There was an awkward silence. "Maybe we should take a break from the research," Tara said. Expressions of relief broke out all around the table.
"Great idea." Buffy tightened her arm around Spike's middle with the rebellious glee of a small child bouncing on the good sofa. He couldn't blame her; he had the dizzy feeling that this was all a figment of his overactive imagination. If he pulled her closer, would she disappear? The slight, strong body in his arms remained flesh and blood as he draped both arms round her shoulders, and the rebuff he still half-expected didn’t come. Elated, he bent his head, nuzzling her ear. She tensed a little, then leaned into him defiantly, shoulders against his chest, the sweet curve of her ass pressing into his crotch. Ha ha, I'm touching Buffy! Touch touch touch! Felt good. Felt wonderful. Felt like... felt like the mood was making a remarkable comeback. "In fact, I think we should try to find out more about all the, uh, bears and things, and if there's any--" Buffy gasped slightly as his arousal became more evident, straining towards her warmth. "--connections. Spike and I can search--" She cast a quick look at the front door; still sunlight out. "--the tunnels."
Spike nodded. “I’m game.” Without further ado Buffy broke for the door to the basement, Spike right behind her.
Willow called after them, "Do you need any he--"
"NO!"
Spike kicked the door shut behind them. Buffy spun around and grabbed him, yanking him down a step or two. They collided on the stairs, hands clutching bodies with white-hot bruising passion, slamming against each other, blind with two years of pent-up need. He caught hold of her waist, hands sliding up under the halter top, stroking, caressing, drawing little whimpering moans from her while her lips and tongue traced patterns of fire down the cords of his neck. Her hands went back to work on the buttons of his fly--good, going to be some serious damage done if something didn't give down there soon. Warm hands, fuck, there was a God. She freed him from the jeans and he gasped in relief, but it was only momentary; her touch made him so painfully hard it was a marvel he didn't come right then and there.
Fresh desire surged up in her, musky and intoxicating, the moment she took him in her hands. Spike staggered for a second, drunk on her scent, caught his balance, and lifted her up bodily. They crashed into the storage shelves at the bottom of the stairs, sending vials of mandrake root and asphodel flying. Buffy braced herself against the shelf. He heard cloth ripping as he pulled her jeans off her hips--didn't care, not when his Slayer was squirming and moaning under his hands, her teeth nipping at his lower lip, her mouth warm, so warm, but nothing compared to the tropical paradise between her thighs. She was wearing some lacy scrap of nothing under the jeans and both layers of cloth were soaked through already; she yanked the underwear aside and reached down to guide him into her.
Then he was sliding into that lovely moist heat in one long sure stroke, borne up in the ocean of her eyes--if the world had stopped turning on its axis, he would not have felt it; if prophesy was fulfilled, he would not have cared. All he knew was that in her body he had returned home at last.

5:00 PM

"Again? Can’t--oh. OH..."
"Oh, but you can. Again. And again, and again. Don't know your own strength, Slayer?"
"I--oh, yeeessss. Get in me, now. Harder. Didn't know your strength. Everyone else... got... tired... OH!"
"Rrrrrowwrr... Ah, that's lovely, that is. You've got the prettiest little pink quim, and you're so wet, all for me, so hot and tight... I get hard just breathing you in, you know that?"
"Getting the picture. Nice big picture. God, Spike, you feel so good... yeeeesss! That's it! Right there! Yes, yes, YES!!"

6:00 PM

"Do you think they're still up there?"
"Do we give a fuck?"
"Welll..."
"Makes me horny, thinkin' of them clustered around the door, listening for pointers..."
"Everything makes you horny."
"True. Let's not waste it, eh?"

7:00 PM

"Oh, come on, love, you act like you've never seen one before. I know damn well the poof wasn't snipped."
"I know, but we didn't exactly... you know, spend a lot of time looking at each other. It's so... cute. Like a little turtleneck." (a giggle) "OK, a not so little turtleneck."

8:00 PM

"Say it."
"I bloody well will not."
"Say it. You know you want it. You won't get it till you say it."
"Buffy Summers is the Goddess of Head and the owner of the Magic Tongue and I beg her on bended knee to apply her rosy pink lips to my poor abused cock before I fucking explode."
"That's not what I--oh, screw it, it'll do."

9:00 PM

"Are you sure? I've never--"
"Love, I could break the damned thing in two ticks if I wanted to. I don't want to. I like it."
"But it looks like it hurts."
"Oh, yeh, it hurts. Hurts real good. Just keep on--ohfuckingchristYES!"
"Wow. I guess you do like it. What if I... oooh. You know, a girl could get into this..."

11:00 PM

"Buffy? Love? What's wrong?"
"I--don't stop! I'm not crying. I'm not. I--I never knew it could be like this. I--no one ever did that to me before."
"No one...? What, was Commando Boy sodding insane? He had you in his bed for a bleeding year and a half and never...? I'll fly down to Brazil and kill 'im tomorrow... Or better yet, I'll stay here and do it again."

1:00 AM

"Mmmm. William..."
"What?"
"Oh. Sorry. Spike. Spike? Are--"
"No--s'all right. Just... no one ever said that name that way before."
"Hey. I’ll say your name any way I like."
"Ah, so now it’s my name?"
"Shut up and do me, William."

3:00 AM

"I love you."
"Spike, I..."
"Don't. I know. It’s all right. I've just got to say it now and again."

Buffy awoke to the sound of a heart not beating.
In repose, they fit together, an interlocking puzzle in ivory and gold: his nose buried in her hair, his occasional breaths stirring the fine loose strands; her head still pillowed on his shoulder, an unforseen advantage of sleeping with someone whose circulation couldn’t get cut off. His arm curled across her body, hand cupping her breast. Her fingers splayed across his chest, savoring wiry muscle layered over bone. She could see the trail of fingernail-welts over the curve of his shoulder, already starting to heal. She watched the flutter of his lashes, startlingly dark against his pale cheek. He looked younger, more vulnerable, in sleep--hair tousled, the lush, almost feminine curve of his lower lip all the more irresistible set against the severe planes and angles of cheek and jaw.
Had she intended to take it this far, this fast? She couldn't remember; skin-to-skin contact with Spike left her brain little more than a cascade of white sparks. She flexed her body experimentally, wincing at all the delicious little aches the movement roused. She was ravenously hungry, in desperate need of a shower, and feeling...
Spike made a little protesting noise, drawing her closer, and she curled into his side; there was a warm spot there, where she’d lain next to him all night. All of this changed nothing, of course. Last night she’d screamed, laughed, wept, made him do the same. They’d touched ecstacy beyond her wildest dreams--and then had a rousing fight over whether or not he got to smoke in bed after touching ecstacy. Some time in the night the glass wall had shattered for good, cutting her to the bone and making her howl with joy at the pain.
She couldn't remember if Angel had breathed in his sleep.
One thing she was going to have to keep in mind if this went on was that wild spontaneous sex in unheated basements was very Blue Velvet and all, but waking up in the unheated basement next to an unheated vampire was just chilly. Was that rag in the corner what was left of her halter top? Forget the morals of it all, your wardrobe can't afford an affair with Spike.
His arm tightened around her and his eyes blinked lazily open, blue and clear, with a told-you-so smirk that had nothing to do with being a demon and everything to do with being a guy. His fingers began tracing arabesques on her breasts and belly, and she arched into his touch, her mouth seeking his with unerring instinct. After a moment she had to breathe, and forced herself to sit up, casting about for her clothes, whatever was left of them, anyway. "What time is it?"
Spike yawned, (why on earth did someone who didn't breathe yawn?) did a long, slow, crack-every-muscle stretch--and pounced, pulling her down and nibbling her earlobe. Melting now. "Buggered if I know. Buggered if I care. C'mere and let me give you a nice thorough shagging."
"Noooooo!" she moaned, not at all convincingly. She squirmed out of his grasp and crouched on hands and knees, surveying the storeroom with alarm. There were pieces of broken glass from the toppled mandrake jars all over the floor, along with splinters from the broken shelf. Amazing that they hadn't sliced themselves to ribbons or accidentally staked Spike. If we don't happen to be in an alley, by gum, we'll make the place look like one! Anya was going to freak. "No touchy! Dawn's probably worried sick--"
Spike caught her ankle and ran the tip of his tongue along her instep. "Dawn's fifteen, not five, and probably thrilled to have a night to herself for a change. 'Sides, Will and Tara’ll have told her where we were." He grinned. "Not exactly where we are, I hope."
"Well... oohh... No! If nothing else, I've really gotta pee. And I'm starving."
He sighed and let her go, reaching for his own clothes. "I could use a spot of brekky myself." The grin widened. "Nothing like exercise to work up a healthy appetite."
Buffy, clutching the remains of her halter top to her chest, bit her lower lip. "Spike..."
"Yeh, love?"
"You didn't..."
"Eh?"
"You didn't go all grr. Even once."
He raised an eyebrow. "So?"
"Does that mean..." She felt herself going red. How on earth was she supposed to ask this? "I mean--was--did you... enjoy it?"
He cocked his head to one side and stared at her. "Did I--? That's a damned fool question--there's things a bird can fake, but in case you haven't noticed, I'm not a bird."
She ducked her head. "It's just--whenever Angel got...uh... excited..."
Wrong thing to say. Hurt and irritation swept the look of nostalgic lust off Spike's face in an instant. "Look, Slayer, if this little get-together was about indulging your death wish, take the next sodding bus to L.A. and look up Grand-sire. I don't screw my food."
Buffy flinched. "It wasn't Angel who kept reminding me I wasn’t worth a second go!"
She didn’t try to keep the bitter edge out of her voice, and got the dubious reward of seeing him flinch in turn. Spike made a disgusted noise and got to his feet. A moment later his hand was tipping her chin up roughly, forcing her to look at him. His winter-blue eyes caught hers, looking right down into the bottom of her soul; was it fair that he, who had none, was so good at reading hers? She felt his fingertips tracing the old bite scars on the side of her neck, and shuddered. He studied her face for a moment, then bent his head. Slowly, methodically, his lips brushed her neck, teasing her--then he bit down, hard, suckling at her throat, that amazingly talented tongue caressing her sensitive skin in the wake of his grazing teeth until she was dissolving under his touch. She was gasping when he drew away, on the verge of another climax, and she could feel him hardening against her. His face was still completely human; he hadn’t broken the skin. "Listen," he said, harsh and intense. "Last night was the most amazing experience of my life. Better than the best kill I ever had--if sex was blood I could live off you, Slayer. I’m yours. You and the Bit. In the immortal words of Buffy Summers, deal."
He was still a monster. A beautiful monster, a monster who loved her, her very own leashed and muzzled man-eating tiger. Buffy lifted a hand to his face, stroking his cheek, not caring that her fingers trembled. Nothing had changed--
“Here,” he said, handing her his T-shirt. “Looks like this survived the carnage.”
--except that someone, somewhere, had just won that pool.

Tanner sat on a hummock of limestone, rubbing his upper arms with his hands. He was cold. The temperature in the caves was constant, but chill, and his coat was too thin for comfort when sitting still. A few guttering candles dripped wax down the sides of the stalagmites where they were perched--as an attempt to hold back the immense rolling darkness, they were pathetic, but that was not their primary purpose.
The figures huddled around the central altar didn’t appear to notice either the cold or the darkness. Skeletal limbs swaddled in rags, eyeless faces turned upwards, they brandished staves adorned with fragments of bone and feathers, their droning chant importuning the attention of something ancient and dark. Tanner didn’t understand the words; they were in a language that had died before the first ape stood upright on an African plain. The echoes rolled back and forth across the cavern, creating a polyphony that gnawed its way into the brain, an endless tapestry of sound.

Ganag’sh awruun, ganag’sh hlal
Raukh al ankhun f’khaeth guih nawrn
Hauth hauwrug yawva’thir rukh
Shkaur ri yawkweth f’kruth anih gawrn!

