Chapter 6
Instead of answering him
Buffy just smiled, a full smile that lit her entire face and eyes and Angel
stood before her struck slightly dumb.
She was staring at him like
he was the be all and end all of her entire world. And if she was to be
believed he might actually be.
It would certainly explain
the otherwise unexplainable dreams / visions that he’d been having.
Unless.
“You’re not psychic are you?”
he asked with mild alarm.
With a smile she tilted her
head. “No…” she murmured hooking her fingers into the edge of his towel she
pulled him closer to her. “That would be Dru,” her voice was a whisper against
his skin as her lips brushed his cheek softly.
“Dru?” he asked his voice
choked as he ordered his body to stand down. It of course didn’t listen to him.
“William’s
wife.”
“William’s wife,” he repeated
after her dumbly. An image of a statuesque young woman with long ebony black
hair that fell to her waist, head bent as she giggled with Buffy and another
woman flashed through his mind.
“Yes William’s wife… are you
okay?” she asked curiously, head cocked to one side she studied him intently.
“You look flushed,” she said with mild alarm tingeing her voice. Raising a hand
she pressed the back of it to his forehead and Angel leaned into the gentle
motion.
“Maybe…” clearing his throat
he began again, “maybe you should wait in the bed… other room.”
“And why would I want to do
that?”
“I need to get dressed,” he
gestured down at his decided state of undress.
“And you can’t do that with
me here,” she smiled impishly fingers dragging along the skin of his stomach
once more. “Do I distract you my love?”
The scream, his sisters scream, thankfully prevented him from having to
answer and with a slight jump he turned on his heel and ran towards the
direction that it had come from.
Buffy stared after him with a
frown, then with a mild sigh she straightened her
shoulders and blinked.
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“Look guys…” Xander was
sputtering as he tried to quell the panic rising in him. The hard point of the
knife pressed into the skin of his throat and he took the warning and shut up.
Closing his eyes he silently
pleaded with Angel to hurry.
“Riley, Gunn… what in the
name of Djinni do you think you are doing?” his eyes snapped open as he heard the angered
scolding of the Djinn that Angel had freed from her bottle. Standing before
them, off to the side of the table she glared at the two men with knives, hands
on her hips he almost laughed.
She was so tiny.
“Our task…” the answer,
sheepish in tone came from the sandy haired Djinn. “We’re supposed to protect
you Princess, that’s our job.”
“And you decided that
assaulting Liam’s friends was a good way to do this?” she growled. “Put your
weapons away.”
“But…” both men objected.
“Away… now!” she snarled her tone angry and hard.
As the two men complied
Xander heaved a sigh of relief as the pressure of the blade was released from
his skin, pressing a hand to his throat he was surprised to not see blood
there.
“And you,” Buffy turned to
the young Djinn still seated on the table. “Why didn’t you stop them?”
“They were right,” Oz
shrugged as he crumpled his empty chip bag in one hand. “Protecting you is
their job, something you make that much harder by just vanishing and not
telling anyone where you’re going.”
“Oz do you really think that
Liam’s friends are going to harm me?”
“We didn’t think Darla would
betray you either, I think its safer to err on the side of caution then to
place a flag in the air announcing your arrival.”
“I wasn’t planning on announcing my presence here in any way
shape or form.”
“You may not have been
planning it but you know that Darla is going to know exactly where you are at
all times… whether you like it or not whoever you choose to side with is going
to win the revolution sweet.”
“And Darla knows me well
enough that she’ll know that there is no way that I would side with anyone
besides William. My loyalty is not up for grabs,” Buffy scowled, tiny foot
tapping in anger. The sound of Angel bursting into the room had Gunn and Riley
redrawing their knives and Buffy whirling around. A smile lit her entire face
and Oz sighed.
“Unless she finds someway to
draw him into this war,” he muttered.
Blinking once the empty bag in his hands vanished.
“Darla wouldn’t dare,” Buffy
turned back to her best friend. “He’s under my protection.”
“It didn’t stop her before,”
Gunn mumbled under his breath. Riley nodding his head sharply in agreement as
both males re-sheathed their weapons. Glancing at his Princess he found her
staring at him with narrowed eyes. A stare that he returned with practiced
innocence.
“He might be,” Oz nodded.
“But what of his family, his friends…”
Buffy’s nose wrinkled at that
thought as her eyes were drawn back to him.
“What’s going on down here?”
Angel finally asked. Breaking the silence that the humans had
all seemingly been encased within.
“We… they…” Xander sputtered
waving his hand, disbelief that Angel had come down here in nothing but a towel
warring with the fact that they had been attacked for absolutely no reason at
all.
“Articulate for a human,” Oz
rolled his eyes.
