Dozy little bints, Spike thought as he followed Xander away from the car. If he hadn’t had to ferry Dawn’s annoying friends home, they wouldn’t have passed the park. If they hadn’t passed the park, they wouldn’t have run into this larger but equally dozy bint, and he wouldn’t be tramping after Harris on a mission of mercy. Whatever was menacing her chum had bloody well better be something he could sink his teeth into, metaphorically speaking. If it turned out to be human and he had to sit back and watch Harris play Sir Galahad he was going to lose his lunch.
He glanced back; Dawn's pale, resolute face watched him over the top of the front door window. Lisa, in the back seat, was also watching, but her expression was far from resolute, and she quickly rolled the window up when she saw him turn. He snorted. Scared. Of him. Not of Dawn’s calibre, that one. The Bit had never been afraid of him, not from the first brief glimpse they’d gotten of one another the night he’d come to offer Buffy an alliance against Angelus. Still, it had been a long time since anyone human had been terrified of him, and it felt... good. Gratifying. Not that he was going to do anything about it... not that he could do anything about it... but... there were times when the smell of fear was wonderfully nostalgic. Megan, on the other hand... just too dim to be frightened. Spike drifted off into a pleasant daydream about draining Megan to the point where she was too weak to give voice to that immensely grating giggle.
Weatherly Park bordered on state land, and in places where the fences hadn’t been kept up, it was possible to wander into moderately wild terrain--though not, as made plain by the litter of cigarette butts and the occasional crushed beer can, to escape evidence of human occupation. They’d been walking for a good five minutes and were well into the trees, a grove of huge old magnolias with limbs bent nearly to the ground in places. Moonlight poured through the dark leaves and ran along the branches like molten silver, dripping down to gather in cold pools at their feet. The woman led them out of the grove and through a ragged wall of oleander and pyracantha heavy with clusters of half-ripe berries. The hem of Spike’s duster caught on a branch, bringing him back to the here and now. He yanked it free with a muttered curse.
He might be a complete git most of the time, but Harris had the right idea about avoiding the great outdoors. Vampires were creatures of civilization by necessity, but Spike objected to the great outdoors on principle. He’d been born in an era where the only sensible thing to do to a wilderness was tame it. In life he’d had harbored a romantic’s fascination with the untamed variety, but that hadn’t survived his first few post-mortem encounters with the real thing.
“Just how far away is your friend?” Xander asked, batting aside a branch with the butt of his axe. The woman quivered at the sound of his voice and stopped, pointing.
“Through there,” she whispered, pointing to a gap in the bushes.
Through the thorny sprays of pyracantha a clearing with a picnic table was visible. Several dark figures clustered around it, and the sound of chanting rose on the night air. Spike wove his way through the pyracantha, cursing the thorns under his breath, and peered around Xander’s shoulder. He heard the woman moving behind them, and didn’t think anything of it. At least, not until he heard the faint whistle of something heavy slicing through the air. He turned in time to see a length of cloth-wrapped lead pipe smack into Xander’s dark head just behind the ear in as expert a coshing as he’d ever been privileged to witness. Xander’s knees buckled and he fell heavily to the ground, dropping the axe. "Bloody--you daft bitch, what--”
The woman swung at him and Spike dodged--or tried to; his duster had snagged very thoroughly on the pyracantha when he’d turned. There were downsides to all that dramatic flaring. The pipe grazed the top of his head, sending a shower of vermillion sparks across his field of vision. He staggered, grabbing the branches around him for support and coming up with a handful of thorns. Ignoring the pain in his lacerated palms he hauled himself up, snarling. The woman swung again, all technique gone, just pure desperate panic left. Spike struggled to free himself of his coat. The pipe clipped him in the head again, barely missing the thin bone over the temples. He ripped his left arm from the entangled duster with a yell of agony and launched a furious swing at his attacker.
He felt his fist smash into her cheek and the satisfying crunch of bone breaking. Even as she crumpled, electrical retribution from the chip arced through his skull, turning everything to light, to pain, and Spike collapsed into the thorny embrace of the pyracantha, more than usually dead to the world.

There was a unique flavor of panic associated with being a vampire and waking up to find yourself restrained outdoors on the wrong side of midnight. Spike lunged to his feet, was brought up short by a double jolt of pain in his hands and shoulders, and fell back into the lamp post he was tied to with a grunt. The back of his head slammed into the metal post and the impact woke the sharp hot pain of the knots left by the pipe. It wrestled for dominance with the dull, general ache of residual chip-shock, and won out for the moment, but neither one was down for the count.
Spike made himself stop panting and sat there taking inventory, not daring to shake his head lest something come loose. The yellow glow overhead was the lamp, not the sun, and the brightness of the little clearing was due to the full moon which was still shining over the tops of the trees to the west. It was late November, nights were long, and it was still hours to sunrise. He wasn’t on fire. No broken bones. He could smell blood, mostly his own, but it wasn’t much and mostly dried. The worst of the pyracantha scratches still stung, but most of them seemed to have healed already. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for his head.
He heard a muffled groan behind him. “Harris.”
A beat. “Yeah?”
He didn’t sound good. God knew he didn’t have much of a brain to bash in, but there were limits to everything, even Harris’s apparently infinite capacity for absorbing blows to the head. “Do me a favor.”
A strangled snort, and the sound of futile thrashing. An elbow jabbed him in the back. “Kind of tied up at the moment, Spike.”
“Next time some daft bint swans in out of nowhere wanting a John bloody Wayne impersonation, go with the impulse that says ‘Sod off’.”
“Yeah, like you were Mr. Suspicion.” Another bout of thrashing, accomplishing nothing. “Damn,” Xander breathed, slumping back against the pole.
Spike wiggled his fingers experimentally. His arms had been pulled behind his back around the lamp post, and his thumbs were lashed together--wire, not rope. From what he could feel, Xander’d been given similar treatment. He could pick at the loops of wire with his index and middle fingers, but he couldn’t get a grip at all, and the tightness with which the loops had been twisted meant there was a very real possibility that too-severe struggles could result in the loss of a digit. If he’d had any circulation his thumbs would have gone numb by now. Spike pondered the question of whether lost body parts would conveniently regenerate, or if he’d have to hunt a severed thumb down and stick it back on somehow before vampiric healing kicked in. He’d had minions injured that severely once or twice, back in the days when he’d had minions, but unfortunately for the cause of medical inquiry, at the time he’d had no interest in letting them laze around while they healed--not when it was so much faster to rip their heads off and make new ones.
Wages of impatience, William old boy.
A strange woman in a faded sun dress trotted past, carrying a pile of white stones in her skirt--palm-sized fragments of crushed quartz from someone’s landscaping, it looked like. Spike growled at her and wished that tearing off a few heads was still one of his options. The woman detoured well around their lamp post and joined the rest of their captors. She let go her skirt-tails and poured the rocks out on the ground, where half-a-dozen hands snatched them up and began adding them to the... assemblage.
It was centered around the picnic table. Not one of the new, UV resistant plastic ones in red and blue and yellow to be found in the main picnic area towards the front gates of the park; this was an old one, poured concrete layered with decades’ accumulation of Parks and Recreation Department paint. The last layer applied had been forest green, but it looked black in the lamplight, with leprous patches of fire-engine red showing through where it had peeled back from the layer underneath. All around the table the landscaping quartz had been laid out in lines and curlicues, intersecting at crazy angles. Random objects were scattered throughout the white quartz maze--Pepsi cans, a mangled Barbie doll, a bundle of used ballpoint pens tied together with dirty pink ribbon. A scatter of devotional candles in cheap glass holders clustered on the benches to either side of the weird suburban altar. A thin middle-aged man in a grimy yellow nylon weatherbreaker was carefully drawing a series of symbols on the table with chalk.
The people working on the construction of the thing were as random as the objects that made it up. Men and women both, ranging from college-age to their mid-fifties, with pinched tired faces and hopeless eyes, working with an eerie, implacable concentration. The presence of their captives seemed to make them nervous; their eyes slid over and around the lamp post and when they had to pass by they did so at the greatest distance possible. They worked without speaking, each seeming to know his or her part by instinct. Only the woman who’d led them here sat apart, huddled beside one of the benches, whimpering softly and now and then poking tentative fingers at her bruised and swollen cheek.
“There’s something disturbingly familiar about all this.”
Spike grunted. “Don’t fancy hanging about to let it get more so. Your hands are above mine--I can’t stand up till you do.”
By bracing themselves against the pole and each other’s shoulders, they managed to push themselves upright. “Right,” Xander gasped. “We’re vertical. Now we put stage two of my brilliant escape plan into action.”
“And that would be?”
“Pliers. They tied us up with wire, someone’s got to have pliers. We lure them over here, and--”
“Kick them to death? That is brilliant, except for the part where I collapse in a government-sponsored seizure and you saw my hand off trying to close the snips.”
“Well, if you don’t like that one, we can go to plan B.” Xander threw back his head and bellowed “HEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLP!” Spike looked at him sourly over his shoulder. “You got a better idea, fang-face, I’m listening.”
The man in the yellow windbreaker threw down his chalk and scuttled over to them, waving his hands and making shushing gestures. He bobbed up and down, his balding head gleaming in the lamplight, shaking a finger at them furiously and then going into something that looked like a goldfish impression, but before Spike could decide if kicking the legs out from under him was worth the shock, he caught the sound of approaching footsteps. Too heavy to be Buffy or Will. Not that Will might not enjoy watching him turned into cutlets, the mood she was in lately.
A moment later the man in the windbreaker heard the noise too and broke into a flurry of gestures and twitches, contorting his body extravagantly as the runner burst into the clearing. The newcomer staggered to a halt, looking like he’d just outrun the devil himself, and bent over with hands on knees to try to catch his breath. Non-descript, middle-aged, greying dark hair lank with neglect... “Bugger me sideways with a shrimp fork,” Spike muttered. “That’s the bloke who disappeared from the loo.”
Xander craned his neck to get a better look. “Who?”
“The other night. Couple of wankers chased their dinner into the pool house whilst I was in there mindin’ my own business, and I had to teach ‘em some manners. When I was done the dinner’d scarpered, and I’d swear on my mum’s grave he didn’t go past me. All that arsing about with Willy knocked it out of my head.”
The others had left their tasks and joined the man in the windbreaker in clustering around the newcomer, touching his face, patting his shoulders as if to reassure themselves he was real. “Tanner, Tanner.” One of them tugged on the man’s coat sleeves, pointing to the woman who’d lured them here.
The man--Tanner?--glanced over at the altar. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Lizzie!” He was at the woman’s side in a handful of long strides, and knelt beside her, cradling her face in his hands with impersonal tenderness. He looked up, back over at the others. “Jim, Ramon--what happened to her?”
Windbreaker Man pointed mutely at Spike. Another man, younger, larger, Hispanic, wearing a Dodgers T-shirt, mumbled, “Lizzie Borden took an axe, but the dead travel fast.”
Spike’s lip curled. “Not fast enough, apparently.”
Tanner rose and walked over to look the two of them up and down, an inscrutable expression on his lined face. “I can’t get away from you people tonight.”
“Look, mate, sorry about your girlfriend’s good looks, but she did a number on us first. I did you a good turn the other night; return the favor and we’ll call it even.”
Tanner folded his arms and stood there staring at them, head to one side. The lamplight pooling in his dark eyes illumined no triumph. He sighed. “I wish I could. I didn’t ask for any of this, you know?” He waved a hand around the clearing, taking in the altar, the little huddle of people behind him, the prisoners in front of him. “But here I am anyway, and... I have to take care of them. I’m doing it the only way I know how.” He turned to the man in the Dodgers shirt. “Ramon, untie the little guy. We’ll do him first.”
Ramon jogged off to the edge of the clearing and began rummaging through a bag of supplies. He came up with Xander’s prophesied pair of pliers and started back, making snik-snik noises playing with them. Spike pressed warily back against the lamp post. Tanner didn’t seem to have any weapons on him, unless he meant to go get the lead pipe and start a game of vampire pinata, but Spike knew first-hand about the creative things one could get up to with the contents of the common toolbox, and pliers were among the most useful of the lot. In for another bout of poetic justice, are we? Bloody wonderful.
“It probably won’t do much good to explain all this to you,” Tanner said, taking off his coat and folding it carefully in quarters. He laid it on the grass beside the picnic table and began rolling up his sleeves. “But I do it anyway. Seems the right thing. I can’t tell you if you’ll remember any of it later. Some do.” He bent down and extracted a couple of pens from the pink-ribboned bundle, pulled a rubber band out of his trousers pocket and began lashing them together. “You’ve probably noticed that most of us have a few problems... relating to reality.” A rueful smile crossed his face. “I can fix that. For awhile. Just for me, in which case you’d recover. Or for everyone. In which case...” He looked genuinely regretful. “You won’t.”
Xander went stiff with shock. “You’re Glory’s band of crazies!”
Ramon trotted up with the pliers, which looked positively friendly and welcoming compared to what Tanner was putting together. Tanner motioned him to wait, and stepped forward, holding up his makeshift cross. “Some of us were. Now... we’re family.” Spike pulled away, sliding down the lamp post in an effort to avoid contact, but his bound hands prevented escape. His head jerked back as acid fire branded his brow and cheek. “Untie him, fast,” Tanner snapped, and Ramon clamped the nose of the pliers on the wire around Spike’s hands and began undoing the twist. Spike bit his tongue to keep from screaming at the incipient agony half an inch from his eyes. Ramon hauled him to his feet and dragged him away from the lamp post, and Tanner backed along with them, keeping the cross near enough his skin to raise a welt. “I will take care of you when this is over,” Tanner said. “I want you to understand that. You’re giving us a great gift, and that makes you our--my--responsibility.”
“That makes me feel just ducky. Unfortunately, I’ve got special needs you may not be aware of.” Spike hooked a foot around Ramon’s ankle and threw his weight sideways, quelling a whoop of triumph when the chip didn’t give him more than a minor buzz. Ramon dropped the pliers and staggered under the impact, but unfortunately he had a good fifty pounds on Spike and kept his feet. Spike kicked the pliers wildly in the general direction of the lamp post before Windbreaker Guy and Tanner pounced him. The three of them wrestled him onto the picnic table while Spike twisted in their grasp like a cornered wildcat, unable to land any effective blows without shocking himself.
The three men slammed him into the concrete of the table with desperate strength and Spike heaved upwards against their hands, the muscles in his neck and shoulders corded with the strain. “Hold him down!” Tanner gasped, and another three or four pairs of hands grabbed his legs and arms. The vampire snarled up at the circle of frightened, confused faces hovering over him, morphing into game face and snapping at the nearest set of fingers. The elderly man and the thin, wispy woman in the sun dress cried out and cringed away, but they were back a moment later at Tanner’s urgings. There were things on the streets of Sunnydale a hell of a lot scarier than a neutered vampire, and this lot had probably seen most of them. Spike jerked violently back and forth as Tanner began a staccato chant and his hands descended towards the crown of the vampire’s head, fingers spread.
“Couldn’t we maybe get you a gift certificate to Chuck E. Cheese instead?” Xander shouted over at them. “Honestly, sucking my brain won’t do you any good. Ask anyone. Bottom of my class and proud of it, and Spike, well, he’s--”
He’s a vampire. Lesson number one, vampire equals impure. You can’t even...
Spike gave up his struggle and fell back onto the concrete slab, relaxing so completely that several of the people holding him toppled forward onto the table. Saffron melted into blue as his eyes met Tanner’s brown ones.
For a moment Tanner looked uncertain. Then he drove his fingers into Spike’s skull.