First One, thou who dwellest in the night places
Thou who art the darkness between the worlds
We have made ready the path
We have opened for thee a doorway.

The hand of our messenger has fallen
On the head of thy anointed
On the head of thy chosen
Enter in where the dwelling has been prepared.

One by one the chanters dropped out, until only a single ragged voice remained. “Shkaur!” it cried, striking downward with the butt of his staff. Sparks flew from the cavern floor, as if the staff were steel to its flint, and for a moment actinic green light illumined the whole vast space around them, glinting off swags and canopies of flowstone, translucent crenelations, pendant forests of rust and cream and gold. Then it was gone and the darkness rolled in once more, still and cold and overwhelming. The eyeless men stood rigid for a long moment, then lowered their staves, slumping in exhaustion. One of them turned to Tanner, the muscles of its ravaged cheeks twitching with fatigue. “It is done.”
“Great. So what about my half of the bargain?” Tanner got to his feet, stiff with long sitting. “I can’t keep this together much longer. It was sheer luck we found that poor schmuck under the picnic table.” And poor fare the man’s mind had been, too--half gone already, as so many of the chronically homeless were. Odds were good he’d remain one of the ones who never left the junkyard camp, one more mouth to feed and back to clothe for those of them who remained able to function.
The eyeless man smiled, perhaps the most unpleasant expression Tanner had ever witnessed. “Your foolish panic has wakened other powers. Their arrival stirs others yet, already made wary by the shifting of the Balance. Complications such as these we needed no part of.”
Tanner shrugged. “You pick a crazy guy to do your dirty work, you take your chances.” Unease coiled within him even so. He’d been running on the ragged edge of sanity that night, or he’d never have tried that half-assed summoning to begin with. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but he couldn’t begin to analyze his own motivations now. The loa were not forgiving masters, and he had no right to beg their protection--yet Ghede had answered. chill black waves flowing from his hands into the Red Witch’s skull He shivered. “I did what you asked me to. Pay up.”
A desiccated chuckle. “Never fear. Your reward is at hand.”

"OK, so the spell you used on me--the incantation was Fomorian, right? And no physical components at all?"
Willow, head propped listlessly on her fist, nodded and flipped over another page of Unnatural Maladies. Grimacing at the gory illustration of a victim of a Fyarl demon's acid mucous, she skimmed the accompanying text and flipped the page again. "That's right. Just words and hand-wavy stuff. I didn't figure I'd have time for anything fancy while Glory tried to pop my head off."
Tara went back to the diagram she was working on. Willow sneaked a look over her shoulder; it was a more elaborate version of the scribbles she'd been working on yesterday, showing all the component parts of the altar. They'd taken the bus out to Weatherly Park that morning and hunted till they found the isolated picnic table-altar and the scattered remnants of the spell. Tara had sketched the whole thing carefully, and now she was trying out different reconstructions of the patterns formed by the stones and the ritual objects. Willow didn't know what Tara expected to get out of the project; obviously Daniel Tanner's version of the spell wasn't what they needed, but she didn't feel up to arguing about it.
You're not up to much lately.
She stared down at the ornate script on the page before her and heaved a sigh. It was a whole big ol' fashioned Scooby research party--well, minus Giles, who'd bowed out, as he did so often these days, to deal with the shipping company which was moving his library back to England. And minus Buffy and Spike, who'd been incommunicado since the previous afternoon. No one had quite gotten up the nerve to knock on the basement door yet.
Willow should have been in her element, but she felt fuzzy and unfocused, unable to concentrate. Something inside was dried out, scraped bare, and how long it would take for her inner reservoirs to renew themselves... ugh. She didn't even want to think about that.
Xander and Anya were having an argument over by the counter; eavesdropping on them was more interesting than trying to puzzle out what the author of Unnatural Maladies meant by 'lesions caused by the unmentionable foulnesse practiced among the Fyarl of Bavaria.' They were arguing a lot lately--about the wedding, about money, about anything at all. "Look, it doesn't matter how the bear fits in." Xander sounded edgy and snappish. "We just don't have enough info, so we stick to the mission: find crazy people, catch crazy people, fix crazy people."
A chill worked its way up Willow’s spine, as if dark water were rising around her. Of course, you realize all this is futile--without a source of power to tap, you won't be able to fix the crazy people without making more crazy people. Every spell has its price.
No! That's not so! Well, the price part, yes, but-- She looked round at the stacks of books, feeling the dark water rise, a wave of defeat washing over her. There wasn't anything in them that could help, she knew--she'd gone through every single one of them researching the original spell she'd used to cure Tara. The niggling little voice was right. You couldn't draw power out of nowhere. But she’d had a lot of experience in being creative about where she drew it from--work at anything hard enough and you’d find a catch. If you couldn’t beat the simulation, reprogram the simulator. Wasn’t that what Buffy’d been doing for the last six years?
Anya sniffed. "The last time one of those bears came around, you got cursed with a grotesque sexually transmitted disease. As the person you have sex with, I have a right to be concerned." She unlocked the lid to the front counter display case and arranged a pair of enameled bracers (guaranteed to fend off shark bites) in a prominent position in front of the 'Store Special!' placard. She stood up and surveyed the shelves critically. "Drat. We're out of the lemon meditation candles. Go get me another carton out of storage, Xander."
"Oh, thanks for the reminder! I'm not the one who stirred it up this time." Xander tossed a snide look in the direction of the basement door. "Someone else’s parts can fall off. And I am not going down there."
Anya shrugged. "All right, I will." She started off towards the forbidden door.
Xander caught her arm, his voice taking on a note of panic. "You can't go down there!"
"Why not? It's my store."
"Because--because it might be dangerous! What if they left the door to the tunnels unlocked, huh? They haven't come back yet, maybe something got them and maybe it's down there right now about to--"
"Xander," Anya said with commendable patience, "They didn't go into the tunnels. They went down to the basement to have sex. Although I wish they'd gone into the training room instead; there are far fewer breakable items in there, and I know I heard crashing noises. But since the training room has no exit, it would have been obvious that they intended to have sex, and I did notice that Buffy was employing the misdirection you keep talking about. It doesn't work very well. Or maybe she's just not very good at it."
Xander clapped his hands over his ears. "Gnnng."
"Poor Xander," Tara whispered.
Willow wrinkled her brow. "I wonder if he's really upset or if this is some kind of autonomic reflex. If he didn’t kick up a fuss it would ruin his reputation. Besides, you know, him and Anya--I suppose technically she's got a soul, but--" If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. What a boring philosophy. She tried very hard for Xander's sake, but Anya was just annoying. Nails-on-chalkboard annoying. She speculated idly on the chances of Xander noticing if Anya lost a little mental energy for a good cause. Bad Willow.
Still , said the niggling little voice, not a bad idea in theory. You could steal a tithe of energy from many minds to heal one. Who would miss it?
The necessary spell flashed into her mind, almost fully-formed. Eww. No. Where did that come from?
"I'm surprised it's taken this long," Anya continued blithely. "It's been obvious for some time that Buffy's sexually attracted to him. Spike is pleasent to look at, has well-defined muscles and appears to be exceptionally well-equipped to give her orgasms. Also the two of them have a great deal in common. They both enjoy witty repartee, wearing leather and killing things."
Dawn slammed her book shut, pulled her backpack from beneath the table, and hopped to her feet. "Not that hearing you guys speculate about my sister's sex life isn't oodles and bunches of fun, but I'm getting nowhere and it's almost twelve. I'm supposed to meet Lisa at the mall. Can you tell Buffy when she gets back from her, uh, search that I'm gonna have dinner at Lisa's and--"
"I'm sure Buffy will be back by then," Tara said firmly. "Phone home at six and see what she says."
"Buffy will say be home by ten or face the Slayer's wrath," Buffy said.
Everyone's attention was immediately riveted to the back of the shop, where Buffy stood, wearing yesterday's jeans (somewhat the worse for wear) and Spike's t-shirt. Spike lounged in the doorway behind her, equally rumpled-looking and bare-chested underneath the duster. It was astonishing how the ever-present tension between them was simply gone--evaporated. Spike took in Xander's look of exaggerated horror and Anya's frank appreciation with amused equanimity; Buffy just looked disconcerted to see that everyone was staring at them. Dawn bounced over to her sister (and someone was going to have to tell Dawn that with the way she was growing, getting Dawn-bounced was becoming a little alarming) and hugged her. “This is so great!"
"Ah," Xander said, straight-faced. "I see. We're now looking for a clothes-eating monster."
"You guys haven't been out here since--?" Buffy asked nervously.
"Not at all," Anya assured her. "We left when the noises got too distracting. You’ll be paying for everything you broke, of course?"
"She's joking, Buff," Xander said, glaring at Anya.
“Of course.” Anya looked quite earnestly upset over the idea that her humor might have been misconstrued. “Except for the paying for breakage part. Oh!” An expression of rapture blossomed over her face. “If the two of you are a couple, I can save money by getting you one Christmas present!”
“Because our tastes are so similar? But I’m getting you and Xander separate presents,” Buffy shot back. “No fair.”
“Right, no cutting back on the prezzies when you and Harris are the only ones in this merry band with a steady income.” Spike leaned over and whispered something into Buffy's ear. She smiled up at him and tugged him down for a kiss that rapidly deepened to the point where shutting the door on them again began to look like a viable option. "I'm going to nip home and get something to drink," the vampire said when they finally broke apart, doing the whole husky-voiced, smouldering-gaze thing. "Later, Slayer." He started back down the stairs, stopped, and leveled a warning finger at Anya. “And yes, I’m coming back for my car, so if you have it towed I’ll come hang about through your whole Christmas sale week and harass the paying customers.”
Buffy watched Spike go with a little smile, took a deep breath and turned back to the others. "So," she said. "Got something for me to beat up yet?" Not carefree, bouncy, pre-Angelus Buffy; that girl was long gone. But certainly happier than Willow could remember her being since before the whole mess with Riley and vamp hookers, before Joyce Summers had died. If Spike can do that, then maybe I should be playing matchmaker. Come to that, Spike had looked pretty darn pleased with the universe, too.
Hard to believe it was only three years ago he was threatening to cut your face open with a broken bottle, isn't it? Of course he's harmless now--for the time being, at least--but it's sobering to think any new-risen fledgling could do the same to you now, with your powers at such a low ebb.. .
Willow fought off a reflexive shudder as the memory of that horrible night in the old factory washed over her afresh--and Spike had been the least horrible part of it, in retrospect. Perhaps that was why she'd been able to let go of the fear and anger towards him so easily: when it came down to it, she'd hurt herself far more than he'd hurt her. Still... she had been afraid, that night. It could never happen to her now--
Except, of course, that it just did. At the hands of a mere human hedge-wizard.
"You'd better just go looking for crazies," Tara was saying. "Because the leads we have on any of the rest of this stuff are--well, they aren't."
The others didn't notice as Willow rose from the table. She had the eerie feeling that time was slowing as drifted over to the stairs, the earth ceasing its revolutions for her and her alone. Everyone else was frozen in place, too busy talking to Buffy about the unsolvable problem, as if the Slayer could beat it into submission. But it wasn't unsolvable. The solution just wasn't in any of the books down on the lower level. Willow whispered the words that allowed her access to the balcony.
She knew exactly what part of the restricted section of the library to go to, exactly what part of the shelf to reach towards, exactly which book to slip out from its dusty slot, taking care not to disturb the volumes around it. It was small and squat and bound in battered black leather, and any title embossed upon its spine or cover had worn away long since. It was one of a box full of books Xander and Spike had recovered from Doc's apartment over the summer, when they'd searched it for clues to who the mysterious old man--or demon--had been. Most of them had been concerned with necromancy of one sort or another--not surprising, considering that Doc had been an expert on the subject.
Her fingers brushed the greasy leather. This one... this one had proven valuable. She'd found the passages that had inspired her modifications of the Raising spell here, part of the Protocols of Osiris. She'd intended to translate the rest of it at some point, but there just hadn't been time. Quickly, Willow tucked the book under her arm and climbed down the ladder again. She slid the book into her dufflebag and zipped it up. Time lurched into motion again around her.
"--just doesn’t seem right somehow,” Buffy was saying. “Buffy the Homeless Wino Slayer? Not exactly a fair fight, is it? What do I do, catch them with butterfly nets?”
“Say that again after a pack of them come this close to sucking your brains out,” Xander said with great feeling.
“Mm.” Buffy didn’t look convinced. “All right, we’ll get on it. I’m gonna go home and hit the showers or no one will be able to tell me from the crazies.”
“Get the mail, will you?” Willow asked. “I forgot to check the box when we left this morning. Oh, and tonight before patrol? There will be dish.”

