Love In Vein: Book Three - Chapter 8

Buffy stared down at the tarry brownish-purple mud that was filling the mug she was holding. She curled her lip in disgust as she looked at it, thinking about how she would rather drink another pint of Spike’s blood than the contents of the cup.

“All of it?” She furrowed her brows into a hopeful look in Willow’s direction.

“Yep.” Her friend answered brightly.

Buffy couldn’t help thinking that she wouldn’t be as breezy about the quantity they had to consume if she was the one having to drink it.

Pinching her nose tightly, she closed her eyes and quickly drank the potion down. She grimaced and tried to stop herself from gagging as the lumpy glutinous slop slid down her throat like a tepid milkshake.

Reaching the bottom of cup, she shuddered as she was suddenly chilled from the inside out, as though the drink she’d consumed had been ice cold rather than lukewarm. Opening her eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to look at the mug, she just put it down on the table beside her and let her gaze fall on Giles.

He was pulling a face of such disgust that it was almost comical.

When he slammed the mug down on the table hard enough to make the other one jump slightly, she offered him a sympathetic smile, glad that she hadn’t been alone in the slop drinking.

“There…not so bad.” Willow said and then immediately looked sheepish when they both shot her looks that could kill. “Should take effect in about thirty minutes, maybe an hour.”

Buffy sighed. What kind of potion required six hours to brew, looked like mud from some indescribably unpleasant bog and then took a further half an hour to work once you’d managed to keep the nasty stuff down?

Finding there was nothing else for her to do, she idly walked about the drawing room, looking for something to entertain her. Giles looked equally as bored.

Walking over to a large chest, he drew out a selection of weapons, trying to decide which ones would work best against a three headed dog. He smiled as soon as he saw the axe, its blade gleaming brightly and its mahogany handle reflecting the warmth of the lights overhead. Taking it out, he remembered what Spike had said about Buffy’s love of axes and walked over to her with it.

“Thought…you’d prefer this.” He was almost stunned by the intensity of the smile he received from her as she took it from him, her eyes running over it approvingly and her fingers immediately coming up to test the sharpness of the blade.

Buffy span it lightly in her hand, watching it glide around in an arc beside her.

She’d never felt a more perfectly weighted axe.

“Thanks.” She said with another smile and then looked over at Willow and Tara. “Thanks to you, too…don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Willow couldn’t resist moving in for a hug, holding Buffy tightly and feeling warm inside from seeing her almost back to how she used to be.

“We should probably be going, it takes a while to get to the cemetery that the murders have been taking place in. The magic should have taken affect by then.” Giles didn’t want to break apart the touching scene in front of him, but he was anxious to find Cerberus and put a stop to the killings.

He was anxious to be home safe.

He knew that Buffy would be able to handle herself, but she had drained herself of so much strength by refusing to eat properly and by drawing back into her own world. He was glad to have been the one to give her back her mate, and her love, but he still wished it could have been under better circumstances.

Hopefully tonight would help answer a few questions and hopefully it would help Spike.

Bidding goodnight to Willow and Tara, he escorted Buffy out of the house to the waiting car and gave the order to head to the place that was to be their hunting ground tonight.


“Highgate cemetery?” Buffy stared at the sign over the gates and raised her brows—she’d actually heard of this place. Maybe Spike had mentioned it once.

“Twenty-two of the attacks have taken place here. The others took place in the surrounding area.” Giles informed her as he looked at the rolling green of the cemetery in the darkness.

A low mist seemed to be clinging to each tombstone, making him want to think twice about heading into the dark depths that awaited them. There was something foreboding about mists, midnight and cemeteries that made him come to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to end well.

Coming out of his reverie, he realised that Buffy was already walking into Highgate, her double-bladed battle-axe held firmly with both hands as she took in her surroundings.

“Creepy.” She muttered to herself and then shrugged. She did creepy on a nightly basis, it was probably just the age of the graves and the tombs that were making tonight even more like a scene from a Hammer House of Horror film.

“Come along…best to keep moving I think.”

Buffy nodded and fell into step beside Giles.

It was the first time in a long while that she’d patrolled with him. The last person she’d patrolled with had been Spike, and that had been mostly about talking rather than staking things. Her other patrols had been solo missions, and they were purely about killing things and losing herself in the violence she was feeling inside over the loss of Spike.

But he was back now and, in a weird way, she felt as though she was back too.

He’d brought her back.

She idly scanned the horizon, or at least as much as she could see in the pitch-black cemetery with the mist obscuring her vision. She watched it as it swirled around her feet, her movements disturbing it and making it look like a friendly ghost that was hugging her ankles.

She smiled.

Spike would like tonight. He’d talk about his past adventures and he’d do stupid stuff to creep her out even further, like giving her the slip and hopping out from behind crypts to frighten her. He loved to make her scream like a girl.

He said it made him feel all manly.

