Part 4
The slow cooker’s lid rattled as steam created pressure and tried to escape from inside. Homey aromas of roast beef and herbed potatoes permeated the air, and Joyce’s chocolate cake sat frosted and decadent on a crystal platter.
She’d given into temptation and had set the dining room table with a simple white linen tablecloth and silver candleholders, but she’d managed to stifle the urge to break out the good china and silver; every day dishes and flatware would suffice. Joyce knew her eyes showed her hunger for him well enough, so she didn’t need to throw a bad June Cleaver impression in the mix. That was a level of desperation on par with placing a personal ad on the bulletin board at the local Clip’n’Curl. She hadn’t crawled into that pit yet.
Buffy was out on patrol, and as Joyce made her way up the stairs to put the finishing touches on her make-up, she wondered if she should be happy about that or nervous. Having Buffy there would provide a buffer between her and Rupert, but it would also keep them from really talking about what had happened to them. But did she really want to talk about it? Or just sweep it under the rug and forget all about it?
Stopping in front of her dresser mirror, Joyce eyed her ensemble critically. She’d gone classic chic: chocolate brown slacks and a soft green sweater set that made her skin and eyes seem radiant. It was cashmere and clung to her curves, but the cut was conservative. Well, nearly conservative, she conceded as she noticed the hint of cleavage she displayed at the V-neckline. Nature hadn’t blessed her with a voluptuous figure, but Wonderbras weren’t just for co-eds.
Picking up a compact, she began to powder the bit of shine on her nose and cheeks. Her eyes sought the clock and widened when she realized he’d be here any minute. Rupert Giles, her lover, would be here for dinner. In the house alone with her. For hours.
The compact clattered to her dresser top as Joyce leaned on it for support. She searched her eyes in her reflection and noticed the flush in her cheeks with some chagrin. She was a mature woman, a divorcee with a grown daughter and a successful career. So why did she feel like a thirteen-year-old with a crush? It didn’t make sense.
A curt knock at the front door prevented her from pondering her situation any further. Forcing herself not to race down the stairs, Joyce sedately walked to the front door and pulled it open, her eyes finding Giles’s immediately. She relaxed just a fraction when she noted the nervousness that clouded his eyes.
“Hello, Joyce,” he said as he walked in, and her knees turned to Jell-o.
Joyce closed the door behind him and leaned against it for support. Giles had turned to face her, and when their eyes met, it was everything she’d ever read about in bodice-ripping romance novels but never experienced in real life. Standing with his feet slightly apart, hands planted in his pockets, Giles looked every inch the confident alpha male and it made Joyce’s heart rate bump up a notch or ten. She watched in fascination as his eyes bored into hers, darkening as he saw her blushing response and a smirk upturned the corners of his mouth. Her eyes dropped there, and she swallowed nervously.
Joyce stood trembling against the door as Giles let his eyes roam down her figure, his gaze lingering at each curve and hollow as if he were memorizing the map of her body for a tactile navigation later. When their eyes met again, Giles’s practically smoldered.
Suddenly desperate to escape, she hurried away toward the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready,” she informed him over her shoulder, leaving him staring after her.
Giles watched her leave with something akin to awe. He’d been unaccountably anxious as he’d walked up the front steps, standing in front of the door for five minutes just gaining the courage to knock. But the moment she’d opened the door and he’d greeted her, all his nervous energy had morphed into lust. One look at her had reduced him to pure hormonal responses. And Giles was a practical man; this wasn’t something he was used to.
Following her into the kitchen, he watched her finish dinner as he leaned nonchalantly against the door jamb. His eyes roamed her body freely, and the clothing she wore was driving him insane. It was conservative, but that only heightened his response; he knew what treasures lay underneath. He also knew that his open ogling in the foyer a few minutes earlier had flustered her, but even though he knew he should be appalled at his behavior, he was more amused by her response than anything else.
“You can have a seat at the table,” she informed him without meeting his eyes, and began gathering up bowls and platters to transfer to the dining room.
He moved to her side and grasped the bowl in her hand, their fingers brushing. “I can take that.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, curling her fingers in as if keeping his touch with her.