“It goes so well with that eyeshadow!” Lisa peered over Dawn’s shoulder at her reflection in the mirror on the counter. Dawn tilted her head this way and that, doubtful.
“You don’t think it’s too red? But then, Buffy does go for that blood-of-the-innocent look.”
“Trust me, it’s luscious. She’ll love it.”
Dawn stuck the lipstick back into its slot on the tester rack and twiddled a few others round to read the names. Raspberry Dew, Cotton Candy... no wonder little kids tried to eat the stuff. She looked around, but there were no clerks in evidence anywhere near the makeup counter. Par for the course. Nordstrom’s was festooned with swags of gold and silver crepe and crowded with early Christmas shoppers, and the air was redolent of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and the smell of Department Store: a mingling of perfume, leather, plastic, wool, and fake evergreen scent. “I can’t believe they had this stuff out before Thanksgiving,” she muttered.
“Are you kidding?” Lisa waved at the nearest display of holiday cheer. “They had it out before Halloween. Here, smell this.” She spritzed her wrist and stuck it under Dawn’s nose.
“Phhweh. Smells like cantaloupe. I don’t think fruit salad is sexy.”
“Huh. So much for designer fragrances. On the other hand, mothers aren’t supposed to be sexy.” Satisfied, she dropped the bottle into her shopping basket and consulted her list. “Got Mom, got Dad... he’ll be so thrilled with another tie, but honestly, I have no idea what to get him--Jamie wants that Green Day album...” She hesitated, then choked out in a rush, “Do you think I should maybe send that guy a card or something?”
“What guy?” Dawn asked absently, trying out a slightly less fire-engine shade of lipstick. “Alan?” Forbidden Passion. Oh, yeah, this was it--if nothing else, watching Buffy’s face when she read the name was going to be worth it. “Stand right there. Hold it.” She took another quick glance around to ascertain that there were still no clerks in sight, and shifted her body so that her back was towards the security camera. One quick flick of the wrist and the lipstick of her choice was in her purse.
“You’re so good at that.” Lisa was frankly envious. “I’d totally panic. No, the--the vampire guy. He did kind of save my life.”
“It’s a knack,” Dawn said, giving her hair a careless flip. She was good. Even Spike said so, and he was the professional. “Sure, send him a card. I think he’s got a post office box, I’ll see if I can get the number. If not you can leave it at my place and I can pass it on.”
Lisa nodded, still a little red about the ears. After the way Megan had been drooling all over Spike, maybe she was afraid he’d take it the wrong way. Little chance of that considering recent developments.
She was glad she’d already had plans with Lisa for this weekend; it kept her from obsessing to much about those recent developments. She was happy for her sister and for Spike, of course, but she couldn’t help worrying about how this would change everything. She’s wanted this--wanted the two people she loved most to come together, wanted their weird little almost-family to finally coalesce into something real. Sure, it was silly to think that Spike would move in and he and Buffy would show up together for Parent-Teacher Night, but the fact that there was now a solid, nameable connection between them was reassuring. From This is Spike, the dead guy who hangs around a lot to This is Spike, my sister’s boyfriend was a big step. Sister’s boyfriends got to come over for Christmas and didn’t have to skulk around in the bushes with a beat-up box of chocolates on birthdays.
Still, it was hard not to be nervous. Every change over the past year had been one for the worse. Change was bad. So naturally something awful had to be lurking over the horizon to mess up this seeming good news. She just wasn’t going to think about it. “Men’s clothing next?” Dawn asked. “I want to get Xander just one decent shirt and I’m gonna have to pay for that. Oh, and we have to stop at Williams and Sonoma, I know Tara wants some weird egg-strangler kitchen device.” Which she wasn’t going to be able to afford, most likely. She had a Williams and Sonoma shopping list and a K-Mart budget. Which made it practically noble to take a five-fingered discount on a few things, since they weren’t for her. Right?
They set out for Men’s Casual, navigating the maze of clothing racks and dodging displays of elegantly-dressed mannequins tastefully disporting themselves amidst piles of fake snow. Neither girl noticed the man in the dark suit step out from behind one of the mirrored pillars and start to follow them.

The shadows were growing long when Tara arrived back at the Summers home. She slid her key in and discovered that the front door was already unlocked. She frowned. Dawn wouldn't be back from Lisa's until the very last strike of ten if past experience were any guide, and she'd left Willow at the Magic Box. In Sunnydale, it was sometimes easy to forget about the mundane dangers of burglary, but the VCR would be just as gone whether smashed by a rampaging demon or stolen by an ordinary human being desperate for drug money. At least it sounded like Buffy was downstairs; she could hear the muted babble of the TV. "Buffy?"
"M’in here," came a voice from the living room.
Buffy sounded different, the overwhelming determination and confidence of the previous day leached out of her voice. She sounded, in fact, small and sad and lost. Tara set her backpack down and shot the deadbolt behind her as she came in. She walked into the living room, where Buffy sat in the middle of the couch, wrapped up in her bathrobe, damp hair straggling round her shoulders. The room was dark save for the phosphor glow of the TV. All the curtains were drawn. The wintery afternoon sunlight was nowhere near strong enough to penetrate the gloom. Buffy was cradling a decimated carton of chocolate chip ice cream in her lap and staring at the television as if her life depended on it. The distant, detached expression of the last month was nowhere in evidence. Her lower lip trembled slightly and her eyes were liquid with emotion.
Ordinarily Tara would have found that encouraging, but that the emotion was prompted by the Weather Channel scrolling a list of high temperatures for the day in each of the fifty states was a little worrisome. "Are you busy?" Obviously not, but... "I wanted to talk to you privately about--"
Buffy smiled lopsidedly and jammed her spoon into the middle of the slowly melting remnants of her ice cream. "So you're the first up, huh? I guess I was expecting this." She summoned up the determined look again. "Yes, I know exactly what I--I..." Her voice broke and she burst into silent, quivering tears.
Tara half-tripped over the corner of the coffee table getting to the couch. "Buffy--what's the matter?" Would asking if this were Spike-related (and what else could it possibly be?) make things better or worse? She took a seat on the arm of the couch. "Are y-you--"
"I'm f-fine--" A fresh bout of sobs overtook Buffy, and Tara held her shaking shoulders for several minutes until they subsided. At last Buffy took a deep gasping breath and straightened up, wiping her reddened eyes on the sleeve of her robe. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me." She looked down at her lap as if she hoped for answers in the rivulets of melting ice cream. "I felt great when I got home, and I went up to take a shower, and came down here to see what the forecast was, and..." She gulped a little. "I just happened to look at the picture." She waved at the TV, and for a second Tara was confused; then she realized that Buffy was referring to the little gold-framed photo of Joyce Summers sitting on top rather than to the screen. "I miss Mom."
Tara had long ago finished mourning her own mother's death, but there were times and circumstances which could still make her eyes ache and the back of her throat grow taut. "That's normal," she said. "It's only been a couple of months for you. The rest of us have had longer to...adjust."
"She hated me being the Slayer, did you know?"
That was something Tara never suspected. "Did she? She always seemed to take it so gracefully."
Buffy gave a rueful little laugh. "When she first found out she told me I wasn't welcome in her house if I kept it up. Of course I kinda picked the worst possible time to tell her about it--Spike had just offered to help me take down Angelus." Tara blinked; she hadn’t known that Spike had been in on that. Buffy twiddled the spoon around in the ice cream. "Mom got better with it. I wish now I'd told her from the start. It would have made a lot of things so much easier... all the trouble I got into at school, explaining Angel..." She sighed. "Maybe not. Mom never liked him, even before she found out he was a vampire."
Tara wondered if it was safe to turn off the TV, or at least change channels. "I never would have guessed--about your mom, I mean. She always got along so well with Spike."
"I know. Irony much? My mother hates my one true love and invites my mortal enemy in for cocoa." Her eyes softened, the grey-green going misty. "And Spike really liked her. I'd come home from the dorm to visit sometimes and find him over here with her, talking about those dumb soaps or whining about Dru. He'd even listen to her stories about the gallery and pretend to be interested. I wish--I wish she were still here." Her lower lip was trembling again. "I wish I could talk about this with her. She'd probably freak--she liked Spike, but she was so happy when Angel left and I started dating Riley. A nice, human guy. Someone I could have a so-called normal life with." A snort. "That turned out well."
"Normal lives are over-rated."
"I keep telling myself that. It's just weird to hear someone agree with me."
Tara shrugged. "I grew up liking girls in a small town. If you think my family was down on witches, you should have heard Dad’s opinions on, quote, uppity dykes." Buffy looked startled. Didn’t think I knew that word, did you? I know a lot of things. Tara looked over at the other woman, debating her next words. "Buffy... what I said before about why you were kissing Spike--or doing anything else to Spike--not being my business, I meant it. It doesn't--can I have some of that ice cream?"
"Sure." Buffy handed her the spoon.
"Thanks." She took a spoonful and licked the drips off. Not butter pecan, but it would do. "Whatever’s between you and Spike doesn’t change anything about the way I look at you. You're a grown-up, and besides that, you're a--" She paused, trying to make sure she had the right word. "--responsible person. One of the most responsible people I know. I know you fight it a lot, but when it comes down to it I've never seen you back away. So whatever you've decided to do with your life... I can't believe that it's anything that will hurt others. And whether or not you hurt yourself, or-or Spike--that's your risk to take, and his."
Buffy buried her face in her hands for a second, then straightened and tucked the strands of water-darkened hair behind her ears. "Thank you. God, I'm so messed up!" She wiped her nose. "I've been sitting here for two hours and one minute I'm high as a kite and Spike's the best thing that ever happened to me, and the next minute I'm completely convinced that I'm insane. Hence, ice cream therapy, only partially successful. I'll be OK. I think." She turned on Tara with eyes full of panicky intensity and grabbed her arm. Tara suppressed a wince. "Don't tell Will about this, please--keep it a private meltdown? She's already so worried about whether or not I'm happy or sad or--I slept with Spike. I know it's crazy. I mean, not completely dense, here! How do I explain to Dawn's caseworker that she can't meet my new boyfriend today because he tends to burst into flames? Oh, my God. I called him my boyfriend. What am I thinking? How can I think when he's being all--all Spike at me!? I--"
Tara grabbed the spoon, dug it into the carton of ice cream, and shoved it into Buffy's mouth. Buffy's eyes bugged out at the sudden chill. She held her breath for a good ten seconds, let it out in an ungraceful through-the-nose snort, and with a supreme effort of will, swallowed. Tara watched her. "Are you OK for a minute?"
She gave Tara a watery smile. "Uh. Yeah. Thanks. No guarantees for the minute after that, though. It's all been so--so flat since I got back, like nothing touches me." She caught her lower lip in her teeth. "But when I touch him... everything makes sense. I feel like I fit into the world again. Even if it hurts." There was a look of concentrated wonder in those grey-green eyes, and Tara got the feeling that she was never again going to see Buffy this unguarded. "Have you ever felt like that?"
Tara thought of Willow, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of a pile of books. "Yes. Yes, I've felt like that."
Buffy nodded. "So does that cover what you wanted to talk to me about?"
Tara's mouth twitched into a smile. "Not even close. I wanted to talk to you about Willow."
"Oh." Buffy's ears went a little red, to match her nose. "I am Buffy the Walking Ego, hear me roar. What about Will?"
Tara dropped her eyes to her hands. "I left her at the Magic Box--"
"Is that safe, considering what she came up with the last time you left her alone at the Magic Box?" Buffy asked in lighter tones.
Unhappiness welled up inside her, and Tara nodded. "Very safe. That's what I needed to talk to you about. You're counting on Willow to come up with a spell to cure these people, and that--th-that may not be possible."
A small crease appeared between Buffy's brows. "You mean, there may not be a spell that can do the job? But Wills had an idea just before Spike and I, uh, left yesterday. Didn't it pan out?"
"It's not that--Willow may be able to create a working spell, I don't know. The problem is..." This was proving harder than she'd anticipated; there was a dreadful sense of betrayal in telling Buffy this without Willow's knowledge. "I don't think she'll be able to cast it. Bringing you back the way she did--the Raising was an incredibly powerful spell. Normally it's performed by a circle of five or more adepts, and powered by at least ten sacrifices, human and vampire. Willow got around all that, using Dawn's blood and Spike's soul." As much as Tara had disapproved of the spell, she had to admit that Willow had crafted it brilliantly--in concept, at least; as happened too often for comfort, Willow's execution had contained a few flaws. "But that means that a lot more of the power had to come from the caster--Willow. That would have been draining enough, but then the spell went wrong. She poured every bit of magic in her into closing that portal."
"Right," Buffy said, with an understanding nod. "And she's been recuperating ever since."
"No." Tara's voice sounded wretched in her own ears. "That's the trouble. It's been a month, and she's showing no signs of recovery at all. She can cast simple spells, but she burns out almost immediately. I mean, she blew herself out for the day opening a door. When Tanner grabbed her, she had nothing left." Each word grew heavier on her tongue, but she forced them out anyway. "It could be months before she recovers. Or years. Or... maybe never. I just don't know. But I'm pretty certain she's not going to be up to casting a spell to restore the sanity of a dozen or more people any time soon."
Buffy's expression flickered from worried to grim as she spoke, and Tara surmised that Oh, poor Will! was doing mortal battle with Hah, serves her right! in Buffy's head. "Oh. Wow. I never realized... great. We can't just let these guys run wild and free. Oooh, wait!" She gave an excited little bounce. "This Tanner person's only dangerous because he's a wizard of some kind--is there a way to short-circuit his magical talents? So he won't be able to cast the crazy-making spell?"
"Maybe... some kind of curse?" Tara rubbed her mouth, frowning. "I hate messing around with curses, though. You pretty much have to leave the target an out when you construct it, and when they find it--and sooner or later they usually do--it always comes back to get you."
Buffy made a face. "Mmm... you should really have a talk with some gypsies of my acquaintance."
"Maybe a geas. Those are tricky, but they're not malevolent. It'll have to be something that I stand a chance of casting on my own."
"Does Willow..."
Tara sighed and shook her head. "I know she knows she's not getting better, and I know she's scared. We haven't talked about it much. I just... I don't want to come off all 'I told you so!' She's feeling miserable enough about it already." She scraped up the last of the ice cream. "Now that we've had dessert I guess I'd better get dinner started. Willow will be home soon." She couldn't afford to pay Buffy much rent, so she liked to make up the difference in other ways, and besides, she was the only really good cook of the four of them. Buffy attacked the job as though planning a meal were the culinary equivalent of the Battle of Gettysburg, Willow only baked when she was feeling guilty about something, and Dawn... "Um... what do you want to do with that leftover hot dog-macaroni-ketchup casserole?"
Buffy stuck a finger down her throat. "The usual. Pack it up and smuggle it off to Spike."
"You hate him that much, huh?"
Buffy snickered, got to her feet and started for the stairs. "I don't care what he claims, anyone who can eat Dawn's cooking and enjoy it is not possessed of working taste buds." She ran a hand through her damp hair. "Ooh, look at the time. If I want to be ready for patrol by six I'm going to have surrender to the sinister allure of blow-drying." She headed for the stairs and stopped on the lowest step, hanging off the bannister. "Do you need help with dinner?"
"No, that's fine," Tara assured her. "Not like I'm cooking for twenty. It's just going to be hamburgers tonight."
"Coolness. Hey--make an extra one for me for after patrol, OK? Or maybe two. I think we're going to be hungry."

