Love In Vein: Book Three - Chapter 15

Bloody vampire.

It was all Giles could think as he hurried through the maze of corridors towards the cells. His eyes widened slightly when he saw the tangled mess of doors at the end of the dimly lit hall. They looked as though they had been torn off their hinges and were resting haphazardly against each other.

Clambering over them, he glanced at the broken cell door and then crouched down beside Andrew where he was sitting on the damp stone floor.

A scared smile seemed to be etched on his face as he stared blankly into the cell in front of him.

“Andrew…” Giles touched his shoulder lightly and kept his voice soft and soothing. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I…went to feed him. He…he broke the restraints and…” Andrew wrapped a shaky hand around his neck, intimating what Spike had done to him.

Giles noticed the sticky dark patch on the back of the boy’s head and looked at the man who had discovered the mess. He was the youngest member of the team assigned to hunting down Cerberus, a lad no older than Andrew was, and Giles knew they had become good friends since he had moved here from Sunnydale.

“I heard a noise, sir, a roar and a scream. I ran down here as quickly as I could. The damned beast was already free. He was running toward me.” The other boy paused and swallowed noisily. “I thought…thought he was going to…”

“He wasn’t interested in either of you, was he?” Giles looked at them both and sighed as they shook their heads. He’d feared this would happen. He’d thought the restraints were strong enough to stop Spike’s escape into the world.

“He knocked me aside and that’s when I found Andrew, and we raised the alarm.”

“You’ve done well. Now help Andrew up to the nurse and I’ll see about waking the others to tell them what has happened.”

Standing quickly, Giles moved as fast as he could back through the corridors and up into the house. The only thing he could think of was warning everyone of Spike’s escape. But first, there was someone else he had to tell.

Buffy.


Buffy almost leapt out of her skin as someone banged loudly on her door. Slipping off the bed, she hurried across the room to answer it. She’d heard the commotion outside her room, people rushing around and speaking in whispers as though she was the cause of whatever was happening.

She didn’t want to think how she’d heard them. Since Spike had countered her claim, her senses had been off the scale and she knew it had something to do with him.

She could hear the people outside as though they were speaking normally.

That was definitely a vampire trait.

She flinched as the loud banging came again and she took a deep breath, pausing with her hand on the door handle. She knew what was coming.

Opening it slowly, she found herself face to face with a very flustered Giles.

“We have a problem.” He spluttered at her and she just looked at him. “Spike is missing.”

She still just looked at him.

Giles had been expecting a different reaction and ploughed on, convinced that she was obviously having difficulty understanding what he was telling her.

“Buffy, Spike is missing!”

“I know.” She stated simply and idly watched the members of the Council as they marched up and down the corridor outside her room.

“We have to go and find…wait a minute…what do you mean you know?”

Buffy stepped aside, revealing her dimly lit room and the sleeping form of Spike.

“He came to me. He was in so much pain, and I couldn’t make him go back down there. That place is killing him.” She kept her eyes fixed on her mate as he twitched in his sleep.

“I don’t think this is very wise…”

“I don’t care. He’ll be okay with me, Giles, I know he will. Let him sleep. If he misbehaves…”

“Misbehaves? Buffy, this isn’t a child we’re talking about here. This is a cold blooded killer, a vampire. A bloody soulless one, too. One that your affections for is blinding you to the potential danger of the situation.” Giles felt the last of his restraints snap and everything came flooding out as he stood in her doorway.

Buffy just stared at him, hard. “I know how much this must disappoint you, how it lessens how proud you are of me…but I love him and you have to trust me when I tell you that I know he won’t hurt anyone.”

“He threw Andrew against the wall. The boy’s in the nurses office right now.”

“But he’s not dead, is he?” She ground the words out hard and held his gaze. “Giles, the Spike you’re holding onto is gone. He isn’t the killer you want him to be. He would have killed those boys if he was. He’s changed so much…I’m sorry that you can’t see that.”

Giles stood silent for a moment, staring into the narrowed green eyes that were telling him how much not having his trust and his faith was hurting her.

“I suggest we return him to the basement as soon as possible.”

“No…he’s not going back there. That place is killing him, Giles, it’s killing him and I’m not going to sit here and feel that. I tolerated it for as long as I could…so did he…but he doesn’t need to be restrained, he needs to get back to normal and that means being with me in a safe environment, not a dingy hole.” She let her shoulders sag resignedly. “Please, Giles, I’m asking you to trust me. He won’t hurt me. He won’t hurt anyone while he’s with me.”

Giles drew a long deep breath and took his glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he thought about what he was going to say.

“I wish I could believe you…”

“But you don’t…you don’t trust him, or me.” She felt like she was losing a part of herself as she looked at Giles and saw in his eyes that he wasn’t able to do as she asked.