Minutes later, they were settled, he at the head of the table and she just to his right. They ate, though neither of them were very hungry. Dinner was quiet, punctuated occasionally by mundane questions or topics that both of them felt safe discussing.
It wasn’t until Joyce was cutting the chocolate cake that Giles shattered the mirage they’d so carefully crafted around themselves.
“We need to talk about last night, Joyce.”
The way he said it, so quietly and confidently, made Joyce drop the knife to the table with a soft thud. Her hands trembled, so she clenched them into fists and dropped them into her lap.
“Why?” she finally asked, not meeting his eyes. “We were both there. What’s to talk about?”
Giles leaned across the table and grasped her upper arm in one warm hand. “Joyce, look at me.”
She did, reluctantly, and her breath caught at the tenderness in his gaze. “This is important.”
Sighing, she relaxed and nodded. “I know,” she admitted.
Giles pulled back, and reaching into his pocket, pulled out a notepad. “I need to know exactly what you remember so I can have a complete picture before our research begins.”
Her mind went blank. “Research?”
“Yes.”
All warmth she’d felt under his tender gaze vanished. The muscles in her jaw began to tense, and she had to breathe deeply before continuing.
“That’s why you’re here? Because you want to find out what made this happen?”
Giles looked confused at her questions, but that only made her anger grow.
He eyed her askance, then said a bit patronizingly, “Well, yes, I need to know what you were feeling, what you remember, so we can pinpoint the–“
“Yes, I understand,” she snapped, eyes flashing as she stood and began gathering dishes noisily.
Giles watched her, noting her grim expression and the way she stacked plates like they were weapons she planned to hurl at him. What could possibly be the reason for this petulance?
“Wait, what did I say?”
She stopped, setting the last bowl on the top of her stack with a clatter, then turned to him with an arched eyebrow and said, “Nothing, Rupert. Absolutely nothing.”
He shook his head in confusion. “Then can the dishes wait? I’d like to ask you–“
“No, they can’t wait!” she interrupted him again. “Five minutes, Rupert, and I’ll be back and you can ask whatever damn questions you want.”
His mouth dropped open as she grabbed the stack of dishes and marched into the kitchen. She was obviously upset, but why? She knew he was coming over here to talk about what had happened. He went over their conversation, trying to determine where he’d gone wrong. Three times through it, and he still hadn’t figured it out. She must still be experiencing an increase in hormonal activity from last night; there was no other explanation.
In the kitchen, Joyce resisted the urge to scream and throw the entire stack of plates on the floor just for the satisfaction of hearing them shatter. Rupert Giles was an idiot. Here she had done everything she could to make this crazy situation more comfortable to the both of them, the atmosphere more conducive to talking about the ramifications of last night to their relationship, about their feelings over what happened and what they should do about it all, and the man wanted to take notes. To research. To ask her clinical and embarrassing questions about her physical reactions to him last night, made under the influence of god-knows-what.
As if what happened between them meant nothing.
Tears stung her eyes. He’d openly flirted with her at the front door! She hadn’t mistaken the sexual heat in his eyes. So what was this to him? Some fling to write down in his precious watchers’ journals for hundreds of stuffy old men in the future to laugh at and commiserate over? Because it certainly didn’t seem to be to him the life-changing experience it was to her.
Fine. Two could play this game. She could be just as cold and clinical as he was being. She could sweep this under the rug, too, and pretend that nothing happened.
A few moments later she walked back into the dining room and sat primly in the chair across from him, meeting his eyes with an expression that could freeze the Amazon.
Giles felt her anger bite into him like a blizzard’s wind. His confusion heightened, and he reached across the table to take her hand in his, but she nonchalantly slid it off the table and into her lap before he could reach her.
With measured movements, she took the knife again and began cutting the dessert with quick, precise movements.
“Cake?” She asked, gesturing to him with the knife, and Giles swallowed nervously as he watched her wield the frosting-covered weapon.
“Sounds delicious,” he murmured, and accepted the dessert with no small amount of trepidation.
