A Raising In the Sun

Part 3

"You could have brought the food back first and spied later," Anya complained, examining her slightly congealed cheeseburger. "Now it’s all cold and icky. I don't like cold food. And Xander could have been hurt."
Spike, lounging against the end of the counter (Anya wouldn’t let him anywhere near the cash register) shrugged. "He's had ‘is shots."
“It’s OK, Anya, we can warm them up,” Tara said, anxious to avoid a squabble. She took the cheeseburger and whispered a few words over it, handing it back in slightly more edible condition.
The table in the back room of the Magic Box was covered with a litter of ancient, musty books, scribbled notes, and hamburger wrappers. Willow sat in the middle of the mess, dwarfed by teetering stacks of books piled up in on either side. She was leafing through one book and then another with an increasingly puzzled expression. “Five vampires,” she said. “I know I’ve heard of that somewhere before. Completely totally positive sure, but there’s lots of nothing in any of these books that matches it.” She brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes and opened yet another yellowing tome. “I wish Giles would get back.”
Tara put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Willow reached up to catch it in her own and leaned into Tara’s side. She flipped another page. She didn’t want to think about just how likely it was that Giles would decide to stay in England for good.
“What about Wesley?” Anya asked suddenly. “He’s sort of Giles Lite.”
“That’s an--OH!” Willow clapped a hand to her mouth. “Wesley! That’s where I’ve heard about a five-vampire ritual!” She bounced up and began rooting through the piles of books. “He told me about it when I was in L.A. last spring!”
“So it’s, what?” Xander asked. “I’m guessing not something to do with pretty flowers and fluffy puppies?”
“It’s a Raising.” Willow dug out a short fat book bound in shabby brown leather from the middle of one of the stacks. The stack wobbled dangerously and Anya and Tara grabbed it, narrowly averting a literary avalanche. Willow sat down obliviously and started leafing through it in excitement. “Here it is! The ritual itself isn’t described in detail, but it’s a ceremony for...” She trailed off, and when she spoke again her voice was small and unhappy. “Raising a particular soul from death and re-embodying them,” she finished. “You have to sacrifice five living humans and use their blood to paint the symbols and mark out the circle, and then you have to sacrifice five vampires, and then poof, you get your dead person back. It’s what Wolfram & Hart used to bring Darla back to life. It says that ‘cause it requires such a big sacrifice it’s usually used to resurrect really powerful or important people.”
“Which hell?” Anya inquired. “There are a lot of them.”
Willow ran a finger down the page. “It doesn’t say. It’s all really vague. The only copy of the ritual itself is on the Scroll of Aberjian, and Wesley’s got that all locked up in L.A. because it’s got a whole bunch of prophecies about Angel on it and a spell for neutralizing the Mark of Vocah. It’s seriously multi-tasked.”
Spike arched an eyebrow. “So if that’s the only copy of the ritual, and Wes and Soul Boy are keeping this ever so important bit of parchment under wraps, might I make so bold as to ask what these blokes think they can do without it?”
“That’s the only official copy,” Willow said, squirming slightly. “Maybe they have another. Like if they happened to see a copy of the scroll once and just happened to memorize parts of it and write it down later, purely for research purposes. Because you wouldn’t ever actually use it, it being completely of the bad and all. Unless of course you’re of the bad too, which I guess they must be.” She looked around with a feeble smile. “Hey! Did you guys see what the last number on the license plate was? We could narrow down the address.”
As attempts to change the subject went it worked fairly well. Fifteen minutes and second cruise through the California Department Of Motor Vehicles database later, everyone was gathered round the laptop, staring over Willow’s shoulder at the address on the screen. “That’s it,” Xander said. “Hacienda Drive.”
Willow drew a deep, nervous breath. “OK. Strategizing now. Whatever they’re Raising is likely to be bad. So we need to find out when they’re doing it, so we can stop it. And just in case we can’t stop it, we need to find out who... or what... they’re trying to bring back.” She chewed on her thumbnail for a moment, then glanced up. “Xander, you and Anya head back to the warehouse. If the van people are gone, stake those vamps. That’ll delay them while they get more. If they aren’t gone, just go home and get some sleep.”
She slammed the book shut and stood up. “Tara... you and Spike come with me. We’ve got some spying to do.”

The DeSoto slewed round the corner onto Hacienda Drive, headlights reflecting crazily in the blank glass eyes of the houses. Darkness parted before it and closed in again behind it as the car cruised slowly down the street. Hacienda Drive was in an older neighborhood which had been made into an inadvertent backwater when a branch of the freeway had cut through it forty years ago, and they hadn't seen any other through traffic since turning off Fourth. The houses were mid-sized ranch-style dwellings, built some time in the fifties--a few of the roofs still showed the distinctive outline of a swamp cooler against the city-glow of the night sky. The yards were comparatively huge, and the houses were set well apart from one another. The single street lamp set at the intersection with Cavenaugh shed a dim circle of yellow light upon the first few houses on the block, but did little to illumine the rest of the street.
"I don't see any street numbers," Tara whispered, leaning over the back of the front seat.
"They're painted on the curb," Willow whispered back, "but they're pretty faded. I can't see anything through these windows anyway." She reached up and scrubbed at the cloudy windshield with the heel of one hand. It didn't produce much result. "What do you put on these things, Spike, SPF 300 sunblock?"
"Axle grease," the vampire replied. "And mind you don't rub it all off when I've got it just the way I like it." Willow jerked her hand back and examined the black smudge on it with dismay as he pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine. Spike picked up the printout of the address from the seat between them and squinted at it at arm's length. "Got to be one of these along here, dunnit? Next block down skips to the forties. Twenty-seven... um..."
Willow snatched the paper from his hand. "Twenty-seven thirty-eight." She looked at him a little suspiciously.
Spike returned the look with perfect who-me? indifference, feeling slightly silly. He didn't have his reading glasses with him, as he'd learned the hard way in his first year of undeath that glasses and riverfront brawls were not particularly compatible. He'd been pretending he didn't need them for so long it probably wouldn't have occurred to him to put them on in front of the witches in any case. He circumvented further discussion by getting out and opening Tara's door; Willow, alarmed, was out of the car before he could get round to hers. It always amused him that the two of them could take vampires in stride but a little old-fashioned courtesy thoroughly wigged them out.
Willow, having saved herself from the potential horrors of chivalry, retrieved a small blue nylon duffle from beneath the seat and slung it over one shoulder. "I am so Harriet the Spy," she whispered, bouncing on her toes a little. "I wish I had a notebook." Both Spike and Tara looked at her blankly, and she heaved a resigned sigh. "No one ever gets my literary references."
After checking several of the faded and half-overgrown numbers painted on the curbs, the three of them set off across the dark lawn towards the houses. Most of them were overshadowed by huge old trees, mulberry and elm and eucalyptus, or dark ragged hedges of untrimmed oleander, twenty feet tall and starred with red and white flowers. The scent of the eucalyptus and oleander mingled headily in the humid night air. They kept to the shadows of the trees as much as possible. Half-way to the house a sudden whirring noise made them all freeze, but it was only the automatic sprinkler system of the house next door.
There was no car in the driveway, though some fresh oil spots indicated that one had been there fairly recently. They came to a halt within a stone's throw of the house, on the far side of the curving drive. The oleander hedge was now reinforced by a six-foot cinder block wall, and the branches drooped down over it, forming a sort of half-tunnel leading along the length of the wall.
"Near enough?"
Willow glanced nervously at the uninformative windows of the house and nodded, chewing on her lower lip. "I just hope this is the right..."
"You're sure about this...?" Tara asked, worry evident in her eyes. "Freeing your astral body is..."
"The best way to disarm any wards they've got," Willow replied. She didn't look any less worried herself, but her voice was as resolute as it always was in the face of a new magical challenge. Spike nodded.
"You're doing fine, Will."
She looked up at him gratefully. "I... thanks. The Fearless Leader thing... it's not me." She made a helpless gesture with her free hand. "Buffy was so good at it."
"She was that," Spike agreed, "But here we are, awaiting your every word, so you can't be doing too badly, eh?"
Willow grinned. "Oooh, I have minions." She set the nylon bag down and dropped to her knees beside it, brushing the hair from her face. Unzipping the bag revealed a wooden bowl and a plastic squeeze bottle of water; Willow removed both and set them carefully down on the ground, along with a small linen bag. She brushed a clear spot in front of her in the litter of oleander leaves and shed eucalyptus bark, and positioned the bowl in the center. Sitting back on her heels, she unscrewed the cap of the water bottle and poured it into the bowl until the liquid touched the rim, then sprinkled a few pinches of powdered herbs from the pouch onto the surface of the water. The mixture stank of wintergreen and garlic, a peculiar combination which didn't go at all well with the eucalyptus. Spike stepped back a pace or two and stifled a sneeze.
"'ere, you didn't tell me this spell required large amounts of vampire repellant!" Garlic wasn't physically dangerous as a cross or holy water would have been, but the smell of the flowers still made him gag.
"Don't be such a big baby." Willow composed herself in front of the bowl, laying her hands palm up on her knees. She took a deep breath, and looked up at them apologetically. "This will probably take awhile."