Xander squinted against the late afternoon sun as he trudged through the graveyard, examining the neat columns of figures on the bill Anya had given him. Shelf, storage, six-foot, one, $79.95. Chest, mahogany, 3 cu. ft. cap., one, $244.95. Jars, storage, 1 qt., twelve, $2.99 ea. Jars, storage, 8 oz., twenty-four, $1.99 ea. Bottle, djinni for the use of, one, $24.95. Djinni, one, priceless...
He'd devoted a sizeable portion of the afternoon to helping Anya clean up the basement and forcing himself not to speculate on his eventual fate had any of his long-ago Buffy-fantasies ever come to fruition. He'd survived one night with a Slayer, but he had no illusions that 'survived' was not the operative word in describing his tryst with Faith, and she'd been playing nice... for Faith. No, best just close his eyes and think of baseball, and not about what a pair of inhumanly strong people in the throes of passion could possibly have been doing to leave a head-sized hole in a cement-block wall...
He crumpled up the bill and stuffed it in the pocket of his slacks, trying to ball up his resentment with it. He and Anya'd had another fight before he'd given in and consented to run this hopeless errand. In the unlikely event that Spike consented to pay for the damages, ten to one the money to do so would be liberated from Xander's own pockets, and Anya knew damned well that Buffy could barely afford to keep her utility bills paid. Let's face it, their combined assets are about enough to go down to the corner and buy a stick of gum.
Their assets? Ugh, had he actually started thinking of Spike and Buffy as a them? He was supposed to shudder at this point, but no one was there to see him do it, and the truth was he didn't know exactly how to feel. That was mildly disturbing. Vampires = Bad was the cornerstone of his philosophy of life, had been for the past six years. See vampire, stake vampire. Very simple, until Angel came along with his anomalous soul and his brooding cow eyes and his Neanderthal brow and his air of mystery and danger, and all of a sudden Buffy was in love with him, and he was an exception. Until exceptional Angel lost the soul, killed Jenny, kidnaped Dawn, and left Buffy a walking shadow of herself. Xander kicked a tombstone in passing, a bit harder than he'd intended, and bit back a yelp as a stab of pain penetrated his work boots. Despite the horror of it all Xander hadn't been able to help but feel that the world was back on kilter: Vampires bad.
Spike should have been easier to deal with. He wasn't any kind of exception. He was your standard issue bloodsucker, sans soul, sans conscience, sans remorse. Up until last fall Spike had made no bones about the fact that he hated them all and would return to trying to kill them the moment something happened to the chip in his head. Spike = Bad, If Occasionally Useful.
Xander wished that it were easier to remember that these days, that he didn't keep falling prey to unexpected moments of sympathy for the Bleached Wonder, or that Buffy hadn't looked so contented earlier, and not in that sappy, spell-induced way, either. He couldn't say that he liked the vampire, and it was for damn certain that Spike didn't like him, but they'd gotten used to each other over the last year, and familiarity bred... something that made the two of them not completely disinclined towards one another's company. If they spent most of their time snapping at one another, well, everyone needed a hobby.
It lacked several hours till sunset, but the crypt was already shrouded in purple shadow, thanks to several strategically planted cypresses. Xander glanced at the windows; a few candles glowed, but there was no movement behind them. Normally Spike was up and about at this hour, watching television or doing some mysterious vampire thing. He banged perfunctorily on the door to the crypt and then gave it a shove, rattling the chain--what was the good of having a padlock, he thought, if Spike never locked the damned thing? Half the demon population of Sunnydale out to skin him, and anyone could just walk in. The vampire had the brains of a kumquat. He entered the crypt and looked around, then yelled, "Hey! Dead Man Walking! Getcher undead ass up here! Got something for you!"
After a few minutes the sound of booted feet on the stairs echoed up from below, and Spike's pale head appeared out of the opening leading to the lower level. Xander blinked as Spike's shoulders emerged; he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt in vibrant scarlet over his customary black t-shirt, a style Spike hadn't affected since he'd shrunk the last one he'd owned in Xander's washing machine almost two years ago. He was carrying a couple of moldy-looking books in the crook of one arm and tucking a small, oddly-shaped object into his shirt-pocket.
"Holidays coming up," the vampire drawled in response to Xander's unasked question. "I'm feeling festive." He tossed the books down on a table and looked Xander up and down with a belligerent smirk. "My, don't we look all splotchy and possessive! Come to deliver the obligatory touch-her-and-I'll stake-you speech? Snap it up, then, Harris, I've got things--and people--to do tonight." He strutted up to Xander, the smirk growing even more obnoxious. "Or do we fancy fisticuffs? Little punch in the nose to make us feel extra manly? Sorry, that's the Slayer's private preserve, but tell you what--I'll give you a free shot at the rest of the phiz."
Xander's fingers twitched fistwards. Screw moments of sympathy; once an evil soulless bastard, always an evil soulless bastard. He rocked back on his heels and stared down at Spike (and how annoying was it that it had taken a year for him to realize that the undead jerk was shorter than he was?) and savored the fact that it didn't matter that his merely human strength would make about as much impact on Spike's jaw as throwing beanbags; unlike those poor crazy saps, Xander knew how to throw a punch and how to dodge one. He could just keep hitting until Spike broke or his knuckles did. Or better yet, grab one of the bits of faux-Gothic statuary scattered around the crypt and pound the asshole's skull in. And Spike wouldn't be able to do a damned thing about it; if he tried he'd be knocked on his ass, brain-fried courtesy of the U.S. Army--God bless the U.S.A. In fact, he could do anything he wanted to to Spike...
...And Spike knew it. He could see it in the vampire's eyes, bravado covering the wincing anticipation of the blow to come, the blow he couldn't fight off, and not just because of the chip. The same look, almost, he'd seen in the mirrors of the boys' restroom before a hundred confrontations with whichever bully wanted to knock Xander Harris's block off that week. The look which meant that if you couldn't avoid the pain, you'd damned well take it on your own terms.
Xander kept his expression blank. "Nah. I've got something way worse than that." He reached into his pocket and saw Spike tense, real fear flickering into his eyes--was there really a stake in there? Slowly, Xander drew the bill out and handed it to the vampire. "Paid in full by the end of January, buster. Or Anya'll hand it over to a demon bill collector."
Hah. He'd floored a vampire. Add that to the Harris resume. Spike stared at the bill, then back at Xander, then back at the bill, the fact that Xander wasn't going to beat the shit out of him slowly seeping through his skull. He pulled a half-empty pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket, from behind whatever it was he'd stuck in there on the way upstairs, tapped one out, lit it on the nearest candle-flame, and took a cool-restoring drag. He held up the note and waved it. "Thanks, Harris. I've been thinking of rolling my own, and this is the perfect size."
"You think I'm joking about Anya and money?"
Spike snorted smoke. "Oi, just beat me up yourself, won't you? Easier all around."
Xander coughed, a snide comment about the cigarettes on the tip of his tongue, and then realized that there was far more smoke in the air than could be accounted for by Spike's bad habits or a few cheap candles. Trading looks of confusion, the two of them headed for the crypt door. The diffuse afternoon light dimmed further as they reached it, to the point that Spike risked several steps outside. He looked up, almost losing his cigarette as his jaw dropped. "Bloody hell." Xander shoved past him and tilted his own head back, following the vampire's stunned gaze upwards.
It must have been a hundred feet long. It had no wings, but it rode the wind nonetheless, a sinuous river of gold-rimmed scarlet scales undulating across the sky, blotting out the sun. Five-clawed talons slashed the air. Its be-whiskered and horned head lashed from side to side, trailing fantastic streamers and filaments of silver and gold. Smoke rolled from its flaring nostrils and the immense goggle eyes rolled downwards as the creature spotted them and paused in mid-air, absurdly graceful. The filaments at the end of its snout twitched; it opened its fanged maw and a voice like a striking gong, brassy and ringing and deep enough to make the ground beneath their feet shiver in sympathy, rolled over the graveyard.
It hovered, head cocked as if awaiting an answer. Xander and Spike stood there dumbstruck. The creature gave a heavy, disgusted snort, the scent of its breath like burning metal on the breeze, and then it was gone. Spike jumped back into the shadow of the crypt door as a few small sunbeams penetrated the cypress-shadows.
"What the hell was that?" Xander finally croaked out.
Spike took his cigarette out of his mouth and exhaled a shaky stream of smoke. "Buggered if I know. I never did learn Chinese."