When they’d both had a bite of the rich dessert, Joyce turned to him and lifted her chin in a gesture that could only be defiant. “You had some questions for me?”
“I did,” Giles admitted, “but maybe we could talk about it later.”
She shrugged. “It must be important, or you wouldn’t have brought it up. I know that every time I sleep with someone I need a good debriefing afterwards. It’s important to catalogue everything. For efficiency, of course.”
The sarcasm was unmistakable, but it made Giles smile.
Her eyes narrowed at his expression. “You find something funny in this?” she said in barely controlled tone. “Because, please, share.”
Giles shook his head and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. God knew that would only make things worse. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Joyce. It’s just that this entire situation smacks of the ridiculous.”
She stiffened, but he continued. “To think that I’d dreamt of being with you again so often that it nearly felt like reality, but it took another supernatural force to actually make it happen.”
Giles’ softly stated admission made Joyce’s heart flutter, and a small smile broke her stern countenance. “I thought I was going to die of mortification after that candy incident.”
Giles smiled back and this time when he took her hand, she didn’t pull away. “Did you ever think about it? What it was like between us?”
Joyce’s eyes widened and she nodded, her mouth dry. “I dreamed about us,” she admitted in a whisper. “Being together again.”
“Me, too.” The deep timbre of his admission gave her goose bumps.
“And now?” She asked, her eyes tearing. “What do we do now, Rupert?”
He swept an errant lock of hair from her brow and cupped her face in his hand. “We figure out why this happened, and then we determine how to proceed.”
“But does it matter how it happened?”
He shrugged. “I suppose not, in a way. But I’d still like to know.”
She let that go without answering.
“There’s one thing I know for certain, though,” Giles added after a charged moment of silence.
“What?”
“My dreams will ever be enough again.”
****
A gently curving driveway circled in front of Cordelia’s house, alight with a golden glow cast by understatedly elegant light fixtures. Wealth exuded from every hand-hewn stone, mullioned window, and carefully manicured bush. The cobblestone drive was the same in name only as those Angel had walked in his youth; the stones were too smooth, too strategically placed, too aesthetically pleasing to be authentic. Towering, verdant trees hid the sprawling home from curious passers-by, but the gate he’d walked through had been unlocked. It seemed that the Chases were keeping up appearances. After all, there was virtually no crime in Sunnydale, save the vampire contingent, and locks were useless against them.
It was with no small amount of trepidation that Angel climbed the front steps and knocked succinctly at the front door. His mind had been filled with nothing but her since they’d left each other mere hours before, and while he ached for her return to his arms, he was also very wary of what this obsession seemed to be doing to them. It was as if each time they kissed–no, touched–their reservations disappeared, the connection and longing deepened, and what was left was a lasting passion too strong to ignore. His concerns never truly vanished, even in the heights of need; it was just that the intensity of his passion superseded them until they became moot.
That intensity scared him to the very marrow of his bones.
Several minutes passed before Angel realized that his knock, and subsequent doorbell ringing, had gone unanswered. Listening closely, he took in the familiar sounds of the night, and just as concern began to edge into his concentration, he heard a distinct splash, then smaller water-related noises. The scent of chlorine was faint in the night air, and he smiled as he realized that she’d gone for a swim. Now this would be interesting.
Cordelia in a bathing suit. His mind could barely contain the prospect.
It took seconds for him to locate the pool, nestled in a gated area to the side of the house, abundant flowering vines covering a cedar fence completely obscuring it from view. Silently, he opened the gate and slipped in, melting into the shadows, his eyes immediately searching out the graceful form moving through the water with deep, sure strokes.
She was mesmerizing.
Glistening golden skin covered gently rounded shoulders and perfectly formed arms that appeared, then disappeared, as her body undulated through the water. Her face, half hidden from his view, was a study of concentration, and when she stopped at the shallow end and waded toward the stairs, he saw her smile wistfully.
Like a siren surfacing from the deep, she slowly rose out of the water one glorious step at a time, head tilted back, long hair heavy with moisture, rivulets of water coursing down, around, and through every delectable hill and valley in her exquisite body. Dewy drops beaded on her tanned skin, darkened by the night, and glittered like sapphires in the silvery moonlight. One droplet clung to the curve of her breast, suspended in time for a mere second, and his whole world stopped as he waited for it to fall.