“Are you sure you’re doing it right?” Lisa asked for the third time.
“Yes, I’m sure!” Dawn turned the key in the ignition again and silently cursed the DeSoto’s freaky push-button transmission--why couldn’t Spike have a normal car? The asthmatic rasp of the engine cranking, sputtering, and failing to turn over resumed. She turned the ignition off and sat back, pressing her fists to her temples and trying to think.
Despite the trashy appearance of the interior, Spike doted on the black monster, and kept the engine in good running order--partly normal guy-type car obsessiveness, and partly vampire necessity; Spike took his unlife into his hands every time he took a cross-country trip in daylight, and absolutely couldn’t afford unexpected breakdowns. So it was unlikely that the starter or the battery was going out. The gas gauge was low, but not yet on empty--maybe the gauge was off, though, old cars could be finicky that way, and in taking them back to Lisa’s place, Spike had done more driving tonight than he’d originally intended. Or maybe she’d flooded the engine, in which case all she could do was sit here and wait for it to unflood.
“I know, we could play a game!” Megan said. “Do you guys know Twenty Questions?”
“It’s a breadbox,” Lisa muttered. At Megan’s hurt look, she added, “Duh. With you it’s =always= a breadbox.”
“Would you guys just shut up?” Dawn gripped the steering wheel and tried to stifle the wholly inappropriate yawn that engulfed her. Since school had started Buffy had made her abandon the largely nocturnal schedule she’d kept over the summer, and she wasn’t used to staying up half the night anymore. She rolled down her window again and peered worriedly out into the dark.
“Heeeeeeellllp!”
“What was that?”
“What was what?” Lisa looked around, hugging herself. Dawn was already getting out of the car.
“That was Xander!”
“We’re supposed to go get your sister!” Lisa hollered after her.
The DeSoto’s trunk was large enough to hide a couple of bodies, and had served just that purpose on numerous occasions. Dawn shoved the cooler and the grocery bags aside and began dragging out weapons, searching for something light enough for her to carry. Buffy and Spike made swinging five-to-ten-pound hunks of steel around look like nothing at all, but Dawn knew from certain past experiments of her own that it was a lot harder than it looked. She settled on a thing with a wickedly curved blade which was either a puny sword or an overgrown knife, and slammed the trunk shut. “There’s no time to get my sister!” she shot back at Lisa, grabbing her sweater from the front seat. “Are you coming or not?”
In the darkness of the back seat Lisa looked awful, her complexion like milk about to go bad. It was weird; Dawn was used to thinking of herself as the scaredy one, the tagalong. Was this how it had started for Buffy, six years ago? Just realizing that something had to be done, and you were the only one who could do it? Lisa was looking at her with something like... “Sure.”
“Me too!” Megan said. “You’re not, like, leaving me here alone to get chewed on by vampires. At least, not of the non-sexy variety.”
“That’s beyond gross and into grotty.” Dawn shaded her eyes against the moonlight and tried to remember exactly which pair of trees Spike and Xander had disappeared between.
Megan giggled. “Oh, come on, don’t tell me you never thought about it.”
Dawn did a very creditable imitation of Spike’s trademark disbelieving snort. “You live through three months of Angelus on the rampage and see if you find anything sexy about it.” She slung the sword-knife over one shoulder, picked the likeliest pair of trees and set off at a brisk walk. “Let’s go.”
It was easy enough to say that, easy enough to set off with a determined look, but once into the trees it was impossible to tell which way her quarry had gone. “What if they come back to the car and we’re gone?” Lisa asked, fifteen minutes later--fifteen minutes of wandering around the picnic area, peering through hedges, and jumping at shadows. “One of us should have stayed there.”
That it was a reasonable objection made it all the more annoying. Dawn scowled and kept walking. “Go on back, then. I’ll give you the keys.” Lisa didn’t answer, but her eyes darted from shadow to shadow and she edged a little closer to Megan. Dawn pulled her sweater tighter. It was the coldest part of the night--it must be in the fifties, and Dawn, Southern California born and bred, was convinced she was freezing. At least walking kept her warmer than sitting.
“Why don’t we just yell for them?” Megan asked as they passed another deserted picnic table--the ominous lump beneath it had turned out to be a homeless guy who was probably just asleep. Dawn headed back towards the trees .
“Because then whoever’s got them will know we’re coming! Haven’t you ever rescued anyone before?” Megan and Lisa shook their heads, duly impressed with her expertise--no reason to clue them in that most of her experience consisted of being the rescuee rather than the rescuer. Of course they were going to be majorly unimpressed soon if she kept trekking aimlessly around the park. She bit her lower lip. “Both of you be real quiet for a minute. See if we can hear anything weird.”
“We won’t--"
"Just do it, okay?” Dawn closed her eyes and concentrated. It was freaky how much you could hear when you paid attention. The hiss of your own breath, the rustle of your own clothes. The soft rush of wind through the upper branches of the trees and the distant roar of traffic on the highway. Sirens. A helicopter. A mockingbird running through its repetoire. Dogs barking. And... voices, very distant, very faint. If Spike were here, he probably could have told her what they were saying, but if Spike were here she wouldn’t be hunting him. It was very difficult to tell what direction they were coming from, but... “This way.”

Xander lay flat on his back, arms pulled taut over his head, one leg stretched out as far as it would go. His shirt had pulled out of the waistband of his levis and hiked up around his middle. Half a dozen rocks in various sizes and degrees of sharpness were digging into his shoulderblades, and his breath was coming in harsh grunts of effort. The toe of his sneaker was only an inch or two away from the edge of the concrete path where the pliers lay.
There they were, half-open, taunting him with their nearness. Why the bleeping freck couldn’t Spike have kicked a little bit harder? Xander dug his other heel into the hard-packed earth and pulled himself further away from the post, gritting his teeth against the pain in his hands. He couldn’t feel his thumbs at all anymore, so how exactly he was going to use the pliers if he got hold of them was a bit of a problem, but... one thing at a time. Just one... more... inch...
“Xander!”
He froze, then slowly turned his head. Ten feet away a ragged wall of oleander rose into the moonlit sky. At the base of the hedge the foliage rustled, a pair of hands parted the branches, and Dawn’s face, flanked by Lisa’s and Megan’s, appeared in the gap, framed in dark narrow leaves. “Blossom! Bubbles! Buttercup! I’m saved! I thought we told you to stay in the car?”
Dawn’s cheeks flushed. “If you’re gonna be like that I will go back to the car.”
Xander dug in his heels again and shoved himself back towards the post. A quick look over at the picnic table altar told him that the crazies were well occupied trying to keep Spike on the table. “Just get those pliers and get me off this crazy thing.”

The vampire’s body went rigid as Tanner's fingers brushed his temples and sank ever so slightly into the skull. Instead of sinking all the way in, his probing fingers glanced away, repelled by a surface that was slick, cold... dead. Recoiling, Tanner pulled away, almost ready to abandon the attempt then and there. But no--Ronnie and the Rabbit Guy and Denise and the others, they were depending on this, even though they didn't realize it. He steeled himself, studying his prey as he hadn't done since the first desperate days after She had disappeared and he'd put the spell together out of baling wire and hope.
The brain, the body in front of him weren't alive--but they weren't really dead, either. The electrochemical reactions of a living body were replaced or augmented by demonic life-force, stoking the cellular furnaces with a cold, eldritch fire. Breathing was a wholly voluntary affair, the heart did not beat, and only the friction of its own movements kept this creature a few degrees above ambient temperature. But this body still knew pain and hunger and pleasure, this brain still had thoughts and feelings, no matter that they were stored in patterns of magic instead of electrical waves, and if only he could change the angle of approach, slide in from a different direction... Tanner's fingers sank into the skull further, slowly, reluctantly, and only with great effort.
The vampire tasted of love and rage and poetry, blood and steel and death and moonlight, man's mind and demon's soul inextricably entwined, a creature of air and darkness, and there was nothing there that Tanner could grasp that would not burn his hands to the bone in the grasping. The pale, ostensibly human face looked up at him, and smiled. “So the hellbitch that made you was right about something. Not to your taste, mate?”
Tanner broke away, his skin crawling. He flexed his fingers, sickened, and not entirely by the vampire. How different were they, really, save in what they stripped from their victims? “This won’t work. Get the other one.”

