The Three Kings, Part One Author: Elsa Frohman Rating: PG. Spoilers: Post NFA Summary: This is my 2004 Christmas story. Spike, Gunn and Angel survived NFA and are back in the detective business. Los Angeles The letter rode along with electric bills, credit card offers, Christmas cards and sale fliers, in the depths of a navy blue mail bag, on the shoulder of a mail carrier with a bunion on his toe. It traveled in a slim, lavender envelope, hand addressed in deep purple ink and bearing a faint fragrance of exotic perfume. Its journey was completed without incident, across an ocean, over a continent, through a major, urban mail-sorting facility, until it slid through the mail slot in the door of an office in one of the lesser business areas in Los Angeles -- Angel's new office -- only a few blocks from the office he'd occupied when he first came to LA from Sunnydale. The letter arrived with a bundle of demands for payment and a few offers of business services and even fewer requests for information about services offered. It lay on the rug, inside the door, until Charles Gunn arrived to pick up mail and check the answering machine for messages. He sorted through the stack of mail quickly, setting the bills aside (no money for that this week), and hoping against hope for anything that might put him on the spoor of a paying client. The envelope in question caught his eye, not just for the delicate color of the paper and eccentric color of its ink, but for its international postmark and who it was addressed to in spidery script: William Worthington, Esq. Gunn raised an eyebrow. He knew who that was, though he couldn't ever remember hearing the name spoken. He tucked the envelope in the pocket of his jacket and returned to sorting the mail. ------------- Rome "Andrew!" Buffy shouted from the bedroom. "You retarded little troll, WHAT DID YOU DO?" Andrew hunched down in his chair in the sitting room, trying to hide behind his X-Men comic book. It didn't work. The magazine was snatched out of his hands, and he found himself face-to-face with one very brassed off Slayer. Not THE Slayer, mind you. Nobody held that title these days. Only a Slayer, albeit, the longest serving, and arguably strongest Slayer that anyone seemed to know of -- not to mention the most irritable, in Andrew's opinion. "What do you mean?" Andrew said, trying to scrunch down farther in his chair in unreasonable hope of becoming invisible. "I didn't do anything, I don't think... I mean, not today anyway. And please don't look at me that way. You're going to make me have an asthma attack. "Explain this!" Buffy snapped, shoving a piece of note paper into Andrew's hands. "Um... it's a piece of paper." "Read it," Buffy snarled. "Mia amore," Andrew started out, but he stopped almost immediately. "Um... I can't read Italian. Sorry." "It's not in Italian," Buffy said between her clenched teeth. "That's just what he calls me." Andrew tried to hand back the paper. "I wouldn't want to intrude on your private business," he said, trying hard to avoid Buffy's eyes. "Read it now, or I'm going to rip out your lungs and make you a hat." Andrew cleared his throat uncomfortably. He began reading, adding his own off-kilter interpretation of some sort of a European accent to the words on the page. "Mia amore, I regret that I cannot stay to be with you as you awake. My heart is filled with much pain as I contemplate separating myself from your beauty. But, Andre ("That's what he calls me," Andrew said with a little giggle,) has told me of a matter I must attend to immediately. Please forgive me, but I fear I will not be with you to celebrate Christmas. I do not know when I will be able to return. Know that I hold you in my heart, and please hold me in yours." "What did you tell him?" Buffy said, fixing the boy with a steely glare. Andrew squirmed. "Rupert said I can't tell you," he whined. "I just told him what Rupert said to." "OK, I've got one question for you now," Buffy said very slowly and distinctly, "sombrero or Stetson?" "Um... OK, it's not my fault. I just told him what Rupert said." "Andrew..." Buffy warned. "OK, I'll tell you, but it's still not my fault. Everybody always says I can't keep a secret. But I can. Like, I never told you... never mind that. And when I spill, it's not my fault." -------------- Los Angeles Gunn didn't think of the letter again until he got to the bar down near the beach on Wiltshire. It was one of those dimly-lit places vampires tend to prefer, and something twangy and Country/Western was playing on the jukebox. Spike and Angel were waiting in a booth near the back. "Anything?" Angel asked, as Gunn slid in. Gunn shook his head. "It's Christmas week, bro. You didn't really think there was going to be anything, did you?" Angel shrugged. "I just hope the power company is feeling the