He swallowed convulsively when it did.
Her hands rose, elbows out, spine arching and breasts thrust toward him as she twisted her hair, wringing the moisture out in one long pull that strained her sculpted arms and twisted Angel’s insides into a maelstrom of nearly unmanageable longing. She twisted the hair, pulling it over her shoulder, then hissing and switching it to the other shoulder as it brushed over the bite marks on her neck.
The reminder made Angel’s passion turn to dust.
It was undeniable that those marks had been born in the most intense pleasure imaginable, but they were proving to be a thorn in his side. With each passing hour, his fears mounted. They weren’t getting any less sensitive. And more troubling, they weren’t healing.
He growled in frustration, and Cordelia jumped, eyes watchful, as she quickly grabbed her towel and backed away from him toward the house.
“It’s me,” Angel said simply, stepping into the moonlight. He was relieved to see her relax.
“Geez, Angel! You have to quit scaring me like that. One of these days you’re going to scare me to death.”
He smiled slightly at her warning. “Not gonna happen.”
“No?”
“No. Besides, I’d just turn you, and then you’d be all better.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Hmm, I don’t think the homicidal, soulless version of me would be very pretty.”
He closed the distance between them, raising a hand to cup her cheek, swiping at the water droplets there. “Any version of you would be breathtaking,” he whispered, and Cordelia’s eyes slid shut.
After a moment of charged silence, Cordy slid away from him and grabbed a terrycloth robe on the chaise nearby. “Why’d you stop by?”
“I thought you might want to go to the school together.”
“Sure,” she replied nonchalantly. “Just let me change clothes.”
He swallowed as he watched the motion of her hips as she walked away.
This was going to be a long night.
****
“So what exactly are we looking for?” Xander asked, eyeing the head-high pile on the library table with wariness.
Giles peered down at his notes. “The symptoms all seemed about the same. Initial lightheadedness, a touch of nausea for a moment or two, then an overwhelming lethargy accompanied by a powerful wave of lust. After that, no one remembers anything clearly. We all, however, remember waking up with tremendous headaches and body aches.”
“Hell of a hangover, that was,” Spike muttered, glancing over at Buffy with a smarmy grin. She squirmed and looked away.
“I think we should divvy up the piles,” Giles suggested. “We should be looking for references to anything we’ve come in contact with in the last two months that may cause any or all of the symptoms I’ve listed here.” He pointed to a whiteboard nearby where he’d painstakingly documented everything for the group’s reference. “I’ve also made a list of all the supernatural beings, places, or objects we’ve encountered in that same time frame.”
Cordy squinted at the board. “Is that in English? ‘Cause it looks like Sanskrit to me.”
“Yes,” Giles answered wryly, and Cordy shrugged as if it didn’t really matter anyway.
“Fine,” she sighed, sinking languidly into a nearby chair. “Point me toward the prettiest one.”
Willow raised an eyebrow. “What does beauty have to do with research?”
Cordy smirked and lifted a colorfully-decorated tome on the stack in front of her. “Beauty has to do with everything,” she said solemnly as if it were sage advice. “And besides, if the pictures are pretty, at least I won’t fall asleep.”
A wry smile and shake of her head was Willow’s only answer.
There was a momentary lull in movement as everyone took in the seating arrangement and then readjusted their positions to their greatest advantage. Giles looked on in amusement as he saw the group shuffle once, then twice, and finally again before everyone seemed settled. It seemed that Buffy didn’t want to sit next to Spike, Spike didn’t want to sit next to Xander or Angel, and Willow kept inching away from Xander while he kept trying to close the gap.
Cordy pretended not to notice how closely Angel had slid his chair to hers, but it became impossible and her concentration waned. His leather-clad arm would brush against her periodically as he perused the pages of the demonology book he’d selected. Cautious but deliberate adjustments to his posture would bring his shoulders in closer to her, or his foot nearer to hers, and every movement startled and distracted her. It became a pretense to merely flip the pages at an excruciatingly slow rate, to slide her eyes over the book, over to Angel, and back again, never really noticing the words on the page.
