Chapter 4


Spike wandered.

He felt light all of a sudden; free. But the weightlessness felt strange, like something had been stolen from deep within him, and he felt so little about the absence of whatever it was that he couldn’t help but be a little bouncy.

He ran at vamp speed till he made it to the first cemetery of the night. He leapt high on top of a crypt to test out the lay of the land; locate freshly turned graves and wandering fledglings. He tested his agility by throwing an axe into the air, allowing it to spin several revolutions, before snatching it confidently out of the air mid-turn, the handle almost returning to his palm like it had been magnetized. Not even a nick on his fingers from fumbles. Everything seemed just perfect…and he felt content.

A frown marred his brow at that. Never in his unlife had he ever been anything so unremarkable as content. But along with that mediocre feeling was the very real sense that something within him was missing.

The local cemeteries had a morbid sense of death about them, and not the punny side of death, but the side that indicated that it had been neglected on patrol for rather too long. Fledglings were out and about, pulling new mates from the ground. The place appeared to be flourishing. It seemed rather unusual that any short absence from patrolling would result in such an influx of vampires.

For a moment all he could do was stand and contemplate his confusion. The part of his brain that would remind him when the last time he walked through was, and what even happened on his most recent patrols, seemed to be in permanent lock down. He was unable to recall anything at first effort, and at second effort his head began to hurt. A tense pressure built up in his frontal lobe as he struggled to grasp hold of some information related to his nightly activity. But truth be told, even though he knew this patrolling was something he did-- and regularly-- he was buggered if he could remember even a single time of doing it.

Odd.

But he accepted and wandered on, entering into subtle kafuffles here and there whenever he came across one of the prolific newly risen vampires that might be a threat to his little group of friends. And that thought caused something strange to twitch between his eyes, but again any protracted thought on the topic had his head pain resume. Funnily enough, as soon as the thought was just accepted at face value, the pain receded to a comfort level even he- as used to pain and violence as he was- was alright with.

So, without another title to give them, he had to presume he could call the Scoobies his friends. As far as friending humans could go with a vampire. And thus making sure their lives- particularly Nibblet’s- remained safe, was much more than a duty. It was his purpose. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember having any other.

Anyway, the night was quiet, and for some reason he failed to understand, it felt wrong to be quiet. It felt like he was missing something. But he couldn’t hang on to that feeling without his head attempting to explode, and he gave it up to the idiosyncrasy of the night. His mindless stroll through the night led him to a place hidden by sweeping Willow branches, and as he looked upon the headstone, another stroke of pain arced through his brain. ‘Buffy Summers,’ it read, and confusion compounded with the throbbing in his head as he fell to his knees and struggled to regain quiet.

On all fours, he pushed his way backward and away from the grave, a feeling so overwhelming and painful-in his heart as well as his head- that only receded the further away he got. Not understanding much of what he felt this night, he quickly tore through the trees into another part of the graveyard, letting his steps slow and the pain in his head disappear along with the thoughts of familiar.

A few more distracted steps brought him to stand before a vamp with extremely good taste in leather. Spike cocked his head to the side as he swept his eyes from the stranger’s boots-completely bitchin’ as far as he was concerned- to the leather pants and jacket, to focus on the dark hair, eyes and pasty face of Xander Harris.

Spike jerked back with an instant grief, and was speechless.

He lifted a hand and allowed a finger to point at the newcomer’s chest. He worked his lips, pushed them into the beginnings of a sentence-- but no volume escaped. He allowed his ears to search for the heartbeat he was finding it difficult to believe he was desperate to hear, and suddenly felt a dark curl of foreboding settle around his stomach when it was quite definitely absent.

Finally, shock lent him words and he did his best to fumble and fuck them up as they tumbled past his lips.

“You!”

Harris nodded.

“You’re a vampire!”

Again Harris nodded, allowing the head action to be partnered with an evil grin.

“So are you,” was his pearl of wisdom, and it jerked Spike into action.

