TITLE: WARLOCK 11/14
AUTHOR: vatwoman
DISCLAIMER: JOSS WHEDON, MUTANT ENEMY AND FOX/UPN OWN EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE ‘BUFFY.’ NO INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. THE CHARACTER OF KOVACS IS MINE.
FEEDBACK: YES PLEASE, TO VATWOMAN@Y...

CHAPTER NOTE: This part has an NC17+ rating.

>>> The door swung open.

“Ah, Jenny. Welcome.” Kovacs glanced down at his watch. “One a.m. – I do so appreciate punctuality, don’t you?” He was smiling, as if this was to be something other than hell to her. “Please.” He stood aside and waved her in. “Step into my lair!”

His laughter was tinged with madness; a madness lurking behind the deep blue of his eyes. She bit down on a shudder and stepped across the threshold.

As he turned to follow her inside, he sensed … something … and protectively made a small sign in the air in front of him. He immediately felt the static of the wards.

A figure stepped out from the shadows across the street. A young man, dressed in black, sweetly handsome. Kovacs watched as he walked slowly towards the building, reached the sidewalk and then stopped. He raised his hand and stretched out; the ward, a repelling wall, shimmered briefly as he touched it. He stared at Kovacs across the gap, ten feet that might as well have been ten miles, and slowly morphed into the demonic face of a vampire.Kovacs found himself smiling at the creature – another being to whom he’d denied Jenny Calendar – turned away and softly closed the door. <<<

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Buffy’s voice sounded small in the unnaturally quiet cemetery. No buzz of crickets, no barking dogs, no drone of cars on the freeway – and no vamps.

The air around her seemed charged somehow, crackling with an energy that carried the merest hint of ozone. She shuddered, disturbed, without being sure why she’d done so.

“Buffy?”

She launched herself, stake in hand, off the grave she’d been crouching on – and had to execute a twisting loop over Angel’s head as he ducked defensively. They spun around to face each other, both breathing hard.

“This some macho un-dead thing? Sneaking up on the Slayer when she’s told you, like, a zillion times already that it is so not a good idea?”

“You can feel it?”

Buffy blew out a breath. “Yeah, haven’t got a clue what it is though.” Then she frowned. “You were watching Kovacs’s.” Her eyes widened. “Oh god, no! Giles!”

Angel grabbed her arm as she turned away to run. “Not Giles.”

“Then who?”

“Jenny. She’s there now.”

“Jenny? How? She get ‘spelled’?” Buffy looked over her shoulder to the cemetery’s exit. <Giles. We have to get Giles>

Angel shook his head. “I couldn’t tell, but what I do know is that when he opened the door, she walked right in.”

“That’s not right.”

“I know. But he is using magicks. It’s what you’re feeling in the air – strong magicks. There’s a ward around the house; I couldn’t get closer than the sidewalk.”

“So he could’ve ‘spelled’ her. Angel we’ve got to get her out of there!”

“We’re going to need some help. Fight magick with magick.”

“Giles.”

Angel nodded.

>>> “A drink, I think.” He left her side and walked to the bar. “Champagne?” He gestured with the bottle. No reply. “Champagne.” He poured two glasses and brought them to her. “Jenny?” He held hers out to her.

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, Jenny. I’m sure you were brought up with better manners than that.” He held out the drink once more. “I did think about perhaps drugging you.” He smiled at her involuntary half-step away from him. “But it seemed a little unsporting.” His eyes hardened again. “I would not wish to deny you that moment when your arousal is so intensely painful that you almost do not wish the orgasm.” He touched her for the first time, drawing the cold, wet, glass down the soft skin of her cheek. “But you must wish for it. You must reach for it.”

He turned away suddenly and replaced the glass on the bar. “What do you think of the apartment?”

Jenny glanced around the huge loft-space and saw only the bed, sheets folded back, with lit candles on the side-cabinets in a sordid mockery of romance. Her heart jack-hammered in her chest, her whole body fighting her will not to tremble.

“I didn’t come here to admire the décor.”

“You are determined to vex me, aren’t you?” And she trembled as he was suddenly so close that she could feel his breath on her ear. “Very well, then.” He prowled around to face her. The mocking smile that had been a permanent fixture since she’d stepped into his home, was gone. In its place was something else, a stillness made of stone. “Take off your clothes.” <<<

Buffy burst in through the front door yelling Giles’s name. The apartment was empty, scarily so: what if he’d already found out and had gone after Kovacs? “No, no, no! GILES?”