Angel knew he was flustering her, but he couldn’t help it. Every time he got in close proximity to her, her scent would engulf him, the image of her stepping out of the pool would swim in his vision, and subsequently he couldn’t think of anything save ravishing her again. He nearly grunted at his use of such a corny term–ravishing–but it was the only one that described what he wanted to do to her. Last night had merely been a prologue, a teaser, a simple hors d’ouvre to tempt his palate for the lavish banquet he’d planned for later. When, later, he wasn’t sure, but he did know one thing: tasting her had only whetted his appetite for more.
Even now, his mouth salivated at the thought of sampling her again. Tonight in the cemetery had been not nearly enough. The intensity disturbed him, certainly, but not enough to tamp down the voracity that raged deep within.
Across the table, Spike haphazardly surveyed the pages of the book in front of him while casting surreptitious glances over at Buffy. It was his usual modus operandi at the few research sessions he’d attended, and it still amazed him that they’d slowly but surely begun to acknowledge his usefulness. No one liked it, he knew, especially Giles and Angel, but he was viewed as kind of a necessary evil. True, he’d never risen above much more than a paid informant, and an unappreciated one at that, but acknowledging his worth as something other than an arch nemesis had been a step up.
He’d been particularly useful about a month and a half ago when they’d needed his connections to infiltrate a vampire cult, and since then, he’d been reluctantly called on for information or muscle. He’d had his hand in just about every problem they’d encountered in that time, and it was probably the reason he’d ended up in bed with Buffy, now that he considered it. If he hadn’t helped them out, he’d probably have moved on by now, in search of something that would fill the ache Dru had left, the unfaithful bitch.
He’d even taken to leaving his victims alive, albeit weakened, and occasionally, he bagged it. In his defense, Giles had refused to pay him until he conceded, and he’d needed the blunt. Still, some unnamed emotion had emerged at their acceptance of him after making that one concession, and he’d been strangely reluctant to return to the old days. It was nice to be needed again.
Not that he’d ever admit that at the point of a stake.
Now, his eyes skimmed over Buffy in a light caress as she sat turned away from him, her posture stiff. He felt a twinge of regret at his inability to resist her. Their impromptu loving earlier that night had been incredible, but it had left a bit of an ache in Spike’s heart, something he’d rarely experienced since dying and rising as a vampire. They’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms afterward, the cool, damp darkness cocooned around them, and he’d been lulled into a sense of rightness, of belonging that he’d not felt in a century or more, maybe ever.
When she awoke, the feeling splintered into nothingness.
Her wide-eyed gaze after the fog of lust had cleared, after the afterglow had faded, had ripped his heart in two; her regret had been palpable. Almost more disturbing was the silent way in which she’d gathered her strewn clothing, her glistening eyes straying to his more than once as he did the same, and the tentative way she’d nearly reached for him once before darting off, a smothered sob echoing in the night, had wrenched him more than any vitriolic words might have done. He’d expected her anger, even girded himself for it when he’d awoken first, but he hadn’t expected the silence, the mantle of self-loathing she’d placed on herself.
His guilt was going to make him an arse. Either that or a ponce, he didn’t know which. Neither option was acceptable.
A startled movement and a gasp made everyone’s concentration break.
“I think I’ve found something,” Willow said, her lips pursed in concentration. “There’s a monastery near here that we visited two weeks ago. We went to get that medallion for the Charuk demon spell, remember, Giles?”
The older man nodded, coming to peer over her shoulder in interest. “The ruins of the Monasterio de San Tomas,” he confirmed.
“It says here that the monastery was cursed by a witch who had fallen in love with one of the monks. They’d been lovers in their youth, and after an argument, he impulsively took the monastic vows which separated them forever. In her anger, she cursed everyone of the monks to a life of–ewww!”
“What?” Xander peered over, suddenly interested.
Willow slammed the book, her face suddenly green. “There’s a picture. Believe me, you don’t want to see it.”