“My guards,” Buffy smiled
gently up at him as she walked closer, touching his chest lightly as she
continued. “They can be overzealous in the name of protecting me.”
“Did we interrupt something?”
Cordy snarked from the doorway arms crossed over her
chest as she took in her brothers’ state of undress. He had been out of the
shower for about 30 minutes, she’d heard the water shut off and he was still
not dressed?
Either he was taking more
time in the bathroom than normal (which was unlikely) or he’d had a guest.
“You are underdressed,” Buffy
blinked slowly a black silk robe appearing out of nowhere covering Angel’s bare
skin.
“Handy,” Xander muttered.
Oz took the time that his
friends gaze was not trained on him to study the small group before him.
If he hadn’t known that Liam
was long dead he would have thought that the man before him was Liam. The markings
on his soul, his physical appearance… the man standing before him was an
exact duplicate of Buffy’s lost love. No wonder she was so out of sorts.
If he had ever lost his
But it seemed that as the
fates had decided to recreate Liam Angelus in his entirety they had recreated
him in his original form.
“He’s human,” he said quietly
watching Buffy’s hands still in the act of smoothing the collar of Angel’s new
robe.
“Yes,” she said simply her
hands dropping to her side, already she missed the
feel of her mates skin under her fingertips.
She could feel Gunn and
Riley’s eyes trained on the man before them, much as Oz’s were… they all knew
what it meant even if Angel and his friends, his family didn’t.
“What’s the fact that Angel’s
human have to do with anything?”
She was a Jesper. A Witch, with just as much… maybe more power than even his
Buffy was saved from having
to make any sort of response as the emerald around her neck began flashing.
“I’m going to take a wild
guess and say that William doesn’t know that you made the journey here,” Oz
smirked as he saw a panicked expression cross her face.
“Do you think that if William
had known I was coming here that I would have journeyed with any less than a
contingent of soldiers? Of course I
didn’t tell him that I was coming here,” Buffy growled. “I told him I was going
to Al Saman and
that if he tried to send guards with me that I was going to send them right
back.”
“Then you should go… before
he does a scan and finds out that you’re not even on Al Abar,” Oz said.
“But…” she waved her hands at
the confusion running rampant on the faces of the humans before her. They
deserved explanations… not that she wanted to be the one to make them but they
still had the right to now.
“I’ll tell them what they
need to know.”
“Oz…”
“Go,” he urged. “I’ll meet
you at Council later.”
“I was actually planning on
skipping Council,” Buffy wrinkled her nose in distaste.
“They’ll be expecting us to
make an appearance, if we don’t they’ll think there’s something amiss.”
“But they’re all so stuffy…”
“Buffy…”
“Fine…” she heaved a sigh.
“But if I fall asleep during it I’m blaming it on you.”
“You normally do,” Oz grinned.
“Now go.”
They all watched as Riley and
Gunn positioned themselves on either side of the Djinn Princess and then with a
blink they were all gone… and all eyes flew to the young male still sitting
perched on the kitchen table.
“But… she…” Angel’s eyes
narrowed as he scowled. “I thought that Buffy was with…”
“You?” Oz asked, brow cocked as he
studied the male before him from head to toe.
“Yeah.”
“You’re human,” the Djinn
male sniffed as if the statement would make clear what was so obviously not.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You have no clue do you,” Oz
shook his head. “I assumed that since her markings were still in place that you
would retain all else as well… Humans have been banned from setting foot on Al Abar for
over two thousand years.”
“So?”
Oz rolled his eyes as he
languidly moved to his feet before them. “And since she chose a human mate she
needed to choose a Djinn male as her Serite.”
“What the hell is a Serite?”
“I would assume that it would
be an equivalent of a husband… though only in name. In body, in soul she was
Liam’s.”
“Wait a minute,” Xander
stared down at the other male. “Are you saying Buffy’s your wife?”
“She is my Serite yes.”
“I don’t understand,” Angel
shook his head in denial, blanching slightly at the possible ramifications of
all this. “Does that mean that we…” his hand waved between them as his eyes
widened. Just because he hadn’t eaten anything didn’t mean that he couldn’t
throw up.
“No,” Oz laughed at the
expression of alarm on Angel’s face. “I have my own mate, not human, but she
was still unacceptable by Djinn standards. Having Buffy as my Serite serves both of our purposes. We sit in
Council together, attend functions that require our presence but our bodies are
shared only with our mates; we have never been anything more than friends.”
“Oh…” the Hunter heaved a
sigh of relief. The thank god that trailed on the end was unspoken but still
heard by all.
“Having momentary doubts in
your heterosexuality?” Xander grinned.
“I would never question my
sexuality… yours maybe, not mine.”
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TBC