With a desperate shout of, “bloody hell!”, he hit Harris with a vicious upper cut and took off back to Revello.

When he skidded to a halt within the front door, he was taken aback by a stranger standing away from the Scooby group. She stood strong, but rigid; power surrounding her as well as controlling her. The Scoobies were refusing to take turns in both explaining and yelling their view of something or other. And as he tried to comprehend what they were all in a state about, his eyes slipped again to the dainty morsel of a girl dressed down in army type uniformity that called as little attention to her looks as possible. She obviously didn’t like attention-- as made plain by her skimming the edge of the fiery argument going on in front of her-- but the wicked scar, obviously a battle memento, insured that all eyes would stick on her. He was rather impressed by the disfigurement for the battle she must have gained it in.

He was mystified by it all, obviously having walked in on the tale end of something rather big. There was something familiar about the girl, and more than just the emanating power that was driving his demon wild. He already had his suspicions about the tense situation overtaking the living room, but observing the look of devastation on Dawn’s grief ravaged face, he quickly clued in that the new bird was at the centre of the bother.

“What’s goin’ on?”

His eyes swept from Dawn to the blond- something about the stranger continuing to pull at him- but a dim ache in his head forced him to not think about it too hard.

“They brought Buffy back!” Dawn almost screamed at him across the room. He was about to ask who Buffy was when Giles, the fatherly calming influence, stepped in.

“This isn’t our Buffy, Dawn. This is Buffy from a different dimension. The dimension Anya created in her last granted wish before that dimension’s Giles destroyed her amulet.”

Dawn looked stunned, and betrayed. “You were planning to bring another Buffy into my home without even warning me-- or Spike-- about it first?”

The Scoobies shared a guilty look. Then quietly mumbled incoherent apologies.

But distraction proved why it was a curse as another voice entered the fray and a stake came sailing at Spike’s heart, followed rather closely by the mostly quiet petite blond. In concert with her move was a panicked, high-pitched scream of fear.

Spike dodged the blond’s initial attack, but she was used to improvisation and ended up behind him with one arm around his neck and the other positioning the extremely pointy stake over his chest. Coming to an abrupt stop and facing him with wide horror-filled eyes was Dawn, great balloon-like tears almost flooding her face.

“Please?” She attempted to pacify the new girl, to appeal to her with her misery, but for the moment she was ignored, though each small step she took forward resulted in the stake pressing closer to pinch the skin over his heart.

“Might be an idea to stop there, Pidge. Unless you want dusty Spike to tuck you into bed tonight!”

Dawn nodded slowly, carefully, the pain of loss all too visible in the stress lines of her young face.

“I don’t know who the hell you people think you are, but you can send me back to that other place right now. You don’t know what you’re fooling with. You left Sunnydale at the mercy of The Master. I need to kill him.”

Her voice sent a barrage of tiny shocks along the surface of his skin. It seemed familiar, but not. Powerful yet dark in its bearing, but innocent in elocution. The need it sparked within Spike made his head ache.

“Actually,” interrupted Anya, “we saved you just in time. The Master killed you in that dimension.”

Spike could feel her stiffening against his back, yet the stake stayed true to destination. He didn’t move.

He couldn’t move. The sensory overload of having her hot body pressed up against his brought something so near to his grasp that he almost fell over with the howling pain that seared through his brain, just barely managing to hold off on impaling himself on her stake. The loss of her heat, of her strength from his knowing was both hurtful and a relief. The pain in his skull receded to tolerable yet confusing levels, yet her distance seemed like a rejection. He felt it personally, down very deep within.

“I understand the confusion, Luv. But nobody here is out to hurt you. Put the stake down, Pet.”

Spike felt a curious lack of fear by her proximity, almost like he was used to this particular threat and had reached comfort with it. He’d surrendered a trust to it. The thoughts had nothing to back them up in his rather lacey memory, and as he was so apt to do tonight, he decided to just let it go before a nice decorative hole burned right through his skull.

She pushed the stake closer to his skin through the thin t-shirt, and he revelled in the collective gasps throughout the room.