"Guardians of the night, I call upon you,
Ye who are of the night and in it
Ye whose eyes are the thousand thousand stars
Ye whose ears are the thousand thousand winds
Ye whose tongues are the thousand thousand streams,
All-seeing, lend me your eyes
All-hearing, lend me your ears
All-telling, speak to me!
Make of me one spirit with ye
Ye who are of the night and in it
Make of my eyes two stars..."

Spike watched from a garlic-free distance as Willow's voice grew softer and softer and at last faded to silence. Tara stood for a moment, watching Willow critically, then gave a small nod. "She's left her body," she said, her normally quiet voice even quieter. "We should probably leave her alone. Disturbing her concentration right now could be bad."
"Well, let's not have any bad, then." The two of them retreated a little further back along the wall, keeping the motionless Willow well in sight. Tara wrapped her arms around herself and leaned back against the wall, long honey-colored locks hiding her face, her eyes never leaving the still form of her lover. Spike made a quick line-of-sight check to be certain that the flame wouldn't be visible from the house, dug his lighter out of his coat pocket and flicked a cigarette to life. There were only two or three left in the pack; he should have picked up another one back at the crypt. He leaned against the cool gritty dampness of the cinder blocks and drew smoke into his lungs gratefully.
"She never believes me when I tell her that," Tara said. Her voice was barely audible.
Now what's all this? "Tell 'er what?"
"That she's doing fine."
Spike looked sidelong at her and exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Got to believe it yourself first, pet."
Tara stared unhappily at the ground. "I do."
The vampire rolled his eyes. "Come on, Kitten, you're worried sick about 'er. She can't help but notice."
Tara hunched up upon herself even further. What those two need, Spike thought, is a good knock-down drag-out or three. Clear the air. Buffy had certainly never had any problems letting him know when he'd pissed her off... But Will and Tara danced around each other on pins and needles, so terrified of hurting each other that things festered...
"You wouldn't understand," Tara said, and then, at his expression, added hastily, "I'm not trying to be snotty. She doesn't understand, and the two of you... you're a lot alike. In some ways." She looked miserable. "Willow never knows when to stop, and someday she's going to get hurt."
Spike snorted. "And?"
"I t-told you you w-wouldn't..."
He made a derisive gesture, the glowing tip of his cigarette a red-gold arabesque in the darkness. "So Will takes a few chances. She gets results, doesn't she? God, I'd rather risk a little and get something done than sit around wanking off in the library over whether it's hic or haec or hoc in the fifteenth stanza. Just cast the bloody spell already!"
Tara flinched, and Spike immediately regretted his tone. Willow, Xander, Giles, Buffy... especially Buffy... were all more than capable of giving as good as they got when confronted with the sharp edge of his tongue, but Tara never struck out at him or anyone else, verbally or otherwise. It didn't feel sporting, snapping at someone who couldn't bite back.
Not necessarily someone weak, though. She met his gaze levelly. "You end up risking m-more than a little that way."
He grinned. "I repeat--and?"
Tara shook her head. "You two really are a pair." After a moment she said softly, "You like her, don't you?"
Spike blinked. "Much as I like anyone."
"No, I mean... you really like her."
Spike started to toss his cigarette, remembered that he only had two left, and took another thoughtful drag. "Fancy Will? Yeh, a little. I offered to turn her once, y'know, and I don't do that for just anybody." More than that, he'd been perfectly willing to accede to her plea to kill her cleanly instead, which at the time he'd felt was damned considerate of him. Probably Tara didn't need to hear that bit. He didn't enjoy thinking about it much himself. As with a lot of things in his past, he couldn't exactly say he was sorry for having made that abortive attack on Willow, but... the memory gave him no satisfaction anymore, and not simply because it had ended in the pain and humiliation of the first activation of the chip. The idea of doing anything similar now was... there was no idea of doing anything similar now.
"But you never... like with Buffy..."
"Cor, pet, Will was the Slayer's best friend. Who better to fancy if you can't admit to yourself who you really want? Besides, after Jo-Jo the Wolf-Faced Boy ran out on her, Will was looking for someone safe and dependable. And yours truly will never be safe and dependable." He finally gave the cigarette up as a lost cause, dropped it and ground it out under the toe of one boot.
The expression on Tara's face drew an involuntary frown from him, recalling that miserable few months in the wheelchair after the organ incident, Drusilla's dark wicked eyes alight with lust and madness and laughter as Angelus' hands slid over her white, white shoulders... He realized that his fist was clenched so tightly that his nails were cutting into his palm, and forcibly relaxed. It was astounding how much he could still hate Angel, even after his love for Dru had... not gone; William the Bloody Sap had never fallen out of love in his unlife, but Dru had become part of his past rather than his future. "Look, you're not... even if Will was interested at this late date, I don't poach. Not," he added with a cheerful leer, "that I'd turn down a nibble on either of you if it were offered."
Tara flushed; he could sense the rush of blood to her face, but the near-invisible smile made a reappearance. "Sorry. Not offering. No, I'm n-not worried about that. I know Willow loves me. I just wish I could... understand her better sometimes. She's gone so far, so very, very far... and I know I'll never catch up." There was a lost look in her eyes for a moment, but she shook her head, banishing it. "You're not what I expected. You or Anya. I used to think... when I thought I was a demon... that maybe if it turned out like you two maybe it wouldn't be unbearable, and Willow would..." She laughed a little. "Willow likes the extraordinary. And then you hit me in the nose and proved I was ordinary."
Spike, lighter poised over his next cigarette, shrugged. "Will loves you, Kitten. Can't be all that ordinary."
Willow's still form slumped abruptly, and Tara dashed over to her side immediately, cradling the smaller woman in her arms. Spike stuffed the lighter back into his coat pocket and followed her. Willow's elfin face was pale in the darkness. "Whoa," she whispered hoarsely. "They had wards all right. "I've got them turned off, but we should hurry. Spike?"
He tossed her an ironic salute. "Leave it to me, Red."
While Willow began putting her spell components back into her duffle, the vampire pulled a small, battered black toolbox out of the inside pocket of his duster, opened it, and selected a small pair of wire cutters. Humming to himself, he crossed the drive in a few noiseless strides and inspected the side of the house thoroughly. As expected, his dark-piercing eyes picked up the wires to the home security system running along up under the eaves. He followed them back along the side of the house to the place where they spliced into the main electrical line. He took a leap up and caught the edge of the roof with one hand, snipped the wire through, and dropped back to the ground and tucked the clippers back into the case. He sauntered back over to the side door and glanced in through the windowpanes. He couldn't quite get a sense of whether or not there was anyone inside. "Do we care if they know we were here?"
Willow, still looking somewhat washed out, got to her feet and straightened her blouse. "Deeply."
Spike pursed his lips. "That'll take longer." He selected a couple of oddly-shaped pieces of metal for the black case, and dropped to one knee to examine the lock. After studying it for a moment he put one of the picks back, took out another one, and went to work. It wasn't much of a lock, just the sort of thing you could buy and install yourself at the local Home Depot.
"I'm going to try really hard not to think about how much of an expert you are at breaking and entering," Willow murmured.
The vampire smirked. "All part of basic training for the forces of evil."
Once the door clicked open, Tara and Willow slipped past him into the dark interior of the house. Tara conjured a small light and the two started off down the hall. Spike stood in the doorway, pressed up futilely against the intangible barrier that prevented him from entering and straining his ears for the sound of other human beings, or anything else. Willow looked back, surprised, then chagrined. Spike sighed and waved her off. "Search away. I'll just stand here all uninvited-like."
"Oops." Willow grimaced. "I forgot. But maybe it's easier for you to keep lookout from there anyway."
The two of them disappeared down the hall and Spike sat down on the doorstep. This was the only thing he really loathed about being a vampire. Angel whinged on endlessly about not being able to see the sun, but for Spike having to avoid sunlight was usually only a nuisance. The sun was an enemy, something he could outwit, if not out-fight. Not being able to walk where he pleased was just a pain in the arse, a snide reminder from the Powers That Be that he wasn't quite human, even if his (Could he say friends, at this point? Perhaps he could) didn't always remember that.
Buffy had forgotten, that last night...
His eyes were tearing. Bloody garlic.