He probably should have kept himself from tensing as Ramon and Jim looked from Tanner towards the lamp post, should have remained impassive as they saw that the lamp post now stood bare and alone in the center of its own spotlight--should have refrained from doing anything that might draw any attention to Xander, who’d come up behind Tanner and was raising the the lead pipe over his head.
Sod that; he’d never been any good at impassive. A feral grin burst across Spike’s face as the pipe came down. Tanner’s eyes rolled back--not as damaging a blow as it could have been, since Xander’s wounded hands could barely keep their grip on the pipe, but as Spike could attest, even inexpertly wielded it was one hell of a distraction. The hands restraining him momentarily loosened their grips in surprise, and he surged up off the table in a black-and-ivory blur and broke for freedom. He hit the ground rolling, bounced to his feet and spun round to see Xander chuck the pipe at Ramon. His head was still aching, but the rush of fight or flight shoved the pain to the back of his consciousness. His eyes met Xander’s, and the grin widened. “Better part of valor, or do you want to work off some more frustration?”
Xander looked at Ramon, whom the pipe had missed by a mile. “If that means run like hell, let’s do--hey! Running away is in the other direction!”
“And my coat’s in this one. I’m not leaving it for the Salvation Army brigade. Run, you nit--they can’t do a damned thing to me; it’s your brain they want to make chowder of!”
Spike dodged Jim and the elderly man whose name had never come up and sped off across the clearing towards the pyracantha bushes. Sure enough, his duster was still tangled in the branches like a shabby black leather bat, and Xander’s axe was still lying on the ground where he’s dropped it. Spike snatched up the axe and gave his coat a yank, wincing as he felt the thirty-year-old leather tear. Well, he could get it repaired; it had seen worse over the decades. Coat in one hand and axe in the other, he turned on his heel and raced after Xander, drawing breath for a victory yell--and catching the scent of Dawn and her friends as he did so.
“Niblet, you’re bloody well going to be deader than I am when I catch you!” he roared. Tanner and the woman whose jaw he’d broken were still slumped beside the picnic table, but the rest of the crazies had taken off after Xander, and, whether they realized it yet, Dawn as well. Which meant that he was due for a few more run-ins with his electrical nemesis before the night was over. Spike plunged through the barrier of oleanders and began to run in earnest, feet barely skimming the ground. Patrolling with the others he rarely got the chance to go all out, and it was exhilarating to exert himself to the fullest again. Over the pounding of his own footsteps he heard the noise of people crashing through the brush ahead, drawing closer with every stride, and caught the heady scent of human sweat, redolent of fear and exhaustion.
A piercing shriek split the night ahead of him. Spike’s eyes flared yellow and an anticipatory growl ripped itself from his throat. The moon was sinking behind the trees now, but his eyes could pierce the blackness of a coal mine as readily as the brightest of noons, and there was nothing between him and the hulking figure ahead but time and distance, and he was rapidly closing both. He inhaled sharply--
Not Dawn.
He checked himself in mid-leap, twisting aside and landing crouched catlike in front of Ramon, who had Lisa tucked securely under one meaty arm. She saw him loom up out of the night and whimpered, clawing uselessly at the hand over her mouth, her eyes liquid with terror.
He could hear the retreating footsteps of the others ahead of them; by the looks of it, Lisa hadn’t had a chance to cry out. For a second he seriously considered leaving her behind; he’d have gladly shocked his brain to jelly for Dawn’s sake, but Lisa was no one in particular to him, and he’d had enough, the last few days, of helping the helpless and having said helpless promptly turn around and apply boot leather to his arse. Buffy might get off on the whole sacred duty thing, but he didn’t, and if he took off now none of them would ever know...
...until Dawn asked what had become of Lisa, and he couldn’t lie to her or her bleeding sister for sod all. Bloody hell.
The whole internal debate had taken place in the space of one of his nonexistent heartbeats. Spike dropped his coat and the axe and sprang hard and fast from his crouch, tackling Ramon low around the knees, using Lisa’s weight along with his own--none of the crazies seemed to have any real skill at brawling; it was only their numbers and the fact that he couldn’t hit back which made them dangerous. He grunted as another shock hit him--after all this time you’d think he’d get used to them, but no such luck; maybe a human’s pain centers would have burned out by now, but hip hooray for vampire healing abilities; his was in perfect working order. Ramon went down this time, skidding through the dead leaves and letting go of Lisa as he fell. Spike rolled off the larger man, swearing steadily, and staggered to his feet. Christ, but his head hurt.
Lisa, still huddled on the damp ground where she’d fallen, stared up at him, trembling. Fuck, he was still all fangy; the chit was going to wet herself. Spike shifted back, reached down and grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. Lisa looked from him down to the fallen Ramon, who was wheezing and trying to get the air back into his lungs, and back to Spike.
And grabbed him round with waist with an incoherent sob, and hugged him, hard, before Spike had time to feel anything except shock.
His hands hovered over her shoulders, uncertain. He didn’t touch. Not humans. Not anyone. Not anymore, not outside a fight. Not that he didn’t want to. He’d always been a tactile person. But why torture himself by sidling up to all that lovely, warm, forbidden flesh? Dawn, yes. He’d gotten accustomed to Dawn’s presence and her complete comfort in his, and the awkward, brotherly hugs and pats on the shoulder between them had been a large part of keeping him sane over the long summer--and maybe her too. But this--Lisa was anything but comfortable; the scent of her terror combined with the pounding of her pulse made his fangs ache to extend.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and released him.
Spike stared down at her for a long moment, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth, as if to wipe away some invisible stain. He stalked over and snatched up his much-abused duster once more, picked up the axe, and thrust it at her handle first. “Here, make yourself useful and carry this. Let’s go.” Without sparing Lisa a further glance, he took off towards his car, not bothering to see if she followed.

Dawn detoured around a tombstone and shifted the bag of groceries from one hip to the other. "You could have left me off at Lisa's." Lisa and Megan had agreed eagerly that it wasn't necessary to burden Lisa's mom with excess information about their night out, and had agreed somewhat more reluctantly to tell Lisa's mother that Dawn had gotten sick and gone home early--Megan obviously suspected the two of them of being off to have further adventures of which she was being left out.
Spike took a final drag off his cigarette and sent the butt spinning into the night. "Could've. Didn't."
Dawn shot him a sideways look under her lashes. Something had unnerved him there at the end, as they'd escaped the park; he was stalking along, head down, duster flapping behind him, doing the 'I'm a predatory creature of the night and don't you forget it!' thing big time--a difficult effect to achieve while carrying a styrofoam cooler under one arm, even if it was full of pig's blood, but Spike had had a lot of practice. "I thought we weren't going to add to my sister's worries."
"That," Spike said, "was before you left the car." He looked down at her and his voice softened. "Not that we didn't appreciate the hand, Bit, but if anything'd gone wrong you could have ended up roughly as bright as Harris. Your chums--they had no idea what they were getting into, did they? Not the best choice for backup, pet. For bloody stupid planning I'm bound to make you suffer, and I can't think of anything calculated to cause more suffering than forcing you to endure your sister's company when she's good and brassed off."
Dawn punched him in the arm. "You really are evil." She stuck her lower lip out and added in lower but still perfectly audible to vampires tones, "And if you think enduring Buffy's presence is a good punishment for stupid plans, no wonder you come up with so many of them."
He chuckled, his mercurial spirits on the upswing again. "Pet, I still don't buy that you could spot a kukri knife in a dark boot and completely miss the full can of petrol right beside it."
"I told you, it was behind the cooler!" She wasn't going to live that one down for quite awhile. "Anyway, it's not my fault you drive a car that gets, like, three miles to the gallon."
Spike looked wounded. "Twelve, I'll have you know!" As they approached the crypt he stopped in the middle of the path, frowning, and put a restraining hand on Dawn's shoulder. "Half a mo'. We've got company."
Dawn looked ahead. Tawny golden light poured out through the windows of the crypt--someone had lit the candles, which meant that the visitor was either human or some other kind of demon--vampires wouldn't have needed the light. A darker shape moved behind the iron crossbars of the window. Spike pulled Dawn off the path and into the shadow of a nearby elm. "See if you can stay put this time."
He glided off towards the crypt, a shadow among shadows, all business now and infinitely more dangerous-looking for it. Dawn set her bag down and folded her arms across her chest, tucking her hands into the sleeves of her sweater against the chill. With all that had gone on already tonight, she was far more on edge than she liked to admit, and letting Spike out of her sight was the last thing she wanted to do. She stood on tip-toe, trying to see what was going on inside, but the angle was wrong and the candlelight too diffuse to make anything out.
It was with great relief that she saw the vampire's pale head re-appear in the crypt doorway. "All clear, pet. It's just your sis."
"Oh, great. I was hoping it was only a flesh-eating demon."
When Dawn entered the crypt Buffy was hovering beside the stairwell to the crypt's lower level, arms folded, head down, carefully not looking at Spike. Spike was setting the cooler down by the refrigerator, carefully not looking at Buffy. Dawn expected her sister to go into lecture mode immediately, but to her surprise Buffy just acknowledged her presence with a nod.
"I put her in your bed," Buffy said. "I hope that's OK. Tara's down there with her now."
"Yeh, no problem." Spike ran a hand through his hair and bent to fiddle with the lid of the cooler. "Still housebroken, isn't she?"
The two of them were not looking at each other so hard Dawn wouldn't have been surprised to see scorch marks in the air between them. Ooh, this was new. Dawn tried not to stare too obviously as she set the grocery bag down on top of the mini-fridge and began pulling things out. Buffy'd said they'd had a fight. What kind of fight left you acting like that? Buffy'd always claimed that Spike considered a punch in the nose third base. "Her? Her who? What's wrong?"
"Willow," Buffy said, her voice flat. "She's--last night, we found Willy the Snitch wandering around in the middle of the highway, acting like one of Glory’s crazies. Tonight Willow ran into the guy that did it. At least I hope so--I’d hate to think there were two of them running around. Willow has left the building, sanity-wise."
Spike abandoned the no-eye-contact game and looked right at her, startled. "Would the bloke she ran into be a skinny dark-haired git about so tall?" He held a hand a few inches above his own head. "Dresses like Babbitt on a bad day?"
"Failing the cultural literacy quiz here, but yeah, that sounds like him." Buffy rubbed her forehead and pulled her hair back from her face, still avoiding the vampire's gaze.
"Is Willow going to be OK?" Dawn asked. "Tara can fix her, right?"
"I don't know. I hope so. Willy recovered, so..." Buffy frowned at Spike. "How do you know what Mr. Brainsuck looks like?"
With a common problem to focus on, the uncomfortable tension between the two of them dissipated like morning fog. "Harris and I crashed his picnic in Weatherly Park." Spike knelt down, opened the cooler and began transferring his blood to the fridge. "Showed up running like Old Nick was after him. His name is Tanner, he was one of Glory's lot, and he's still got a whole crew of nutters with him--they pulled a bait and switch on Harris, got him to go poncing off after a damsel in distress--"
It was Buffy's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Followed by his faithful vampire companion?"
Spike gave her a dirty look. "Couldn't let the bleeder wander off on his own, could I? Wouldn't last ten minutes, and you'd skin me for it. Though in his case, damned if I know what difference losing his mind would make. From what this Tanner bloke said when he tried his Tibetan memory trick on yours truly, if he ran into Will by himself, she'll get over it. Put those biscuits in the crate there, Pigeon," he directed Dawn. He examined the contents of said crate and held up the remaining bottle of whiskey with a frown. "Oi, I had two of these in here!" He sniffed suspiciously. "Slayer?"
Buffy groaned. "I don't have time to explain right now, but it was vitally necessary." A ferocious light entered her eyes. "This guy went after you and Xander? Xander's all right?"
"Eh--a bit knocked about. We dropped him off at the emergency room to have his hands seen to. Anya's with him. And I'm just fine, thank you for asking."
Buffy ignored him. "Dawn, why exactly are you here?"
"It was vitally necessary?" Dawn said with a weak grin. She held out a box of Ritz crackers. "Hungry? We can make peanut butter cracker sandwiches."