“You are a vampire. You’ll hurt me. I don’t need to worry about them. They’re human.”

Spike suddenly felt an overwhelming test of nausea at the thought of doing any damage to her.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Slayer.” He blinked while looking at Dawn, startled that her title had fallen so easily from his lips but prepared to believe it was because he could sense her power.

Which he could.

Of course he could.

“Do you have a soul? Like that one that the other vampires were torturing?”

Spike raised himself up straight, affronted by the comparison of who he could only guess to be Angel, and gasped as the wood formed a groove on his skin.

“Oi, I’ll have you know that my unsouled self is far better at taking care of those he loves than that poncy git ever was.” And he blinked again, not having a clue why he believed that thought so strongly. The knowledge seemed new, recently established and so not connected to his Yoda’s defection just over a century ago. But he had no foundation, no clue to who the great Angelus had betrayed lately.

He shrugged as, in a lightening move, he slipped from her restraint and turned to determinedly knock the stake from her hands. Her eyes grew wide in apprehension and he could smell the beginnings of fear on her skin before she clamped down hard on it and fell into a fighting stance.

He sighed, annoyed, and the Scoobies all came to a crashing halt in their observation, random confusion as to why Spike was not sobbing at Buffy’s feet while thinking all his wishes had come true. His distance, and almost lack of true interest, was distressingly strange.

But the moment was still tied up in the new Buffy, the marked Buffy, the only Buffy that Spike seemed to know of. Dawn only just began to see that Spike had no real memory of whom this woman in front of him was. Not only was he acting non-emotional, but he didn’t even recognise her. The realisation came to her on a giant wave of uh-oh, and she slowly backed up away from the older, more witchy people of the group. Hiding behind Xander and Anya, she felt the first tugs of guilt that maybe her spell…backfired…just a little?

Spike had made no attempt to engage the new Buffy in combat, mindful of the nic-nacs around the place that defined who Dawn thought her mother was. So, instead of antagonising this girl- she didn’t look a day over eighteen- Spike stood back and just watched her. He wished he could do it with a fag dangling from between his lips. He had to forgo that desire, though; someone had told him he couldn’t smoke in the house. Any effort to try and recall who that actually had been reactivated that pain that was started to bug the crap out of him. Was worse than the bloody chip.

But in allowing his body to remain in a restful state, he seemed to be able to zero in on her heart-rate- this little blond Slayer with the wicked scar- feel the subtle pinkening of her cheeks, and caught with a little grin of cocky satisfaction her many darting looks at his face and body.

“Right then. Introductions look to be in order.” Spike thrust out his hand, almost desperate for her to take it so he could see if her hands brought back flashes of recognition, too. But the contact was too brief, though slightly electric. He had the feeling he had received much higher voltage touching from someone else. Again, he just couldn’t remember whom.

“I’m Spike, the resident vamp good for kiddy sitting and demon demolition.”

She smiled at him, and he was struck by a force so strong that he was incapable of deciphering it. It was the sun, though for some reason he saw storms. This girl reeked of power, was physically strong and independent, but Spike found himself picking up on vibes…enough vibes to suspect that she wasn’t as hardened on the inside as she was on the outside.

“My name is Buffy, and I am the Slayer. They’ve taken me from an important battle.” Her small finger had pointed at Giles and Willow, wavering slightly with the magnitude of her situation. Then she appeared to squint, and took a hesitant step closer.

“Don’t I know you?” She looked intently at Giles as confusion marred her brow.

“But I just spoke to you. You’re the reason I came to the Hellmouth. You summonsed me to fight The Master.” She stopped as she internally worried over the facts. Her face easily revealed her struggle with the situation, and finally a hardness eclipsed the uncertainty in her eyes as it masked the rising fear within her.

“What the hell have you people done to me?”

Against her earlier judgement, she shrunk back against Spike in some effort of protection. He felt different to the other vampire that she’d taken a risk on trusting, more needing of the faith in him. Not to mention he was seriously hot.