They'd come in through a side door which opened onto a hallway. It ran off on either side, leading to several bedrooms in the rear of the house and off towards the living room and kitchen towards the front. There were a few anonymous photographs hanging on the wall, all of people with strangely disturbing eyes. The living room was made up as a home office with a desk, a chair, and several filing cabinets, while a couch which had seen better days and a televison huddled on the other side of the room. Bookshelves lined the walls. "Wow." Willow stared around in growing excitement; the mystical energy in the room was exhilarating. The volumes crackled and throbbed with power. Her fingers itched to get hold of the shabby leather bindings. Tara could sense it too, though her expression was anything but enthusiastic.
"This feels... I don't like it," Tara said. She looked around. "We should check the desk and the files."
Willow tore herself away from the shelves and headed for the computer on the desk. Tara, after a somewhat jittery reconnaissance of the room, began rummaging through the filing cabinets. Willow pulled out the last item in her duffle, and slid it into the CD slot. Hopefully this machine was set up to boot from a CD, and wasn't programmed with some noisy WAV file on startup. As it turned out, she was in luck. Hacking into the computer's password files was stupidly easy, easy enough to make her a little suspicious, but she found nothing unusual once in. There were hundreds of files in the Documents folder, far more than she could hope to check in the time they had. However, this was a nice new computer. Did it have a CD burner? It did. She slipped a blank CD into the second CD bay, pulled up the burner software, and set it to copying the entire directory. While it ground along, Willow pulled up the e-mail program and checked through the incoming and outgoing boxes for recent communications. There was nothing, until she thought to check in the trash folder--and no, it hadn't been emptied recently.

Date: 21 Oct 2001 142456 PDT
Subject: Progress To: lmartin356@socal.net
From: burningman@toccata.fugue.com
Martin Note the subject line. Not impressed by your lack of it. Special circumstances in this case make it imperative that the subjects be collected in the vicinity of the target's death. I realize that this is a difficult task in light of our deadline, but you were fully informed of this upon accepting the assignment. I will be arriving on the morning of the 31st with the other operants and the living subjects, and I expect everything to be in place. Please arrange for a hotel room and the necessary accommodations for the target.

Vespasian
cc:Mr. Bryce

Date: 25 Oct 2001 195613 PDT
Subject: Re:Progress
To:burningman@toccata.fugue.com
From:lmartin356@socal.net
Mr. Vespasian, I'm pleased to report that we've located a nest of suitable subjects, several of whom fall into the parameters you gave us, no younger than thirty and no older than seventy-five years...

Well, phoo, Willow thought. This tells me nothing we didn't already know. She skipped down a few messages.

Date: 27 Oct 2001 072546 PDT
Subject: Re:Progress
To: lmartin356@socal.net
From: burningman@toccata.fugue.com
Martin The description you gave matches that of William the Bloody, A.K.A. Spike. Our information on him is extremely sketchy. Various sources give his age as anywhere from a hundred and twenty to two hundred years, and while he is unquestionably of the lineage of Aurelius, it is unclear as to whether his sire is Angelus or Drusilla. He is of no immediate use to us in this operation as he is well outside the necessary parameters. Mr. Bryce informs me that he may, however, prove useful in the later stages, as he has been associated with the target in the past. Kindly make preparations to take him after the Raising. As for the Raising itself--no excuses. You will have the correct number of undead subjects prepped and in position on the night of the 31st, or you and your associates will become part of the procedure.

V.

Willow blanched. How could she have forgotten? The scroll had been very specific, after all. A Raising demanded human sacrifices as well as vampire ones. Someone, somewhere, was gathering up those sacrifices, and that was the first thing they had to stop--never mind whatever it was they were trying to Raise.
"Willow," Tara whispered. "Look at this."
She was holding up a manila folder with a snapshot paperclipped to the front. Willow hurriedly checked the burn process, closed down the software and removed her CD. Hopefully there'd be something in the wilderness of borrowed files with more details on who and what. She leaned over the desk in the eerie glow of the monitor to get a better look at the photo. Tara brought her little ball of witchlight down to help out.
The photograph was of a blonde girl, or perhaps a young woman, in a blue tank top. She was staring at something off-camera with an intent look, lips parted, one hand raised with index finger extended as if she were about to make a point in an argument. Willow stared at the picture in shock. "Buffy?" she got out at last.
Tara silently opened the folder while the other two hovered over her shoulders. Within were several other photos, some recent, others less so. Each one was fastened to a short printed biography, apparently from the Council of Watchers' official records, plus a page or so of notes and observations. "That's Kendra!" Willow gasped. Tara had never met Kendra. "And that's Faith, and..." She shuffled through the snapshots. "They're all Slayers. I don't recognize this one, she must have been the one who died just before Buffy was called, and hey, this one's really old..."
The dates on the records went back at least thirty years. Buffy's file was by far the thickest in the folder. Not surprising, as she'd been the Slayer for five years, almost double the usual run. None of the others seemed to have made it past three, and there were several whose entries amounted to little more than their date of Calling and date of death. "Why would they have..."
Her puzzled inquiry was cut short by a sharp rap on the window. Willow jumped half out of her skin, her heart racing, but it was only Spike, nose pressed to the windowpane. "Step it up, children," he said, voice muffled by the glass. "Mummy and Daddy are home."
"Oh, shoot." She looked around wildly for a moment, making sure she'd collected up all her CDs. "Come on, Tara."
Tara stuffed the files back into the folder and tucked it under her arm, heading for the hall. A moment later they caught the distant rumble of an engine. It grew louder as they hurried down the hallway, and the whine of the tires altered pitch as it slowed. With a crunch of gravel it turned into the driveway and the side of the house was bathed in the glare of headlights. The engine coughed in protest for a moment and then fell silent.
The witches heard the slam of car doors as they reached the side door. Willow clutched the doorknob in momentary indecision. Run for it, or try to hide in the house and gather more information? And what about Spike? He couldn't fight humans; was he going to do the sensible thing and stay out of this? And is that the stupidest question I've asked myself tonight? The indecision lasted a moment too long; footsteps were coming up the porch steps. The knob twisted in her grasp. "Hey," a male voice said, "This door's unlocked."