They ended up making up a plate full of crackers, cheese and apples to take down to Tara, Spike grumbling the whole time about not having signed on to feed the multitudes. Dawn held it carefully in one hand while climbing down the glorified ladder which served as a staircase to the lower levels.
Spike's downstairs was bigger than his upstairs, including the original lower level of the crypt, several rooms dug out beneath the cemetery, and access to the tunnels running all over Sunnydale. Though he had indeed gotten rid of the pile of moldering skulls (Dawn rather regretted the loss; the skulls had been pretty cool) the atmosphere was still leaned more towards the Addams Family than Better Homes and Gardens. There was real furniture down there now, but whenever he'd run into a coffin in the course of his excavations, Spike had hauled it out and incorporated it into the decor. Dawn occasionally speculated on whether or not the end tables still harbored their original occupants, but had never gotten up the nerve to ask.
The bedroom was off the main room through a low, irregular archway. It was a weird combination of comfortable and creepy. The floors were blanketed with a haphazard collection of oriental rugs. There was a bookshelf, a nightstand with an old-fashioned pitcher and basin, a coffin-cum-blanket chest, and a wardrobe which, at a guess, housed Spike's extensive collection of black jeans and t-shirts. Another coffin or two hung drunkenly out of the packed earth of the walls by way of decoration. The room was dominated by a huge old four-poster bed in dark wood, complete with canopy in hunter green and cream swirls. In the middle of the vast expanse of counterpane Willow was curled, small and waifish with her auburn hair in flyaway wisps about her face.
Tara looked up as they entered; she was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Willow with a heartbreaking expression. Willow broke into an agitated wail when she saw Dawn. "Oh, the shining, the shining, come over the sea with the brightness inside..." She reached out, fingers crooked, raking the air with both hands. Dawn cringed back. She'd thought this was all over. She wasn't the Key anymore, she was just Dawn Summers, dammit! Wasn't it ever going to stop?
"I don't think it's a good idea, everyone being in here at once," Tara said, taking the plate with an apologetic look.
Buffy circled the bed; Willow had half-crawled, half-slumped over to the side opposite Tara, and was pawing aimlessly through Spike's pile of bedtime literature, shoving things under the bedstead at random. "Come on, Will, sit up." Willow ignored her, and Tara leaned over, took her lover firmly by the shoulders and pulled her upright. Buffy shot a helpless, guilty look back at the others. What on earth did she have to feel guilty about? Dawn thought bitterly. She couldn't stop staring at Willow's slack, horrible, yearning face. She felt sick to her stomach.
"Come on, Bit," Spike said, taking her arm. "We'll give them some air."
Guilt or no guilt, she was exhausted, and it was a relief to collapse on the couch in the main room, though it was one of those stiff, fancy drawing-room type divans and not exactly built for comfort. Spike sat down on the end opposite and watched her, head on hand. Dawn tucked her arm under her head and stared across the room at the niche in the wall where Spike had once kept that pathetic shrine to her sister--the shrine was long gone, but the niche still had a couple of defiant snapshots tacked up: one copy of the picture of her and Buffy and Joyce which stood in the Summers' living room, but mostly a series of goofy pictures of her and Spike making faces at the camera that they'd taken at one of the four-for-a-dollar photo booths at Sunnydale Mall. Someday she'd find someone to explain why vampires wouldn't reflect in anything, but photographed just fine. "So--counting Willow, how many people have ended up dead or insane because of me?"
Spike snorted. "Zero. Don't recall you holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to suck anyone else's brains out."
She rolled over and stared up at the vaulted ceiling, lost in darkness and cobwebs. I'm fifteen years old, I didn't really exist until those stupid monks shoehorned me into everyone's memories a year ago, I know that ho-bag Kirsty is badmouthing me to Kevin in first period history, Mom's dead and dad never calls, my sister is a vampire slayer and my best friend is a defanged vampire. "Spike--when do I get to stop feeling like shit about existing?"
Spike leaned back, laced his hands behind his head, and pursed his lips. "It's been a long time, but I seem to recall that stage lasting from approximately age thirteen to age twenty-eight. 'Course between you and me, Bit, I was a bit of a wanker in my breathing days."
"What happened at age twenty-eight?"
"Dru killed me."
"Oh."
"All things considered, I don't recommend it as a cure for weltschmertz."
"Guess I'll pass."
Spike leaned over and pulled an afghan down from the back of the couch, tugging it over her shoulders. "Get some sleep, pet. Will'll be fine."

Spike was slouched in the middle of the long gold couch when Buffy came out of the bedroom, one booted foot propped up on the coffin in front of it, the other folded under him. He was balancing a book on his bent knee, head cocked back a bit. Spike reading. She was still trying to get used to that. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as Giles' place, but once you knew to look for them, Spike had books stashed all over the crypt--tattered Remo Williams paperbacks and lurid romance novels rubbing spines with Shakespeare; Dorothy Parker living in literary sin with Hunter Thompson. They'd always been there, but somehow she'd never noticed before--before having died.
Her sister was curled up on the far end of the couch underneath a black-and-red crocheted afghan--more or less; Dawn's long-legged, coltish body didn't curl very compactly any longer. Her feet, still in their straggle-laced sneakers, hung off the couch, and her glossy chestnut hair fanned out over the arm. She was making a very soft noise as she slept,
somewhere between a snore and a sigh. Buffy, unwilling to disturb her, walked over as quietly as she could and sat down beside Spike. His eyes flicked up as her shadow fell over him, then down to his arm's-length perusal of the book again. He seemed to have gotten over the impulse to hide it and pretend he'd only been watching Bob Barker. Not that that would work very well when the television was upstairs. "How's Will?"
Her shoulders slumped. "Same old. I wish we knew how long before we found him Willy'd been hit. It would give us some idea how long Will's going to be..." She felt tears welling up again. "Oh, god, the things I said to her! If that's the last thing she remembers of me..."
"Ah, love..." Subdued, Spike closed the book and tossed it over onto the coffin; it hit the curved lid with a thump and slid off. His hand hovered just short of her shoulder in that way he had of not quite touching her. "Haven't exactly been thinking the happiest thoughts about Will myself lately." His arm finally settled on the back of the couch, behind her. Still not touching, but the tension in his body was palpable.
A mewling noise came from the bedroom, followed by the wordless murmur of Tara's voice. Buffy shuddered, straightened, and looked over at the door. "Spike--"
"Buff--"
"Me first," she said, rushing the words out. "I'm tired of missing my chances to say things. If I'd talked to Willow weeks ago and tried to work this out--"
He made a small impatient noise. "Guilt runs in the family, does it? Love, this isn't your fault--"
"Shut up, Spike, this has nothing to do with Willow and I want to get this said. I was out of line last night. Not for wanting you to pay for your own blood, but for--for--" She stopped, stiff with frustration. "This is so hard to explain! For trying to--to force you to..." Spike sat up a bit straighter, head cocked in perplexity. Buffy gnawed on her lower lip. "I didn't want the reminder," she said at last. "I was forgetting there, for a minute, who you are. What you are. I don't want to do that."
His flinch was barely perceptible. Buffy cringed. "No! I don't mean it like--why do I suck at this so much?! I don't want to forget it because--because I don't want to forget anything about you. Spike, you've changed. A lot." Enough? God, I don't know.. . "Sometimes I can't believe how much." She swallowed, hands clasping convulsively in her lap. "But you did it by yourself. I can't jump in now and make you--"
The intensity in his voice was terrifying. "You know I'd do anything for you, love..."
"That's the problem! It wouldn't be real, don't you see? And if there's ever going to be anything between us--" (and oh, did his ears prick up at that) "It's got to be--there can't be any lies. For either of us. I--the loving me, I know that's big, bigger than I can really--but I can get love from a lot of places, Spike. You give me honesty, and that's... Never change that. Never. No matter what else--"
Spike didn't say anything, just sat there, attentive, gaze riveted to her face, waiting for her to finish. She couldn’t deny, deep down, that it was a bit of a rush, this power she held over him, the more so because she knew it left her balanced on a knife’s edge. Spike might be love’s bitch, but even he had limits, as Drusilla could attest, and there was no guarentee she wouldn’t push him to those limits, someday. The loa's inhuman voice rang in her ears. What do you want him to do?
"You don't have a soul. I can't ever pretend that you do. But you do have a mind. So promise me something, Spike. About the blood. In fact, about everything." She drew a deep shuddery breath. "Do what you think is right. Even if I don't like it--even if I hate it, even if I hate you. It--it's got to be real, what I see when I look at you."
Spike sat there for a long time, studying her with those incendiary blue eyes. At last he sighed. "You don't make it easy on a bloke, do you, Slayer?"
She managed a shaky smile. "It's part of my charm."
"Maybe Harris will trade me for the flower problem."
"Huh?"
"Long story." The corners of his mouth twitched. "I was going to tell you I'd decided to give up the nummy people snacks for good, but in light of new information p'raps I should reconsider."
Buffy stared, floored. "Um."
The twitch turned into a grin. "Close your mouth, Slayer, you'll catch flies. I don't bloody well want to, you know. Imagine living on oatmeal with all essential vitamins and minerals added for the rest of your life and you'll get some idea of what the pig's blood diet is like." He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on his hands, dark brows knit, obviously thinking hard. "Tell you what," he said at last, "I won't drink anything that I don't know for certain came from a willing healthy donor." He quirked an eyebrow. "Blood from Willy's stable of drunks tastes like sodding turpentine anyway."
She studied him in turn. This is Spike, technically evil vampire. Someone I shouldn't like, shouldn't trust, shouldn't want--and do. "Okay. That's a decision I don't have to stake you for."
He snorted. "Ah, I should have guessed that was the downside to your little do-as-you-like speech."
"Hey, I have to be all with the honesty too." Buffy stared at the cover of the fallen book, but it was upside-down and the lettering was too faded to make out anyway. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the crushed-velvet upholstery. There was only a breath between them--literally; Spike inhaled sharply as her hair tickled his arm, and she felt his ribs brush lightly against her shoulder. Spike used breath the way a writer used punctuation, for emphasis, for clarity. Every rise and fall of that black-clad chest meant something: there were no unneeded breaths. Lucky her, she had to inhale all the time and there was no way he could tell which breath was spurred by mere need of oxygen and which from the imperative to draw as much of his scent into her lungs as possible.
Admitting to the attraction, even if only to herself, had probably been a mistake. Do you think maybe you could go back to trying to kill me on a regular basis, Spike? It's way more effective than cold showers . Eyes tight shut, she could still map out the lineaments of his body relative to hers--nothing mystical or romantic about it, just that around Spike her Slayer's sense for a vampire's presence grew incredibly intense and specific: not just 'vamp nearby!' but 'Spike, right here!' It had been that way with Angel, once. Maybe it would be that way with any vampire she was around for a long enough time.
He wouldn't make the first move; he knew she didn't love him, and that she'd never act on the desire he'd always known was there. She wouldn't make the first move; she knew she couldn't possibly get involved with another vampire, especially a soulless one, most especially Spike. So they could go on like this forever, dance at arms' length in the exquisite torture of one another's presence, taunt one another in the desperate hope that one of them would snap, and somehow the results wouldn't be the other's fault. Or she could back off, return to a life where Spike was just another thing out there in the dark, put them both out of their misery.
Except that the thought of life without Spike in it had all the appeal of day-old Tab.
And wasn't she supposed to be being honest, here? She didn't love him. But she was no longer at all certain that she couldn't love him.
"There's no way this isn't going to hurt, is there?" she said softly.
Spike didn't ask what she was talking about--he always knew. "Eventually? Yeh. But Christ, love, what doesn't, eventually?"
"Well. Someone once told me to risk the pain." Buffy leaned over--only an inch or two, all that was necessary--and closed the distance between them, sliding her arm behind him, her hand burrowing between the small of his back and the couch. Every muscle in his torso twitched in response to her touch, and he let out a long hissing sigh.
She'd done this before. A year ago, with Riley. A lifetime ago, with Angel. Even once with Spike, under the influence of Willow's mis-cast spell. She had loved the dead before, and her body remembered what she had tried to forget in the arms of the living. Familiar, the cool weight of his arm slipping down to rest on her shoulders, the room-temperature body next to hers slowly warming with her heat. Familiar, her own heartbeat sounding the all louder in her ears for lack of any answering beat in the chest beneath them. Familiar, the sensation of irregular breaths drawn and held far too long for human comfort, and the faint earthy scent of male vampire.
And different, the whipcord leanness of his body, the ease with which they fit together, the way his shoulder was the perfect height for her head. Different, the contours of his face beneath the blind explorations of her free hand, the angle of his jaw, the elegant jut of his cheekbones and the hollows beneath, the scar running across his left brow, legacy of another Slayer, long ago. Different, the long cool fingers, nicotine-stained, slightly callused, drifting across her own cheek and
brow. Different, the crisp stiffness of his gelled hair and the way it sprang into traitorous curls when mussed. Different, the smell of leather and tobacco, whiskey and shaving soap that was uniquely Spike.
God, it felt good to touch him with no ulterior motive, felt as if years worth of tension were draining out of her through every square inch of their close-pressed bodies. Buffy opened her eyes, looking up into Spike's face, watching as astonishment and adoration and lust and (ah, for him too) sublime relief chased across it, and whatever he saw in her face (and she herself had no idea what the huge giddy bubble of emotion expanding outwards from her center was composed of) it couldn't have been too bad. Citrine fireworks burst and faded in the blue of his eyes, but his features were still entirely human. "Change," she said.
Spike blinked, customary eloquence fled. "Huh?"
"Change. I want to see all of you."
He looked at her a moment longer, and then the bones of his face shifted beneath her fingers, his canines lengthened into fangs and the demon ridges emerged from his brow, lowering over eyes gone lion-gold. She traced the new lines curiously. She was unused to seeing him like this; unlike most vampires, Spike spent most of his time in human guise, but there was a strange, harsh beauty even in this aspect of him. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time," she said, trailing one finger down his cheek.
His voice was husky. "Yes, love?"
Buffy stared deep into those leonine eyes and whispered in a voice as sultry as she could make it, "Why don't you have any eyebrows in game face?"
Spike exploded in snort of laughter, face melting back into humanity. "Fuck you, Slayer."
She smiled--the teasing one. "We'll see."
"Bitch." Looking at her as if he wanted to eat her whole.
"Pig." Looking at him as if she'd like nothing better.
"You've still got stupid hair."
Buffy twined her fingers in his own thoroughly disordered locks. "You dare dis the hair, bleach boy? This means WAR!"
Spike leaned forward, eyes glittering beneath half-closed lids. "Bring it on, baby." His hands slid down her back, fingers kneading the muscles along her spine. He was growling deep down in his chest, a low purring rumble she'd only heard once or twice before (because really, how often was Spike relaxed and happy at the same time?) The sound vibrated through her whole body, curling her toes as her arms locked around his narrow waist and pulled him closer. Mmmm. Toasty. If this was what a relatively chaste hug felt like, God help her when they actually got around to the lip action-- waitaminute, lip action? Who says there's going to be--
"Guys, Willow's--" Tara stopped, hand flying to her mouth, and the two of them broke apart guiltily. "Um. Awake. Now."
Spike groaned. Buffy whacked him on the shoulder and squirmed out from underneath him, her cheeks aflame. Tara's eyes were darting everywhere and anywhere but the couch. "I w-wasn't, uh, interrupting..."
"No," Spike grumbled, "But if you'll sod off for about fifteen minutes I can fix that."
"Don't start picking out curtains just yet." Buffy tugged her blouse into place. Ego much? Once out of physical contact with the mind-altering substance that was Spike, the Ohmigod I did what with who on the same couch my semi-innocent baby sister is sleeping on? reaction was starting to set in. What, does he think one, uh, comradely, yeah, that was a good word for it, comradely, hug means I'm just going to swoon and tumble into his manly arms and--they are awfully nice arms, all muscley and... Stop that! Spike was just sitting there and grinning at her, doing that maddening thing with his tongue when Tara wasn't looking. "I'm going to go talk to Wills, and then I'm going to take Dawn home, and--"
Big in-no-way-innocent blue eyes blinked up at her. "Does she fancy a fireman's carry, or d'you want me to give you a ride?"
Damn. "I'll think about it."
"You do that, love. I know I'll be thinking about it."
Buffy glared at him to no effect whatsoever, and beat a hasty retreat to the bedroom.