Christmas spirit." "I wouldn't count on it," Spike said glumly. "I doubt California Grinch and Lighting Inc. is going to want to carry us much longer." "Let's face it," Gunn replied. "Helping the helpless just isn't all that profitable. I mean, one thing about the helpless -- they don't have much money. That's one of the reasons they're helpless." "It was never meant to be profitable," Angel said glumly. "It's just the right thing to do." "Yeah, but while we're all busy doing the right thing, how do we keep the lights turned on?" Gunn replied. "The money I found in the basement of the hotel was gone before we went to Wolfram & Hart," Angel replied. "We're just going to have to find a paying client pretty soon. There haven't been enough of those." "We could rob a drug dealer," Spike said hopefully. Angel just shook his head. "Too much collateral damage. Bystanders get hurt." "But it'd be fun," Spike offered, only half joking. "No!" Angel said firmly. "Oh, I almost forgot," Gunn said, reaching into his pocket, "there was something for you." He slid the letter across the table to Spike. Spike turned the envelope over in his hands examining the address and postmark, then frowned. "Oh God, this can't be good," he said quietly. "Huh? International postmark, bro -- I'm thinking it's got to be from a certain lady we all know is hanging out in Europe these days." Spike shook his head. "It isn't from Buffy," he said, irritation creeping into his voice. "She wouldn't write to me anyway. She doesn't even know I'm alive." "What?" Angel said in surprise. "The twerp, Andrew, was in her apartment when we were in Rome. Surely he told her. He never struck me as the strong silent type." Spike shook his head. "I'm sure he never told her. If he had, she'd have been here threatening to stake me for not telling her sooner." Angel nodded. "That's our Buffy." He took a sip of his beer. "So, who's it from?" Spike slid the envelope over to Angel with one finger, as if he didn't even want to touch it. Angel picked it up and looked at the handwriting on the front. "Oh, God, this can't be good," he said. Spike nodded. "OK, spill," Gunn said, irritated at the cryptic glances passing between his friends. Spike took a long drink. When he set his glass down, he sighed. "It's from Drusilla." "What, the crazy bitch?" Gunn asked. Angel nodded. "OK, so somebody going to open it and see what she wants?" Gunn asked. "You do it," Spike said. "Me? Why me? I don't even know her," Gunn protested. "I'll read it," Angel said grimly. He carefully tore the end off the envelope and slid out the single sheet of stationery inside. The paper was covered in tiny script. "Dearest William," Angel began. ---------------------- Rome Buffy had deflated into an overstuffed chair. She sat there now, her chin on her chest, her attitude despondent. "Buffy," Andrew said, sounding more puzzled than anything else. "I thought you'd get even madder when you heard. Rupert said I shouldn't tell you because you'd run off half-cocked -- just because it was her." Buffy struggled to respond, but couldn't get much more out than a strangled sigh. "It's not so bad," Andrew pleaded. "She's just a vam-pyre. It's not like she's any danger to the Immortal." "It's Drusilla," Buffy replied. "She's killed a Slayer. She's not just any vampire." "Yes, but..." "I know. It's not that big a deal. Everybody's going to say that. But that's just it, don't you see? The Council has dozens of Slayers. They could have sent a team to take her out. He didn't have to go. But he went. "They all leave. I don't know what's wrong with me. Is there something wrong with me, Andrew?" "He said he'd come back," Andrew offered. Buffy just shook her head. "He didn't say when. That's how it always is. We'll hook up again sometime. Oh, I'm busy this weekend, Buffy, maybe some other time. I'll give you a call. They all leave -- and they don't come back." "Come on, Buffy. You're going to make me have an asthma attack." "You said you have asthma attacks when you're scared." Andrew nodded. "And you're scaring me. You're supposed to be strong. You're supposed to say you're going to go after him and strangle him with his small intestine. You're not supposed to sit there making pouty faces." "What good would it do?" Buffy said, sinking deeper into her chair. "He's done with me." "Buffeeeee," Andrew whined, "don't be like this. You're not just going to let him run off with Drusilla, are you?" ---------------------- Los Angeles Angel raised an eyebrow at the salutation, but kept reading the letter. "A sweet little vole told me you were gone and back again, and lately you've been living in my head. I think I shall have to be very cross with you, because there isn't room for both of us, and our thoughts are falling over and getting trampled like dove eggs. "It's been so lonely