The Artifact Chapter Two
Chapter One is here.
Now, I'm not sure I'll be posting /every/ day, darlings, but here you go!
The Artifact
Chapter Two: A Delayed Claim
With one thing after another, Buffy woke up the next day, still smelling like burning rift despite her shower, with a horrified gasp and the sudden realization that they’d forgotten Spike. She fell back against her pillow. “Why can’t I wake up realizing the oven is still on?”
She could just go back to sleep. Hey look, no more Spike to deal with, ever again. It wasn’t like he wasn’t evil. Buffy rolled over. And back again. Sometimes being moral sucked.
Giles didn’t pick up his phone and so she had to go to his place. It took four times knocking for him to answer the door, looking about as disheveled and tired as Buffy felt. “Spike,” she said.
Giles grimaced and pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “I suppose we ought to rescue him.”
“I know,” Buffy said. “It feels like… do we gotta? But he did volunteer to help us. He didn’t have to.”
“To be in the debt of William the Bloody. Perish the thought.” Giles sighed. “I’ll call Willow and we’ll arrange the dimensional travel spell again.”
They’d used up all the galingale herb the first time, and what with waiting for the shop to close before they discovered that, it was the next day before they had everything ready and Willow and Giles were laying out herbs and drawing in chalk on the floor of the shop. “One thing I should warn you about,” Giles said, “When we went in the first time, it took us hours to reach the city, and here, no time passed at all.”
“Right. So you’re going to try to get us closer this time? Because my boots never recovered.”
Willow looked up from crumbling some savory leaves. “It means that we don’t know how long Spike has been in there. Days or even years could have passed.”
“Great. So he might not even be in the city anymore.” Buffy rolled her lips inward. She fished the stone ticket out of her pocket. It was engraved with swirls and dots similar to the talisman they had gone to fetch. “What if we can’t find him?”
“I’ll leave it to your discretion how much time you want to spend in another dimension. Though again, we have no way of knowing how much time passes here while we’re away.”
“Nothing to it but to do it.” Buffy shrugged and stepped into the circle.
They materialized in front of the giant stone monsters. Giles sighed with relief the same time Buffy did. “Yes, much better,” he said.
“Always easier the second time, huh?”
“Let’s not see how it is the third,” he said, and grimly stepped forward, waving to the woman with the clipboard. This one had tightly curled hair.
Buffy’s stone chip was enough to get them into the city since they had ‘legitimate business’.
The brothel receiving room was a sunken square lined with low benches covered in silk pillows. The place looked like a temple on the outside and like a fancy spa on the inside. They were lead to seats by a handsome man in a barely-there toga, and another appeared with a tall ewer of some amber liquid and teeny gold cups.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate all the ceremony,” Buffy said, setting the cup down as soon as it was handed to her, “but I really just want Spike back so we can go. He’s here, isn’t he?”
The man smiled, bowed, and in a soft voice said, “The mistress will be with you shortly.”
Buffy looked to Giles, who sniffed his own drink before taking a tentative sip. “If they didn’t have him, we would have been sent away.” Giles frowned. “I think.”
A curtain drew back and a woman came in, older but still handsome, dressed in a modest toga. “Welcome,” she said. “I understand you have the claim ticket?”
Buffy stood and handed over the stone. “We’d just like to take Spike and go, if that’s alright.”
The woman studied the stone, her lips compressing. She sighed, and then sat down on the cushions opposite them. “He’s with a client right now. Would you care to sample our offerings? Purely my gift to you as trade partners. If you like, you may stay the night in our guest suite and we’ll discuss business in the morning.”
“World of no,” Buffy said.
“We’d rather just complete our transaction,” Giles translated.
There was an awkward pause, during which the madam obviously hoped her earnest smile would change their minds. She broke eye contact. “I’m aware that your claim is valid, and that we’ve had far more use of him than the initial contract of fifteen minutes. However, when you didn’t return to claim him within the first year, we assumed the contract was abandoned. We’ve put a lot of work into this vampire, with the understanding that we would keep him for the foreseeable future.” She turned the stone ticket over in her hands. “Perhaps there is some small token we can offer you in exchange for this really rather worthless little claim? We have other gentlemen just as pretty.”
Buffy was still reeling over the words ‘first year’ when Giles quietly and firmly said, “Spike is not for sale. We traveled here from another world and so what seems years to you was only a matter of days for us, and from our point of view the bargain has not changed. Your time is up. Please return him immediately.”
Buffy was silently grateful for how Giles could do that uber-polite-but-all-threaty-underneath thing.
The woman spent way too long looking up and down Giles like he was tweed candy. “If you let days pass you can’t have been that eager to have him back.”
“We were unintentionally delayed.”
Giles and the madam stared each other down for a while. Finally she stood. To a servant hanging obsequiously at the fringe of the room, she said, “Have him brought.” Turning back to them, she said, “I hope once you see all the work that we’ve put into him, you’ll agree that this is no longer your vampire at all. You may not even want him anymore. He’s certainly assumed you didn’t want him back after all this time.”
Low blow, Buffy thought. She crossed her arms. “We don’t barter over people.”