"So?" Willow asked, taking a plate from the dishrack and polishing it with the Hello Kitty dishtowel. Across the kitchen Tara was wrapping up leftover hamburgers in foil and putting tomato slices and shredded lettuce into Tupperware bowls.
Buffy was concentrating on getting the burnt cheese off the skillet, scrubbing hard with the copper mesh pad. "A needle pulling thread?" She was not only in the best mood Willow could remember seeing her in since her return, she was dressed to slay in a dark pleated knee-length skirt and a cream-gold blouse--part of her office drag, Willow knew, but jazzed up with a slim gold belt and matching necklace, displayed to advantage by a few more unbuttoned buttons than most office dress codes would have let her get away with. How was it, Willow wondered, that Buffy could make the cheapest, tackiest accessories look like a million dollars, while she still gave off an aura of plaid jumpers and goofy hats no matter what she wore? It was an alien plot, had to be.
“No, doofus. So, you and Spike. Things are moving kind of, um, fast, aren’t they?” Understatement of the year; was it only two days ago that Buffy’d declared the whole thing impossible?
"I guess. I’ve known Spike way longer than anyone else I’ve slept with." Buffy applied more elbow grease to the skillet, and for a second Willow was sure she was going to get a polite brush-off. She slid the plate on top of the stack in the cupboard, watching her friend with worried eyes. Maybe she was being too pushy. Once upon a time she wouldn't have had to push at all; Buffy would have been bursting to discuss new developments in her love life with her. Buffy hadn't shown any interest in girl talk in a month of Sundays, even before her death--she’d completely clammed up about the whole fiasco with Riley, and Willow sometimes suspected that whether she admitted it or not, Buffy was still a tiny bit uncomfortable with the idea of her and Tara and S-E-X.
They’d promised each other no secrets, hadn’t they? The inner voice she couldn't seem to shut up snipped, Right after the last time Spike nearly tore the whole gang apart. Not a constructive thought. Why was she in such a pissy mood today? She'd gotten that great idea for revamping the transference spell, and she'd gotten the book she needed out of the Magic Box safely. She stopped herself from throwing an uneasy glance over at her duffle, currently languishing in a corner of the Summers' kitchen. The book was still there. There was no reason for anyone to suspect she'd taken it.
“I’m sorry, Buff, if you’re not comfy talking about it--”
"No, it’s OK. It's just been so long since I had anything to dish about, I've forgotten all the tribal customs." She stood with one hand resting lightly on the hot water tap, contemplating the drifting archipelagos of soapsuds in the sink with a little smile curving her lips.
Putting away another plate, Willow asked, "Sparkage, then?"
Buffy toyed with her necklace for a moment, trying hard to suppress the smile and not succeeding very well. "Maybe," she replied, evasive. "Oh, who am I kidding, enough sparkage to send the Sunnydale power grid into epileptic fits. You remember when Riley and I got caught at that party at Lowell House?"
"Hard to forget the great Summers-Finn Boinkfest of '00."
Buffy rolled her eyes and turned the tap on, rinsing out the skillet. "It’s a little like that. Except, you know, not a magical compulsion, and without the freaky sex-poltergeists draining us. And it feels about a hundred times better, and a hundred times scarier. And Spike's a lot more, uh, imaginative than--okay, it’s nothing like that at all. Last night was so intense--"
Willow's eyebrow went up. "Is this, like, meeting-with-Angel-that-you-won't-talk-about intense?"
Buffy flicked soapy water at her. "No. It was like--imagine the only ice cream you ever had in your life was vanilla. And it's good. You like the vanilla. Yay, vanilla! But then one day someone hands you a great big ol' butterscotch ripple sundae. With extra hot fudge and whipped cream and a cherry on top." She held the skillet up to the light for inspection, then set it on one of the stove burners to air-dry. "And then tells you that there are seven zillion more flavors still to try, and he owns a Baskin Robbins.”
“And you’re not worried about... all the stuff you were worried about two days ago anymore?”
“I’m terrified.” The words were a flat statement of fact. Buffy flipped the damp sponge into the air and caught it. “But night before last--I could have lost you, or Tara, or Xander, or Dawn. Or Spike. Who knows what'll happen tomorrow? Last time I checked, still a Slayer with a short expiration date, and dead bodies tend to happen in my vicinity.” For a second her eyes were haunted, though her voice remained flippant. “Besides, sex changes everything. Probably the next time we see each other it'll be all weird and uncomfortable and--"
The approaching growl of the motorcycle rattled the panes of the kitchen window slightly, rising to a crescendo and then dying away with a cough as it pulled into the driveway. Buffy stood on tiptoe and twitched the curtains aside to peer out into the blue-grey dusk. "It's Spike!" she said, a little breathless, as if she knew hordes of people who were likely to turn up on motorcycles and its being Spike was a wonderful surprise.
"Is he wearing the coat?" Willow asked, straight-faced.
Buffy gave her a suspicious look. "Of course he is. OK, I'm out of here. We'll do a standard pass over Rolling Green and Eastside Memorial, and then see if we can rake up any leads on Tanner and his band of Merry Men. I'll phone at ten-thirty to see if Dawn's home. I'll probably be home around two."
She pulled the stopper out of the sink and dried her hands, then made a quick detour into the living room to grab a couple of stakes from the weapons chest behind the couch. Willow followed her, lagging a bit, but getting there in plenty of time to see Tara open the front door in the middle of Spike's over-enthusiastic leaning on the doorbell. Buffy straightened up, tucking the stakes into her coat pockets.
Spike stood in the doorway, wearing the coat, which had obviously been cleaned up and mended since its encounter with the pyracantha bush. He looked rather more dressed-up than usual--besides the red overshirt he'd made an attempt to un-scuff the toes of his boots, and he was wearing a couple of those big gaudy silver rings, like the death's-head one he'd given Buffy under the influence of Willow's spell of two years past--Spike's taste in jewelry was an aesthetic train wreck between goth-punk and the Victorian conviction that too much was never enough. He looked slightly self-conscious until he took in Buffy's attire, and a slow grin spread across his face. "Dressed for action, I see. Sorry, Slayer, the bike doesn't come with a side-saddle."
"How cute," Willow whispered to Tara. "It's a slay date." Tara poked her in the ribs.
Buffy sashayed over to the door and stood nose-to-chin with him. She put her hands on her hips and gave him a coolly superior smile in return. "I used to slay like this all the time. Just remember, anything you can do I can better--and while wearing high heels."
Spike's arms slid through the crooks of her elbows and round her waist as if drawn by magnets. "Really?" He dropped his head a fraction and whispered something in her ear.
Buffy's cheeks flushed, but there was challenge in her voice. "Try me. Come on, Spike, time's wasting."
He offered her an arm, and after a second's hesitation she took it. Vampire and Slayer strolled arm in arm down the porch steps, laying claim to the night and looking at one another with unabashed hunger in their eyes.
Beautiful, both of them. And deadly. They have power.
There were times, when she was deep in the casting of a spell, when the world fell away and Willow saw everything as patterns and auras of magic. The spellsight overtook her now, and she saw, not the small lean man and the smaller slim woman, but figures of flame: Spike’s demon-soul dark as midnight, shot through with the gold and scarlet of human desire, Buffy’s human one bright as noon, though the brightness could not conceal the dark currents of power which marked her as something other than merely human. A crown of crackling blue sparks arced around the shadow-Spike’s head--the chip?
The voice whispered in her mind Ironic, is it not, that these two whose power was thrust upon them, she unwilling and he unknowing, should outstrip you, who were born to wield it?
Willow blinked and shook her head, hard, and vision returned to normal; it was only Spike and Buffy disappearing round the hedge in the direction of the driveway, Spike starting to tell Buffy about something he and Xander had seen in the cemetery. “Spike!” He turned, questioning. “You be good to her, or--”
He cocked his head to the side, amused. “You’ll stake me?”
“No. I’ll tell Xander about your deepest, darkest secret.” She ran the tip of one index finger up the bridge of her nose.
Spike went a shade paler, if that were possible, and his hand made an abortive movement towards the breast pocket of his shirt. “You wouldn’t, you vicious little--bloody hell, you would! What do you lot do, hang about dreaming up ways to torture me?”
Willow smirked at him. “Like you haven’t done the same to us?”
He considered for a moment, then smirked back. “It’s a fair cop.”
“What?” Buffy asked, extending a curious hand towards his pocket. “What’s in there?”
Spike captured her hand and strode towards the motorcycle. “Nothing, pet, let’s us just go kill off a few of my friends and relatives, shall we?” A moment later the motorcycle rumbled to life, and then they were gone, roaring away into the darkness.
“What was that?” Tara asked, slipping an arm around her waist.
"Just a little vampire blackmail,” Willow said with a satisfied smile. “The punishment should fit the potential crime. I’ve still got a shovel with Riley’s name on it in my Dad’s toolshed.” She leaned into her lover's shoulder and sighed. "Guess that blows the 'next time we meet will be awkward and weird' theory. I just want it to be all better, now. I want to know she's happy. If this whole thing with Spike is just some weird self-flagellation thing because she hates being alive again--"
"I don’t think it is. But it’s still Buffy’s decision," Tara said firmly. "You brought her back, but it's Buffy's life, not yours. Personally," she slipped a hand under Willow's blouse and ran her fingers teasingly along her ribs, "I think your life has enough exciting parts to keep you occupied."
Willow laughed and kissed her on the nose. "I consider myself chastised."
Tara nuzzled her back. "We've got the whole evening to ourselves," she whispered, sliding her hand higher. "I could chastise you a little more."
For a moment Willow wavered. "I should really work on my English term paper," she said, pulling away. "I really slacked off my classes after Halloween, and I've got to catch up. I was going to head over to the university library and see if that new biography of Gertrude Stein was in yet. I won’t stay out too late. You want to come along?"
That was a calculated risk. Dawn wouldn’t be home for hours, but Willow knew that responsible, level-headed Tara would want to be sure that someone was home to answer the phone in case of emergencies. And just as she’d expected, Tara looked wistful, but shook her head. "No, I should stay. I've got homework I can work on here."
Retrieving her duffle from the kitchen corner, Willow slung it over her shoulder, feeling the chill electric tingle of the book inside even through the layers of fabric. “I’ll be back before you know it,” she promised, and set off into the deepening night.