Spike faded back into the shadows beneath the trees as the familiar blue van with the crumpled grill drove up and rattled to a halt. The engine shut off with an asthmatic wheeze, and the two men he and Xander had observed at the warehouse got out, followed by a third whom he recognized as the one who'd been driving the van the previous night.
The logical thing to do would be to stay out of sight. Willow was more than capable of handling three men who'd shown no sign of being anything other than ordinary humans, whereas he couldn't so much as give Xander a well-deserved smack on the head without setting off the chip. He was getting damnably tired of that chip. He watched with increasing distemper as the men left the van and headed towards the house. Two of them, the driver and Paint Guy, went round to the front door while Broom Guy headed for the nearer side door. He heard the rattle of keys, the driver's muttered complaint about his aching back...
"Hey," Broom Guy called out sharply. "This door's unlocked."
"Did you forget...?" the driver asked.
"Hell, no."
The other two had abandoned the front door and were coming back around the corner of the house as Broom Guy pulled a pistol from one pocket and jerked the door open. Spike caught a brief glimpse of the witches' faces beyond his shoulder. Tara looked scared. Willow looked nervous. Which didn’t mean anything; Tara always looked scared and Willow often looked nervous just before she turned someone into a newt. There was absolutely no need for him to risk his neck...
Bugger logic.
All three of them were focused on the doorway and none of them saw him step out of the shadows and cross the drive. "And just who the hell are--" Broom Guy was demanding. Spike reached around him, yanked the pistol neatly out of his hand before he could finish the sentence, and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Beg pardon," he said as the startled man rounded on him, gaping, "but you're surrounded." He held up the pistol and examined it with all due scorn. It was a cheap .38 Smith & Wesson which hadn’t been cleaned in too long. He broke open the cylinder and began removing the cartridges, shaking his head sadly the while. "This is really pathetic, mate. This thing wouldn’t even slow me down."
The other two stopped in their tracks. It struck the vampire that if they'd never heard of him, they probably didn't know about the chip, and that the last time they'd met, he'd done a convincing, if spurious, imitation of someone capable of inflicting all kinds of damage without batting an eyelash.
Paint Guy made a flinchy sort of move, as if he were about to do something but couldn’t decide exactly what. Spike dropped both gun and ammunition into a coat pocket and fixed him with an evil smile. "I wouldn't try that if I were you, my jumped-up alchemical janitor." He laid a comradely hand on Broom Guy's arm and tightened his grip a fraction, just enough to convey I could crush you like an eggshell without quite intending to do so. He felt a nausea-inducing twinge in his head, but the chip remained otherwise quiescent. "Might make me testy.” He nodded at Willow. “Worse, might make her testy."
The driver broke for the van, heading for escape or the tranquilizer gun. "Sleep!" Willow shouted, fingers stabbing the air. The driver collapsed bonelessly to the pavement. The other two, their eyes riveted on their partner, didn't see her wince and stagger as the hasty spell's backlash hit. For a moment all her weight sagged into Tara, who held her up with white-faced calm. In the interval it took the men to turn and face her once more, Willow had collected herself. "You're making this very difficult," she said. She pointed to the prostrate driver. "Spike, pick him up and bring him inside." Willow turned back into the house with an imperious look at the other two. "And you--invite the nice vampire in."
Broom Guy and Paint Guy exchanged mulish looks, obviously unwilling to comply, until Willow wheeled round, green eyes darkening ominously and little blue and white sparks crackling in her auburn hair. "I said, invite him in."
"Come in," Broom Guy said hoarsely.
Spike strolled over to the driveway, bent down and hoisted the limp body of the driver over one shoulder without apparent effort. He tipped an imaginary hat to Broom Guy, and stepped inside with only a minor glare at the doorframe.
They herded the Van Guys into the living room. Spike dumped Driver Guy on the sofa and Willow directed the other two to sit on either side of him. Broom Guy was large and dark and belligerent, Paint Guy was thin and fair and intense, and the driver was an inoffensive sandy-haired median between the two. He looked vaguely familiar. On the sofa, a tired relic of those few years in the mid-seventies when everything was either mustard yellow, burnt orange, or avocado (this particular specimen being all three at once) they made a particularly repellant sort of see, hear, and speak no evil tableau.
Spike drifted over to the desk and hitched himself up on the corner. Willow took a stand on the threadbare carpet in front of the sofa and regarded their captives. “All right,”, she said, crossing her arms and looking severe, “Someone’s up to something very naughty, and you’re going to tell us all about it.”
“Shit,” Broom Guy muttered, “We don’t need this, Vespasian didn’t pay us to--”
“Shut up,” Paint Guy said, utterly flat.
Willow looked over at Tara. “Do you remember that truth spell? Will it work with tonight’s stars?”
Tara nodded. "I think so." She looked around for a moment before pulling a paper clip off one of the files in the manila folder. She set the folder back down on the desk and held the paperclip up in both hands, speaking the incantation in a clear soft voice which held none of her usual hesitancy. "As the reed, so the rede; as one is unbent be the other be also. I make straight the path." She jerked one bend out of the paperclip. "I make true the tongue." She jerked another bend out. "No falsehood may pass the lips of those within these walls." She placed the mostly-straightened bit of wire across the threshold of the hallway. Willow turned back to the Van Guys.
"Who's Mr. Bryce?"
Paint Guy's mouth worked for a moment.
Willow frowned. "I can't force you talk, Mr. Evil Person, but I can tell you that as of tonight don't have any 'subjects' left, and that won't make Vespasian happy. You don't have anything to lose by joining the forces of niceness, and we may be able to keep you from becoming blood sacrifices." She paused significantly. "If you feel like holding anything back, I can also point out that the nice vampire hasn't had dinner yet."
Paint Guy glanced at Spike, who gave him a little wave. Sweat broke out on his brow. "Magnus Bryce," he rasped out at last. "CEO of Bryce Communications."
"Magnus Bryce the software guy?" Willow asked in surprise.
"What, you think Gates is the only one in the business with a line to the netherworld?" Broom Guy asked. He glared at Spike, his wide mouth twisted in what would have been an aggrieved pout on a less Neanderthal countenance. “Jesus Christ, it’s bad enough having a goody-two-shoes vamp in L.A., now there’s one in every town in--”
“You wouldn’t be comparing me to Angel, now, would you?” Spike snarled. “Not bright.”
"Hush, Spike. Bryce? That’s the last time I use his programs!” Willow said with an indignant huff. “Who's Vespasian?"
"Our contact in L.A. Works for Bryce," Paint Guy replied sullenly. "I don't know his real name."
Will wasn't too bad at the interrogation biz, Spike thought, though personally he would have preferred a little more preliminary smacking around. But that wasn't the witches' style, and unfortunately he couldn't volunteer his services in that line without blowing his cover. He was only an effective threat as long as they didn't realize he couldn't hurt them without incurring killer migraines.
He picked up the folder Tara had set down and began leafing idly through it. Slayers' biographies? He'd known of some of them, fought a few of them, and killed two of them... Three, if being a bloody incompetent at saving one counts. The photo Tara'd taken the clip off slipped out of the mass of papers. The woman in the photograph was African-American, grinning at him with cocky confidence from almost twenty-five years in the past. Nikki. The vampire stared at her for a long moment, eyes glittering. Nikki had been a master of the dance. Not in Buffy's league--no one was in Buffy's league--but she'd had style, that one. You didn't beg for death. Took it when I offered, but didn't beg. Shouldn't have told Buffy that you did. Sorry, Nik.
Spike shuffled through the rest of the files, but they only went back thirty years or so; the other face wasn't there. He'd never known her name. He slammed the folder shut, angry--whether at himself or someone else he wasn't sure. 'Sorry, Nik'? God, I am turning into fucking Angel. Pathetic sod. Restless, he flipped the folder open again. Kendra's file. Someone had written 'Unacceptable risk of complications' in blue ball-point at the bottom. Most of the other files, he saw, had similar notations, cryptic little phrases about akashic degeneration or low metatonic interphase resolution in the same anal-retentively neat handwriting.
Buffy's said 'Excellent prospect.'
He stared at the notation for a long moment during which he felt exactly as cold as he was. Spike leaned over and nudged Willow in the arm with the folder. She took it and began to flip through it absently.
"...all I know is, the blood sacrifices will be brought here when the Raising commences," Broom Guy was saying. "They're scheduled to start at midnight on Wednesday. I guess they thought that doing it on All Hallows' Eve would ensure that they wouldn't attract any unwanted attention. You wouldn't catch a real spook out dead on Halloween." He looked uneasily in Spike's direction. "No offense."
"So we need to be here to stop it," Tara said. Willow nodded, but her attention was on the contents of the folder, her eyes growing wider and wider. She’d read into it what he had, then. She pinched her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice had that dangerous level chill in it.
"What are they Raising?"
The Van Guys shrugged in unison. "Some supernatural bodyguard for Bryce, is all we know. He fucked up a sacrifice last year and he's got a Davric demon pissed off at him for breach of contract. Not to mention his feuds with every other magical corporation on the west coast."
Willow snapped the folder shut under Paint Guy's nose. "If you're so completely not knowing, I gotta wonder what this is doing here."
Spike leaned forward intently and ran his tongue over his teeth. "Look, we really don't know!" Broom Guy said, edging away on the couch. He ran into Driver Guy's still-comatose form and stopped. "All the files and stuff are Vespasian's, and sure, I can guess he might be trying to Raise one of these Slayer chicks, but I don't know, and I don't want to know! I was hired to catch some vampires, all right?"
Spike got up and glided over to the couch, sat down on the armrest next to Broom Guy and eyed his neck. "You've caught one, then." He ran a finger down Broom Guy's cheek, savoring the throb of the man’s pulse, letting the yellow light blossom in his eyes. The fear-stench in the air intensified. Time was, that would have been as enticing as the scent of blood ... He brought his head down, until his lips were a breath away from the salt-tang of the man's skin and the sound of the blood rushing through the carotid artery was a sweet lascivious torment. "So, Will, do I get din-din or not?"
In light of their shared suspicion, Willow looked as if she were giving the matter serious consideration. "I think he's telling the truth," she said at last. She looked each of their captives in the eye and said very composedly, "I think you'd both better pack up your friend and leave town. We'll take care of Mr. Bryce."
"You'd better hope so," Broom Guy snarled. "You are fucking screwed if you mess with him, girl. You and your pet vamp may be hot shit against the three of us, but Bryce is one of the top five wizards on the West Coast and he's got another five of the top twenty on his payroll."
Spike's voice deepened to a growl. "But all the king's 'orses don't happen to be here at the moment, do they?"
"Let's go before they get here," Willow said, tucking the folder under her arm.
The DeSoto roared up the on-ramp, ignoring the one-car-per-green light at the end, and bullied its way into the next lane. For once Spike's driving failed to raise his passengers' blood pressure. Willow stared blankly at the folder full of Slayer bios down on her lap and rubbed her eyes. Tara leaned over the seat, rubbing her shoulders and looking at her in concern. "You need to get some sleep, sweetie."
"I guess." Willow picked up the photo of Nikki and looked over at Spike. "You knew her?"
The vampire's ice-blue eyes flicked from the road ahead to the twenty-five year old photo. "Yeh. She was my second Slayer kill." There was none of the old pride in his tone, just a flat statement of fact. Willow looked away, and for half a mile or so no one said anything as the highway lights strobed by outside.
"We all saw the notes," Tara said. When neither Willow nor Spike replied, she gulped and went on. "And w-we know we've g-got to..."
"Shut the fuck up," Spike interrupted savagely. "We don't know. Not yet. Not for sure."
"Spike..." She put a tentative hand on his shoulder; all his muscles were tensed to the consistency of steel cable. "I'm sorry."
The platinum head dropped abruptly, forehead banging the top of the steering wheel, and the car swerved wildly for a heartbeat. Before either of the others had a chance to panic, the vampire was looking up again, his cheeks wet in the chancy light. "Sorry's good for sod-all!" he yelled. The DeSoto was weaving dangerously from lane to lane and only the lateness of the hour had prevented them from sideswiping someone already.
"Spike!" Willow shouted, grabbing the dashboard with both white-knuckled hands. "Stop it! We're all going to end up dead--deader--if you don't--"
Spike slammed on the brakes. The DeSoto fishtailed to a screeching halt on the shoulder and he collapsed over the wheel, his whole body shaking. He flung open the driver's side door so viciously that it was a wonder the handle didn't come off, leaped out and shook a fist at the sky. "It's not fair. You hear that, you fucking bastards, if you're up there which I fucking doubt? IT'S NOT FAIR!" He sat down abruptly on the pavement, drawing deep gasping breaths as if his life depended on getting the air. Willow and Tara got out of the car and huddled together a few feet away, uncertain. The vampire looked up at them, eyes wild and pleading. "It's not fair," he repeated. "You're supposed to go on, aren't you? That's what she said she wanted. Live for me. And I'd just got to where I can do that, and the fucking Powers That Be want to dangle her in front of my nose and take her away again? I can't do this. I can't. I'll fucking hunt the bastards down and kill every last one of them--"
Willow, her own eyes brimming, dropped to her knees and laid a small hand on his right shoulder. After another moment Tara dropped down on his left. If any of the passing cars thought it peculiar to see a bleached-blond vampire sobbing his heart out on the shoulders of a pair of witches on the verge of the highway none of them stopped to comment.