“I know you believe that he won’t hurt anyone, but it’s his nature, Buffy. If you can give me a valid reason as to why we should let him be free to roam…”

“He’s changed, more than you could ever know…please, just give me a few days…if he’s not better…we’ll move him back.” Buffy watched as he hesitated, considering her offer. She wished she could tell him why she knew that Spike wouldn’t hurt anyone, but it wasn’t her place to announce Spike’s soul to the world. It was up to him to do that.

Giles nodded reluctantly and placed his glasses back on his nose. He was sure he would regret handing Spike over to Buffy, but he could see in her eyes that there was something going on that she hadn’t told him, and that she honestly believed that Spike was different somehow.

He wished he could believe it too.

Patting her shoulder lightly, he sighed as she smiled wide at him, showing him how thankful she was for being given time to help Spike recover.

Buffy wrapped him up in a hug and then grinned as she let go of him. It was mostly for show, but she felt the need to keep the relationship between her and Giles strong. She didn’t want things to become soured, especially not when there was an apocalypse looming on the horizon.

“You won’t regret it.” She continued to grin as he nodded again.

Both of them watched the Council members as they scurried up and down the hall. Giles sighed again, not looking forward to what he had to do next. It was bad enough when he’d announced that Spike had escaped. The members he’d woken up to tell the news to had wanted blood and it had taken serious discussion to make them realise that it was never going to happen—Buffy would kill them all if they even tried to hurt her mate.

Now he had to go and explain that Spike had been found, and not only that but he wasn’t going to be going back down to the basement—he was going to be roaming the corridors with Buffy.

This was not going to go down well.

“I suppose I should…” He started and Buffy nodded. There was a look in her eyes that let him know that she appreciated what he was about to do and that she was there to back him up if he needed her. It made his heart warm to see it. A moment ago he’d felt as though he was on the brink of losing her completely, but now she was standing stalwart in front of him and ready to fight by his side.

It meant more to him than she could ever know.

Buffy watched him with a smile on her lips as he walked down the corridor, his body language clearly expressing how much he wasn’t going to enjoy being the one to tell everyone that Spike was going to be remaining outside of his cell.

Stepping back into her room, she gently closed the door and locked it. It wouldn’t stop Spike if he chose to escape, but then the cell hadn’t either. He had wanted to get to her, and get to her he had. There was sure to be an inquest into how he managed to get out and she silently hoped that she’d be a part of it—she wanted to see just how Spike pulled such a Houdini as that.

Padding quietly across the room, she looked down at him as he slept, his face boyish and soft in the warm light coming from the lamp on her bedside table. It seemed like so long since she’d slept next to him in a real bed that she felt as though she was dreaming. She couldn’t believe that he was back with her, and the things that he had done in her absence.

All for her.

She’d never felt so loved in her life. He’d changed himself so greatly to become a better man, a man that could save her when the time came, and she wished she could express in words just how much that meant to her.

Slipping under the covers, she waited for a moment to see how he was going to react. She’d stripped him off when he’d come bursting into her room and nuzzling up to her in her bed. The last thing she’d wanted was to sleep next to the month of filth that was on his jeans. He hadn’t seemed at all bothered by her pulling his jeans off; he’d just snuggled into the duvet and purred contentedly as she stroked his cheek.

She smiled as he tugged her to him, a low possessive growl rumbling in his chest. As her body was pressed flush against his, she closed her eyes briefly and let her fingers interlock with his ones where he was holding her waist. She brushed her thumb against his as she looked down at their joined hands, a calmness filling her and chasing away all the things that had been playing on her mind.

A sad smile crossed her face as she saw all the dirt on his skin and the way a few of his fingers were still wrapped in bandages, the others clearly lost during his escape. She sighed heavily as she stroked his arm, thinking about everything he’d been through and how it was no surprise that he wasn’t wholly with the world. He must have been suffering so much guilt, so much pain over the past month that it had been gradually driving him insane. He’d had no one to relate to, no one to tell him that it was okay and that things would get better. He’d been shut in a dark room and had probably believed that he was being punished for his sins by the one man he had thought he could trust—Giles.

She let a tear slip onto the pillow as she thought about how wrong Giles had been. He hadn’t meant to make things worse, but he evidently had all the same. She wished she could tell him why Spike was crazy and why he had been getting worse and not better, but it really wasn’t her place to do that.

She didn’t even think that Spike would do it.

She got the feeling he would want to keep this as their secret for as long as possible.

Pulling his hand up, she pressed a kiss to a relatively clean part of it and rested her cheek against it, taking comfort in the feeling of him so close to her.

Things needed to get back to normal and then Spike would follow suit. At least that was her theory.

Rolling over, she looked at him as he continued to sleep soundly. His feelings were calm, tranquil, and she couldn’t remember a time since her arrival that she’d felt him like that. She ran a finger lightly over his cheek and smiled as he twitched slightly.

Her eyes moved to his hair and she sighed at his dark roots and messy curls.

A smile curved her lips as a plan formed in her head.

“Let’s get you back to normal, shall we?”

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