The magick box was poorly lit. During these midnight research sessions Buffy and Spike seemed to have more and more often they had learnt that if you turned all the lights on you got attention attracted to yourself, mainly in the form of daemons that weren't very constructive when it came to research. Lately they had taken to using candles just to light the area they were using.
Spike had a good idea what the thing they had seen a Giles' was but he wasn't going to tell Buffy that yet. Any time he spent with her was precious to him.
At the moment they were only using the top part of the shop. This was where the serious books were kept, the books Anya wasn't allowed to sell. The area was lit by a few candles and the two people were meant against the bookshelf with books in there laps. Spike was reading. Buffy was sleeping.
It didn't bother Spike that Buffy had fallen asleep. She was doing it more and more often. Dawn had told him she wasn't sleeping at home. She would get up and pace around and make tea or watch the TV until 5 in the morning. Buffy had told him she had been having nightmares when she fell asleep, of not existing. Of dying and being gone and there was no happy ending with heaven or hell or anything like that, there was just nothing.
Sighing he put his book down and, taking one of the candles, slipped down into the shop. He looked around but he couldn't find any blankets so he grabbed both there coats and took them up to Buffy. He moved the candles out of the way then took the book out of her hands. He folded her coat into a pillow then slowly lay her down on her side and let her head rest on it. He then lay his coat over her. She mumbled and pulled the coat closer but kept sleeping.
He sighed and turned back to the books, looking at all the information on various daemons. He'd better find something about sucubi to confirm it to himself and show Buffy.
About a quarter of an hour later Spike's attention was pulled away from his books as buffy began to whisper in her sleep. He looked over at her and noticed she had a worried expression on her face. He moved slowly over to her side and lay his had on her forehead. She mumbled and rolled over, almost knocking over a candle.
The vampire moved quickly and placed the candles out of her way. As he did she continued to toss and turn, moaning softly in her sleep.
“No,” she whispered. He reached out and stroked her hair and her head leaned into his hand, a tear trickling down her cheek. He slowly wiped it away. She mumbled something and turned her hand to his touch as he moved his hand away.
“It's ok,” he murmured, stroking her hair.
“Don't go,” she whispered, tossing over under his coat. As if acting on instinct he lay out next to her and wrapped his arms around her, resting her head on his chest. She mumbled something and struggled against his hold for a second, then relaxed into him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He gently stroked her hair and whispered to her as she stopped tossing and lay still on his chest, slipping into deep sleep again.
Sighing he rested his hand in the middle of his back and looked of across the room. He would have to wake her before the sun rose but for now he would just enjoy the feel of her heartbeat and her steady breathing on his chest.
~*~*~*~
Teri signed and pushed back in her chair, looking down at the pages in front of her. Her work would be made a lot easier with a computer but The Master didn't allow computers in his home. Ever since she had been turned at the lab by Norma, Teri had spent all her time trying to developed a biological weapon against the humans for The Master. It was hard work.
She loved being a vampire. She loved the power it gave her over mortals. She had been chosen because she was the best. As she understood it, it was quite an honour to be brought into the masters family, but still she knew she was only here because she was a part of the unit, and what was this challenge thing?
The Master had been going on a lot about this challenge and some rising this or another, some test or something like that. She hadn't really payed a lot of attention, he tended to get dramatic on her. She was sure she would pass anyway. She had never failed a test. Never.
What he was asking her to do already was hard enough without throwing in this test on top of it. It wasn't like it was easy to develop cancer into a weapon. At least now she knew it couldn't be used against her own. The dead had nothing to fear from disease. Her thoughts wandered back to the test. The tests were going on now. Every so often Butch, The Masters errand bay, would come in and lead of another vampire from the house. She hadn't seen even one vampire that had been taken again. They had taken Norma yesterday. She hoped the older woman was all right. Norma had taken care of her when she had risen. She had waited at her grave and found her someone to eat. She had told her how The Master works and taught her to survive as a creature of the night. Her mentor in life, Norma had retained the roll in death, a kind of mother to her, helping her make her first steps in the world.
Understandably she was a little worried about her Sire's fate. Loosing her would be awful.
A shadow fell across her desk. Teri looked up to find Butch towering over her. He grunted and made a gesture towards the door with his head. She stood quickly and followed him out of the room.
