TITLE: “Blood Bath”
CHARACTERS: Spike/Buffy
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own these characters.  I understand that I have no rights to anything that I
write using these characters.  I hereby renounce any and all claims on my fanfiction to the rightful owners of these characters…Joss Whedon, WB, etc.

PROLOGUE:  This story falls before “Red Leather” but is not actually part of a series.  For continuity purposes you must know the following….Buffy is emotionally distraught due to recent events and is not paying the strictest attention when she is set upon by a horde of Zantoras Demons (aka the Zentori).  Spike, who, to her annoyance, has been following Buffy, joins
the fray when the tide turns against her.  The tide then turns again…
 
 

The bodies of the Zentoras demons lay heaped around them.  Buffy was still battering the lifeless corpse of her last victim.   Spike touched her shoulder and she turned on him, sword whirling, fighting blindly.

The battle heat was still raging inside her.  Spike dodged the deathblow and wrenched her arm backward to disarm her.  She swung her other hand at his head.

“Buffy!”, he yelped, dodging again and struggling to fix a half nelson hold on her, “BUFFY!, It’s over. It’s all over…we won *ow!*…they’re dead * bugger it!*…Now settle *oof!* SETTLE down!”

And then she was leaning into him…her shoulders shaking with exertion and emotion.  He held her listening to the dry sobs catch with each heavy breath.  After a long thirty seconds, she pulled away. Her clothing was tattered.  Her hair was tangled, matted with dirt and twigs and cobwebs and ichor.  Her face was streaked with tears and spattered with blood.

She was stunningly beautiful.

It took a moment for the blood to register.  Instinct guided Spike to the gash in Buffy’s right hand.  Red droplets fell from her fingertips forming lacy patterns on the ground.  The color, the scent, the proximity stirred him like any other lust.  He felt the tightness in his chest and groin and reached for her without thinking.  He turned her hand palm upward so that the wound lay glistening in dark splendor against her pale flesh.

 “You’re bleeding!”, Spike said his voice unnaturally hoarse. “I think they opened a vein.”

“What?”, Buffy looked at her hand. She was only slightly aware of the pain she endured during battles.

 A crescent moon cut across her wrist and curved up the base of her thumb, the blood was pooling now in the center of her palm.  Vaguely, she remembered something about clean cloth and direct pressure but she figured a fast car trip to the emergency room was the way to go.  She looked around the desolate graveyard.  No sign of a pay phone.  Of all the nights to be pedestrian girl.

“Want me to kiss it and make it better?”, Spike said tightening his grip on her almost imperceptivity.

Except that Buffy was the Slayer and her perceptions were razor sharp.  Spike could sense her heart leaping about like a rabbit in a snare but her eyes were the cold, watchful eyes of a rattler.

“Yes, I am so going to let you near an open vein!”, She said with a sweet smile, “Oh, and would you mind helping me with my grandmother’s picnic basket, you sharp-toothed yet kind-hearted stranger.”

She pulled away from him with more force than was necessary. She pressed her other hand to the wound and felt the blood pulse under her fingers.  Come on Slayer healing powers, she thought, as she half turned away from Spike.

“Well, on your way then”, Spike said with a leer, “Good luck to you making it to Hospital…hope you don’t tangle with anymore Zentori.  Just for the record, I
could stop that bleeding for you in about 10 seconds.”

Buffy hesitated.  That last part had sounded like a good idea…maybe the blood loss was taking effect.

“You heard right, honey”, Spike continued seeing her consideration,  “All part of the Vampire
package…coagulation…anti-coagulation…it’s in the saliva.”

“You’re telling me if I let you….”, Buffy choked on the idea.

“Come on! How do you think you survived what Angel did to you?”, Spike grinned showing a pink slip of tongue.  He waved one hand at the scar on Buffy’s neck. “Sliced open a major artery there, took a long sip of  your sweetness and then he sealed you up tight.”

Buffy looked once again toward the distant, empty roadway.  Then with sudden decisiveness she tipped over her weapons bag and drew out a stake.  She moved close to Spike pressing the wooden point into his chest until it just pierced the skin and then placed her injured wrist into his outstretched palm.

“If you try anything…”, Buffy growled, the stake penetrated just a little bit deeper.

“Right!, I’m a dust bunny!”, Spike confirmed, “Look at how I’m shaking!”

He raised her hand to his lips, turning the wrist slightly. They locked gazes as he showed his fangs. His tone and his eyes were mocking but Buffy was close enough to feel the tremor in his body.  Not of fear but of something just as primal.  As Spike’s mouth kissed against her torn skin, the emotion passed into her own flesh.  The sucking, pulling sensation seemed to crawl through her.  Squeezing at her heart.  Dilating her eyes.  Catching at her breath so that it came in short bursts.

Spike’s eyes never wavered from Buffy’s face as his tongue reveled in the taste of her.  How easy it would be to take her now.  Rip out her throat.  Faster than the headache could strike him down.  One lunge and he would claim his third Slayer.  Just as her stake claimed him.  Poetic that!  They would die together.  His dust settling in the sweet flow of her blood.

But this wasn’t just any Slayer.  This was Buffy.  There was a slim chance that, fast as he was, she was faster.  He would be truly parted from her if he failed.  And even the dream of eternity scattered along her body was not enough to outweigh the possibility of losing her forever.

Reluctantly, he morphed back into his human form and stepped slightly away from her.

Buffy glanced down at her wrist.  Her hand was streaked with gore but the gash was clotted over.  Spike was still holding onto her.  His thumb rested in the pool of blood in her palm.  She looked back up at him and was caught in his gaze again.  This was far from over.  Her stake arm tensed.  But oddly she offered no resistance as he leaned forward to run his tongue first along his own thumb and then across her skin.  He traced her lifeline and delicate as a cat
lapping cream probed between her fingers.  His blunted teeth tugged at her flesh as he followed the red tracings of blood down to her fingertips.

A Slayer’s blood is a powerful aphrodisiac but that didn’t explain Buffy’s aching desire.  Her body seemed to be operating independently.  She watched herself wipe a stray droplet of her own blood from Spike’s lips.  His tongue darted out and licked it from her thumb.  A voice in her head, sounding suspiciously like Giles, was berating her for her willing participation in this truly twisted blood bath but it was only when she noticed Spike’s attention shifting from her now spotless hand to the slight spattering of blood on her breast that her Slayer senses kicked in.
The stake came up between them.

“Don’t even think about going there!”, Buffy snarled twisting out of his reach.

With angry efficiency, she gathered up her weapons bag and backed toward the cemetery gate.  Spike made no attempt to follow her.  He touched his fingers to his chest surprised by the pain he felt there.  As Buffy vanished down the road into darkness, Spike looked down at where her stake had carved out a tiny rose of blood just over his heart.

-End Scene-