Willow was Willow again, sitting up in the middle of Spike's bed and nibbling on crackers and cheese. Tara had stayed out in the other room with Spike, abandoning Buffy to the mercy of her own good intentions. "So..." Buffy laced her fingers together on her lap and studied her nails intently. "You're feeling better?"
Willow nodded, rolling the edge of the coverlet into little curls with one hand and unrolling it again. "Better in the sense of not completely insane, yes. Otherwise... pretty brain-fried." She wrinkled her nose and lifted up a handful of coverlet. "And I think Spike smokes in bed. I'm going to smell like the Marlboro Man for a week."
"Hey, thanks to Mr. Possess-and-Run I practically bathed in bourbon. Join me in a mutual 'ew.'" Though in certain select instances the combination isn't completely revolting--stop that! "Spike says he ran into the guy who did this to you. His name's Tanner, or at least that's what he's calling himself. Spike thinks he's one of the people Glory brainsucked. There seems to be a whole gang of them on the loose."
"Oh. That's good, I guess. Or not good. But useful. I-I can’t remember much after I started to talk to him. It’s all confused until I woke up here.” Her haunted eyes reflected the candle flames, a muddle of light and dark. “But I can check the name against the hospital's admissions records last spring and see if it matches any of the known victims. Maybe we can find something that'll help us track him down. Plus this thing that took over Tara--got to be a big clue, right?"
"Are you sure you're up to all that?"
Willow summoned up a wan smile and tucked her hair behind her ears. "The Net Witch is all good to go."
"Well, that's good." Buffy licked her lips. "Will... I just wanted to tell you..." This was her night for awkward confessions, it seemed. "About what I said earlier. I'm sorry. Or not for what I said, for the way I said it--I mean, I was angry about what you did, but I shouldn't have--I should have tried to talk to you about it before, not--"
"Is it really that awful?" Willow broke in. Her hands had clenched on the blankets. In the dim light her eyes were the color of moss in deep water, and her voice sounded husky and smudged, like a bad recording. "Being back here. Alive. Is it really so bad that you have to hate me for it?"
"I don't hate you!" Buffy cried, taking the other woman's hands in her own. "I could never hate you, Wills, and that's what makes this so--no, it's not awful. It's not--it's not anything, really. I just feel so... so flat most of the time. Like I'm living behind glass. And every now and then the glass disappears and I'm really in the world again, but the glass always comes back, and the good moments make the rest that much worse--I can't remember where I was when I was dead. I can't even remember if I was. There's this huge hole in me, and I can't..." She trailed off in frustration.
"That's part of the spell." Willow’s voice was small and sad. "I changed the part of the spell where it says 'the gates of Hell shall open,' 'cause, you know, pretty sure you weren't in Hell. But mostly the Scroll of Aberjian was used to bring back people who'd been sent to, well, pretty awful places. The Raising spell's designed to make the subject forget the pains of hell, so they're not completely wild and crazy. Like Angel, when he came back?"
"So thoughtful of it. So I get to forget the pleasures of Heaven, or the world without shrimp, or wherever I was?" Buffy sighed. "I guess it could have been worse."
"Yeah." Willow blew hair out of her eyes. "I could have done something really stupid, like bringing you back to life inside your coffin. But..." A pleading note entered her voice. "Like you said this morning, it's getting better, right? I mean, most of today was good, right? So pretty soon you'll be fine again."
Buffy opened her mouth, but the expression on Willow's face, so full of raw, aching hope--Please don't tell me I've ruined my best friend's life --killed the words aborning. "Yeah, Will," she said, very softly. "I'll be fine."
After all, she wasn't really lying. Maybe she would be, someday.

Dawn sat in the back seat of the DeSoto between Willow and Tara, lulled into a half-doze by the hum of the engine. Occasionally Spike or her sister, up in the front seat, would make some meaningless comment about the route home, or getting together with the rest of the Scoobies tomorrow. None of it was as interesting as the fact that Spike had his arm draped over the back of the front seat, his hand on her sister's shoulder, and was stroking the point of her collarbone with his thumb. And her sister not only hadn't broken his nose but seemed to be scooching across the front seat, getting closer and closer to him.
“I’ve got my keys,” Tara said as the car pulled into the Summers' driveway and the engine rumbled to a halt. She got out and started up the walk to the front porch, stopping half-way. “Willow, do you need help?”
“I’m--well, maybe. Dawn?”
Dawn pried her eyes all the way open and got out with Willow on the street side. Willow made her way rather shakily around the car, leaning on Dawn’s arm for the walk up to the porch. There was no weight to her, as if her ordeal had hollowed her out and all that was left was a Willow-shaped shell. Dawn felt as if she could have picked her up and carried her as easily as Buffy could have.
Tara undid the lock and the deadbolt and ushered Willow inside. “Where’s Buffy?”
Dawn looked over her shoulder. “Still in the car, I think.” She squinted over at the car; a vague shape moved behind the blacked-out windows of the DeSoto. “Buffy?” She hopped down off the porch, walked back over to the driveway, and rapped sharply on the windshield. “Buffy! You in there?”
The car lurched in place, the shocks protesting, and for a second a hand was plastered to the windshield. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! The blat of the horn was followed by a muffled yelp. Dawn jumped back as the door flew open. Spike tumbled out backwards with Buffy on top of him, her hands clutching the lapels of his duster, engaged in major kissage. Red-hot, desperate, someone’s-coming-back-any-minute face-sucking. Spike hit the ground with a thump that would have knocked the air out of anyone who’d needed air, but neither of them seemed to notice the change in scenery.
“Aaaaahhhhh!!!” Dawn clapped her hands over her eyes. “If you guys don’t break it up I’m going to need a parental advisory warning for my own driveway!”
Buffy drew back with a gasp, her eyes wide and stunned, and looked around, obviously trying to figure out how they’d gotten from the front seat to the driveway. Spike folded his arms behind his head and lay there on the concrete with what was quite possibly the most self-satisfied smirk in the history of the world, in no hurry to get her off of him. “Um,” Buffy said. “I, uh, we slipped.”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Duh. Are you going to come in or make out in the driveway all night? Do I need to get the hose?”
Her sister met Spike’s speculative grin with the Look Of Death, scrambled to her feet and dusted off the knees of her jeans. Spike heaved a melodramatic sigh and followed suit, getting back into the car. “See you tomorrow, love?”
“Uh. Yeah. For the date. I mean meeting. I mean at the Magic Box.”
Buffy looked more than a little dazed as the DeSoto roared out of the driveway, to the probable annoyance of the neighbors. “So, uh, Dawn--you saw the, uh...”
“Mutual tonsil swabbing? Hard to miss.” The situation cried out for a little more sisterly hassling. But Spike probably needed all the help he could get in light of the way Buffy's last vampire affair had ended up. Or heck, any of her affairs. Soul or no soul, Angel had been kind of a tool--blowing in with some useless, cryptic warning, getting Buffy all worked up, and disappearing again. Until Buffy’d boned him and he’d lost his soul and gone on a murderous rampage, anyway. Riley had been really cool for awhile, but then he’d gone all weird and left.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Buffy said. “It’s--something else.”
Dawn opened her mouth, looked at Tara, who was still standing saucer-eyed in the doorway, and shrugged. Buffy was freaked about the whole lack of soul thing, and maybe she had a right to be--she'd seen pre-chip Spike kill people, rip their throats out and drink their blood and toss them aside like used juice boxes. Dawn had only heard a lot of stories. Of course she'd seen him kill demons and revel in every blood-soaked minute of it, and if that guy who'd shot Buffy hadn't died it certainly hadn't been for lack of Spike trying, so it wasn't like she was completely naive about him or anything, and even post-chip Spike could be seriously scary when he put his mind to it... but she still liked him better than Angel. At the best of times Angel'd been stiff as a board with Dawn, as if eleven-year-old girls were some sort of weird alien life form he wasn't sure he wanted to communicate with. It had been fun stalking him and Buffy and popping up from behind the bushes with the perennial cry of little sisters everywhere-- "Whatcha doooooin'?"
“Buffy...” Tara seemed to have gotten her voice back. “Are you sure th-that...”
Buffy shook her head. “No. Not sure of anything.”
Dawn put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Whatever it is, I’m good with it.” Buffy looked up at her, startled (and how cool was it that Buffy had to look up at her? Ha!) “I love you, dope. And I really like Spike. So I want you both to be happy.” Despite noble intentions, she couldn’t quite repress a snicker. “And you sure looked like you were happy.”
For some reason that made Buffy look even more surprised. “I was?” She closed the door behind them, started up the stairs, and it was only chance that Dawn was close enough behind her to hear her repeat softly to herself, “I was.”