A room full of alarmed expressions faced her.

“We saved your life. You could be a little grateful.” Anya, ever the blunt one, jumped in with her tactless justification, much to the gasping horror of everyone in the room.

“Ahem, as…apt…as that description might be, we brought you here to be the Slayer.” Giles could barely look at the girl, so close to being his surrogate daughter, yet so very different. Duty warred within him, yet her reaction toward all of them had him re-questioning the motive behind their desperate retrieval of another Buffy destined for death.

“Our…er…Slayer situation here, in this world, is rather complex, I’m afraid.” Giles’s quick removal of his glasses served to both blur the image of this faux Buffy and give him courage for his speech. “Suffice it to say that we are without a Slayer at all in the world right now, and we needed help.”

A round of Scooby nods encouraged him to continue, and so he placed his glasses back on gingerly, cringing at being able to clearly see their newest addition once again.

“The universe you came from was created about three years ago by a Vengeance Demon. Before that, you didn’t exist. And you were about to die at the hands of the Master. We brought you here so that you could have a second chance, as well as gaining added protection for the Hellmouth. Though, it would appear that Spike is suddenly up and about again.” Giles clapped quizzical eyes on the vampire. “You seem remarkably lucid, Spike. And sober.”

Spike glared back at the Watcher.

“And why wouldn’t I be lucid, Rupert? I don’t drink when I’ve got patrol to take care of, as well as the Bit.”

Dawn stepped cautiously back into the mix and interpreted the building of a number of awkward questions about Spike’s sudden change in attitude, and abruptly blurted a change of topic.

“Where’s she gonna stay?”

Willow swivelled her attention to the teenager. “Well, here. She is your sister, Dawn.”

Five sets of eyes focused on Willow.

“No, she’s not!” Dawn spat in utter rage against the presumptuous witch, furious over the lack of thought in announcing her another sister. One who so was not!

“I don’t have a sister,” Buffy denied.

“What sister?” asked Spike.

They spoke together, still standing close to one another as their voices drowned the others’ out. Spike could feel another headache erupting behind his eyeballs as he struggled to make sense of this stranger in the house, one that all the Scoobies seemed to recognise. His struggle increased his pain.

“What the bleeding hell is all this about then?” His voice expressed all the pain, and repressed rage that the headache instigated, which the Scoobies were determined to misinterpret as confused grief over Buffy. Questions were delayed for the night.

Dawn, freaked about being exposed in her magic expedition of the night, rushed in with a suggestion.

“Spike, you don’t look so good. Maybe you should head to bed for a while. We’ll sort this out.”

Spike looked at Dawn, suspicion encroaching on his battle with the ache in his head. But as it added to the rage of hurt, he decided to follow the suggestion. With a mumbled ‘night’ to those expecting it in the room, and a ‘welcome to the Hellmouth’ to the newest member of the gang, he climbed the stairs in obvious discomfort and disappeared behind the closed door of Buffy’s bedroom.

Dawn rounded on the group assembled uncomfortably in the living room, and released her fury. Pointing at the glorified Buffy stand-in, she reigned in the scream clawing to be released and spoke in quiet, but furious bursts.

“She…is not…my sister.”

“Of course,” answered Willow, completely abashed in her lapse of sympathetic grief. “I wasn’t thinking clearly, Dawn. I’m so sorry.”

“It is imperative that we all remember that this is not our Buffy.” Giles’s rebuke was accompanied with a snarl. Willow flinched away from the group, sensitised to the rumbling of disfavour her blunder had instigated.

Nobody noticed the shrinking back of Buffy against the stairwell as the obvious point of who she wasn’t, was emphasised violently.

Tara placed a reassuring arm around the distressed red-headed witch.

“Dawn, we didn’t mean to upset you. But Spike was in really bad shape, and he destroyed the bot. It’s pretty bad out there. Too bad for us to handle on our own. We needed a Slayer, and you know Faith isn’t an option.”