She ran up the stairs and found an empty, unmade, bed. The bathroom and spare rooms were similarly vacant. Finding herself back in the main area of the apartment she looked around, searching for some clue as to his whereabouts, and her eyes fell upon his weapons chest. She was across the room in one stride and threw open the lid. The weapons were all there, the chest stuffed with them. Still crouching, she spun around and narrowed her gaze at the scene before her. Nothing was out of place. Nothing. <Infact, this place looks just too tidy.> And it did: a place for everything and everything in it’s place. Apart from the bed. <Couldn’t sleep, so he got up and worked off the ‘wakies’ by giving the apartment a ‘Mary-Poppins’?> But where was he now? <Run out of polish and taking a late night trip to the local K-Mart?>

She shook her head and breathed in deeply, looking for calm so her heart would stop pounding. Closed her eyes – and reached out for him. Sounds gradually disappeared, as did her awareness of the magicks that had brought her here, until she was only aware of the beating of her own heart. It beat slowly now, strongly.

She remembered the first time she’d felt his presence within her, the Bronze, when he’d told her to reach out with her senses. Told her that she should be able to sense a vampire even when she was being bombarded with other stimuli. Of course, she’d succeeded - there was nothing new in that - what had been new was the sudden rush of awareness of Giles himself. It had jolted through her like an electric shock, making her sound flippant when she’d pointed out to him the vampire on the dance-floor down below.

She’d never felt anything like this before. She’d almost gone to talk to Giles about it – almost - but that would’ve meant sharing it with him, something she’d found she just wasn’t prepared to do.

It had become so necessary to her, so quickly, this part of her that was him. The part that gave her the strength to love her friends when she knew that having them in the first place was such a risk to their lives and her heart. The part that steadied her when she would have faltered in her duty. The part that, on those nights when fear took her and all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry herself to sleep, wrapped itself around her and held her safe and warm.

And she’d worried that he wasn’t aware of it and that making him aware would destroy it somehow.

She could hear her voice again as she’d pleaded with Willow, wanting to know how she could be herself without Giles. There’d been no answer then – and wasn’t again, as she asked herself the question once more even as she felt him settle into her.

>>> Her eyes followed him as he walked around and around her, dizzying her.

“… you are very beautiful, Jenny …”

“… such a lovely flush to your skin …”

“… there’s just something about long-legged women …”

“And then there’s this.” Their faces were only inches apart. She felt the delicate touch of his fingertips on the bruise Rupert had left on her neck. “This goes against you; something which could have been gentle will now not be so. And you smell of him and his magicks.” He ran his hand down her throat and down between her breasts. “I can feel what he did to you, the power he used, the lack of control he demonstrated whilst using it.” He frowned. “Such a lack of control. He may kill someone before he gives up his power. Will you stay with him then, I wonder?”

“I’ve left him.”

Kovacs laughed softly and shook his head. “No. You have said the words but your body, your soul, has not made the break.” He caught her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him. “You fought him, did you not? But you betrayed yourself.” He dropped to his knees in front of her, gripped her hips and leaned in to breathe on her lower abdomen. “He touched you here.” He pushed his thumb between her folds, rested it on her clitoris but made no move to manipulate it. His other hand closed tightly on her left hip and she winced, knowing that she’d now been marked by his fingers and by the fingernails that he’d filed to small points. “And here.” He pushed deeper and felt her involuntarily spread her legs as the dry skin between them was pushed against itself by his invading fingers. “And here.” A fingertip teased her vagina – probed, then withdrew.

He stood again, brushing his hands up her body. “He came in you. That, too, will go against you”

As his hand reached her cheek, he put his head to one side and just for a moment she felt his mind reach into hers. He smiled. “And this, this is interesting.” The smile deepened. “Very clever. His magick is very strong: you were brave to take it into you, especially as you must know by now how fragile is his control over it.” He allowed the smile to drift away. His eyes flattened and his voice was whispering over and over, “Be with her. Feel with her.” The magick flowed out of him and into her, reactivating the slow dying link to Giles left within her.

“NO!” <<<

Her eyes snapped open. She reached down and pulled aside the rug from under her feet. Hand placed flat on the floor, she could feel the tiniest of vibration against her palm. The garage. Her gaze settled on the door facing her down the short corridor that ran past the kitchen. <He’s here>

She launched herself at the door, wrenched it open and flew down the stairs. The garage door was unlocked and she stepped in to be immediately deafened by the howl of full volume rock music. She closed the door behind her and found Giles, stripped to the waist, beating hell out of a punch-bag. Realising that shouting was useless, she crossed the floor and switched off the record-player. She cocked her head to one side – odd, she hadn’t noticed it was missing from upstairs.

“Giles?” And now there was just the sound of gloves on bag and the sounds of the effort he was putting into each punch. “Giles!”