Part 4

Noon. He was in bed, but he hadn't slept. Tossed and turned for hours, paced up and down the stairs in the crypt, alternated between stretching himself out on the chill marble sarcophagus in the upper room and the perfectly ordinary bed in the lower chamber, tried to watch telly and smoked till his throat was raw, which took some doing for a creature immune to the ravages of nicotine. He could feel the sun out there, making its patient circuit of the sky. He'd never been patient. Oh, as a living man he'd been meek, all right, hemmed in by social obligations and family pressures and all the things that just weren't done, old chap, but never patient. Spike sat up with a snarl, kicked off the sheets, and padded upstairs again.
In theory it didn't matter whether he had sheets on the bed or not; it wasn't as if he were any warmer or cooler with or without them. He just liked sheets, the way he just liked junk food and loud danceable music and penny dreadfuls and a good football game with a good riot afterwards and all the other things which ought to have been completely irrelevant to vampires. (Or, back in his human days, guilty pleasures to gentlemen of leisure; becoming a demon had given him license to indulge all the decidedly plebeian tastes he'd never dared admit to while alive.) Spike had never wasted much time pondering the philosophical implications of his infatuation with things human; it had pleased him, annoyed Angelus and Darla, and completely bewildered other vampires, and that was justification enough.
He lit himself another cigarette and flung himself down in the battered armchair. After a moment of staring at the blank screen of the television, he leaned over and grabbed his glasses off the crate which served as an end table and flipped up the top. He groped around inside and pulled out a book at random. Plain Tales From The Hills. Right, Rudyard, take my mind off my troubles.
Nowadays, it was the things he’d enjoyed openly as a human which were the secret guilty pleasures. No one would have taken a Big Bad who read anything more complex than the Racing Forum seriously--least of all himself. So, Buffy-love, did you ever read for pleasure? Will said you lot had done Oedipus for a talent show once, so I know you've been exposed to the concept. Bet not, though. You always had an aversion to using the brains you were born with, and that godawful sludge Angel used to mope over wouldn't have helped matters. Nausea indeed. Sartre always made me ill. And Proust--did you know Soul Boy adored Proust, or was he wise enough to keep that his own dirty little secret? Incredible, isn't it? Remembrance of Things Wrist-Slashingly Dull. Never could stomach it myself. Give me something with guts to it. The Greeks did it up proper. Blood and love, or blood and rhetoric--the blood is compulsory...
He shut the book and closed his eyes, tilting his head back against the sagging back of the chair. Talking of blood, you know what's funny, Buffy? I was this close to a bloke's throat last night. Oh, I wanted to drink from him all right, if that's what you're wondering. But I didn't want to kill him. Well, all right, maybe a little, I'm not completely pussified and he was an annoying bastard. Frankly it would've been smarter of us to leave them all a little dead. I'd've been more than happy to rip him open in a fight. Just sittin' there, though, seemed... unsporting. Is it the chip that's done this to me? Or was I always weak inside, somehow, all along? 'Cos when I look back, love, it's a little scary how easily I gave up on the killing. Could have had Harmony bringing me snackies all along, but I never asked her. Could have beaten the shit out of any two-bit vamp in this town once I found out I could, and made them kill for me, but I never did. And that's long before I started trying to make nice for you, love. What's that say about Big Bad Spike?
And now all I have to do to get you back is let five people who aren't us die. Wouldn't even have to kill them myself. It would be so easy. If I didn't know what was coming, if someone came up and told me about it next week, would I care, as long as you were walking around in the sun again? Probably not. Too bad, so sad, I've got Buffy! Sorry, love. I'm still a fairly nasty piece of work.
But I do know what's coming.
Sod it all.