“You’re here because you have,” the madam said. Ouch. Lower blow.
The curtains opened and another pretty, scantily-clad young man stepped into the room. His eyes found hers immediately, and then dropped. Buffy gasped. There had been a moment of recognition, of some emotion, but now all she saw were his lashes against his cheeks, a demure mask. If she hadn’t seen his eyes, that one glance, she wouldn’t have recognized him. It’s not that his face is different; it was just such a un-Spike-like expression.
Spike stepped gracefully down into the conversation space, and at a signal from the madam knelt at her feet.
He was exquisitely polished. His hair was long and loose and a better ‘sunburst gold’ than her own. He wore a skimpy concoction of silver silk gauze that more adorned his nakedness than clothed him. It was only opaque enough at his crotch to make you wonder how much of what you saw was seeing straight through and how much was a fold in the fabric.
Buffy tore her eyes away and anxiously checked to see if Giles caught her staring. Giles was staring, mouth fully ajar. Well, yeah. Good. It wasn’t just her. Gems caught the light in Spike’s ears, his neck, his arms and wrists: delicate little chains with thick gems dangling off them at artistic intervals. Studs embedded in the skin. He had a belly button ring! All Buffy could think was how very much Spike would never dress like that. He was so… pretty! And not fussing or growling about it. Buffy couldn’t tear her eyes from him. Was that blue eye shadow? Purple eyeliner?
“The jewelry, of course, is our property.” The madam placed a fingertip under Spike’s chin and raised his face. Spike kept his gaze on the floor. “See here the texture of the skin. It took months to devise a system that worked with the vampire’s healing properties instead of against them, and additional months to scrub away every blemish. He had scars, here.” Her finger traced the length of his throat. “And here,” she touched his eyebrow. “And don’t get me started on the hair color. He came to us with unusual coloring that soon turned out to be nothing more than an applied dye on very ordinary hair. We had to enchant the hair or it would have required repeated dying.”
“And you made no profit whatsoever on your expenses,” Giles said. “Please, tell me how much this beautification project cost you, and I’ll settle the difference.” He opened his satchel.
The madam dropped one shoulder. Buffy began to fear that she was about to flirt with Giles. “Perhaps you’ll just have to raise this matter with the magister.”
“Yes, take you to court, while you continue to enjoy use of our… our property,” Giles said. “You have one last chance to end this amicably, or I’ll simply have Buffy take Spike’s hand and incant the spell to return us home.”
The madam stood. “What?”
“Buffy,” Giles said, “Take Spike’s hand.”
Continued >>
Now, I'm not sure I'll be posting /every/ day, darlings, but here you go!
The Artifact
Chapter Two: A Delayed Claim
With one thing after another, Buffy woke up the next day, still smelling like burning rift despite her shower, with a horrified gasp and the sudden realization that they’d forgotten Spike. She fell back against her pillow. “Why can’t I wake up realizing the oven is still on?”
She could just go back to sleep. Hey look, no more Spike to deal with, ever again. It wasn’t like he wasn’t evil. Buffy rolled over. And back again. Sometimes being moral sucked.
Giles didn’t pick up his phone and so she had to go to his place. It took four times knocking for him to answer the door, looking about as disheveled and tired as Buffy felt. “Spike,” she said.
Giles grimaced and pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “I suppose we ought to rescue him.”
“I know,” Buffy said. “It feels like… do we gotta? But he did volunteer to help us. He didn’t have to.”
“To be in the debt of William the Bloody. Perish the thought.” Giles sighed. “I’ll call Willow and we’ll arrange the dimensional travel spell again.”
They’d used up all the galingale herb the first time, and what with waiting for the shop to close before they discovered that, it was the next day before they had everything ready and Willow and Giles were laying out herbs and drawing in chalk on the floor of the shop. “One thing I should warn you about,” Giles said, “When we went in the first time, it took us hours to reach the city, and here, no time passed at all.”
“Right. So you’re going to try to get us closer this time? Because my boots never recovered.”
Willow looked up from crumbling some savory leaves. “It means that we don’t know how long Spike has been in there. Days or even years could have passed.”
“Great. So he might not even be in the city anymore.” Buffy rolled her lips inward. She fished the stone ticket out of her pocket. It was engraved with swirls and dots similar to the talisman they had gone to fetch. “What if we can’t find him?”
“I’ll leave it to your discretion how much time you want to spend in another dimension. Though again, we have no way of knowing how much time passes here while we’re away.”
“Nothing to it but to do it.” Buffy shrugged and stepped into the circle.
They materialized in front of the giant stone monsters. Giles sighed with relief the same time Buffy did. “Yes, much better,” he said.
“Always easier the second time, huh?”
“Let’s not see how it is the third,” he said, and grimly stepped forward, waving to the woman with the clipboard. This one had tightly curled hair.
Buffy’s stone chip was enough to get them into the city since they had ‘legitimate business’.
