known how big it was until she’d told him.

Stifling another yawn, she realised from the enthusiastic way that Giles was diving headlong into each book he removed from the shelves that it was going to be a long night.

Long nights required much caffeine.

“Giles, I’m going to get some coffee.” She called up to him and he stopped what he was doing, glancing down at her as he nodded in approval of her idea.

Watching her go out of the room, Giles returned to the book in front of him and trying to hunt down the solution to making Cerberus visible.

He frowned as he flicked through page after page of information about demons and mythical beasts. There was nothing in them to suggest that Cerberus was invisible to the human eye, let alone how to make it visible again.

Sighing to himself, he took his glasses off and rubbed his tired eyes.

He wished the answer would just present itself.

Slipping his glasses back on, he glanced at the shelf to his left and frowned as his eyes fell on a book. The spine was tattered, barely hanging onto the leather bound book as it sat on the shelf.

“This is terrible…no way to treat a book.” He grumbled as he gently picked it up and brought it face up in his hands.

The gold imprinted letters on the cover made him do a double take, unsure of whether his tiredness was causing him to see things.

This was certainly a turn up for the books.

Hurriedly sliding the book back onto the shelf as Buffy re-entered, he smiled down at her while quietly considering how to use the information he’d just stumbled across.

The only thing that was certain was that he couldn’t let Buffy find out.

Not until he knew for sure what was happening.

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