Behind her, Giles shifted uncomfortably, having already seen the etching that had disturbed her. Always one for delicate phrasing, he explained. “They were cursed to a lifetime of sexual need.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “So they were randy all the time. Isn’t every man?”
“Not in this way,” Giles stammered, “They were in a constant state of, shall we say, physical readiness?”
“Huh?” Xander said, grabbing the book back from Willow and flipping it back to the page she’d been reading. “Oh. OH!” He slammed the book shut as well, shoving it far away from him. “You were right. Don’t look at the picture. Oh, God, I don’t want to even think about that.”
Spike and Angel turned a paler shade at the thought of dealing with the pain such a condition would bring.
“Did they give a cure?” Angel asked, squirming a bit in his seat as his mind contemplated the possibilities if this was the source of their condition. “Because I don’t know about you three, but I don’t have that problem. Yet.”
Willow opened the offending book again distastefully, carefully placing her hand over the picture as she continued to read. “It seems that the only cure was–” she swallowed, then sped ahead so quickly the others almost couldn’t understand her, “constant sexual gratification.”
“Huh,” Cordy said, leaning back in her chair and staring off in thought. “Makes sense.”
Xander gaped at her, his mind obviously unable to move past the monks’ problem. “Come again?”
Spike snickered. “Think that was the point, mate.”
The others groaned at his bad joke, but the humor broke the tension.
“She wanted her man back,” Buffy answered for Cordy. “The only cure was for him to go back to her and make love over and over again.”
“No pain, no gain,” Cordy quipped, and Giles gave her a stern look of reprimand.
“Hey!” she complained. “Spike didn’t get the Giles-look-of-death. And his pun was worse than mine!”
Spike shrugged. “Devious woman. Got to admire that, if she weren’t such a ball-buster.”
“Literally,” Angel muttered, and the two vampires shared a dark laugh while Xander turned a deeper shade of green.
“C’mon, guys, let’s stop talking about this.”
“But what if it’s us?” Willow worried, flipping the pages beyond the entry she’d read. “There’s no more information in here.”
“Curses can usually be revoked somehow,” Giles reminded them, “but it might take a rather strong incantation. However, considering our physical state doesn’t match that of the monks–“
“–yet!!” Xander interrupted worriedly.
“–I think we’d better keep looking. If it happens again, we’ll deal with it then.”
“There’s one other thing wrong with this one,” Buffy pointed out. “There’s no symptoms mentioned for women.”
“We were just as turned on as the guys were,” Cordy agreed.
Giles frowned. “For now, let’s keep it on the list.” He wrote it up on the whiteboard. “We should exhaust all our resources before we begin to exclude anything remotely plausible.”
Two hours later and they’d had only one more possibility. They’d killed a mated pair of vampires three weeks ago who had been using the lustful power of their lovemaking to fuel the spell they’d been casting. There’d been a shockwave of magic released at the moment Buffy’s stake had penetrated the female’s back, and another when she’d dusted the male almost immediately afterward. They’d all been present.
“Could the magic have had a residual effect?” Willow wondered.
“Perhaps,” Giles acknowledged, adding it to their list, “but it’s unlikely. I did find another possibility, however.”
He reached for a thick volume on the table near his elbow. “I was reviewing the properties of natural spell ingredients, and I remembered that I’d restocked my supply of Argon root.”
“But that’s harmless!” Willow pointed out, familiar with the ingredient.
“It is,” Giles agreed, “But several years ago, a coven experimented with crossbreeding two varieties to increase it’s potency. The resulting hybrid turned out to have a nasty side-effect. It renders any in contact with it completely incognizant of anything except the desire to mate. Needless to say, the coven quickly destroyed the supply they had left, but they’d already distributed a significant amount of it to various magic shops around the world. As with any recall, a small percentage of the product was unaccounted for.”
“So how would all of us be exposed to it?” Angel asked.
Giles frowned. “I used it in that protection spell I cast before we went to fight the Charuk demon. All of us were exposed.”
“And my mom?” Buffy wondered. “She wasn’t there with us at the monastery, or when the vampires were staked, or even when you cast that protection spell. How could she have been affected?”