"...you're sure? All right. Thanks bunches, Wesley. Say hi to Cordelia."
Willow hung up the phone and straggled back over to the table in the rear of the Magic Box. It was still piled high with books, and now with sheaves of printouts of her own notes on the Raising ceremony--or some of them, anyway; there were certain of her private speculations that she didn't feel like sharing with the whole gang. Not now, and maybe not ever. Tara and Xander were going over the mass of paperwork for the umpteenth time while Anya sat over behind the counter making arcane notations in the shop's accounting program.
She sat down between Tara and Xander and rested her head against Tara's shoulder. Tara put an arm around her shoulders and after a moment she felt her lover's fingers stroking her forehead lightly. She'd gotten five or six hours of sleep after Spike had dropped them off at Tara's dorm in the wee hours of the morning, but she had a tension headache and wasn't feeling anywhere near her best. She wanted nothing more than to go back to their dorm room and spend the rest of the day letting Tara hold her and rub her head.
Of all of them, Tara had known Buffy the least amount of time, and while Buffy's death had been sad for her, it wasn't the blow to the gut it had been for her and Dawn and Xander and Giles... or Spike. Sometimes it was a comfort to have someone around who was a little apart from it all; she didn't have to feel that she should be supporting Tara in grief of her own. She could just give it all up and let Tara be the strong one...
But now wasn't one of those times. Time to put on the Fearless Leader hat again. Willow opened her eyes and sat up. "OK. According to Wesley, from what they can tell from what happened with Darla's Raising, this is the top of the line as resurrections spells go. When someone's brought back, they come back exactly as they were just before they died, with their real body, soul and everything. Darla was fine. Well, not fine, she was dying of syphilis, but that's not the spell's fault. If you're terminally ill or grotesquely old or something it's definitely of the bad, but Buffy wasn't either of those things--"
"It's always of the bad," Tara said firmly.
"Yes," Willow said, uncomfortable. "That way lies ickiness. But my point is, if they bring Buffy back she'll be physically all right. The thing is, a Raised person may not remember who or where they are. They're all confused. What Bryce is probably counting on is that he can use that confused time to cast some sort of a control spell, or maybe just use old-fashioned drugs or brainwashing or something."
"So potentially..." Xander said slowly, "He could have a Slayer with five years of experience at his beck and call. And anyone who'd kill five people to get her probably wouldn't employ her to play tiddlywinks."
Willow gave a defeated nod. "Yeah. That's about it. Wesley says they'll try and infiltrate Bryce's place tonight and see if they can find out where the live sacrifices are being kept. If they can spring them, it may mess up the whole plan. He used to go out with Bryce's daughter so he's been in there once or twice before. I've got the Van Guys' e-mail address set up to forward any mail from this Vespasian person to me, so he won't get suspicious about them not answering anything."
Xander looked dumbstruck. "Wait, did you say Wesley went out with someone?"
"Strange, but true." Willow sat up and brushed her hair back from her face. "We can't count on them being able to find them in time, though. We're not even sure that they're being kept in L.A."
"So say we do stop them this time." Xander slammed the book in front of him shut. "What's gonna keep this Bryce guy from rounding up another bunch of victims next month, or next year, and trying this again? He's rich, he's powerful, and he's human. We can't kill him. It’ll be damned hard to get him arrested. I can't really see him groveling at our feet in abject apology for his uncivilized behavior. What can we do about this long term?"
"Probably nothing," Anya said. She tapped on the monitor in front of her with a pen. "That's why I want us to have lots and lots and lots of money. Money is a much better defense than weapons."
"Oh, yay." Xander subsided into a disgruntled perusal of the nearest batch of printouts. "That makes me feel much better."
Anya smiled at him fondly. "Me too."
"We won't have to worry about it again for awhile," Tara said softly. "Raisings only work at specific times, and the times are different for each entity Raised. By the time the stars are right again, it will probably be too late for..." She paused awkwardly. "To bring her back."
"And isn't that just a sunshiny piece of news?" Xander muttered. "And don't tell me about the cosmic balance, and that death is all part of the circle of life, and all that crap. It still sucks wet gravel through a curly straw."
Tara looked hurt, and Xander looked stubborn, and Anya looked worried. "Everyone go home," Willow said.
"What?"
"Everyone go home," she repeated, making a little shooing gesture. "We were all up way too late last night, and we're all tired and arguing about this is just going to make us all kooky. We'll go kooky much more efficiently if we all get some more sleep. So go do Sunday afternoon stuff. Tomorrow night we'll work out an ambush at the warehouse for Wednesday." She pulled up a smile for Tara. "I have one or two things I want to look up here, and then I'll stop by the crypt and bring Spike up to date and meet you later for dinner, OK?"
One of the few perks of being Fearless Leader was that people usually went away when you told them to, but it still took more time than Willow would have liked to clear the others out of the shop. Anya was the last to go, admonishing her to lock up before she left. Willow stood in the shop's front door and watched her walking briskly out to the car to join Xander. She glanced at her wristwatch. Four o'clock, and the Magic Box was finally deserted save for her. Alone at last.
Tara had left reluctantly. Tara was worried about her. Feeling more than a little guilty, Willow cleared a space on the table for her laptop, flipped it open, and pulled up the encrypted files where she kept the notes she hadn't felt like sharing with the gang.
It was more than notes. It was the bones of a whole new spell. She'd never had any intentions of using it, but the original Raising was the most powerful piece of magic she’d ever gotten her hands on. Studying it would teach her things she couldn’t possibly learn elsewhere. Its endless repetitions had reminded her of a clunky old BASIC program, full of unnecessary loops and subroutines. Surely she could tighten up the code a little, eliminate a line here, add a more elegant phrasing there? It would be good practice.
It had proven far more difficult than she'd anticipated. The repetitions, the multiple sacrifices, were all in there for good reason. Tara was right about all magic having a price, but Willow preferred to think of spells as programs, or math problems. You put a word here and it had an effect. Maybe too much effect, so you added a material component there, or subtracted a gesture here. Multiply, divide, manipulate--if you worked fast enough, who knew what you might accomplish before the inexorable laws of magic demanded that the equation be made to balance again?
She sat there for a long time, head propped up on one hand, chewing thoughtfully on the end of a pencil. After awhile she got up and climbed up the ladder leading to the balcony which housed the restricted section of the library. She knelt and ran a hand over the backs of the miscellaneous volumes on the lowest shelf. Her hand paused on a musty tome, and she slipped it off the shelf, turning it over and over in her hands. You should just burn them all, Tara'd said when Spike and Xander brought her the boxes full of old books from Doc's abandoned apartment. Nothing good will ever come out of those... things. Can't you feel it?
Willow ran a finger down the binding of the ancient, dog-eared volume before her. No, she couldn't feel it. Oh, she could tell that the book held power, of course, sense the tingle of potency when she caressed the spine or flipped through the pages. Many of the books Spike and Xander had retrieved felt like this in greater or lesser degree. So did a few of the books in Giles' library. So had the curious set of three grimoires Wesley had allowed her to examine during her trip to L.A. last spring. Power flowed through all of them, twisting, knotting, yearning to be free... maybe Tara was right and there was something inherently nasty about some of them. In many ways Tara was more sensitive than she, but Willow honestly couldn't see it. It was all magic, and it all called to her.
She climbed back down the ladder, holding the book awkwardly under one elbow, and went back to sit at the table. She opened the book and leafed through the first few pages, then opened it to the place where she'd left off the last time.
The lights flickered.
Willow looked up from the yellowed pages of the book and pinched the bridge of her nose. The headache had grown worse, an insistent buzz in the back of her skull like the drone of cicadas. The wavery lights weren't helping any. She squinted up at the light fixture overhead. They seemed fine now. She wondered if there were any aspirin left back in the training room. Probably not. The training room was fast reassuming its original character of a storeroom.
She gazed at the book. It didn't have 'Darkest Magic' plastered all over the cover in big scary letters, that was for sure. It just looked old, and battered, and grungy, black leather binding falling apart and the spine all cracked. It had no title at all.
The lights began to flicker again. The book was difficult enough to make out even without electrical problems, written in a crabbed hand in a debased variety of church Latin. Fifteenth century, probably, a bad translation of a tenth-century Arabic text. Someone had scribbled notes in the margins in a low German dialect and someone else had scribbled notes on the notes in sixteenth-century English. Within an hour she had three dictionaries spread out around her to look things up in, and she was still having trouble.
She'd been working on this since a few weeks after Buffy's death, and the sections she'd managed to translate so far were, she had to admit, a lot more disturbing than anything in good ol' 'Darkest Magic'. The spells in 'Darkest Magic' were destructive and flashy, but there wasn’t really anything all that dark about them. It was just, she suspected, that no one would take a spellbook titled ‘Pretty Decent Magic’ seriously. The stuff in this one, though... nothing flashy here. The spells were as grungy and low-key as the book itself, but something about them... well, she couldn't say 'felt wrong', could she, not after telling herself that there was no difference between the feel of one grimoire and another?
Twitchy. They made her feel twitchy.