The brothel receiving room was a sunken square lined with low benches covered in silk pillows. The place looked like a temple on the outside and like a fancy spa on the inside. They were lead to seats by a handsome man in a barely-there toga, and another appeared with a tall ewer of some amber liquid and teeny gold cups.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate all the ceremony,” Buffy said, setting the cup down as soon as it was handed to her, “but I really just want Spike back so we can go. He’s here, isn’t he?”
The man smiled, bowed, and in a soft voice said, “The mistress will be with you shortly.”
Buffy looked to Giles, who sniffed his own drink before taking a tentative sip. “If they didn’t have him, we would have been sent away.” Giles frowned. “I think.”
A curtain drew back and a woman came in, older but still handsome, dressed in a modest toga. “Welcome,” she said. “I understand you have the claim ticket?”
Buffy stood and handed over the stone. “We’d just like to take Spike and go, if that’s alright.”
The woman studied the stone, her lips compressing. She sighed, and then sat down on the cushions opposite them. “He’s with a client right now. Would you care to sample our offerings? Purely my gift to you as trade partners. If you like, you may stay the night in our guest suite and we’ll discuss business in the morning.”
“World of no,” Buffy said.
“We’d rather just complete our transaction,” Giles translated.
There was an awkward pause, during which the madam obviously hoped her earnest smile would change their minds. She broke eye contact. “I’m aware that your claim is valid, and that we’ve had far more use of him than the initial contract of fifteen minutes. However, when you didn’t return to claim him within the first year, we assumed the contract was abandoned. We’ve put a lot of work into this vampire, with the understanding that we would keep him for the foreseeable future.” She turned the stone ticket over in her hands. “Perhaps there is some small token we can offer you in exchange for this really rather worthless little claim? We have other gentlemen just as pretty.”
Buffy was still reeling over the words ‘first year’ when Giles quietly and firmly said, “Spike is not for sale. We traveled here from another world and so what seems years to you was only a matter of days for us, and from our point of view the bargain has not changed. Your time is up. Please return him immediately.”
Buffy was silently grateful for how Giles could do that uber-polite-but-all-threaty-underneath thing.
The woman spent way too long looking up and down Giles like he was tweed candy. “If you let days pass you can’t have been that eager to have him back.”
“We were unintentionally delayed.”
Giles and the madam stared each other down for a while. Finally she stood. To a servant hanging obsequiously at the fringe of the room, she said, “Have him brought.” Turning back to them, she said, “I hope once you see all the work that we’ve put into him, you’ll agree that this is no longer your vampire at all. You may not even want him anymore. He’s certainly assumed you didn’t want him back after all this time.”
Low blow, Buffy thought. She crossed her arms. “We don’t barter over people.”
“You’re here because you have,” the madam said. Ouch. Lower blow.
The curtains opened and another pretty, scantily-clad young man stepped into the room. His eyes found hers immediately, and then dropped. Buffy gasped. There had been a moment of recognition, of some emotion, but now all she saw were his lashes against his cheeks, a demure mask. If she hadn’t seen his eyes, that one glance, she wouldn’t have recognized him. It’s not that his face is different; it was just such a un-Spike-like expression.
Spike stepped gracefully down into the conversation space, and at a signal from the madam knelt at her feet.
He was exquisitely polished. His hair was long and loose and a better ‘sunburst gold’ than her own. He wore a skimpy concoction of silver silk gauze that more adorned his nakedness than clothed him. It was only opaque enough at his crotch to make you wonder how much of what you saw was seeing straight through and how much was a fold in the fabric.
Buffy tore her eyes away and anxiously checked to see if Giles caught her staring. Giles was staring, mouth fully ajar. Well, yeah. Good. It wasn’t just her. Gems caught the light in Spike’s ears, his neck, his arms and wrists: delicate little chains with thick gems dangling off them at artistic intervals. Studs embedded in the skin. He had a belly button ring! All Buffy could think was how very much Spike would never dress like that. He was so… pretty! And not fussing or growling about it. Buffy couldn’t tear her eyes from him. Was that blue eye shadow? Purple eyeliner?
“The jewelry, of course, is our property.” The madam placed a fingertip under Spike’s chin and raised his face. Spike kept his gaze on the floor. “See here the texture of the skin. It took months to devise a system that worked with the vampire’s healing properties instead of against them, and additional months to scrub away every blemish. He had scars, here.” Her finger traced the length of his throat. “And here,” she touched his eyebrow. “And don’t get me started on the hair color. He came to us with unusual coloring that soon turned out to be nothing more than an applied dye on very ordinary hair. We had to enchant the hair or it would have required repeated dying.”
“And you made no profit whatsoever on your expenses,” Giles said. “Please, tell me how much this beautification project cost you, and I’ll settle the difference.” He opened his satchel.
The madam dropped one shoulder. Buffy began to fear that she was about to flirt with Giles. “Perhaps you’ll just have to raise this matter with the magister.”
“Yes, take you to court, while you continue to enjoy use of our… our property,” Giles said. “You have one last chance to end this amicably, or I’ll simply have Buffy take Spike’s hand and incant the spell to return us home.”
The madam stood. “What?”
“Buffy,” Giles said, “Take Spike’s hand.”
Continued >>