“In each instance, simply living in the same house with you, having simple physical contact, could’ve been enough for the effects to transfer to your mother. Especially in the last two cases, if you hugged her or spent a significant amount of time with her shortly following either incident.”
Buffy slumped in her chair, defeated. “I did. We had a chick flick night after the vampires and she’d had a really bad day at the gallery after the Charuk demon. I remember hugging her several times.”
“I have a contact at the coven who might have an antidote to the effects, if our problem is indeed the Argon root. The only problem is that the coven is in seclusion for Samhain; they won’t be receiving phone calls or e-mail for at least another six weeks.”
“Are you kidding?” Xander gaped. “What if we’re hit by this again? What are we supposed to do?”
Buffy and Spike glanced at each other guiltily, and Cordelia fought the urge to look over at Angel.
Giles sighed. “Do the best we can, I suppose. I don’t really have a solution. In the meantime, we can check out the other two possibilities. We can revisit the monastery and cast an energy detection spell to determine if the curse still is, or ever has been, active.”
“And the voodoo vamps?” Cordy asked.
“That’s relatively easy. I know a practitioner a few hours away who will read us for a small consultation fee. She can detect if we have any residual magic remaining.”
“We still have a few books left,” Willow reminded them.
“Oh, c’mon,” Xander complained. “Don’t we have enough on our list?”
“And let some other possibility go undiscovered?” Giles asked.
Xander grumbled but grabbed a book.
Ten minutes later found Cordy staring at a book that fascinated her. Maybe the unappealing plain cover had repelled her before, but she’d definitely grab this one first next time. It was a book of vampire customs, rituals, and lore. She was deep into a retelling of the vampire origination myth when she heard Xander’s chair scrape the floor loudly as he stood, stretched, and gave a loud, prolonged yawned.
“Anybody want some pizza?”
“Do you mind?” Cordy frowned darkly. “Some of us are trying to read here.”
Xander scoffed. “Right. Like you really do the research. You just look at the pretty pictures, remember?”
“Shut up, Xander. I’d like to get home before dawn, okay? Your gastric proclivities are no concern of mine.”
He gaped at her big words. “Geez, I think I need a dictionary to translate what you just said. What the hell are you reading?” He skirted the table and yanked the nondescript book from her hands.
“Xander!” She growled in a warning tone before yanking it back from him and hitting him with it. “Go order your pizza and leave us in peace.”
He just rolled his eyes and sauntered into Giles’ office for the phone.
Cordy sat back down, straightened her clothing, and opened the book down the middle where she supposed she’d stopped. An interesting heading leaped out at her, and she began reading voraciously, eyes widening as the details became more and more alarming. And then, in the middle of the page, her breath caught. What she saw made her blood run cold.
There, in Latin, a language she didn’t understand, an incantation burned into her soul.
Nos es connexus.
Mens,
Cor,
Corpus corporis.
In sanguis,
nos connexus marital
Intemporaliter.
“Um, Giles?” she stammered, her face ashen.
“Cordelia? Are you all right?” Giles was at her side in moments, and Angel’s arm wrapped gently around her shoulders.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Angel whispered in her ear. “Let me have this.” He pulled the book away from her and stood behind her chair, his hand still on her shoulder, as he and Giles saw what she’d been reading together.
“My God,” Giles whispered, his face paling as well. “You recognized this, Cordelia?”
“Yeah,” she said, voice shaky. “Is it really what the heading says it is?”
Angel’s heart sank as the words reverberated in his soul. Wordlessly, he handed the book to Giles and sat beside Cordelia again, taking her cold hand in his.
Giles leaned on the edge of the table and set the book down quietly, meeting Cordelia’s eyes with a tender sympathy.
“It’s exactly what it says it is. It’s a vampire bonding ritual.”
“What does it mean?” she whispered, somehow knowing, but not knowing, all at the same time.
He picked up the book again, adjusting his glasses before following the words solemnly with his finger. “‘We are joined,'” he translated, “Mind. Heart. Body. In blood, we are joined eternally.”
The silence in the room was deafening.