Buffy burrowed deeper into the covers, hugging her pillow, the sensations of waking muddled up with the fading dream... memory? Arms tightening convulsively arkquoound her, strong enough for her to feel it, strong enough that the pressure of her own embrace elicited a growl of pleasure instead of a wince of pain. A stir of realization: I don't have to hold back. Cool moist velvet of his tongue against hers, deft nervous hands roving along her sides, her back, pulling her closer, never close enough. Scenting her desire, his growl going from contented purr to something savage, primal, dangerous. Deep in her belly a molten internal pulse ignited in response...
She woke with a gasp. Morning sun slanted through her windows, drawing trails of light across the bedspread. She heard voices downstairs, smelled coffee brewing--or reconstituting, or whatever you called it when hot water hit Folger's Instant. Maybe someday she'd get up the nerve to experiment with the coffee maker again. Surely it couldn't be too hard to make it do the drippy thing instead of the running dry and catching fire thing. Coffee, coffee, coffee, think about--Spike.
Buffy rolled over with a groan. She shouldn't be feeling all warm and tingly. Triple plus ungood. She flung the covers aside with a shiver that had nothing to do with the nippy fall air, pulled her robe off the bedpost and struggled into it. Shower. Cold shower. Very cold shower. That worked for guys, right? Into the bathroom. Brush teeth, stare blearily at un-made-up morning Buffy-face in mirror. Remember to take off robe before entering shower.
She almost leaped right through the closed shower door when the icy spray hit her. Abandoning her pursuit of asceticism, she frantically twisted the hot water on. There, that was bearable. Cool, not cold, just like--okay, hot shower. Very hot shower.
In the unforgiving light of morning the events of the previous night were surreal. One minute she was giving a really impressive speech on valuing honesty over kissy-face, and the next she was scarring Dawn permanently with Slayer Porno Theatre. Not that Dawn hadn't spied on her and Angel, or her and Riley for that matter, half a million times, the little perv. But they'd been boyfriends, and Spike was--Spike. And oh, God, Tara'd seen the whole thing. Both times. Tara probably doesn't even have baser urges. She's like a Platonic solid. Or something Greek, anyway. Please let them all have been eaten by Zagros demons before I come down...
One advantage of waking up late was that Dawn had already left for school. Maybe if she was lucky everyone else would be gone, too. An hour later, having determined that showers of any temperature were not much good for anything besides the removal of dirt, and after pulling out everything in her closet at least twice in a futile hunt for something that didn't scream 'I'm having wet dreams about Spike,' Buffy trotted downstairs in jeans and a camel-colored cowl-necked sweater, hair wrapped up in a towel and stomach inhabited by a large flock of butterflies.
Much to her chagrin, though it was almost ten, Willow and Tara were still in the kitchen. Didn't they have classes anymore? Her feet slowed, then stopped, and she stood wavering on tip-toe on the third stair from the bottom, hand on the railing and ears straining to catch Tara's low, concerned voice.
"...another vampire? No matter how much help he's been lately, it's only been a year since he was trying to kill us. Hard to believe it's not some kind of--of vampire fetish."
Willow didn't sound quite as dire. "Maybe--love the thing you kill, and all? That would be deeply psychological. But, benefit of the doubt--she told me she just likes him. And he's saved her life almost as many times as he's tried to kill her now, which, big plus. Besides, he is wicked cute."
"If you say so." Tara sounded dubious. "I'm more worried about him being plain wicked. I know he’s pretty much non-practicing evil at the moment--" A thoughtful pause. "Cute, really? He's always seemed a little funny-looking to me. His head's too big for the rest of him. And he's kind of scrawny."
On the staircase, Buffy's eyes went green with outrage. Jeez, Tara, I thought you were gay, not blind. Just because Spike wasn't the poster boy for steroid abuse... And I do not have a thing for vampires. I'm dogged by vampires with a thing for me.
Willow snickered. “Hey, ‘compact yet muscular,’ remember? Just ask Xander.” She went on, almost regretfully, "I don't think we need to worry. Not like it isn't doomed anyway, with the ghost of Angel past still looming over her love life. It messed things up with Riley, it'll mess things up with Spike. I really feel sorry for the poor guy."
Buffy's fingers tightened on the bannister; Willow couldn't have come up with a better one-two punch if she'd practiced for a week. Not going to break it. Can't afford the carpenter bills. She stomped on the last two steps as loudly as she could and walked into the kitchen. Willow and Tara were both sitting at the kitchen table, solemn as a pair of owls, all trace of speculation vanished. They looked up in unison as she came in. There was a platter of croissants on the table into which severe incursions had been made, which hinted that they'd been waiting for her for some time. She flashed them a jittery little smile. "Hey, guys."
No reply. They'd been chatty enough when she wasn't there. With an uneasy glance at her housemates, Buffy went to the refrigerator. She dithered over cherry or blueberry yogurt for a minute before going for the cherry. She rescued her favorite coffee mug from the sink and rinsed it off before dumping a generous teaspoonful of instant coffee into it. She filled it with water and stuck it in the microwave. "Hola? Wilkommen? Bienvenue? Willow, how are you feeling?"
Willow's face was shadowed for a moment and she seemed to shrink in on herself. "I kinda know how you felt during that Cruciamentum test."
"Well, I'm sure you'll..." Buffy trailed off. "It's not permanent, right? You just wore yourself out blowing doors open?"
Willow forced a smile. "Yeah. All better in no time. But enough about me."
Buffy tried her best to look blank. She's been doing that so much lately, why couldn't she pull it up now when she needed it? She felt as if Spike had peeled off a couple of layers of skin with that kiss, leaving her painfully tender to the touch. The witches exchanged uncomfy looks. "Buffy," Tara said, "Last night--"
Buffy dropped into a free chair and buried her face in her hands, peeking out at the two of them between her fingers. "Isn't it a little too early for last night?" She essayed another feeble smile. "Guess not. Silly me. First thing we need to do is like you said, Will, see if we can track down this Tanner guy--who he was, and how he's doing this, and where he is now. Second thing--"
"We didn't mean that part of last night," Willow broke in. "More the last part. With the, you know..."
Buffy sat back and folded her arms. "Spit-swapping? Block it from your minds. I have. Stress. It was stress over Willow. Also possibly a side effect of the inhalation of bourbon fumes."
Tara went as red as Willow's hair. "Why you did it isn't any of our business," she said.
Willow nodded vigorously in agreement. "We won't even think about thinking about asking."
The microwave beeped. Buffy ignored it. "Glad you feel that way. Really not ready to dish at this precise moment." Lost use of personal pronouns. Very bad sign.
Tara clasped her hands on the table in front of her and kept her eyes firmly fixed upon her left thumbnail. "We just needed--we thought--Buffy, I know you've been, um, I-I said last year I'd be there if you ever needed to talk about anything, so if you do, I still am. And Willow too, of course! We--we just want you to be sure you know what you're getting into."
The silence stretched from seconds into minutes, until broken by the scrape of Buffy's chair as she got up to get her now-lukewarm coffee. She sat back down and dunked a croissant in the mug. "Let's see." She bit the coffee-sodden end off the croissant and began ticking off points with the remaining pastry. "Spike is a soulless vampire restrained from killing people only by a piece of government hardware with an uncertain expiration date, and because he has the hots for me. If the chip fails, I may have to kill him. If the chip doesn't fail but he decides he doesn't love me after all, I may have to kill him." She turned a wide-eyed look on the other two. "That about cover it?"
Willow and Tara did another synchronized squirm. "Um..."
"It's just..." Willow gave Tara an agonized look. "Buffy. You know I like Spike as much as anyone--well, except you of course, since me? so not with the kissing--but someone's got to say it. How long did it take you to work up to killing Angelus? How many people died in the meantime?"
Buffy flinched. Oh, dirty pool, Rosenberg... "It's different," she said. Her throat had gone dry. "I loved Angel."
Tara looked skeptical. "And you don't love Spike."
Buffy became deeply absorbed in unwinding the layers of her croissant. She shrugged. "No." Not yet. Maybe never. Maybe five minutes from now. We're running a pool; who wants three PM Friday?
There were things Tara obviously wanted to say; Buffy could see them bubbling inside her, but Tara didn't say them. Didn't have to; a small self-critical voice in the back of her own head had them on repeating loop already. Spike only wants you because A) he wants to get back at Angel for stealing Dru B) He's obsessed with Slayers C) There's nothing better on telly D) All of the above. You only want Spike because A) You've got some sick vampire fetish B) You're an enormous slut C) The famous Slayer death wish D) All of the above. If by some outside chance he really does love you, you'll mess it up anyway, just like you messed up with every single other man you've ever loved. Lather, rinse, repeat. "Look guys, if I go off the rails and you shove me back on, I'll thank you later. But right now I'm not even on the train yet." She pulled the tab off the top of her yogurt and plopped a spoonful onto the last bite of croissant. "It's just one kiss."
Willow made an apologetic grimace. "When in one day you go from all 'This can never be!' to wild passionate vampire kissage on the driveway... I worry, you know? And not just about you, about Spike too." She leaned forward, conspiratorial. "So, was he any good? I mean, from the moaning and slurpy noises I’m guessing yes, but--" Tara cleared her throat and Willow clapped a hand over her mouth, looking guilty. "Just asking." She mouthed 'Talk later!' behind Tara's back.
Tara still didn't look happy. "If you don't have any feelings for Spike, should you be... encouraging him?"
"I didn't say no feelings!" Buffy smacked her mug down on the table, sloshing coffee onto the newspaper. "There are feelings! Lots of feelings! With Spike there is nothing but feelings! Ow!" She grabbed a napkin and mopped hot coffee off her front. Now she'd have to change shirts. "I just don't know which feelings they are." She sighed. "Look--what I had with Angel... I can never do that again. I've tried, right? It doesn't work. I don't have that kind of love in me any more. Trust me, outside of the fact that they're both the same sex and species, Spike and Angel are as different as night and day, and I could never feel the same way about Spike."
She stabbed her spoon into the heart of the yogurt. It was true. As far as it went.