Giles took pity on Tara, knowing that he was the one to give the final approval for the spell to bring the other Buffy to their world. He wouldn’t allow Tara, or even Willow to take the brunt of the younger girl’s frustrated anger.

“When Anya mentioned this Buffy, we thought it was a good solution. I’m sorry that we didn’t consider how you would feel about all this.”

The Scoobies were nodding in agreement, most faces drawn in remembered pain for the real Buffy, while the current one stood propped against a wall feeling lonely and slightly afraid now that Spike had left her to stand on her own against this strange group of people. She didn’t know how to relate, having been on her own fighting evil for so long. She was feeling crowded and misplaced, and as she shrunk back against the stairs, and eyed the closed bedroom door, she wondered how wrong it would be if she snuck up there to him and away from all this confusion down here.

All their reassurance to the teenager, though, was getting on her last nerve. They were all so apologetic to her, sorry that her feelings were hurt by Buffy’s sudden and unexpected arrival. Well, hello. She hadn’t exactly expected her night to end like this, either. In fact, she wouldn’t mind a bit of sympathy. Coming from a soon to be defunct dimension; escaping certain death with her neck still attached. But no, she was ignored-- just the lookalike replacement brought in to take over the Hellmouth so they could all sleep at night.

The youngest one’s voice reconnected in her brain and she heard them mention her name.

“She’s not Buffy,” this one called Dawn continued.

“She is, actually. Just not the Buffy we all know. But she is still Buffy.” Anya’s contribution made the others cringe, expecting an outburst of teenage proportions.

What they received was a grittily determined Dawn, her jaw clenched in raw anger.

“She is not my sister. If she is to stay in my house, then she will go by a different name.”

All eyes turned to the quiet girl who still quietly contemplating the risks of joining the vampire upstairs.

Buffy looked at the teenager—not much younger than herself-- and could see the terror and anguish that her sudden appearance had caused. Though she had no knowledge or details of what had gone on here, she knew that pain. That loss of everything that held meaning. And she compromised. She clashed eyes with Dawn and refused to look away.

“You can call me Anne,” she conceded, and was rewarded with her first hesitant Dawn smile.

“Thank you.” Dawn’s voice shook with her gratitude.

Calm settled on the room and the first tentative smiles were shared between them all.

Then heavy footsteps clunked down the stairs and a highly strung out Spike leapt from a higher step to land at the bottom in a rare display of his vampiric grace. He raised a shaking finger and pointed at Xander.

“You’re a vampire!”

Xander pointed at his own chest, opened mouth, and spoke nothing. He shook his head instead.

Frustrated, Spike repeated, “you’re a vampire.”

Xander straightened and took a few steps toward Spike. “No, I’m really not.”

Spike tilted his head and tried to listen for the heartbeat of normal Xander and became agitated because there were too many for him to single out the one he was searching for. His head pounded with the left over traces of his effort to sort out what was going on after he’d left. He was too tired, confused and achy to work any of it out. But he saw the flush of pumping blood circulate beneath the covering of the brunette’s skin, giving it a lovely rosy flush, and felt tremendous relief at the ‘alive’ part that was Xander.

But then he remembered the other¾ the vampire other¾ and his confusion soared.

“But I saw you. In the cemetery. And you were dead.”

Xander looked at him, spooked.

“What kind of dead? I mean, was I dead on the ground, all bloodied dead? Or an evil bloodsucking dead?”

“Yeah,” was Spike’s succinct response.

Several annoyed and pointed looks encouraged him to expand.

“The undead dead.” He was nodding like it all was perfectly clear, even though he felt nothing had ever been more seriously convoluted and unclear to him in his entire life and unlife combined.

“Uh oh.”

A chorus of groans was the reaction to Willow’s echo of doom.

“What exactly is with the ‘uh oh’, Wills?” Xander stood closer to Spike, closer to the door for escape, thoroughly wigged by the idea of an undead him.

“Um, guys…remember the last time Anya and I did the spell and Vampy Willow came to visit?”