since everybody left me behind. Grandmother is gone away, and she refuses to come back again. Bad, bad Grandmum. She's gone all white and luminous, and the light hurts our eyes to think about her. And Daddy doesn't want us anymore. He's all full of gloomy, gloomy soul, and he only looks down. He won't look up to see what's written across the sky in stars. "William, my dear William, even you burned up and changed. But I know there's still some of the old Spike left. Won't you find me and set me free? How can you be so mean to your princess? If you're not with me, I must make up my own story. "I will write to Father Christmas and ask for a pony to keep me warm through the long winter. I will name him Bertrand, and he will be a prince of ponies -- if he lasts the night. "Come back to me, my darling, and you must bring the right presents for the baby. He's so cold in the manger. You won't leave him there for the nasty cows to eat him, will you? A baby must have a champion. "I'm going to change everything, dear William. Nothing will be the same. I'm going to make stones weep and the earth cry out. My heart weeps for my family, and I will have that again. This Christmas Eve I will pray with my sisters near the Harrogate. We'll sing until midnight, and the animals will speak. Then there will be a grand Christmas pie, and what was shall begin again. "Do not disappoint me, sweet William. You can raise love from the ashes. Everything depends on you." Angel set the letter down and shook his head. The song on the jukebox finished, and there was an extended moment of silence. "Well, that was a lot of nonsense," Gunn said with a frown. "Dru always sounds like she's talking nonsense, but a good bit of the time, she's actually saying something," Spike said, looking down at the table. "Nobody ever understood her as well as you," Angel said. "Yeah, but I didn't know what she was on about most of the time. Then later something would happen, and I'd realize what she meant the day before. That's the trouble, it's all a lot easer to sort out after what she's talking about has gone down." Gunn looked from Spike to Angel and back again. His two friends seemed to be putting heavy significance on a letter that sounded like nothing but gibberish to him. "You really think that meant something?" he asked. "At the very least, she's saying she wants Spike back," Angel said slowly. Spike shook his head. "I don't think that's the gist of it. She wants her family back. Not just me -- me, you, Darla. She was always stuck on the idea of being a family," Spike replied. "The line about praying at the Harrogate with her sisters worries me," Angel said. "How so? In a hundred years, I don't think I heard her mention her sisters once. It was always 'Daddy' and 'Grandmother.' Say what you want about Dru, but she left her mortal life behind, and I don't think she thought about it much." Angel looked away. He seemed to be having trouble looking at Spike as he talked about Drusilla. "There's a convent outside the town of Harrogate. That's where I sired her -- after Darla and I killed all the other nuns first. When she says they'll pray until midnight and there will be a Christmas pie..." Spike's eyes widened as he latched onto the picture Angel was painting. "She's going to re-enact the night you sired her," he said. "She wants to start over." ------------ Rome "Nobody would run off with Drusilla -- except Spike -- and even he wouldn't anymore ... I mean, if Spike wasn't ... gone, he wouldn't. No, he's running away from me. They all do, eventually." Somewhere in that thought, Buffy managed to find traction. She looked up, her eyes narrowing. "Drusilla. She killed Kendra. She had Spike wrapped around her little finger for a century. She hangs all over Angel whenever she gets the chance. She even went after Xander. It's like she has it in for me. She's got a thing for any man who has anything to do with me. It's a wonder she's never gone after my dad. But that's probably because she couldn't catch up with him." "Every man? Do you think that means she's going to come after me?" Andrew whimpered. "You? I said man, Andrew." "Hey!" Buffy straightened up, new resolve showing in her posture and her expression. "She's messed with me and mine one time too many. I'm not going to sit here and take it. Come on, Andrew. Pack a bag. We're going after her." "We? We? What you mean we, paleface?" Andrew exclaimed. "You!" Buffy shook her head. "Dawn's back in the States for Christmas with our cousins. She won't be back for two weeks. The last time I left you alone in the apartment for more than a couple of hours, I was scraping funnel cake batter off the ceiling for a week. You're coming along -- where I can keep an eye on you." ---------------------- Los Angeles Angel nodded. "She's got to be stopped." "Wait a minute," Gunn