She shook her head as she remembered that weapons apparently made him feel all manly too. Her eyes fell to rest on the axe she was wielding.

He loved axes.

It hadn’t taken her long to discover that they shared such similar passions, that they were so similar in so many different ways.

“Have you had any more visions?” Giles broke the silence, wanting to keep his mind off the thoughts that had been crowding it.

Buffy shrugged. “Not really…I mean, while I sleep with Spike I don’t have any. I’ve had a few, but it’s the same one, nothing’s changed in it yet.”

“But you have reason to believe that it will? That your vision will progress or alter in some way?”

Buffy decided that she really missed patrolling with Spike. He didn’t ask her questions that sounded as though her psyche was under scrutiny, or talk about such mundane things as the latest book on demonology he’d been reading.

Giles really was made for libraries, places where you weren’t supposed to talk.

She gave a non-committal shrug and left it at that.


An hour later and she was listening to Giles drone on about the research he’d done on Cerberus. There had been no sign of the beast in question and she was beginning to wonder if it actually existed, or whether it was some sick bastard doing all the killings.

A rustle of leaves in the trees just ahead of them made her stop dead. She watched as the birds flew their nests and followed them as they went directly overhead.

“That’s a little odd.” Giles said as he watched the birds flying into the distance.

“No, that’s a little odd.” Buffy pointed at the great hulking mass of black dog that was staring straight back at her from the tree line, its long pink tongues hanging out the side of its mouths as it panted and sniffed at the air.

“Dear lord.” He felt his heart skip a beat as he looked straight into the beast’s black eyes.

He gave it a disgusted look as it licked its nose, long strings of slobber streaming from its jowls as it regarded them, clearly curious as to why they could see it.

“You see what I see?” Buffy hissed out the corner of her mouth and for the first time Giles drew his gaze away from the head that was watching them.

He was stunned when he saw that the black lion-like head on the left of the central head was hanging limp as though it was dead. The one on the right was badly injured and a long gash was visible on its neck. He frowned as he saw that some of the serpent like mane was missing.

As Cerberus moved forward, Buffy noted that it was limping. She was getting the feeling that someone had had a good go at killing the beast and, in her eyes, there was only one person in London who would take on such a mammoth task.

“Spike.”

Giles looked confused.

“Giles, what if Spike wasn’t coming to ask for protection? What if he came to you to tell you that you all needed protection? What if he had fought Cerberus and knew that he was slipping away? That he wouldn’t have time to defeat it?”

Giles looked even more confused.

She rolled her eyes.

“Spike came to you…” She started but he cut her off with a ‘tut’ and a glare.

“Yes, yes…I understand what you’re trying to say. But Spike specifically asked for protection.”

Cerberus took another step towards them.

“Did he?” Buffy questioned, not believing it for a second. Spike wouldn’t ask for protection. How could she have been so blind? Spike would never ask for protection, not from the Council. “You told me that he had said something about needing protection and about Cerberus. He might have been trying to tell you that he couldn’t stop it, that it was on the loose and London needed protection from it.”

Giles stood very silent for a few seconds and then relented. She had a point. Spike hadn’t said anything about wanting protection himself. In fact, Giles distinctly remembered that Spike had mentioned something about needing protection from himself.

Why would Spike need protection from himself?

“I could see where it might be possible he was trying to give us a warning.” He said, weighing up each word before saying them and trying not to sound as though he’d made a mistake in believing that Spike wanted protection.

Buffy smiled triumphantly and then froze as she heard a snorting, wheezing noise. Turning slowly, she found herself face to face with the drooling remaining heads of Cerberus, the dog-like one and the wolf-like one.

“Heh.” She said and then swallowed noisily.

Just as the beast was about to lurch at her, she swung her axe up and buried it as deep as she could into its side. It was evident by the lack of impact she made that her strength wasn’t wholly with her again yet and she was barely doing more damage than Giles could. She rolled forwards, avoiding the large canines of the middle head as it tried to bite her and then growled on realising it had missed.

Giles roared and thrust the long sword he was holding at the beast, trying to lure its attention away from Buffy so she could find a weakness.

Buffy brought the axe down hard onto Cerberus’ injured leg and smiled as the beast yelped in pain. She hit it again in the same spot and felt a grim satisfaction as blood began to spill from the wound.

Fighting it with everything they had, Buffy and Giles took turns to try to draw its attention away from the other so they could get attacks in without getting hurt.

This worked fine until Giles thought it was his turn to lure Cerberus’ attention, when it was actually his turn to hit it.

Buffy watched as he was thrown aside by the middle head and impacted hard against a tombstone. She dashed over to him, helping him sit up and feeling sick with worry when she saw the trickle of blood coursing down from his hairline and over his forehead.

“You okay?” She breathed heavily, keeping one eye on Cerberus the whole time.