Late Friday afternoon at the Magic Box. The DeSoto skidded to a stop in front of the shop, and Spike leaped out of the car, flung a blanket over his head, and dashed across the sunlit expanse of sidewalk. He yanked the door open so fast he almost twisted the handle off, and dove inside to the accompaniment of the shop bell. There was a perfectly good tunnel leading into the Magic Box's basement, but it meandered, and he'd been in a hurry. He had people--well, person--well, Buffy--to see, and damned if he was going to let a little sunshine take him out of his way, at least for the approximately thirty seconds a vampire his age could take it before starting to smoulder.
Anya was behind the counter breaking out a few more rolls of quarters for the change drawer of the cash register, taking the opportunity to fondle the shiny coins while no one was paying attention. She looked up, took in the arrival of the sun-scorched vampire, murmured, "If you catch the greeting cards on fire, Spike, you're paying for them," and went back to her receipts.
"Love you too, pet," Spike growled, pulling the slightly charred army blanket off his head. He slouched over to the back of the store, where Rupert Giles sat at the circular table in the book section, going through the pile of neat, color-coordinated folders filled with neat, indexed notes in front of him. He tossed the blanket under the table, and sat down opposite the Watcher. Neither spoke for a moment. At last Spike said, "You heard?"
Giles took off his glasses. "It was on the radio this morning. I hardly consider myself a sentimentalist, but I confess I spent the whole morning listening to Rubber Soul."
"Bloody waste." Spike produced a flask from the interior pocket of his duster, and unscrewed the top. "To George." He tossed back a swallow and handed it to Giles, who followed suit.
"To George."
"Who?" Anya asked. "Is this some English ritual I'm not aware of?"
Vampire and Watcher turned twin gazes of laser death on her, and then Giles shook his head. "Never mind, Anya. I believe he was before your time. Well." He glanced at the two cassette tapes beside the pile of folders, and sighed. "I'd been hoping to go over the last few sessions and clarify a few points, but it appears that the last few sessions have yet to be transcribed."
Spike made a mock-sorrowful noise. "Pity, that. Guess we'll be forced to do something interesting instead."
"Which would naturally preclude your participation," Giles said with champagne dryness. Spike smirked at him and tucked his flask away again. Move it along, nothing to see here. Giles adjusted his glasses and gave the cassettes a severe look. "I must speak to Willow about this. If she's unable to make time for this project due to her schoolwork, I'll ask the Council to assign us a secretary." He slid a fresh cassette into the recorder, hit the play button, and said into the microphone, "Interview with the--I'm sorry, I can't say it--William the Bloody, a.k.a Spike, conducted by Rupert Giles on November 30, 2001. Session six." He clicked the pause button. "I don't suppose I can convince you to give your real surname this time?"
Spike lazed back in the chair and folded his arms across his chest, obstinacy in every line of his body. "You suppose correctly. I told you when we started this, none of your Council's bloody business who my family was. I'll spill my guts about whatever you care to hear after 1880, but anything prior to my turning's off limits. Take it or leave it. And speaking of taking it, I'm not doing this out of the goodness of my heart." He held out a hand. "Where's my honorarium?"
Giles sighed and pulled out his wallet, and counted out five twenties into the vampire's palm. "Mm. One can but try. Since one of the purposes of this study is to document the survival of aspects of the host personality in the post-turning vampire, it would be immensely helpful if we had some idea of what the human William the Bloody was like."
Spike rolled his eyes. It had been a little galling to discover just how patchy, incomplete, and downright inaccurate the Council's dossier on him was--not that he hadn't started a lot of the contradictory stories himself in the early years of the twentieth century, when he'd been trying to establish a reputation for himself apart from Angelus and Darla, but weren't these Council chaps supposed to be vampire boffins? "All present and accounted for, minus the annoying consciency bits. If you're all that keen to find out, exercise your massive brain and--"
"Actually, presuming you gave the correct date for your death, I can have the Council access Scotland Yard's records for persons discovered dead by violence on and immediately after that day," Giles said with a wintry smile at Spike's discomfited look. He began the recording again. "If I recall correctly, we left off in...?"
Spike gave up. He never should have agreed to cooperate, but cash was cash, and it wasn't that often that he had a chance to acquire some in a completely legitimate fashion. The downside was that eventually Giles was going to pick up enough clues to discover his real name, and... well, what if he did? Not as if he'd been important enough in life to merit more than a two-line obituary tucked away in some obscure corner of the Times . William the not so Bloody, born 1852, died 1880, accomplished bugger all in between. Finally, some good came of being a complete non-entity. "New York. Dru and I were hunting the Battery that year, though we could have gone anywhere, done anything--you wouldn't sodding well believe the number of drifters there were about. We hadn't eaten so well since the influenza epidemic during the Great War--God's truth, we could kill two or three people a day for weeks and no one'd notice. It was like that everywhere. Whole bloody country on the move, hoping things'd be better in the next town over, and the locals more relieved than not when some hobo turned up stiff and minus a few pints, 'cause there's one less stranger to be knocking at their door looking for handouts and work that wasn't to be had. We had this cold-water flat in--"
His mind started drifting almost immediately. There were few things that pleased Spike so much as the sound of his own voice, but today his attention was elsewhere, on the memory of warm hands and warm lips and grey-green eyes gone hazy with passion, and recollections of seventy-year-old kills couldn't compete. He hadn't expected her to...any of it.
He had no romantic illusions about what it all meant--it was all heat and desire on her part, the painful prickling of a numb body and soul coming back to life. It would burn wild and bright and hot and then be gone, leaving him--one way or another--in ashes. So much more than he'd hoped for, so very, very much less than he wanted... but he'd take it. Oh, yes, he'd take it, because who knew when that flame would be snuffed out again? Better burned than left in the dark. He glanced at the clock on the shop wall again. Three-thirty-seven. Twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds until Buffy walked in the door. He licked his lips and realized that Giles was staring at him strangely. He had absolutely no idea what he'd just said. Oh, well. He always had more fun with these interviews when Dawn was around to play suitably horrified audience, anyway; Giles lacked an appreciation for Grand Guignol. "So I killed 'em and I ate 'em, the end. Rupert, what are you doing about the Slayer's salary?"
Giles turned off the cassette player. "Not that it's any of your business, but I am working on it." He took off his glasses and began to polish them.
Spike jogged one foot against the nearest chair leg. "What's the holdup? Just put her on the bloody payroll."
Giles shrugged, though the set of his shoulders gave more than a little hint that he was as annoyed about the situation as Spike was. "The Council's still considering the matter. There's no precedent for an adult Slayer living independently of her Watcher. Little enough precedent for an adult Slayer. Few last as long as Buffy has."
"Yeh, takes a licking and..." Buffy. Licking. Rrrrowr . Giles was staring at him again. Twenty-one minutes and forty-two seconds. "Never mind. They're making her sweat because she had them by the short and curlies last year, aren't they?"
"The thought has crossed my mind," Giles admitted. "I doubt we'd be seeing quite this much red tape and paperwork had Buffy been slightly, er, more tactful in her dealings with them. Once I return to England and can deal with the matter in person I expect things will clear up." He left unsaid the Or Ripper will have a talk with someone part, but Spike didn't need to hear it. Giles would have made one hell of a vampire. The Watcher gave the untranscribed cassettes an irritated glance. "Assuming this project ever ends and allows me to leave for England, of course."
Spike shrugged. The thought of seeing London again was appealing--he hadn't been home for decades--but if Giles couldn't manage to live an interesting life in California, Spike doubted he'd have much better luck in Bath. And if he hadn't figured out that Willow was dawdling in order to keep him in the States as long as possible, Spike didn't feel obliged to enlighten him. "Cheer up, Rupes, I've only got so much life to narrate. Though if you'll keep paying me I'll be happy to start making things up."
The bell on the front door jangled, and Xander bounced in, sporting an impressive collection of bandages on both hands. "Hey, guys," he said, leaning over the counter and kissing Anya on the top of her head. He came over and flopped down at the table. "Hey, G-Man. Where's the Buffster?"
Spike smirked and waved a completely healed hand at him. Giles transferred the irritated glance from the cassettes to Xander. "She and Willow and Tara should be here shortly. And don't call me that."
Seventeen minutes, thirty-one seconds. Spike fidgeted in his chair. Giles, having learned the hard way that quizzing Spike on anything when he was in the throes of one of his hyperactive fits was worse than useless, shoved the tape recorder to one side and began going through the folders again. Spike got up and started pacing, back and forth from the table to the ladder leading to the loft where the restricted grimoires were kept. He needed a cigarette. The alley out back was in shadow at this time of day, but if he left he might miss her arrival, and he didn't want to miss one more minute of Buffy if he could help it. Of course he wasn't certain how she was going to react. Since Dawn and Tara had been witness to their interrupted snogging session, she couldn't get cold feet and pretend the whole thing had never happened. Or could she? The Niblet didn't exactly count, and Tara was the Black Hole of Calcutta of discretion. She probably wouldn't breathe a word of the incident without Buffy's permission. Bloody hell.
The doorbell jangled again and Buffy walked in (twelve minutes and fifty-two seconds early, thank God he hadn't gone for that cigarette!) followed by Willow and Tara, the former looking tired and the latter uncomfortable. Buffy was wearing that red halter top that made him want to bite through the straps. She'd done something to her hair, too, lightened it up a little, and it curled softly around her shoulders and the smooth creamy column of her neck. He grinned at her. Couldn't help it.
She brushed right by him. Cut him cold, wouldn't meet his eyes. Buffy skirted the table and sat down between Giles and Xander, eyes still downcast, white teeth nibbling on her lower lip. Sod it all. She was going to back out on him; he could feel it in his bones--going to insist that the whole thing was an aberration and leave him to the cold comfort of Pearly Palm and her five sisters again. God knows what he'd been expecting; not hearts and flowers, surely, but some kind of acknowledgment. She was having second thoughts, and she expected him to wag his tail and slink back to his doghouse until called for. Well, bugger that. He'd tasted blood and he wasn't going to give up this easily.
Willow and Tara took their seats, relegating him, as usual, to the background of the bookshelves. Willow flipped her laptop open and began to finger-dance across the keyboard. Spike hitched himself up on the railing of the stairs and glowered. Honesty, is it? Do as I say, not as I do, eh, Slayer? We'll see about that.

Safely ensconced behind a wall of Scoobies, Buffy kept her eyes attentively on Xander as he finished narrating his and Spike's adventures of the previous night. In her peripheral vision, Spike favored her with an insolent raising of one brow. He was mad. What right did he have to be mad? Not like she'd signed a pre-nup with him or anything. It was just one stupid (glorious, mind-melting) kiss. Xander finished his story and Tara and Willow launched into theirs. Don't look at Spike. Look at table, not at gorgeous pouting vampire. She folded her hands. "So--in short, we've got a crew of Glory's left-over crazies running around sucking brains right and left."
"It's not just that," Xander said. "If this Tanner guy creates a new crazy every time he does this mind-suck thing for the whole crew, then when do the crazies reach critical mass? One person won't be enough, and he'll have to start grabbing two or three at a time. This could get out of control."
Tara was doodling on a legal pad, making a little sketch of the ritual as Xander had described it, her fair brows dipping together. "It sounds like they were using a really weirded-out version of the spell Willow used to cure me--they're taking mental energy from one person and transferring it to another." She tapped the pen on one of the curlicues. "I wish you remembered more of the details."
"Well, sor-ree," Xander grumbled. "Next time I'm being sacrificed I'll ask them to untie my hands so I can take notes."
Willow produced another folder, this one full of printed web documents and photos, laid it in the center of the table and flipped it open. Buffy leaned forward and picked one of them up. It was definitely a younger version of the man she'd confronted in the cemetery, a graduation photo, maybe. He looked bright and hopeful. "Daniel Evelyn Tanner," Willow said. "Born May 22, 1956, right here in Sunnydale. Attended Sunnydale High, graduated near the top of his class, left for Yale in 1974. Nothing more about him until 1992, when he came back to Sunnydale to live a completely uneventful life. He's in the phone book and the voting records, but he seems to be retired. Until Glory captured him and turned him into one of her brain-dead minions. He was admitted to Sunnydale General Hospital on April 16, 2001 for observation for schizoid behavior, and disappeared with the rest of the crazies in May. And that's the last official word on Mr. Tanner--missing and presumed dead."
Xander snorted. "But actually alive and confirmed nuts."
Tara bit meditatively at her thumbnail. "I don't understand where the loa fits in. Most of the traditional practitioners in Southern California are into Santeria, not Voudoun."
“Is it of the bad? This loa thing?” Xander asked. “Some kind of demon?”
Giles looked up. “Not precisely. Loa or Lwa are Haitian ancestral spirits or gods, New World versions of the Orisha of Western Africa, which are primarily Yoruban or Dahomeyan in origin, and while there are some unsavory aspects--”
“They’re a mixed bag, good and bad wise,” Tara finished.
“Quite. Ritual possession plays a large role in their worship, so this was not necessarily an inimical move.”
"We'd have known if this Tanner was a practicing houngan," Anya said. "Every witch, wizard, and sorcerer in Sunnydale orders supplies through the Magic Box."
"Right," Tara agreed. "I looked some stuff up today too. What he did last night wasn't a real Voudoun ritual--no drums, no offerings, no invocation, no nothing. Ghede normally wouldn't come if he was called like that--no self-respecting loa would. So either Daniel Tanner is an incredibly powerful wizard, strong enough to summon what amounts to a minor god without the proper ritual--or Ghede came because he wanted to. Because he had something important to tell us." She looked at Buffy. "What exactly did he say to you?"
Buffy shrugged. "He gave me three questions--I asked what was wrong with Willow and how to fix her, mainly--and he gave me the kind of totally useless answers I usually get from random mythical creatures and then told me that I was asking the wrong questions anyway." Buffy began picking the eraser of the nearest pencil to shreds. "Since Willow's fine now, it was a pretty pointless encounter all around. If there were any shining beacons of answers in there, I'd be shouting them from the rooftops, promise."
"You should try to remember exactly what he said," Tara persisted. "Ghede's advice sounds pointless or strange sometimes, but it's always accurate."
Buffy stuck out her lower lip. "Right. For an advice-giving god, he was a complete pig."
Tara shrugged. "It's a Trickster figure thing. He's dead. The dead are beyond punishment.”
“Don’t I wish,” Spike muttered.
Tara continued, “They can do and say what the living don't dare. But the advice is good, and whatever he said could be vital, so if you can remember the exact wording--"
"I'll try. But right now we have to figure out what to do about the brain-eating non-zombies. We can't just kill them. This isn't really their fault."
"It's ours," Tara said. "It never even occurred to me to wonder what happened to all the others...and it should have."
She was really upset, Buffy noted. Had she ever felt like that? Spike's soup kitchen jibe still bothered her. She took her duties as Slayer seriously, but had she ever really felt that kind of personal concern for the people she was protecting? She saved lives because it was the right thing to do, but she couldn't say she got much personal satisfaction out of it anymore, if she ever had. Was this how Spike felt, going through the motions of goodness because he couldn't do anything else?
He was still there, still looking, pale eyes calling to hers. Do not look back--
Xander stirred uneasily, his hand grasping Anya's. "We were all pretty thrashed that night."
"I know--but all the rest of the summer?" Tara shook her head. "They've been living like that for months, trying to take care of themselves--I know what it's like, being like that! I should have--we should have--"
Guilty silence reigned for a moment, to be broken by Spike's impatient, "Should've. Didn't. Cry me a river. What do we do about it now?"
Buffy shot him a daggery look. Did he have to rub her nose in the fact that he didn't give a flying flip? "We try to fix them. Will--what about the spell? Is the one they're using defective? You don't have to go out and turn someone into a drooling idiot every two weeks to keep Tara going."
"I'm pretty sure this Tanner guy's using an inefficient version of the spell. Maybe he overheard me doing it and didn't catch all the words or something. My version's a permanent fix, but the energy's still gotta come from somewhere. Someone. I'm working on it." Willow's tone was a trifle defensive still; she hunched over the laptop, all her attention on the screen. "But like I said before, the original mental energy's gone, with Glory. Unless... maybe I could draw on some other kind of energy..." Her eyes went distant, then sparked with renewed enthusiasm. "Ooooh. That's a thought." She snatched Tara's pen and started scribbling, oblivious to Tara's sudden air of worry.
Buffy sat back, relieved. "Coolness. The big gun fires again."
Spike raised an eyebrow, slid off the bannister and sauntered over to the table, hands in pockets. "Forgetting something, aren't we? While Will plays Albert Schweitzer this Tanner bloke's out rounding up more brain food."
"Not forgetting, Spike." She began tapping the mangled pencil on the table. "I just haven't decided what the best course of action is yet. We can't just take him out. He's human."
"I dunno, Slayer, quite a few other things seem to have slipped your mind lately."
The acid in his voice snapped her head up to meet his eyes at last. Buffy shoved her chair back, jumped to her feet and advanced on him. Spike stood his ground in that hipshot slouch that she thought of as his hunting pose. She glared up into his half-lidded eyes, three-inch heels ensuring that she met him only a few inches shy of nose to nose. She could beat him black and blue if she wanted to and he couldn't lift a finger to stop her; where the hell did he get off looking so intimidating? "I haven't forgotten anything."
"Really... love?"
That insolent drawl went straight to the beast in the back of her brain that was responsible for fighting and... other stuff, caught it by the scruff of the neck and made it hiss in rage. She hadn't given in to the urge to hit him for a long time, but she was itching to do so now; there were times when the only thing that could sum up the tangled mess of emotions he roused in her was a good swift punch in the nose. Everyone else was watching them with uneasy confusion. She bared her teeth in something an uninformed observer might have taken for a smile. "Excuse me," she said, piling on the sugar, "I need to talk with Spike in private."
She grabbed his arm, feeling his muscles tense under her fingers, and dragged him behind the counter, out the back door of the shop, into the alley. Too familiar, the scraps of paper, the dirty concrete, the crunch of grit and broken glass beneath the soles of her feet, the faint nauseating smell of spoiled food from the dumpster behind the Espresso Pump down the block. Why did she end up having so many conversations with Spike in alleys? "What is with you?"
Spike had straightened, weight shifted forward on his toes, watching her like a cat with a mouse. The faint bitter smirk on his lips was insufficient mask for the hurt in his eyes. "Gonna hit me, love?" he purred. "Just like old times? Been awhile, hasn't it? You go right ahead. Give it to me good. You know you want to."
She didn't stop to think why the words were familiar, just lashed out in blind fury. Spike dodged, but she was just a hair faster than he was, and her fist clipped his jaw; she felt his teeth graze her knuckles. Spike fell back with that mad grin, licking his own blood from his lips, feral yellow flickering in his eyes. A useless, toothless threat; he couldn't bite--or yes, he could, just not with his fangs, bite deeper than she wanted to think about. Buffy stood there in the lee of the dumpster, fists clenched, chest heaving, on the verge of tears for no reason she could name. "What's wrong with you, Spike?"
He shook himself, rolling his shoulders. "With me? Take a sodding guess."
"This is what it's been all along, isn't it? You really do get off on me beating you up!" She was going to be sick, she was sure of it. And she was not, not, not going to hit him again, not going to give him what he wanted.
Spike began circling her. "I get off on fighting you, you stupid bint. You and this lovely piece of silicon in my brain won't let me get off any other way. And you get off fighting me--don't deny it, I can smell you getting all hot and bothered. You like whaling on a bloke who can't hit back? You like it better than what we did last night?" His voice was a dead-serious snarl. "If I could hit back I dunno as I could choose one dance over the other either. But you're going to have to. I know you'll never love me. I'm going to love you till I'm dust, but I'm damned if I'm going to sit for this. I'll take the touch any way I can get it, but I get this much say--kiss me or kick me, but it's one or the other. You can't have both, not till I can have both too."
With a sob she lunged at him. Spike ducked the blow, feinted left and dodged behind her. Buffy spun to follow him. "Make your mind up, Slayer." He blocked her incoming fist, dodged her kick and caught her by the heel, using her momentum to flip her over--all defensive moves, skating on the narrow edge of what the chip classified an attack. She twisted in mid-air, landing in a crouch, kicking out from it and knocking Spike's feet out from under him. He was rolling even as he hit the ground, and bounced to his feet breathing hard and fast, but far too shallowly for someone who really needed the oxygen. "What's it going to be, Slayer? This? Or the other?"
Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. She'd died--twice now, for crying out loud! Was her life going to be like this forever, slipping back into the same old patterns like falling into quicksand, jumping back on the same endless merry-go-round? God knew she she hadn't asked to come back, but she was here--did it have to be the same thing all over again? Couldn't she make it different this time, somehow? I don't love him. He can't love me, or-- No, she couldn't even think about that, couldn't pull up those three-year-old memories that still throbbed and ached at certain words, certain glances, like shrapnel healed into an old wound. I can't, because it would be wrong...
The dead are beyond punishment.
No, they weren't. Not hardly. But she was on her third life now. Her life, no one else's. Not Tara's, not Willow's, certainly not Angel's. Hers, to make of what she would--what she dared.
Spike was still there when she opened her eyes; giving her a long, anything but expressionless stare. He was always going to be there, watching her back, irritating the hell out of her, making her life... a life. If she let him.
Wrong was a world, a life, without Spike in it. "This, Spike. It's going to be this." She lunged for him again, and he didn't make a move to stop her.