protested. "If that's what she's going to do, why write and tell you about it? Sounds like she wants to get you there to spring something on you, if you ask me." Spike shook his head. "Drusilla doesn't work that way. She's completely sack of hammers, no doubt about it. But she isn't a plotter. She's straight forward. If she says she's going to kill a convent full of nuns on Christmas Eve, she's planning to kill a convent full of nuns on Christmas Eve." "But she didn't say she was going to kill them. She said she was going to pray with them," Gunn protested. "That's just how she says things," Spike explained. "Vampires don't do a lot of praying, as a rule," Angel added. Gunn was having trouble grasping all of this. Drusilla was someone he'd heard his two vampire friends talk about from time to time. He knew she was bad news -- not much of a stretch, considering that she was a vampire -- but beyond that, he wasn't sure why Spike and Angel, arguably two of the best fighters anywhere, would give her a second thought. Surely, they could take her down with little effort. "OK, assuming you know what she means," Gunn said slowly. "What's the big deal?" "I think a threat to kill twenty or thirty nuns is a reasonably big deal," Angel replied. "Maybe not quite an apocalypse, but something worth consideration." "Right, but what's the big deal? So, call this convent and tell them not to invite any crazy-ass vampire bitches in on Christmas Eve." Spike and Angel exchanged a look that more or less said "Are you going to tell him or am I?" "It's more than that," Spike said quietly. "We can't just keep her away from the convent and let her go. If she can't have her nun buffet, she'll find an orphanage or a boarding school. Once she's bound on carnage, she's going to have it." Angel seemed to have found something fascinating to watch in the head of his beer. "I'll go," Spike said. "She wrote to me. She's all but begging me." Angel shook his head. "No. I should have taken care of her three years ago -- after she re-sired Darla. I let her walk away. It's my responsibility." It was Spike's turn to protest. "We were together for a century. We were everything to each other. I can't leave her for someone else now. I owe her that much. She asked me to come, not you." "Let's get this straight out," Gunn said. "Exactly what are you talking about?" "She's got to be dusted," Spike said without enthusiasm. "It's got to be done. I'll go -- alone. I'll take care of it." Angel looked irritated. "You know I can't send you off by yourself for something like this. I know you mean to do the right thing, but you two have a history together. And she's good at winding you up -- nobody does it better. She'll find a way to get under your skin, and you won't be able to do it. I'll go." Spike was glaring at Angel now. "I told you I'd handle it," he said coldly. "And I told you I would. Don't be an ass, Spike. This is my responsibility. I drove her insane. I sired her. I let her loose on the world. And I let her walk away when I should have ended it three years ago. I have an obligation here." "We'll all go," Gunn said firmly. "That's final. Now, where are we going?" Spike and Angel turned to look at him with renewed and united irritation. "And don't give me any of that 'stay out of this, it's vampire business' crap," Gunn added. "We're going to stick together. You think I don't know what it's like to dust a bloodsucker who used to be somebody you loved? I'm going with you, because you two both care more than you want to admit about this lady. I can hear it when you say her name. Sure, you know what's got to be done, but neither one of you really wants to do it. "I don't give a rat's ass about this bitch, so when you two are all tied up in 'how can I do this to someone I love,' I'll be there with the stake, and I'll do the deed." Angel and Spike exchanged another look. "You've really got the holiday spirit, don't you?" Spike said ironically. "I guess he's coming," Angel said at last. "Seems so," Spike replied. "So, this Harrogate, it's in England, right?" Gunn asked. Angel nodded. "Well, as I see it, that's a real problem. We haven't got the money for this month's electric bill. How are we going to buy three plane tickets to England? And they won't even be economy, because we've got to leave tomorrow to get there in time." "One ticket and freight for two boxes," Angel said. "Two boxes?" "You don't think we're going to share a box, do you?" Spike replied. "I am not going to be jammed into a crate with him for an eleven-hour flight." "Even one ticket and two boxes... we don't have the cash," Gunn said. Spike raised an eyebrow. "Still plenty of drug dealers around. There's one who works the schoolyard a couple of blocks from my apartment." Angel sighed. "Drug dealer selling to kids... works for me."