Downtown Sunnydale on a Saturday night, an island of small-town ambience in the ocean of So Cal suburbia. Main Street, lit up with the glitter and sparkle of Christmas lights, hosts the usual good-time Saturday crowds augmented by hordes of shoppers. The Bronze, the Espresso Pump, the Sun Theater, all packed. Go further downtown, towards the docks, and the streets grow narrower, darker, and the seedier allure of the Fish Tank and the Purple Onion draw their own circles of clientele.
If you are human, you keep to the light, stick with the swirling mass of high school kids with oversized jeans and backwards baseball caps, college kids in fashionable piercings and haircuts that had been out of date in L.A. for weeks, adults young and old grabbing the bit in their teeth and throwing over the traces of the workweek. If you are human, and have lived in Sunnydale any amount of time, you know something is out there in the dark, beyond the sodium glow of the street lamps. You join in the buzz of talk and ever-so-slightly-nervous laughter and hope that by refusing to name it, you can ward it off.
If you aren't human, you keep to the darkness, stalking the mortal herd with predatory precision. You drift along the edges of the crowds, silent as the mist that legend said you could turn to--legend was wrong, but who needed special effects when you had strength and speed and senses far beyond the mortal? There's nothing human which could match you, much less best you. Scout the sidewalks, looking for tonight's victim. The blue-haired woman with the armful of packages? The lanky young man with the soul patch and the air of existential discontent? Or there, in the alleyway ahead, the young couple necking heedlessly against the wall, hands and mouths all over each other, lost in a carnal fog?
If you are a vampire, you smile to yourself and glide forward across the gum-pocked pavement in front of the theater, cruel delight welling deep inside as you imagine your hand falling on the man's shoulder. You imagine his look of shock, the woman's terror as you tear his jugular open, the fear in their eyes as delicious as the blood in their veins. You suit action to thought, reaching out; but before your hand comes to rest upon its target, the man in the alley turns to face you in a swirl of black leather. His golden eyes and ridged brow and sharp-fanged, arrogant smile mirror your own, the only reflection you will ever know.
If you are a vampire, you realize, too late, that there is only one heartbeat to be heard between them. You start to back away, thinking that you have intruded upon the other's kill; but there is no blood on his mouth, and his hand, cold as your own, closes about your wrist with a strength that exceeds your fledgling prowess by a century or more, pinning you in place. The delicate pink tip of the woman's tongue darts across her kiss-swollen lips, and her eyes are bright with excitement, not fear.
If you are a vampire, you look upon the faces of the Slayer and her traitorous consort and know that you've made a terrible, terrible mistake. As the wooden stake plunges into your chest, there is one moment of needle-sharp, achingly brilliant pain which lasts forever, the forever you were promised when your sire first placed your dying lips to the wound at his breast and bade you suck.
And then you are gone.

Buffy nudged the pile of dust at her feet with a disdainful toe, and the evening breeze finished dispersing the remains of the vampire who'd attacked them. Spike slouched against the brickwork, watching her with an admiring half-grin that didn't quite conceal his fangs. She watched him back from beneath lowered lashes. His pale hands drew a rising arc in the darkness as he brought his lighter up to meet the cigarette held askew in one corner of his mouth. His left thumb flicked the striker of the gold Zippo and the flame leaped up, conjuring twin gold-on-gold reflections in his eyes. The light lent the momentary illusion of warmth to his angular features, threw the brow ridges of his demonic face into sharp relief and cast the hollows of his cheeks into deep shadow. He cupped his right hand around the cigarette, and the red ember at its tip flared, dimmed, and brightened again as he drew it to life.
She couldn't stand smokers, hated the smell of cigarettes, and was in full agreement with the old joke about the designated smoking areas in California being Arizona and Nevada. So why was the sight of Spike lighting up so god-damned sexy? Something about the way that sensual mouth pursed around the cigarette...or maybe the way those strong, long-fingered hands manipulated the lighter... He flicked the lighter off and returned it to his coat pocket. Smoke trickled from between his parted lips and coiled upwards in a lazy spiral. "Was it good for you, love?"
"Not as good as this." Buffy dragged him down without waiting for him to shake off the game face, grabbed his cigarette, and tossed it over her shoulder. She was afraid for a moment that he'd take her curiosity wrong, but after a moment's surprise Spike responded with all the enthusiasm she could have wished, and they were feeling each other up and trading long nicotine-flavored kisses again. The first time Angel had kissed her he'd vamped out uncontrollably, and ever after had been wary of it happening again. If anything, Spike seemed to have the opposite reaction; he had to concentrate to keep from reverting to human at her touch. Buffy ran her tongue over his teeth, testing the sharp points of his canines. Different. Dangerous. Thrilling.
She really had meant for tonight to be all business. Really. They had work to do. Vamps to kill, crazies to track. So naturally Spike had to show up looking hotter than a two-dollar pistol, and ride her around on what was essentially a two-wheeled, gas-powered vibrator until she was all hot and bothered. At least it wasn't just her. Spike had scarcely let her out of arm's reach all evening--always catching hold of her hand or touching her cheek or stroking her hair or brushing against her, as if to reassure himself that she was really there. Or maybe just to be touching her. For all her own longing, she'd never realized how starved for physical contact he was, too--going on two days' evidence, Spike was big on the PDAs.
So they were being businesslike. Really. Here on the town's main drag it was ever so much more inconspicuous for the two of them to go arm in arm than to stalk along like a pair of Old West gunslingers lookin' fer trouble at the OK Corral. Ending up macking in the alley next to the Sun was just an occupational hazard of going arm in arm, was all.
His soft cool lips tantalized her throat, his fangs making little teasing pinpricks against her skin that never came close to really drawing blood. Some part of her was completely astonished at all this implied about his control and her trust of it, but the rest of her shivered and melted as his hand slid up and over her shoulder, stroking the line of her collarbone where it ran beneath her jacket, then dropping to cup her breast. Her nipples went taut under his fingers. He had an unerring sense of what kind of touches, and where, turned her to goo. Best of all it was mutual; her hands were eliciting all kinds of happy little rumblings from Spike as they explored the lean hard lines of his torso. It was very easy to tell exactly what kinds of touches he liked, and where.
She made an attempt to break free of his circling arms that barely qualified as quarter-hearted. "We should patrol."
"We are patrolling."
"Patrolling implies actually moving from place to place at some point."
He nuzzled her collarbone. "I am moving from place... to... mmmmrrrhhrr...." Now this was a cool discovery; rub a vampire's brow ridges and he'd follow you anywhere. Fun with game face. Who knew? Spike tilted his head back with a goofily blissful expression, allowing her easier access to that completely lickable Adam's apple, and said hoarsely, "Got a dangerous vampire to keep an eye on right here, Slayer."
"Really?" She took advantage of the invitation and licked his throat, reveling in his pleasurable shudder. "I always thought this one was kind of a creampuff. I hear he uses excessive amounts of hair gel."
"How many times, pet?" His husky growl went right to the center of her being and pulsed there.
"What?"
"How many times did you bring yourself off today, thinkin' about last night?"
Thump him on the chest, hard. Had to be hard; soft wouldn't make an impression on that rock-solid body. "As if!" Could she make a quick grab for his shirt pocket and find out what the heck he was hiding in there? Or would any such attempt degenerate into further sessions of Grope The Vampire, and would either of them really object if it did?
Spike only laughed. "How many?"
She looked up, biting her lower lip with a reluctant smile. "Twice." At his skeptical look, "Well, twice before Tara got home." Her smile went wicked. "And you?"
He nipped at her pouting lip and chuckled. "If the whelp had shown up a few minutes earlier he'd've gotten an eyeful. I'll be in Guinness for non-stop wanking any day now if this keeps up. Not that I wasn't close already."
Buffy reached down and toyed with the buttons of his fly, cupping the already sizeable bulge in his jeans and letting her fingers stray to one side, then the other, teasing him through the worn black denim. "Seems to me like you're keeping up very nicely." He groaned and his cock jerked and hardened further beneath her touch. So nice not to have to pretend Spike didn't exist below the belt buckle, especially when the real estate in that neighborhood was so choice. It was a little aggravating that he could scent her arousal no matter how she might try to hide it, but everyone could see just how hot she got him, and it gave her a heady, joyful jolt of sexual power. She did that to him, she, Buffy Summers, the one Angelus hadn't thought worth a second go, the one Riley had left for not needing him enough.
Spike growled deep in his chest and ground his body into hers. She was half a breath away from yanking the jeans right off those narrow, muscled hips (damned if she could tell what besides his hard-on kept them up in the first place) and going down on him right then and there when the scream tore through the noise of traffic and Saturday crowds.
" Bugger," Spike snarled with truly heartfelt viciousness.
Buffy bit back similar sentiments. Time to save the world, or at least the local part of it. "Sounds like it came from across the street. Come on."
They dashed out of the alley and down the sidewalk, dodging pedestrians and prompting a few more shrieks from the people who noticed that Spike was still all fangy. Vaulting the hood of an acid-green Nissan parked at the intersection, Buffy paused on the corner, trying to concentrate on the tingle along her nerves that meant vampires were nearby. She'd never been as good at this aspect of the Slayer biz as the hitting parts, and having to filter out Spike's overwhelming presence didn't make it any easier. Still... "There," she said, pointing.
Spike's gaze followed her outstretched hand and he nodded, eyes lighting at the prospect of carnage. There were four this time. Smarter than the one who'd attacked earlier, too. Two of them, human features to the fore, were standing guard in the mouth of the alley behind the hairdresser’s, camouflaged in seedy-young-adult uniforms of baggy jeans and oversized flannel shirts. Both stared insolently at the passers-by and silently dared anyone to venture past them. No one was taking them up on it. In the shadows of the alley behind them, two dimly visible figures loomed over a body sprawled out on the oil-stained concrete. Its leg kicked fitfully, once.
The guard-vamps sprouted fangs and dropped into a fighting stance the moment the two of them approached. Buffy shot a look at Spike--all it ever took. She dove at the vamp on the right while he tore into the one on the left with a joyful roar. Instead of closing with her foe she feinted, dropped, and rolled under his swing to come up behind him. She back-kicked as she came to her feet and slammed her heel into his kidneys as Spike grabbed his opponent by the scruff of the neck and rammed his head into the wall. The force of Buffy's kick sent her target staggering forward face-first into Spike's waiting fist, but she didn't bother to track his progress; without hesitation she leaped at the pair who were feeding on the man on the ground. She dug her fingers into the nearest one's shoulder and yanked him upright. "Hey, Mr. Selfish! Didn't your mom teach you that you shouldn't eat if you didn't bring enough for everyone in the class?"
The interrupted vampire snarled and lunged at her. She smashed a hard left into his jaw, sending him reeling back into the side of the nearby dumpster. Buffy grinned, flexing her hand. Oh, yeah, that felt good.
The second one's head snapped up, runnels of crimson trailing from the corners of her mouth. "Make-up's running, Elvira. Have a wet-nap." She snapped a front kick at the crouching vampire, catching her right under the chin. "Oopsie. That was my boot." Number One kicked off the dumpster and pounced her from behind. She elbowed him in the nose, whirled in place and drove her fist into his solar plexus. His legs went out from under him and she brought her knee up to catch him in the face again. The sound of bones breaking was music. Yeah. This was the stuff. Get out all that... frustration.
She caught a glimpse of Spike as she spun, engaged in his own dance with the other two. He was outright toying with them--he'd shifted back to human form, foregoing the extra advantage of strength and speed that letting his demon aspect surface gave him--saying, in essence, I don't need it for you. He'd leave himself open, let them get in a hit or two, think they had him going, and then let go with a lightning-swift series of brutal kicks and blows. His face was alight with that huge tongue-wagging grin, loving the fight, turned on as all hell by the act of pummelling someone into the ground.
He caught her eye and winked, conspiratorial.
You got off on it.
And I suppose you're telling me you don't?
The chill cramp of self-disgust in her stomach had a knock-down drag-out with the adrenaline rush of the fight, and lost--for the moment, anyway. The moment almost cost her; both of her foes took instant advantage of her distraction and for a second she staggered under the impact of their fists. She crashed into the side of the dumpster and the side panel fell open with a clang; one of the plastic bags inside burst and garbage cascaded out onto the ground. Buffy leaped to her feet, well and truly pissed off now. "Do you realize this blouse has to be dry-cleaned?" she snapped, whipping out her stake. "No more Ms. Nice Slayer!"
Over at the mouth of the alley Spike had taken note of her slip and already disposed of one of his foes; now he wrestled the second one into a headlock and wrenched, hard. The guard-vamp's scream was cut off as his head and body parted company.
Spike was coming for her, bursting right through the shower of grey-brown particles which were all that was left of his opponent. Buffy rammed her stake home, straight through the rib cage of the female vamp, and whirled, looking for the other one--no way was she going to let Spike dust more vamps in a night than she got. There he was, by the dumpster, just turning to face her. She readied the stake for a blow. Spike fell into position behind the remaining vamp, boxing him in. Buffy struck. The vampire howled in fear and dodged, but she'd taken that into account. Mr. Pointy arced towards his heart.
It wasn't there.
Giles had told her more than once during their training sessions that the opponent most to be feared was the inexperienced one, because they were the most unpredictable. Over the years Buffy had found the advice to be accurate, but pretty much useless--how could you predict something that wasn't predictable? Or in this case, even an opponent? The vamp gang's victim, still supine, had kicked the last vampire's legs out from under him. Her target was now flat on his butt on the ground, and her stake was now headed straight for Spike's chest.
Time slowed to a crawl. She saw Spike's eyes go wide, and his right forearm start up to block her at the approximate speed of molasses in January. She screamed at the pokiness of her nerve impulses, which were moseying from her brain to her arm at much the same pace.
She managed to divert her aim a fraction; he managed to block. The stake went flying. Shaking with equal parts relief and absolute fury, she bent and wrenched the nearest piece of sharp wood off the pallet leaning up against the wall behind the dumpster and stabbed it into the fallen vampire's chest. She stood there staring down at the place where it wasn't any longer, unable to control her shivering. That could have been--could have been-- "Spike! Are you OK?"
He patted himself down. "Yeh. Still undead, no thanks to..." A fearful whimper at their feet broke the spell. Spike's head turned slowly, his eyes sparking gold. The man who'd almost been lunch staggered to his feet, clutching the dumpster. Dark-haired, husky, wearing a Dodgers t-shirt... "You. I know you," Spike whispered. "Ramon, innit?" He smiled, the sweet, bone-chilling smile which presaged casual bloodshed, and without any further warning his hand shot out to clamp around Ramon's throat.
It had always been characteristic of Spike that he could go from edgy annoyance to full-blown murderous rage in the space of an eyeblink. It didn't happen often these days; two years of living with the chip had forced him to learn how to muzzle that demonic temper, but every now and then it chewed through the straps. It's OK, Buffy thought, the chip will...
She flashed on the night a month ago when she'd been dragged unwilling back to life, and the fight with Magnus Bryce's men: the crack of gunfire, the fiery lash of the bullet creasing her arm, Spike's fangs sinking into the neck of the man who'd shot her, heedless of the pain the ship was causing... and for the first time it really sank in that the chip made it very difficult for Spike to kill people--and very difficult was not the same as impossible.
Her fist met Spike's nose just before his fingers met flesh. He staggered with the double pain of her blow and the chip-shock, dropping the terrified Ramon immediately. Buffy heaved him up by the lapels with all her strength, tossing him across the alley and into the wall. He hit with an audible thump, slid down the wall and crumpled to the ground, clutching his head. Plainly dizzy and aching, he found his feet, then reeled back into the brick wall as Buffy's hard little fist smacked into his nose a second time.
"You ASSHOLE!" she yelled. Buffy interposed herself between Ramon and Spike, balanced on the balls of her feet, fist cocked and ready to hit the vampire again despite the tears welling in her eyes and the quiver of her mouth. "What are you THINKING?" For a long moment the two of them remained frozen, eyes locked, Spike's bloodied face a mask of impotent fury, all the more frightening for remaining human. "Spike..."
Her voice broke on his name, and perhaps he sensed the fear behind her anger. The rage in his eyes melted away as they softened from gold to blue, and he held out a placating hand. "Sorry, love--got a little carried away--"
"Carried away? Don't 'love' me, you--!" Her fist lashed out and Spike's expression hardened again--he grabbed her wrist before she could connect, making no move to fight her, but pulling her close and holding on, hard, before she tore her arm from his grasp. Buffy slapped both palms flat against his chest, ready to shove him off. She made the mistake of looking up and was instantly lost in the lustful, adoring azure of his eyes.
"Too late for that, pet."
Buffy's breath made a little hitching noise in her throat. "This isn't a game! You could have killed--" Ramon? Anyone? Should it have occurred to her that he could kill her too?
Spike shook his head with a rueful laugh and let her go, massaging his temples. "It didn't come off, did it?" He licked the trickle of blood from his upper lip. "And yours truly's got a bugger of a headache to keep me company for the next hour. No harm, no foul."
There was a voice in the back of her head yammering No harm, no foul, no, it's wrong wrong wrong but I need him want him love--oh God, not that, not now, don't say it don't think it--still a monster, still a monster--
Ramon, his dark eyes like saucers, broke and ran, kicking up a shower of garbage.
"Fuck!" Spike yelled as a crumpled milk carton smacked him in the head.
"Yeah!" Buffy gasped. "I mean, catch him!"