Xander’s eyes shot open as wide as bowling balls.

“Wha…?” Speech was caught up in his panic responses.

“I think…maybe…I mean…it’s possible…”

“Oh, do spit it out, Willow. We might not have much time.” Giles polished his glasses with a pristine white hanky, anxiety making his movements harsh.

“Maybe we brought more than Buffy…I mean, Anne, through the portal. Um, did we forget to clean up the circle before we left? That might not be so much of the good. There was some weird crackly thing going on, like a major infusion of magic in the air…I sort of noticed it while I was walking to the factory. Things might have, maybe, gotten… a little mucked up?” she offered in her little timid girl voice. “Maybe…” She paused, frowning on her over reliance of ‘maybe’ in her fumbling explanation and sorting out of the feasible outcomes in regards to the spell.

“I think it’s possible that maybe something from that dimension slipped through.” She glanced round at the collection of horror-struck expressions giving her all their attention. She responded with a rather nervous giggle. “I think we have a Vampy Xander on our hands.”

“You think,” came a cocky, overtly confident voice from the door. The resultant scream burst from the throat of Live Xander as everyone took in the pasty, leather tasty goodness in the doorway of Vampy Xander.

Before anyone had the chance to act, Xander had Spike’s discarded axe in his hands and had hefted it in a wide arc through the door. It lodged deeply in the doorframe as the dust of an unsuspecting VampXander filtered through the slight breeze to land atop the ‘welcome’ mat outside the door.

Several shocked statue-like bodies took up space behind him, nobody pushing beyond their shock, until Spike burst out laughing.

“Well, that’s gonna be a fucker to fix. Good thing you’re the handyman, Xan!”

Continuing to break out in almost hysterical guffaws, Spike clapped him heartily on the back and nearly knocked him outside, then returned upstairs and shut the bedroom door.

A smile teased the corners of Xander’s mouth and he realised he still held the handle of the axe. He gave a little tug, but the blade of the axe remained embedded in the wood of the doorframe. He gave it another more determined pull, yet still it remained stuck. He shrugged and allowed the newly named Anne to step forward and yank it from the wood. He turned to face the others and the first face he focused on was Anya, his smile reaching beaming proportions.

“Guess this time I did get to kill myself.” As the crowd finally gave into amused snickers, his eyes rolled back in his head and he hit the floor backwards.

*********

The force of the passing was deeply felt. Moments of severe pain halted the progress of the desired cloaking. Devastated grief cut into her gut and ripped her insides out, forcing a howl of epic sadness to be released from her burgundy lips. Red hair curtained her face as she fell to her knees and growled and sobbed in terrified loneliness. Her mate was gone, struck down in this new world before their feet could be found. Before their fangs could tear flesh.

Her body was racked with shuddering finality. Their new home was less one member, and with grim determination and an ugly, bitter smile, the vampiress resumed the incantation that would hide her and her Master from the threats of this new world.

Their invisibility would give them time, give them freedom to find the murderer that cut their family to two.

Willow closed her eyes in magical induced ecstasy as she felt the barrier take its place around the mansion, sealing their existence from the outside world. Regaining her feet, she used them to find her Master and collapsed in grief at his feet. He sat in a large chair¾ adopted as his new throne¾ and ran his permanently clawed fingers through the smooth fire of her hair.

“It will be alright, Childe. We will find those who have struck our number down and wreak vengeance. Are the barriers secure?”

“Of course, Master. No one can find us. To the people here, we do not exist.”

The red-head was poised in her power, anxious to already be under way to find those responsible for killing her mate.

“Excellent. Sleep now, I think. And tomorrow, we will start our revenge.”

Willow nodded in perfect supplication, her mind racing ahead to the torture she would inflict on those that had dared to take Xander away from her.

They would pay.

“I will find them, Master.” She lowered her head to the hard strength of his thigh and closed her eyes, her hand stroking the length of his leg between her face and his crotch, brushing a devoted hand over his cloth-covered cock. “I’ll find them.”

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