Through the heave door that all the vamps picked out to take the test had passed through was a small room, like a changing room at a gym. The Master was stood there waiting for her. Butch moved behind her, pushing her forward.
“You will now take the test,” the master said, stepping forward. “Many have gone before and many will come after. I hope, my childe, that you will be one of those who emerge at the other side. There will be 3 tests, each more difficult then the last. If you complete them all you will be permitted to exit and you will join us in our moment of triumph.”
The Master reached forward and opened a door. Teri passed through and found herself in a small room with a tiled floor. The walls were also covered in white tiles. The ceiling had white foam tiles.
Just as Teri was beginning to let down her guard the scene began to change. Abruptly she found herself back in her childhood home. She had grown up in the country side on a farm and now she found herself in her favourite field. Slowly she turned and began to walk towards the house. As she moved the scenery moved with her. Obviously this was some type of magick.
As she approached the house she saw a figure sitting on the step. A little girl with blond ringlets and a little pink dress. It was her little sister, Emily.
“Emily,” Teri called. Emily looked up and then she began to scream. She turned and ran into the house. Confused, Teri touched her forehead and found she was in her game face. She let her human visage fall into place and walked up the steps to her home.
“Emily,” she called out, stepping into the kitchen. “It's all right Emily, It's only me.” Slowly a small head appeared from under the table. The sobbing face turned into a look of joy as Emily ran into Teri’s arms. Teri watched the little girl, wondering how this was a test. There had to be something going on here.
Slowly Emily turned her puppy dog eyes up and grinned at her big sister. It had been a long time since Teri had been home, working at the research centre and all.
“She’s real,” a voice said. Teri looked up and saw THe Master watching her. “I am not, I am just an image but this is real, it is a test of your evil.” The Master stepped up slowly and ran his finger through Emily's neck, stroking the flesh even thought Emily felt none of it.
“I think you know what to do,” he told her, fading away. Slowly she looked down at her sisters neck. She knew shat to do. She had to kill her sister. She had known it all along really but just hadn't wanted to admit it. She loved her sister. But this was bigger then Emily, this was eternity. She knew that if the child was a little older she would understand but as it stood she wouldn't understand so she would just take what she wanted.
Slowly she reached down and positioned her fangs but found she was oddly reluctant to bite. It seemed so horrible, to kill her own sister. Her own innocent little sister. She knew she would regret it ... but still. It was a dog eat dog world out there and she didn't want to be bitten.
With a quick and decisive motion Teri drove her fangs into her sisters neck. Emily tensed for a second, then went limp as Teri gorged herself on the blood of her sister. She let go of Emily's body and the scene shifted. She found herself in a large, musty dungeon. The Master stood there with a tall black daemon beside him. “Now for a quick physical.”
~*~*~*~
Giles was late to the magick box as usual but she couldn't find it in herself to be mad at him. According to the information Spike had given her that morning when she had woken up, wrapped in his coat and with her head on his chest, it seemed like it wasn't Giles' fault he was so tired.
It was a succubus. She'd never heard of one before but it didn't surprise her that Spike had. A succubus is a beautiful daemon that creeps into men's rooms at night and steals there energy by making love to them in here sleep.
It freaked Buffy out. Who knew how long that thing had been around, causing trouble. She just wanted it gone, but unfortunately she had other things to worry about, like the reckoning. If Spike's research was to be trusted then in about 10 days the master and his elite few would travel to the hellmouth to perform a ceremony to raise then to true daemons. And what's more the death rate was way up with the sheer volume of vamps in town to see ozzy, not to mention the embarrassment of mistaking a few metal fans for vampires while out on patrol.
And as if that wasn't enough Dawn wasn't speaking to her. Buffy didn't know why her little sister was so angry about everything. She had just been so angry lately. She yelled at Buffy, she yelled at Willow, she yelled at Xander, and Buffy was pretty certain she had been stealing. The only person Dawn seemed to respect al all was Spike. buffy had no idea why but Dawn seemed to have a real connection with him.
Sighing Buffy slowly make her way up to Giles. She had to tell him about this problem. It involved him so much that he had to know. Still she got the idea he might be happier not knowing. Maybe she could get rid of it without him having to know. Maybe Spike could help her.