The UC Sunnydale library had been built in the 70's, during a phase when architecture was all blocky textured cement pillars and plate glass. In the summer, in the daytime, the interior was pleasantly light and airy, but at night, in the winter, sitting too close to those vast blank windowed walls could give you the unnerving sensation of floating in some starless Lovecraftian void.
Which just went to show, Willow thought, giving the page in front of her a moody flip, that you could make anything creepy if you tried hard enough. She sighed and pulled her German dictionary over to look up another irregular verb. Obviously she wasn't trying hard enough, because the evening remained as prosaic as it could possibly be. Other students with book bags slung over their shoulders or varicolored stacks of texts in their arms drifted past her carrel in knots of twos or threes, exchanging low whispers on the location of the nearest card catalogue terminal, or the periodical literature room. Willow peered at them over the stacks of dictionaries and reference books piled around her. No one seemed nervous. There were no ominous flickering lights, no manifestations of power.
She hadn't been hoping for any, she told herself sternly. She was just doing research. Translating. Sure, the last time she'd opened this book she'd been caught up in a transcendent mystical experience unlike anything she'd ever known. But it had been wrong, and creepy, and evil, and anyway, things had been different then.
Yes. Then you had power.
Her hand tightened on the pencil and the point snapped off, leaving a snail-trail squiggle of graphite across her translation notes. "Oh--" She looked guiltily around. It was practically sacrilegious to swear in a library, wasn't it? "Bugger," she finished in a much softer voice. There. British swearing didn't count. Giles had done it all the time. Willow Rosenberg, too much of a weenie to say fuck in a library. With a sigh she returned to her task. The scribbled footnote she was currently translating ran over onto the next page. She turned the yellow, dog-eared vellum over and began the laborious task of translating the next section.
"In the next chapter," an oddly familiar voice said. Willow's head jerked up. Her reflection in the night-black glass gazed back, her but not her: a young woman in red lace and black leather posed seductively in her carrel, leaning on one hand and looking at her with a coquettish tilt of her head. Her hair, longer than Willow’s, fell in russet sheaves about her pale, pixie-ish face. "Hi, Snuggles." She wiggled the fingers of her free hand at Willow. "What we want. In the next chapter." Her lips curved in a pouting smile and her voice grew husky. "Wanna look?"
Willow jumped to her feet, sending several of the books tumbling to the floor. She rubbed her eyes, hard, but her vampire avatar was gone, and the reflection in the window was her own prosaic self. "I'd say this verges on the disturbing," she muttered. Well, she'd wanted a transcendent mystic experience... She looked down at the shabby little book on the desktop, and after a few false starts, extended her hand and ran a finger over the pages. What was that disturbing rust-colored stain sticking those two leaves together? Best not think about it. One by one, she turned the pages until the next chapter heading leaped out at her from the top of one of them. The crabbed, archaic lettering blurred into illegibility in several places further down the page, but the title was clear: Addressing That Which Abides In The Great Darkness.
That didn't sound good. Let's face it, nothing in this puppy is Norman Vincent Peale material. She sat down again, tracing the lines of text with one finger and frowning at the difficult language. The first few chapters of the grimoire had been devoted to necromantic spells of various kinds: spells to bind a ghost to your service, spells to reanimate the dead, spells to create zombies. The next few chapters had dealt with living souls, but had been no less uncomfy to contemplate--here there were spells for influencing decisions and clouding minds.
What she'd hoped to find was something that would restore a damaged spirit and allow her to regain her magic. This, however, was an invocation of some kind, though the author was cagey about what exactly was being summoned. Odd. Knowing the correct name of the being you were invoking was vital; otherwise you risked losing control.

Who art beyond the light of sun or moon
Who precedeth time, who art the final darkness
My soul is yours; grant me therefore all that I desire,
Yea, though my desires be as the boundless sea shalt thou satisfy them
And in retu--

The rest of the page was hopeless; at some point, someone had spilt ink over half of it. Willow turned to the next page; it wasn't in good condition, but she thought that it might still be decipherable if she worked at it. Still, this wasn't at all what she was looking for. Summoning some nameless, really-not-good-sounding critter was not on the agenda. Even if it could satisfy desires as boundless as the sea. Which did kind of cover getting one's mojo back, didn't--
Willow slammed the book shut, stood up, and began stuffing things into her backpack. It was past time to get home.

