5. FEAST

[hismasterpiece]

[Voice]

Hallo, pretty New Feathers! I am hosting a feast. A feast by the lake to the West.

[Not the southern lake -- she needs to keep certain peoples' attention away from the lonely house she inhabits there.]

You are all invited! I have prepared something for you. It tastes of mint and chicory and iron! Yarrow and tansy! It will make you stronger.


Come.

[/Voice]

[Action]

Drusilla will be stalking about the woods as usual, eager to assist anyone who HASN'T heeded her invitation.

There is a cage waiting there, hidden under the trees. It is large enough to house a full-grown adult human.

It tastes of mint and iron.

[/Action]

Comments

[herotypical]

Buffy Summers was not so much protective of the lake as she was of its environs. The now-overgrown clearing where the house used to be. The familiar paths. The memory-drenched shore. And upon hearing such an open, unhinged invitation? She couldn't exactly ignore it -- no matter what she and Spike had quietly decided between the two of them.

Besides? There was no sin in a reconnaissance. There was no sin in patrolling and perhaps coming across the same space that was earmarked for something else. There was no sin in taking care of her town. Nor any in eyeing up her enemies.

And so -- with sunset long behind her and with a rustling revenge in her blood for what Drusilla had done to Jack while the Kin'corans were in town -- Buffy Summers took to the woods around the western lake. Seemingly unarmed.

[bloodwaif]

Oh, a slayer a slayer. Drusilla had known when she made the invitation that a slayer might come.

She sucked some pigs' blood from her fingertips and followed the feeling, the felt feeling of slayerly presence.

She liked walking naked in the woods. Her frock was dirty; she was going to wash it in the lake. She liked to walk to the lake to wash.

As she walked she projected a thought toward the slayer: Spike. Spike and Drusilla in bed. Walls cracking; sheets twisting. The absence of sweat and the presence of ecstasy.

We're back. We're going to do this place like we've done the others. It will be ours.

[herotypical]

If troubled thoughts or visions tugged at the corners of her mind, then Buffy readily assumed it was her own disgusting jealousy creeping in from the darker corners. Envy that was rotted to the core because...because what claim did she have on the second soulled vampire? Not a claim she wanted to cash in on, certainly. Not a claim she felt with any pride and barely any love. But she felt it all the same. And she felt anger that Spike would take his sire back under his protection when she was so obviously a piece of bad news.

Buffy didn't want to see him backsliding. She'd once told him that he could yet be a good man; she wanted to believe his time had come. But hard roads were lined with honey traps. Or, in this case, O Negative traps.

At the water's edge, she snapped off a bull rush and turned to the right -- following its curve. Drusilla was 'round here somewhere. It was just a matter of waiting for her to seize upon her dramatic moment.

[namesthestars]

Knee deep in marsh, the vampire waited. Watched.

O slayer my slayer, she whispered into the night breeze. It was late summer and the wind was filled with the beginnings of decay. Just the beginnings, as though summer was not yet ready to let go of life.

She loved the struggle.

"Buffy Summers."

[herotypical]

Once -- mysteriously enough -- there had been a stretch of months in this barrier that had been more play than work. More love than violence. And for so many months, Buffy had tasted a kind of peace she now realized was never ever going to be in her cards for long. Because enemies arrived and ex-lovers came and they all doomed everything else.

Maybe Spike was right. Maybe her mojo was gone. But maybe if she dug deep enough and pulled herself inside out, she'd find it again. Of course, there would be a price...

But for now? She bought her mojo on credit and straightened. There -- on the other side of a drooping tree branch. Pale skin. Buffy did her best to savour the fact that she could still breathe.

"Some party..."

Her head tilted. She caught sight of dark hair through a limb or two that shivered in the wind.

[hismasterpiece]

"Can you smell him on my skin?"

[herotypical]

Immediately, she was on the defensive.

"Sorry. Creepy sniffing powers is your bag, not mine."

You don't want to know you don't want to know you don't want to know.

[hismasterpiece]

"He took me suddenly, like a fever. I want him even now."

Can you smell that?

[herotypical]

"...More like a fever-dream, I think you mean."

Denial ran strong in her veins. Strong than a lot of other things. She edged her way nearer the bent-over tree and aimed to skirt around it.

[namesthestars]

Dru skirted the other way. She wasn't prepared for a fight with a slayer, tonight. She was having too much fun of other kinds.

"He touched my wings. They glistened with it."

[herotypical]

"You're lying. You're crazy. You're crazy and you're lying."

[hismasterpiece]

"Shuddered and shook and glistened. And I want more. Every night I want more and all the day, too."

[herotypical]

"He wouldn't," she argued with such conviction. Such strength of faith and certainty. Spike -- her special cause among vampires and her Blood-drinkers Anonymous padawan -- couldn't have fallen so far, could he...?

[hismasterpiece]

"But I made him a promise, slayer. I promised him no more human blood."

That she practically purred.

"No more, I promised. So he would stay."

[herotypical]

"Reality check, Drusilla. He's not staying with you. Kinda has a permanent room back at Chateau Slayer."

[namesthestars]

"IS. He is staying! Promised me, Spike did! And I shall eat your eyes like olives and be cheerful!"

[herotypical]

"I really think they're more grape-green than olive-green. Nice try, though."

She had to talk to Spike. God help her, but she couldn't stay here and play smack the pyscho. Buffy backed up.

"Enjoy your creepy naked marsh romp."

[hismasterpiece]

"It will be better when he returns to me. Then we shall romp naked again.


And again and again and again. He is my love."

Bye, Buffy. Enjoy your future conversations with Spike.