Chapter Five
"I Can Hear Heaven..."
3.1.2113 1:24 PM
Spike awoke to the sound of shallow breathing. The kind of breathing one would associate with sleep. The vampire grinned to himself. She was back! He wasn't just dreaming it! He felt like doing his own sort of Snoopy Dance out of sheer joy! But just as he'd said so long ago, when the Scoobies had brought her back that time..."The thing about magick? There's always consequences...Always!"
He knew it, and still he'd insited that they bring her back...he was giddy about the idea at first, but as he kicked the idea around, he wasn't so sure. Before he, Rayvin, Isabelle, and Shalimar had resurrected her again, he had wondered what would go wrong this time. He recalled the episode with the hitchhiker from so long ago. Spike had found himself wondering what would come through the temperal folds with his Slayer this time around.
But after the spell had been completed, he'd sensed nothing different - she was his Slayer, plain and simple...no extra baggage. But now, as he awoke, he began to sense something...different, something changed within her.
"You feel it too, don't ya' Spike?" came a voice from his left. He looked up, and before him sat Rayvin, her back up against one of the supports on the dingy wall, cleaning the grit from under her fingernails with her lavishly decorated shiv. She looked up at him, her crimson eyes seemed distant, and vague. "About Buffy?"
Spike sighed.
"Yeah. I's hopin' nothin'd come through with her this time...but it did...Guess I'll just have to find a way to fight it..."
Rayvin leaped to her feet, her face slipping into its rightful facade, her amber eyes seething with anger. "Don't you dare, William!"
Spike was taken aback by her outburst. NEVER had the raven-haired vampyress spoken to him like that. Sure, before she'd been forceful many times before, but NEVER had she taken that tone upon him. In one fluid motion, Spike had jumped to his feet as well, depositing Buffy's head onto his flack jacket for her to use as a pillow, and changed faces just a quickly as his second-in-command had done moments before. In an instant, Spike was toe-to-toe with the vampyress, his amber eyes echoing the angered golden glow of her own.
"Now you're tellin' me how to live my unlife, is that it, Rayvin?" his harsh tone seemed to bring her back to reality. He saw the anger dissipate from her eyes a bit, and saw her take a step back, shaking her head to revert back to her human features. Rayvin hung her head. Despite her reaction, Spike stood his ground. "What's got your soddin' knickers in a twist, Rayvin? Hmm? Is it the Slayer bein' back? Is that it?"
Rayvin shook her head.
"Is it something to do with the way I'm runnin' this bleedin' company?"
Rayvin shook her head again, but this time, instead of staring at the ground she raised only her eyes to glare at the stubborn master vampire before her.
"You were always too stubborn to get me, Spike. And I can tell you sure as hell en't gettin' me now! Your Slayer - she's the one that's gonna save this bloody world, Spike! I may die in this fight, and you may die with me, and she may bloody well die again, but she will lead us to victory, Spike! You mess with what she's brought with her, and we're all as good as dead!"
"You think you know all about this, Rayvin?! Then tell me? What'd she bring back with her?!"
"She's an Angel, Spike! She's part of the Clan of Angelos!"
Spike recoiled from Rayvin's words. "No..." he looked back at the Slayer. "She...she can't be..."
...
I watched as Spike sank away from me, and then I raised my head to get a good look at him. He was pale, even more pale than what was natural to vampires. That worried me. I could see his heart break as I told him that Buffy was a member of the Clan Of Angelos, but I couldn't understand why...I would have thought that he would have loved for her to be one of them, for it would have made her powers far greater than anyone in the Crew, or everyone in the Crew put together for that matter. But he wasn't.
"Why are you against this, William?" I asked, as confused as I had ever been in my entire existence. "I should think you'd be joyous...your Slayer will help us to avert yet another apocalypse..."
"That's just it..." Spike sank to his knees in front of Buffy and stroked her blonde hair lovingly. "I don't want her to have to..."
"Then why bring her back, Spike? You knew she would have to face it eventually." I walked back over to the gurter I had been sitting against earlier, and leaned against it, pulling out my shiv once more before I picked up a reasonably sized stick from at my feet and began to whiddle away at it, crafting it into a stake that would easily be concealed in my boot. I sheathed it in between the tongue and inside wall of my boot, then looked around for a large, rough-edged stone. Finding one to my left, I picked it up and tossed it into the air before turning back to face Spike and snatching it out of midair. I dug the oil out of my bag and put about five drops onto the stone before sitting crosslegged on the cracked tile of the subway station, long since forgotten, that we had maneuvered our way into. I began to sharpen my shiv and, after about ten minutes of nothing but the sound of metal against stone, I looked back at Spike. He seemed to be in deep consideration. "Spike?"