He that desireth return from the land of Osiris hath many paths to walk, and this one be...

Shadowed? Unknown? What declension was that adjective, and which noun did it refer to, 'he' or 'path'? Willow flipped through the Latin dictionary, trying not to lose her place in the main text as she did so. Tenebrarius... darkness? Of the darkness?

...and as Horus he returneth, yea he returneth clothed in flesh...

Return clothed in flesh? Could this have some relevance? Osiris and Horus were Egyptian gods, and Osiris was killed by Set and...
Suddenly several previously obscure passages made sense. The lights were flickering again, violently, and the pain in her head was growing, but Willow paid neither any attention, focusing on the translation with all her being, biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The cicada-buzz was louder now, waxing and waning in time to the dimming of the lights. The shadows crawled round the edge of the room--that was only the lights, only the lights and the ongoing California power shortages.
She pulled up the file of not-for-the-public notes on the Raising and began making alterations, adding a line here, deleting a reference there. Her fingers flew over the keyboard of the laptop, transcribing text and notes and notes on the notes. No... it wasn't transcribing any longer. She was creating. This, this was the heart of magic she'd been struggling towards for so long. Her breath came harder and faster as she typed. The buzzing grew to unbearable proportions, ringing through her head like a jackhammer, and the shadows in the corner of the shop writhed as the lights whined and failed overhead. Terror and elation filled her in equal proportions. Willow hit the last return and smacked 'Save'. Almost immediately the flickering stopped. Willow took a deep breath. She felt drained and lightheaded. She glanced up; the fluorescent were glowing steadily again, and the droning buzz in her ears was gone. Shaking slightly, she closed the shabby black book, and began straightening up the mess of papers, pens, and dictionaries. By the time she'd returned the books to their places on the shelves, and put everything else away, she was feeling more like herself again.
Before she closed the laptop, she checked to be certain the file was still in the folder, half expecting to find that there was nothing there. For a moment her fingers hovered over the trackball but her stomach went cold and tight and she decided against re-opening it. She wasn't sure she could face looking at what she'd just put together. Not yet. She tucked the laptop into its case, made sure she'd put everything away, and started towards the front door.
On the threshold she hesitated, then turned back and walked over to one of the glass cases. Inside were a selection of small glass and ceramic objects, statues and fetishes and idols of various types. Among them were two or three palm-sized spheres of smoky glass. Their surfaces were curiously crackled, as if they'd been through a fire. Willow opened the case and reached for them. Her hand hovered indecisively over the selection for a moment before settling on one of them.
She pulled it out and examined it, her heart pounding. The Orb of Thessula lay quiescent in her hand, empty, useless--a New Age paperweight, no more. She tucked it into her purse, conscientiously counted out the purchase price and left it on the register. She locked the front door of the shop behind her and started down the street. It was getting dark, and though the buzz in her ears was gone, the buzz of her thoughts wouldn't die down. She had to talk to someone... not Tara. She knew what Tara would say about this, and she didn't want to hear that, not right now.
She was frightened enough already.