Truth to tell, he'd expected another punch, and didn't have the heart to block it. But her hands were open, and her fingers warm on the back of his neck as she grasped him, pulled him down, and his hands were tangled in the tawny silk of her hair and her sweet vicious mouth was savaging his, lips tongue teeth devouring one another, she blood to him, he air and food and water to her. Their bodies spoke to one another, pressed up against the brickwork, old tensions giving way to new ones--now that they had this it was impossible not to want more. Soon. Now. How did this cris-cross thing go? In about ten seconds he would bite through the damn straps. Her hands left his shoulders and he growled in protest until he realized that they were tearing at his belt buckle and why in hell had he been such a git as to wear button-fly jeans today--
Grrrrrrrrrrrraaaaarrr .
Buffy gasped into his chest, "Ah! Yeah! Do that!"
Spike froze, fingers tightening on her shoulders. "Love..." He was having trouble getting enough breath to form the words. "That wasn't me."
She turned in his arms, just in time to see the wall of cinnamon-gold fur rolling by. Bear. Big bear. Fucking enormous bear. The bear looked at the two of them and shook its massive head, rubbery black lips peeling away from a set of fangs that put Spike's to shame. The loading dock of the store across the alley was faintly visible through its sides. It rumbled at them again, then lurched into motion with a contemptuous grunt. A minute later it was gone.
Spike collapsed back against the wall, shivering. Buffy stared at him. "Spike. Spike! You're hyperventilating! Stop breathing!" She looked up at him, perplexed. "I've seen you take on fire-breathing, spine-covered, acid-dripping Things five times your size with a song in your heart. What's the deal with Winnie the Pooh?"
"I don't like bears, all right?" He straightened up and peered cautiously around the dumpster. There was no sign of the bear. "It's a bloody childhood trauma."
Buffy bit her lip, trying to hide a smile. "You didn't have a childhood."
Spike opened his mouth, decided that the argument about whether he was or wasn't William wasn't worth getting into at this point, and prowled round to the other side of the dumpster, checking for bear tracks. "Well, if it's not mine, I wish to hell that ponce William had taken it with him when he left. Just be glad it's not sodding bunnies." He took a deep breath. "I think that's killed the mood."
Buffy wrinkled her nose, taking in their surroundings. "Just as well. I guess we should go back in." She stuck out her hand, as much a challenge as a peace offering. "Come on. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it all the way."
Did that mean what he thought it meant? He must have let the astonished hope leaping up within him show in his face, for Buffy's eyes grew suspiciously bright. She took a deep breath of her own, and he could tell she was shakier than she was letting on. "I--I told you I'd never been ashamed to know you. So... I shouldn't be ashamed about... wanting to know you better."
He took her hand, feeling it tremble in his until he gave it a squeeze. She pressed close to him for a moment, holding him with fierce strength while he buried his nose in the crook of her neck and breathed her in. He wasn't fool enough to think this meant smooth sailing ever after, but he was fool enough that, for this moment, he didn't care. She broke away reluctantly, General Buffy again, and hand in hand they went back into the shop to face the enemy. Buffy dropped his hand as the entered, walked to the center of the floor, put both hands on her hips and cocked her head at the others.
"Small announcement," she said. "You know how we aren't sure how the loa fits in? Well, make more fitting room--there's now a Chumash bear spirit in the alley." She paused, forefinger pressed to her lips as if remembering something. "Also, I was gonna do the whole secret doomed star-crossed affair thing, but you know what? I've given this a lot of thought, and I just don't have the energy for one of those right now."
Everyone except Willow and Tara looked at her in puzzlement. With an expression of grim determination, Buffy turned, marched back over to Spike, wrapped both arms around his neck, pulled his head down and picked up where they'd left off.
Now this he hadn't expected. Spike broke into an amazed grin as her small warm body pressed against him and his arms went round her--reflex, almost; could you develop a reflex in less than twenty-four hours? Apparently so. Their mouths met with less urgency this time, both of them knowing now for certain that it wasn't the first-last-only, that they had all the time in the world to nip and taste and nibble and explore the really interesting effects you could get with a thirty-four degree difference in body temperature.
"Willow!" Xander and Giles yelled in outraged unison. Tara looked distressed. Anya looked up, shrugged, and went back to counting receipts.
“It's not my fault, it's not my fault!" Willow squeaked, hiding behind the screen of the laptop. "I didn't do anything this time! I promise!"
Buffy pulled back for air, cheeks pink, eyes bright, her heart going at trip-hammer speed; the sound was music. She glared defiantly around the room. "In orderNo spell. In my right mind. If he misbehaves, I dust him." Her eyes came home to his, And that would kill me writ so plain in her gaze that his heart wrenched within him in startled pain; did she know what her eyes were saying? "Anything else is nobody's business but ours. Deal. Now that that's out of the way, bear-analyzing time."
Spike looked down at her, a smile lurking about the corners of his mouth. "My, Slayer, you certainly do know how to romance a fellow."
"Wait, wait, wait, you can't just say 'Deal' and leave it at that!" Xander objected. "Is there straddling involved here? Because I absolutely draw the line at straddling."
He'd expected this from Harris. He really had. They'd gotten to tolerate each other over the summer, but Harris could never quite get over the vampire thing, and after Buffy's return Spike had been the recipient of all the frustrated anger he couldn't take out on Willow. One night of chasing through a park wasn't going to bridge that gap. So why was he surprised at how much it stung? "Ah, here it comes." Spike slipped a proprietary arm around Buffy's waist and went for the counter-attack. "Is that a bit of the green-eyed monster I hear? The vampire's good enough to cheat at pool with, but I don't want him shagging my Slayer?"
Under other circumstances the shade of purple Xander was turning would have been exceptionally entertaining. "Damn straight! How are we supposed to handle this? Do we say 'Hi, Buffy, congratulations on your new demon lover, and by the way, have you seen a psychiatrist lately?' Or do we do the awkward pretending not to notice what's going on, and try to lure her to the psychiatrist with a trail of jelly doughnuts?" Xander rounded on Giles, who was polishing his glasses so violently it was a wonder he hadn't worn through the lenses. "Giles! Tell her she can't do this!"
The Watcher's face might have been carved from granite. "At what point in this conversation has Buffy been replaced by someone who takes my orders?” He put the glasses back on, studying the two of them. “Buffy--I made it my policy to keep out of your personal life when you were a girl, as long as it didn’t interfere with your calling. I see no reason to change that policy now. I won’t deny that I find this... most inadvisable. I fear it will end in tragedy--again. But if this is your choice--"
"It is." The two words held every ounce of Summers determination in her, and they were the sweetest things Spike could remember hearing in over a century.
“Then I accept it. As for you--” He looked Spike up and down. “For better or worse, you are not the vampire Angel was. See to it that you remain so. You know to exactly what lengths I’m willing to go to protect her.”
Spike nodded slowly. He wasn’t positive, but he thought the odds were better than even that he’d just been given a compliment as well as a warning. “Wouldn’t expect any less.”
Buffy strode over to the table, tugging him along in her wake. "Now. Are we going to discuss demony stuff or argue about my love life?"
Willow waved one hand apologetically. "Um, Buff, your love life is demony stuff."
Buffy considered for a moment, then slipped her arm around Spike in turn and smiled up at him impishly. "So it is. End of argument."

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