As she thought this she couldn't help but thinking about waking up that morning, one hand on Spike's shoulder, her head on his chest. It felt so strange, waking up on a vampire. She had never done it before. Angel wasn't one to snuggle with, when she had been involved with him she had been too young to stop out all night to wake up in his arms. All her other lovers had been human. It had been weird to know there should have been a heartbeat but then realising there wasn't.
Not that waking up in Spike's arms wasn't unwelcome, or the long untroubled night of sleep. Even though she had got over her waking nightmares and almost paranoid fear of death she was still waking up every night with dreams of death and nothing. Slowly she sighed and walked up to giles. He looked up at her then quickly finished counting money into the register. She smiled and waited for him to finish. Slowly he turned to her yawning.
“Look,” she said. “I'm sorry about yelling at you yesterday. I guess it was uncalled for.”
For a moment he didn't reply then he smiled. He reached out and pulled her into his arms. She smiled and rested her head on his chest for a second, he had always been like a father to her.
“Giles,” she said, trying to get to the point. “I came to your house last night with Spike, I wanted to make sure you were getting some sleep and we ... well we saw something, flying out of your window.”
“My god,” Giles said, sliding his glasses down his nose. “What did it look like? Ill have to research this...”
“Me and Spike already did,” she said, cutting him of. She reached over and grabbed the large book of the table. As he read the page he slowly began to turn white.
~*~*~*~
Slowly the room faded around her. Teri looked up and found herself in the tiled white room again. The Master towered over her. She drew in a deep breath, a comfort mechanism left over from her life, and hauled herself to her feet.
She bit her lip to hold back a scream as the sloes of her feet hit the hard floor, they were criss-crossed with cross marks. She was naked and most of her skin was charred black. One of her eyes was swollen shut and her left harm hung uselessly at her side. The Master smirked at her.
“Just one more test to go,” he said, then the scene faded again. She looked around and found herself in a maze with high walls and a dirt floor. For a moment she just stood there, in to much pain to even wonder about what she had to do here.
“Teri,” a voice called out. She immediately recognised the voice as Normas. Quickly Teri ran forward, disregarding the pain in her feet and every other part of her body and just concentrating on finding her sire. After a moment Teri stopped. There had to be a trick. She had been tested for ruthlessness and Strength, she knew that the other quality The Master valued in his family was intelligence. This had to be an intelligence test. Absent mindedly she wondered why he couldn't just give them a standard IQ test and she began to examine the wall. It was perfectly smooth and painted cream. The floor was cream to, paint applied to the dirt and rocks that made up the path.
“Norma,” she shouted.
“Teri,” a voice called from the North. She turned and made her way along the passage in a northerly direction.
“Norma, Teri called out, keep talking to me.”
Norma started to talk. At first the voice was faint but by heading towards it Teri soon found it growing louder and louder until she emerged into the centre of the maze. Norma was stood there in the middle of a circle of salt. Slowly Teri circled, wondering how she would get at the woman. A vampire could not step into or out of a circle of salt. She looked around her maze for something to use to scrape away the salt but couldn't find anything. She paced the circle and was about to head of into the maze to find something to use when the ground began to shake. Slowly Teri looked round and saw a giant daemon emerging from the maze.
The daemon was at least 10 feet tall with a giant muscular brown body and giant horns sticking out of his head. It charged at Teri but the vampire dodged and threw herself onto the back of the daemon. It bucked and trued to throw her of but she clung on. Slowly she crawled up her back until she grabbed one of the horns.
The realised the horns were quite loose on his head and very sharp at the end and began to pull on one. He howled but she didn't let up and with a rip of flesh she got the horn of his head. It growled and bucked it's head violently but she turned the horn over and drove it down into the daemons head, shattering his skull and sending bits of it's brain flying all over the place.
The daemon collapsed on the floor, screaming, and Teri jumped of his back and lunged forward, using the horn to rub the salt from around Norma. The younger vampire staggered towards her sire but the scene shifter again and Teri found herself in her hands and knees in the white tiled room.
She looked quickly around but couldn't see the master. The door at the other side of the room was open. Cautiously she rose and stumbled through.
As she emerged into a luxurious lounge hands reached out and wrapped a blanket around her and Norma reached out and held her childe for a moment, leading the younger vampire over to the side of the room. The master smiled. Turning those two had been a good decision.
It was nearly ready now, a few more days and his family would be ready, the time of accession would be upon them.
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