The blonde vampire jumped, hearing my voice. He looked up at me tentatively.
"You never answered my question..." I spoke in a scolding tone. "I thought best friends were supposed to talk, Will...I'm waitin'..."
His jaw dropped open as if he was going to say something, but then shut it just as quickly. I sighed and shook my head, figuring he'd talk when he was ready, before turning back to sharpen my shiv again. After a while, Spike chose to talk to me, his words trembling with his voice.
"I needed her with me on this one. That's why I had you an' the Wiccas resurrect her..."
"SPIKE!"
"I know, pet. I know. Rather selfish o'me, I know, but..."
"Wait...so you had no clue either?" I was awed. Of all of the beings in the world to not know about a prophecy...let alone one that could possibly the prophecy of all prophcies...I would have never thought the vampire before me could be so clueless to this information...
"About what, Rayvin?" he asked, his baby blue eyes narrowing at me.
"The prophecy. The Heavenly prophecy from Gaelic legend! The one that tells of one of Light and one of Dark leading a pack of Hellions in the defense of existence! The one that we are a part of!"
Suddenly Buffy awoke with a start, a look of both confusion and fear on her face.
"My God, Spike...I tried so hard not to believe it, but...but I can't get away from it...the message is just...too clear..." Buffy rambled, leaving Spike speechless and clueless - for once - as to what was going on inside her head.
"Good Goddess..." Shalimar crept up behind me, followed by a curious Isabelle, Kyla, and Nick.
"You're telling me..." I whispered back.
"She knows, doesn't she?" asked Isabelle. "She can feel it comin' for us..."
"Feel what, Isabelle?" Asked Nick, obviously as confused as Spike was.
"The apocalypse...she knows it's comin'...and soon." Kyla replied in a timid voice.
"What is it, Slayer?" I asked as I excluded myself from the gossiping group and inched closer to the Slayer and vampire. I knelt next to her and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "It's all right, Buffy. What did you hear?"
Spike stole a curious glance at me as the Slayer turned her eyes up to mine.
"There's unrest, Rayvin. In all the world. They say..." she closed her eyes. "They say to tell all of the vampires that fight with you...with us in the Crew...'full pardon is given, take it as you will. Your souls and your mortality shall be returned upon the conclusion of the War, should you want it, and Heaven shall open its gates to you once more'...But you all must fight for it. Also - If you die, you are automatically welcomed back into the Kingdom of Heaven, and a 'high status' is placed upon your head. How high, they didn't say, but I saw...oh, I saw Wills, and Xander, and Anya, and their kids - Spike, you never said they had kids - and then Dawnie...my little Dawnie...and her children...and her husband - oh, he was so good to her, wasn't he Spike?" Buffy looked up at her lover, questions in her eyes.
Spike was in tears. "Yes, pet, he was very good to her...up until their final hours together..." Spike nodded and stroked Buffy's cheek.
"And you know who else was there, Spike?"
The vampire shook his head.
"It was Kendra! Kendra told me that all of them - all of the Slayers would help us fight if we needed them to. She said that this was a battle for the ages, one that every Slayer had been prepared to fight - if we need them, she told me to call out, and that only I and a certain vampyress would know how - Rayvin, I guess she meant you..."
I nodded, signaling that I accepted the notion.
"But the strange thing about it was, I wasn't nervous at all, Spike. I wasn't. I was relaxed, like before the Scoobs brought me back that other time...it was so peaceful and serene...it was so real...and so beautiful!
"Who was it that spoke to you, Buffy?" I asked, determined to find out if my theory was right. "Who are the 'they' you keep referrin' to?"
Buffy's eyes lit up. "A special clan of Angels...made up of only Slayers, past and future..."
"Future?!"
"Yes, future. And I am a part of them, or so they say...And we're all a part of some kind of prophecy..."
I grinned and glanced at Spike whose glare was cut short by Buffy speaking once again.
"A...and, Spike...I swear I can hear it...I swear it! I'm not crazy!"
"You can hear what, Buffy?"
"I can hear Heaven..."
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