“What?”

He continued the onslaught, punching with a rhythm that echoed the music he’d been playing. Buffy went to him and grabbed the bag, stopping him from continuing.

“Angel, he saw … he saw Ms Calendar.” She took a deep breath. “Giles, she’s at Kovacs’s and … and the air’s wrong, it feels all, I dunno, ‘bad-vibey’ … we think … we think he’s using magicks on her … Giles?”

He’d bent his head, hiding his face from her as she spoke, but when she stopped he raised it again. His eyes had silvered out on her, his expression as hard as granite.

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Yes, now move away.” It was the absolute tonelessness of the voice that had her doing as he’d ordered. She fell back to the two little steps at the door she’d come in and sat down. He took hold of the punch-bag and rested his forehead on it. He remained motionless for almost a minute then started to bang his head against the bag beneath it.

“We have to go get her.” But her voice was quiet, the words spoken with none of her usual authority. There was something very, very, wrong here.

“She doesn’t want us to.” He raised his head again and stared at the bag in front of him. “No,” he corrected himself, grimly, “Not us, just me.”

>>> Her world had diminished, shrunk, to the hours before dawn and the man kneeling on the bed in front of her. He’d shaved his body, his cock, full and ready, stood out from his hairless groin. There was no heat from him, instead a vampire-like coolness chilled the air between them.

He held her head in his hands, moving his mouth over her throat and down across her shoulders. The bites came, but came at such irregular intervals that she couldn’t prepare herself for the shocking pain of them when they did come. Then there was the other pain, a constant one, from the nipple weeping blood; his mouth on it was a small agony.

“Go down on me.” He brought his face level with hers, saw the shadow pass across her eyes and felt through his grip on her, the shudder that coursed through her body. “A man’s cock in your mouth – you’ve done this before, Jenny, I’m sure.” The terrible smile that only served, once again, to illustrate his madness. “Resisting me will serve no purpose and believe me when I say that it will only result in harm to you.” He wound his left hand into her hair and slowly pumped his cock with his right. “Jenny, if you would care to oblige me?”

His hand tightened in her hair, stretching her scalp. He forced her head down. The world shrank again to the chill from his body and the cock before her. He filled her mouth, she gagged to breathe and caught him with her teeth as she reflexively pulled off him.

“Bitch!” The backhanded slap across her face, made worse by his grip in her hair, bloomed blood from her nose. He pushed her head down once more. “Again!” <<<

She knew he was strong - they might joke about the ways she put him on the floor when they trained together but she also knew that a lesser man would be half dead by now from the punishment Giles took from her everyday - but the viciousness of the punches he threw onto the bag shocked her. There was nothing elegant about them, instead they came from and had the strength of a street-fighter’s action. Short, sharp, punches to the gut, a shot that she reckoned would’ve landed square on a kidney, followed by a clubbing left thrown downwards and designed to break jaws.

She could feel his anger dripping from him, like the sweat he was covered in. It ran down his face and arms and body. The hair on his head and chest was plastered to him. His jeans, wet-darkened, stuck to him around his groin, backside and thighs.

He backed off and bounced on his toes. She watched him stalk the bag as if picking out the spot that would cripple his opponent if he hit him there.

She didn’t even see the kick, he lashed out so quickly. The bag swung wildly on its mounting. He continued walking around it. Loose-limbed. Hard-eyed. Breathing hard but not heavily.

“He’s been using magicks on her since she stepped into his house.”

Buffy felt herself frowning, “No,” she demurred, shaking her head. <That had to be wrong> “Before she stepped into his house.”

“She went to him of her own volition.”

“Oh …

“He’s linked us. Used my joining spell against me. Do you want to know what he’s doing to her now?” Two left hooks slammed into the bag. “Right now?”

>>> A desperate agony arced through her rippling with the same sickening rhythm with which he was fucking her; hot, hard and dry.

She tried to find a quiet place – a place of safety – somewhere deep inside herself but he kept bringing her back. With his nails, like claws, he brought her back.

To the pain deep in her body. <<<

“Aaah!”

“Giles!”

He collapsed to his knees, chest pumping as he tried to gasp in the air he needed to control the pain flowing outwards from his groin. Tears fell from his eyes and mingled with the sweat on his face. Buffy’s hand was on his back.

“Don’t touch me!” Her hand fell away.

He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned forward to rest his hands on the floor. The trembling began. He raised his head and re-opened his eyes. Focused them on the magickal symbol on the far wall. The controlling symbol for all the others drawn on all the other walls; a binding, the strongest he could summon without outside assistance. He could hear Buffy calling his name – she sounded so far away. And his blood pounded in his ears. Mouth open he forced himself to breathe hard breaths – slow and deep.