“I’m…I’m okay…we’ve almost got it.” Giles watched her nod and leave his side.

Buffy took a deep breath as she stood in front of the remaining head of Cerberus. It stood taller than her, at least double her height, and its heads were each at least twice the size of a grizzly bear’s. Its coat of black fur was patchy, stained with blood and marred with scrapes and wounds. She held steady as it growled at her. It wasn’t the first time she’d been growled at, and it certainly wasn’t the scariest.

Spike took that prize.

Thinking of her mate, she stood a little straighter and stared the beast directly in the eyes. Giles and her had managed to kill off the wolf head, leaving her with just the central one to deal with.

It was going to take a hell of a lot for her to defeat it by herself.

But she was ready.

A blinding light caused her to raise her hand up to shield her eyes and she squinted as she tried to see what was happening. Her grip on the axe tightened as she backed away a few steps, glancing at Giles and seeing he was doing the same as she was—trying to see what was going on.

Coldness seemed to fill the air around them, it felt as though all the warmth had been sucked out and she could almost feel it being drawn past her towards the light like the sea draws sand off the beach with its waves.

Suddenly the light was gone and for a few seconds Buffy couldn’t see anything. Her eyes hurried to grow accustomed to the darkness of the cemetery again and she felt a chill run up her spine as she heard a low snarling noise.

It made her shudder.

Her body felt as though all the warmth was seeping from it.

“Giles?” She whispered and found he had come to stand next to her.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she felt her ability to breathe leave her.

There, stood over the carcass of Cerberus was what looked like an angel. It was taller than the average man, its long silvery wings stretching out to their full span before settling neatly against its back.

She felt as though she was dreaming as she looked at it—it didn’t seem real. There was an unearthly glow to its skin and it was dressed in what looked like gladiatorial armour.

Her eyes fell to its hands and she was taken aback when she saw that it was covered in blood, from the tips of its fingers right up to its elbows—it looked as though it was wearing deep red gloves. It was holding something in the hand furthest from her and she couldn’t quite make it out in the darkness.

As it turned towards her, she felt her stomach lurch.

It was holding a heart.

Cerberus’ heart.

The angel seemed to regard them with distant eyes, as though it was thinking the same thing Cerberus had on first seeing them—how could they see it?

Buffy swallowed hard again and looked at Giles. “Is that an angel?”

Giles didn’t answer, he looked as though he was having a hard time believing what he was seeing.

The angel turned away from them slightly, regarding its kill.

“Because I kinda figured that they’d be more with the harp playing and sandals, and less with the ripping demons hearts out.” She watched it as it moved to look at them both again.

Buffy’s eyes were drawn to the shimmering circle of light that hovered just above its head and she was about to say something about how cliché halos were.

But then the words fleeted her lips.

She was transfixed as the halo began to flicker, the smooth surface of it spiking up and fluctuating.

It burst into flames.

It looked like a crown of fire.

She was still staring at it when Giles threw himself to the ground, taking her down with him and covering her with his body. Her eyes widened as she saw what he’d seen.

The angel had changed, its wings now dirty grey and tattered, its eyes red and a black-blue forked tongue flickering from between its lips, lips that were parted in the wickedest of grins. Scales seemed to have replaced part of its skin, covering its exposed shoulders, and she followed its arms down to its hands.

Claws were penetrating the heart it was holding, black talons that must have been at least three inches long.

She felt sick as its wings opened, beating the cold air toward her as the angel lifted itself off the ground.

It was eating.

It was eating Cerberus’ heart.

She could see the blood running down its face as it gorged itself on the tender flesh, staring at her the whole time.

She felt like it was eating her heart.

Her free hand clutched at her chest.

With an eerie cry that pierced her mind, burning itself into her memory, the angel was gone.

She stared at the spot it had been in not seconds before. She could still smell the foul stench of demon blood and could still see the gleeful look in the angel’s eyes as it feasted.

She pushed Giles off her and rolled over onto the grass to throw up.

Giles sat motionless for a few seconds, not daring to ask what it was she had seen. He had kept his eyes firmly shut, knowing nothing good would come of seeing what the angel was going to do and just hoping it would see them as unworthy of its attention.

He thanked God he was right.

Something told him that God wouldn’t be listening.

He had his own problems.

Angels gone demonic?

They needed to get back to the Council, needed to find out everything the archive had on angels. No matter which way he looked at it, this couldn’t be a good sign.

He watched Buffy as she pushed herself up off the ground. Her skin was pale, her face a mask of disbelief and fear. Helping her to her feet, he held her steady as she took deep breaths, trying to overcome what it was she had seen.

He noted that the body of Cerberus was gone. There wasn’t even a trace of blood on the gravel path. Placing his arm around Buffy’s shoulder, he led her away from the cemetery and back to the waiting car.

He had hoped the death of Cerberus would mean their job was done.

It seemed it had only just begun.

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