Not catching someone was a good deal more difficult than it looked.
Up ahead of them Ramon staggered to a halt and doubled over in the crimson glow of a NO VACANCY sign, hands braced against his knees. Lincoln had once been the main route into Sunnydale, back before the interstate came through, and was lined with a string of grungy little motels built back in the 40's--horseshoes of little detached cabins rejoicing in decaying pioneer ambience. Spike could remember staying in ones just like them on cross-country trips with Dru, in the days when they'd been new and fashionably kitschy. He made a mental note to mention the fun factor of faux log cabin sex to Buffy, and to leave out the part about having the inhabitants of the cabin next door for breakfast.
Lurking in the shadows of the Ace Hardware store across the street, Spike watched as Ramon looked up, scanning the apparently deserted street. The vampire could see the droplets of sweat beading on his brow, each one reflecting the gory neon light. The breeze brought the ambrosial scent of blood and fear to his nose. Ramon'd tried to be tricky at first, but his pursuers knew downtown Sunnydale intimately, and they were both faster and had more endurance than he did. After ten minutes of dodging through alleys and doubling back, their quarry had taken a straight course down Lincoln towards the edge of town. And he was their quarry, no doubt about that. They'd loped along behind him for a good three miles now, like wolves wearing down a deer on the Discovery Channel. It had been a long time since he'd hunted a human being in earnest, but the old skills returned with gratifying speed.
In the time it took the man to wipe the sweat from his brow Spike left the doorway, flowing down the darkened sidewalk with unearthly swiftness to crouch behind the wire lattice shading a bus bench twenty feet closer to his mark. Across the street he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye: Buffy, leaving her own hiding place for new concealment. A breath later she was by his side, her gaze never leaving the back of Ramon's head.
She carried herself with tense grace of a lioness stalking a gazelle. There was a wildness of spirit in her that called out to him in kinship, and reveled as he did in the hunt and the kill, that leapt up in joy within her when danger made the blood run quick and hot in her veins. Artemis of Sunnydale, Night’s huntress/Shall I behold thy unclothed glory/and the hounds of my heart tear my flesh...? Oh, that’s brilliant, that is. No improvement in compositional skills in a hundred and twenty years, I see. No, no cold, chaste huntress this beside him. She brooked no comparison to old goddesses, this woman who could out-fight and out-fuck the lot of them. Whatever siren song the night held for her, Buffy had always denied it sway over her life, living with a fierce resolve that the Slayer in her would be servant, not master. He wasn’t sure if he loved her more because of or despite that resolve and the distance it put between them.
He'd never been able to take Dru on a hunt like this; she was too easily distracted--ironic that he was finally getting to share this particular thrill with someone only after he could no longer bring it to its deadly conclusion. Buffy laid a hand on his thigh, splayed fingers warm through the black denim, and suddenly the lack of a deadly conclusion didn't seem such a hardship. Perhaps he'd take to carrying a camera like those ponces who couldn't bear to shoot the cute furry animals.
She glanced at him and made a small motion towards Ramon, a question in her eyes. Spike shook his head. Normally he was willing to follow her lead on patrol, but this was his element. Buffy fought demons; she had little experience with hunting humans. Ramon straightened and jogged off again. Spike laid a restraining hand on Buffy's shoulder, allowing their prey to move on unmolested for a moment before continuing the pursuit. "He's headed for the dump," he whispered.
Fifteen minutes later, they were half-crouched at the summit of a mountain of junk, peering over the crest and down into the valley below. Buffy brushed at the unidentifiable smear of black gunk on her sleeve with distaste. "Why can't more villains lair in luxury condos?"
‘Villains’ was stretching it. In an arroyo formed by two intersecting ranges of trash, half a dozen crazies were visible in the rubble. One of them going from one ramshackle shelter to the next delivering food--plastic-wrapped microwave burritos, it looked like. The others, under Tanner's supervision, busied themselves with the Sisyphean task of keeping the shelters from falling to pieces around them, adjusting the positions of old doors and pieces of plywood and sheet metal according to some arcane architectural plan. "Bloody Hooverville down there," Spike muttered. The aggravating thing was that this miniature Calcutta had been growing practically under his nose all summer--he came to the dump at least once a week to scout for useful discards. Not that he would have considered it anything more than a possible source of amusement if he had discovered it, but he'd probably have mentioned it to one of the humans, and they'd doubtless have felt the need to investigate, and the whole mess could have been nipped in the bud far earlier.
Still, it wasn't as if they'd hung out a welcome sign. They'd done a bang-up job of hiding their little community among the winding canyons of trash. Nothing was visible from the area of the dump near the front gate, and since he'd often had Dawn with him on his own expeditions here over the summer, he'd avoided foraging too far afield. "Now what?"
Buffy elbowed herself up over a broken-legged record cabinet and frowned down at the collection of huts. "Survivor: The Hellmouth! gets yanked for low ratings," she said. "Number one, we take Tanner out. Number two, we get the rest of his little Kool-Aid cult. Number three... I haven't gotten to number three yet." She dropped back down behind the crest of the trash heap and kicked a tangle of old Christmas tree lights out of her way.
"Can't say that 'Get em's' not a plan after my own heart, love, but exactly what are we going to do with them once they're got?"
She looked disgruntled. "If Tara's right and Will can't fix them up, I don't know what we can do. But they shouldn't be living here like this, no matter what. Maybe I can talk to Dawn's social worker about it. She's got to be good for something besides dropping by to snoop for dirty dishes." She glanced over her shoulder. "This bites. I don't do strategy. Giles does strategy. I hit things."
Spike sucked his cheeks in. "The Watcher isn't going to be around to do strategy much longer, pet."
That made her flinch. Without a word, Buffy got to her feet and began picking her way through the rubbish, back towards the front gate. Spike followed her in a small landslide of trash. He studied the set of her shoulders as they walked; her arms were folded across her chest and she kept her head down. The retreat into blank non-emotion was painful in contrast to the animation she'd shown five minutes ago.
As they reached the gate to the dump Spike hesitated, then took a couple of longer strides to catch up with her, and fell into step at her side. He couldn't help feeling that he was taking an enormous chance, somehow, despite all they'd shared in the last twenty-four hours, but buggered if he was going to let her crawl into her shell again and pull the shell in after her. He put an arm round her shoulders. Buffy looked up at him, startled, and for an instant she stiffened, about to pull away. But she didn't, and bit by bit the tenseness drained out of her. At last she leaned into his side, butting her head into his shoulder with a muffled sigh. "It's so much easier when you can solve problems by killing something," she said wistfully.
Spike's mouth twitched in a wry smile. "Tell me about it."

It was well past midnight when they rolled into the Summers' driveway. Buffy pulled off her helmet and shook her hair out. "Gah. You are never, but never, going to con me into driving that monster again. It's like a recurring Driver’s Ed nightmare."
Spike leaned back in the seat and grinned at her. "Come on, if the Bit can drive it, surely it's not too much for the mighty Slayer! But if it makes you wobbly in the knees, next time you can take the bike." Buffy's speculative look made him regret the offer instantly. Her only advantage over Dawn as a chauffeur was possession of a valid driver's licence--he might drive like a maniac, but Buffy Summers drove like an inexperienced maniac. Following along behind her on the motorcycle for the brief drive from the Magic Box back to the cemetery would have been heart-stopping had his heart been beating in the first place, and went a long way towards explaining why she cadged so many rides with him when she had her mother's perfectly good SUV sitting in the garage. He gave the motorcycle a protective pat and silently promised it never to let her near the ignition. "Well. Suppose I'd better be getting on home."
Buffy stood in the driveway, turning the helmet round and round in her hands. "Do you--I mean, it’s not that late--would you like to come in for a bit?"
Spike allowed himself a smirk at her incongruous attack of propriety. "This the bit where I'm supposed to shuffle my feet and look shy? Right--" He adopted a dreadful American accent. "Gosh, Buffy, that'd be swell!"
"Oh, get off the bike and come on!" Buffy snapped, but her eyes were sparkling. "I'm only inviting you in so I can palm Dawn's gross casserole off on you."
"The Bit's a culinary genius, and someday you Philistines will appreciate her." Spike let down the kickstand, and swung off the bike to follow her inside. The house was dark, not that that made any difference to him, and there was no sign of light from upstairs. Willow or Tara sometimes made a late night of spellcasting on weekends, but not tonight, apparently.
Buffy maneuvered around the furniture in the darkened living room and turned on the light in the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and began rummaging around. "Speaking of munchies, you want anything? Tara left some hamburgers--"
"Thought you'd never ask, I'm half famished." Spike reached over her shoulder and snagged the carton of pig's blood, twisted the cap off and took a long swig.
Buffy made an irritated noise and pointed across the kitchen to the cupboard where the glasses were. "Spike, were you raised in a barn? Don't drink out of the carton!" She looked nonplused for a moment. "Did I just say that? Kafka moment. I'm turning into a giant Mom. You've got my permission to kill me now."
"There are worse fates, love," Spike said with a chuckle. He went over to the cupboard, took his usual glass from the shelf and poured himself a generous helping of the pig's blood. He stuck the glass in the microwave and took the carton back to the fridge; Buffy was examining one of the wrapped up hamburgers with a faintly queasy expression.
"I think this one's yours--that, or Tara's getting really forgetful." She handed it to him; to Spike's delight it was practically raw and oozing blood all over the bun.
"Now that was right thoughtful of her." Spike took a large bite and raised his eyebrows at Buffy's gagging noises. "Wha?" He retrieved his glass of blood and took it and the burger into the living room, set them down on the coffee table and sprawled out on the couch with a sigh of content. Buffy followed him in a moment later with her rather more well-done meal and a mug of decaf tea--mint, by the smell of it--shoved him over and curled up beside him.
They were both too occupied with wolfing down their post-midnight snack to say anything for awhile, and Spike felt no need to break the companionable silence afterwards. Buffy didn't seem to be in a particularly amorous mood; she had the faint line between her brows which denoted deep thought, and was content to burrow into his side and draw comfort from his nearness. Spike sipped his slowly cooling blood, listened to her heart beat, and tried to figure out why he felt so odd. Bloody hell. I'm happy.
"I lied to Will and Tara the other morning," Buffy said.
Spike cocked his head inquiringly and said nothing. She continued, "I told them I'd had a revelation--about how no one's happy all the time, so it was normal that I wasn't, yippee skippee I'm getting better." She contemplated her tea. "I did have a revelation that morning, but that wasn't it."
Spike made a non-committal go-ahead noise. The tension had returned to her limbs, as if what she was telling him was difficult for her to get out. "It was about you pulling me out of the way of that truck. I almost died. Again. And I realized--you're not going to be there every time a truck comes along. Sooner or later, I will die again. It was such a peaceful feeling. I don't even have to do anything suicidal--I'm the Slayer. You said it yourself--Death's always on my tail."
His fingers tightened on her shoulder. "Buffy... you know that promise I made you, when you first came back?"
Buffy looked up at him with solemn eyes; in this light they were stormy grey. "You're not backing out on it, are you? Willow claims the only reason you're sorry I came back is because I'm unhappy about it."
Spike shook his head and set his blood down on the coffee table, disturbing her briefly with the movement. "Well... yeh, she's right there." He leaned back once more and tucked her under his arm, his free hand straying to her face and stroking her cheek. "No fear. When you die next, I'll make sure you stay dead. But fair warning, Slayer--I'm on your tail too, and if the bloke with the scythe thinks he'll get to you again without a fight from yours truly, he's in for a shock." He dropped his head to rest his forehead on hers, cringing a little at the broken note he couldn’t quite keep out of his voice. "I'm sorry, love, that's the best I can do. I'm a selfish bastard, and it's all I'm ever going to have, this right here. I want it to last. I don't know where we vamps go when we get dusted, but it's bloody well certain to have a warmer climate than wherever you end up."
A haunted look crossed Buffy's face for an instant. She reached up, her fingertips tracing a feather-light path down the arch of his cheek in unconscious mirroring of his gesture. As if, mirabile dictu, the thought of his not being there troubled her, and she sought reassurance of his presence. "I can live with that. So to speak.” She laughed a little. “I'm beginning to think... maybe I wasn't lying to them after all." The line between her brows reappeared, and she tilted her chin up, regarding him with upside-down gravity. "You wanted to kill Ramon tonight."
He raised his head and looked down at her for a long, level moment. She kept her eyes fixed on his, but he could feel a tremor running through her. He longed to say something that would soothe it away, return the laughter to her eyes. To lie to her. The one thing he’d never been able to pull off, even if he hadn’t promised... You want it real, Buffy Anne Summers... He braced himself. "Vampire, love. I always want to kill them." She lay against him, quiescent, listening, neither drawing closer nor pulling away. He felt the restless urge to get up and start pacing, but as long as she was willing to sit here he wasn't minded to encourage her to leave. So why are you still talking, you git? "Most of them, anyway. Don't want to kill you. Or the Bit. Or the rest of your little gang of followers--well, Harris, sometimes, but he'd stain the rug. We do that, you know. Not kill the people we... get on with."
"So basically we've got half a dozen people you wouldn't kill if the chip came out tomorrow, and then there's the rest of the world?" Her voice was remarkably steady; no one less attuned to her minute shifts of mood would have caught the quaver beneath the confidence. “You see, I need to know where I stand, Spike.”
Spike rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Not exactly. Look, there's always been categories, like. People who shoot you, or tie me up and sodding near turn my brain to tapioca--I'll always want to kill them. Most people, I don't give a damn about them one way or the other. Unless I'm bored or peckish or pissed off, and then I want to kill them. There's necessary people, like Bernie Kohlermann or Willy, and I won't kill them, even if I want to--" And let's not examine the laundry list of humanity piling up in this category too closely, William, because I don't fancy explaining exactly how Dawn's silly little bints of friends are vital to your continued existence, do you? It's like bloody stray cats, once you give 'em names- - "And then there's people I... love, and I don't want to kill them unless they're being particular bitches--oi, mind the leather! But it's not the wanting or not wanting that matters in the end, is it? It's whether or not they end up on the dinner menu." He hesitated. "And--"
Both of them looked up at the noise on the stairs. Tara stood there, clutching her robe to her. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I fell asleep. I wouldn't have interrupted, but I heard voices, and--it's Dawn. I got the call right after you checked in at ten, and then I tried calling back, but you'd left and no place else I called had seen you. She--she got arrested."

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