And lost the battle anyway.

The garage shuddered, the floor vibrating, the weapons shivering on the walls.

“Giles?” He stood, his eyes on the symbol still. He stripped off the gloves and clenched his fists, fighting against the frailty of his control. “Giles!” She was a dozen or more feet from him, rooted to the spot. The knife, thick-bladed, hovered in front of her face.

“Giles!” A third time, this time whispered across the gap between them. “What’s happening?”

“He’s hurting her. Tearing at her.” Dark and toneless, he could hardly recognise his own voice.

“No – what’s happening to you?”

“Me?”

“Giles.” Buffy’s voice was urgent. Demanded his attention. “Speak to me! What’s happening to you?”

“He’s winning.” And, finally, he looked at her.

“I don’t understand, Giles. What is he winning?”

“Everything.”

“I don’t understand!”

“What don’t you understand? What don’t you understand?” He took two steps forward and he was suddenly there , almost in her face, the knife between them, light rippling across its surface as it shivered in the magicks holding it in place. “This?” He gestured at the weapon. “This is just magick, Buffy, you’ve seen it before. Or perhaps you mean this?” He tossed his head and the blade flashed across the room into the centre of the target that hung on the back of the door. “Or this?” He stretched out a hand towards the floor, fingers spread wide, and slowly clenched his fist. The ground trembled again beneath their feet; pulses, like the beating of his heart.

Dogs barked. Car alarms sounded. Voices of frightened people believing they were experiencing an earthquake. And Buffy suddenly realised that there was soundproofing on the walls and ceiling and that the vibration she’d felt upstairs hadn’t been the music at all …

“This is what he wants. It started with Jenny but it’s become so much more.” He wiped a hand across his sweat-soaked face. “He’s found it.”

“Found what?”

“This …” he waved that same hand around them, to the still shivering weapons. “… my magicks. He wants them.”

“But he can already do magick stuff.” Her brow furrowed. “That can’t be what he wants! Come on, Giles, tell me!”

“Jesus Christ, Buffy, will you just listen!”

“Then tell me something worth listening to!”

They were shouting at each other; their fears for the other building.

“I could kill him just by looking at him. Hell, I could wish him dead and he’d be dead!”

“What?”

“You think magick is all about books and nice neat and tidy little spells. Things that Giles can go and look up, get the ingredients for and ‘hey presto’ the thing’s said and the bad guy’s gone!”

“I don’t …”

“Yes, you do, but you haven’t got one single, fucking, clue! Magick is vile and corrupting and it rips your soul to pieces until there’s nothing decent left in you! You have no idea of the cost …” He shuddered as another wracking bout of pain shot through his body. “Well look around you because this is it!” He took a deep breath and tried to regain some sort of equilibrium. “Those who have magick get stronger in only one of two ways; they either sell their soul to the devil or they take someone else’s magick. I’m guessing Kovacs has already done the first, and now he wants a matched pair!”

“But why you? I don’t understand!”

“Because my magick is chaos … and it’s so bloody dark … and so bloody dangerous … and …”

“… Giles…..” He looked at her, a sort of wildness hovering dangerously in his eyes. She came to his side, crowding him. “… if it’s that strong, use it! Use it against him!”

“I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“Haven’t you been listening? I can’t because my control over it has gone!” He dragged his hands down his face. “I go over there now and I’ll kill him. Is that what you want? And when it doesn’t stop with him? What about when I take out the street? The town? Half the state? Oh god …” He fell to his knees again, crying angry, helpless, tears. “… Jenny!”

>>> “No, no, my dear.” He followed her, laughing, and grabbed her as she tried to roll off the bed. He caught her hands above her head and swept his free hand down her back, lingering on her buttocks. Then slipped a finger between them and ran it across her anus. She bucked under him but he pinned her down. He pushed against the puckered skin in earnest now enjoying the helpless shudders wracking her body.

“A woman is so lucky, don’t you think, Jenny, that she can be a virgin twice over?” He bent over her and pressed his mouth to her ear. “And they say that she never forgets the man that takes her virginity.”

As he drove into her his cry of ecstasy and her scream of absolute pain blended together in a terrible harmony. <<<

Buffy’s tears fell onto his head as she folded him into her arms and rocked him, as you would a child, helpless to do anything other than hold him and hope that that would be enough.

>>> He came on her again as he fashioned the magickal brand on the base of her spine. With his cock still dripping cum, his body running with sweat and streaked with her blood, he laughed at her once more, ordered her to dress and put her out into the waning moonlight. <<<

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