The western sky was still glowing by the time she got to the cemetery, but the last burning edge of the sun had slipped below the horizon. She was going to be late for dinner, but that couldn't be helped; Spike hadn't (so far, anyway) figured out a way to steal telephone service. She knocked on the gate of the crypt, but there was no answer. After a moment she pushed the gate open and stuck her head inside. "Spike?"
The vampire was asleep in the armchair, barefoot and shirtless, a motionless, inhumanly beautiful ivory statue in the grey evening light. His chin had dropped to his bare chest and one pale hand was spread across the open pages of a book lying across his lap. A pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses were perched precariously on the end of his nose, a hair’s-breadth from falling off. Willow cleared her throat. "Spike, wake up!"
Spike started, blinked, and automatically shoved the glasses back into place, regarding her over the top of the lenses in a manner so reminiscent of Giles that Willow, keyed up as she was, almost burst out in hysterical giggles. It must be some sort of English thing. A second later he came completely awake and snatched the glasses off before realizing that it was a bit late for that. He settled for swinging them nonchalantly in one hand. "Will! Ah, hullo, I was just... reading."
"Well, shoot. That ruins my theory about your wretched Artful Dodger childhood and tragic struggle against illiteracy."
Spike looked embarrassed, though since he couldn't blush it was rather hard to tell for certain. "Keep it. Sounds a lot more exciting than swotting at Eton." He set book and glasses down on the crate beside the chair, got up, stretched very decoratively, and went over to the mini-fridge against the wall. He waved her to the chair, and she sat down gingerly. It felt weird, and after a moment she realized that it was because there was no warm spot where he'd been sitting. He pulled out a plastic baggie of blood, bit the corner off, and poured it into a glass. A horrid thought seemed to strike him. "For God's sake don't tell Harris, I'll never hear the end of it."
She smiled wanly. Spike seemed to sense that her heart wasn’t in the banter, and went over to the nearest wall niche to light a few candles. As the little cluster of flames strengthened and filled the crypt with mellow golden light he used the tail end of the match to puff a cigarette to life. "So... news?"
He sounded strained. Willow felt a surge of guilt. She'd never been entirely certain how much of the whole Spike-loves-Buffy mess had been her fault. Two years ago, right after Spike had been caught and chipped by the Initiative scientists, she'd accidentally caught the two of them up in a love spell... sort of. Though both of them had appeared to snap out of it when the spell broke, Willow often wondered if it had had anything to do with subsequent developments. Spike had been suicidally depressed and at loose ends at the time, and then suddenly he'd been happy. If he’d associated that happiness with loving Buffy--who knew what weird little connections might have been made down in his subconscious? If vampires even had a subconscious...
On the other hand, he'd been obsessed with Buffy from the first time he'd blown into Sunnydale, and sometimes Willow suspected that something--not love, but something--had been brewing in Buffy's subconscious almost as long. Spike and Buffy had always talked big about killing each other, but instead they kept fighting and letting one another get away, breaking apart and coming back together like Silly Putty. So maybe she'd had nothing to do with it.
"We're going to meet up at the shop tomorrow night around nine, and work out how to stop the ceremony on Wednesday," she said. The vampire nodded. "Are you... do you want to come? I mean, I know this must be...hard..."
"Will," he said, looking almost his age, "If I wanted to stop you all it would take is a single phone call to Bryce. For all you know I've already done it."
She caught those ancient, pain-filled eyes with her own and held them. "If you had, you’d either be gloating or not telling me at all."
He grimaced as if the words stung him. "True. I'm a pathetic, whipped excuse for a monster, aren’t I?” He chuckled bitterly. "So count me in for Wednesday."
Willow gripped the handle of the laptop case to keep from twisting her hands. "We all thought about it. Maybe for just a teeny weentsy moment, but we all did."
"Yeh, but..."
"And I," Willow continued almost inaudibly, "did something about it."
Outside in the graveyard a late cricket began chirping with moronic cheer. Spike's hand froze in mid-movement, then continued on its way to the ashtray. He ground his barely-started cigarette out very precisely in the center. "Did you, then?" His dark brows knit slightly. "What kind of something?"
He didn’t sound shocked or accusing or worried. Just curious. She could have hugged him. Willow pulled the laptop case up onto her knees and flipped open the catch. "I've been working on this for a long time. Ever since Buffy died, almost. And yes, I know: evil naughty magic, bad Willow!"
"You're talking to the wrong bloke if you expect a lecture on morals," Spike interjected. Willow laughed nervously.
"It's funny, Xander was asking this afternoon what we could do in the long term to prevent Bryce from trying to Raise Buffy again. And the one sure way is to Raise her ourselves." She was talking too fast, words tumbling over themselves in an effort to get out. "I know magic isn't free. I know every spell has a price, and the stronger the spell is, the greater the price. Like there are all kinds of spells for raising people from the dead, but the trouble with most of them is that the price isn't high enough, so you just get gross decaying zombie type raisings of the dead--"
"Uh, yeah. Run into that once or twice."
"--and if you don't have anything to sacrifice, you pay the price yourself. Like when I cast those spells against Glory, and had nosebleeds and migraines for weeks afterwards." She checked the level of the battery and turned the laptop on. "I know all this stuff, and I know that to really bring back someone from the dead... that's a huge price. What's worth a life?" She met Spike's eyes steadily. "Tara thinks resurrection spells are bad because they upset the balance of nature, which is just... stupid. Heck, polio vaccines upset the balance of nature. The way I see it, the real problem is most wizards don't want to pay the price. So they make someone else pay."
She pulled up the file and opened it. Her hands were trembling on the keyboard. "I'm willing to pay. I just need you to help me do it.” Now her voice was shaking, too.
“What kind of price are we talking about, Will?” the vampire asked softly. “There’s damned little I wouldn’t do to get her back. You know that. You have no idea how close I came to making that call. The only thing that stopped me was..." He trailed off, picking at his nails. “Two things, really. Didn’t want to end up fighting you lot. But the main thing...”
"Buffy would have hated you?"
His eyes narrowed lazily. "I could live with that, pet. I could die with that. If bringing her back meant she'd hate my guts, stake me the moment she got her bearings, I'd do it in a heartbeat. If I had a heartbeat. But I couldn't live with her hating 'erself. And she would, knowin' the price of her life was... that." He shook out a fresh cigarette. “So whatever you’ve got in mind, Will, if it’s something Buffy couldn’t live with... let’s make damned sure she never, but never, finds out about it.”
Willow squeezed her eyes shut, shivering. She’d come here for just this sort of encouragement, hadn’t she? Because Spike wasn’t good, no matter how much he cared for Buffy and Dawn, or even, maybe, for the rest of them. She forced her eyes open. "I’ve... I've made a few changes. It doesn't need to kill five people anymore. Or even five vampires. It doesn't need to kill anyone at all."
Spike walked slowly over to stand beside the chair. He retrieved his glasses from the top of the crate, put them back on and leaned forward, staring at the screen over her shoulder. "There's a catch, isn't there? There's always a catch."
Willow didn’t look up from the screen. "It's... there's a lot bigger chance of something going wrong.”
“And that would be...?”
She waved one hand feebly. “Oh, our heads exploding... that kind of thing.”
He made a dismissive noise. “Pfft. That.”
“And it's still nasty magic, Spike. It still requires a sacrifice. Something worth a life."
It wasn't entirely accurate that vampires didn't breathe; they had to inhale to talk, or smoke cigarettes, or sigh melodramatically. She could feel Spike's cool breath tickling her ear whenever he spoke. Now he sighed. "And?"
"You won't like this."
"Try me."
"Dawn's blood is part of it."
"You're right, I don't like it."
"Not enough to kill her," Willow assured him. This was one part she was sure about. "Part of what makes this work is that Buffy died in Dawn's place to begin with. They're metaphysically equivalent. In a way, there's already been a blood sacrifice--"
Spike's eyebrows went up. "Isn't that cheating a bit, Will, bringing back the sacrifice?"
"It's within the letter of the law," Willow protested.
“No worries. I love a good cheat.”
"Nothing actually forbids it.” Even to herself, Willow sounded as if she were trying to convince herself it would work. “In so many words, anyway. But that's not all." She scrolled down the file and pointed to a section near the end. "How up are you on Latin?"
"Rusty," he admitted. "Not much call for it these days." His eyes flicked back and forth over the lines on the screen for a moment. "’Animam meam dono pro beneficio amicae carae.’--I hope I'm getting that bit wrong."
"Then you're probably getting it right. What's worth a life, besides another life?"
Spike straightened and rand a hand through his hair, looking down at her with a curious expression, as if he'd never seen her before. "Not a lot," he said slowly. "But as I remember, there's something you 'eld dearer that night I offered to turn you."
"I think the word you're looking for is 'threatened to turn me'," Willow grumbled. The brief flash of humor vanished quickly. She looked up, her mouth firming, and there was nothing joking in her face or her voice. "So. Is the offer still open?"
She didn't get the chance to see a vampire completely floored that often. Spike opened his mouth, closed it, and flung himself into a furious half-circle of pacing. Willow didn't give him a chance to say anything further. "I still have Jenny's re-souling spell on disk at home, and I've already got an Orb of Thessula. I’ve been afraid to mess with the spell till now because it was so powerful, but under the circumstances that’s a little silly, isn’t it? I figure we set up the first part of the spell ahead of time, you turn me, we call my soul back and catch it in the Orb, and..." her voice dissolved into a shaky squeak. "Voila, we have a sacrifice."
"We bloody well do not!" Spike burst out, coming to a halt. He grabbed one of her hands and pressed it to his forehead. "Am I feverish? I must be feverish, because I'm bloody agreeing with Tara! You're insane, Will! Don't get me wrong, pet, you'd make a smashing vampire, and I'm no end flattered you'd want me to sire you, but here’s some Latin for you." He began ticking points off on his fingers. "Primus, there's no guarantee I can bite you without keeling over, and I'm buggered if I'll make a test run now. Secundus, if I did turn you, you'd be just a tiny bit DEAD for two or three days, and all bloodlusty and disoriented for another few days after that. By the time you were fit to finish the spell, Buffy would be alive and well and kicking ass for Bryce in L.A. And Tertius, once you were a vampire, there's no telling if your demon self would be as keen on getting Buffy back as I happen to be, as the first thing she'd undoubtedly do is stake the both of us. We’re unreasonable that way." His eyes softened a trifle. “Will, you just don’t understand how big a change it is, being turned. You can’t.”
Willow's face crumpled and her shoulders slumped in defeat. "Oh." It was half a sob. “I do, Spike. I met my vampire self once. I didn’t just need you to turn me for this. I wanted you to make me do the spell and then kill me after.”
“Ah." Was that shock in his eyes, at last? "Well, bugger that. I think Buffy would bleedin’ notice me killing her ex-best friend the soulless demon. And besides,” he added gruffly, "I rather fancy you soul included."
He’s not going to help. He’s not going to... I don’t have to... She covered her eyes with one hand, shaking in reaction as the adrenaline deserted her and relief and disappointment flooded through her in equal portions. "Whatever happened to 'It would be wrong'?"
"Sorry, not my idiom."
Willow couldn’t think of anything else to say. Spike returned to his frenetic pacing, as if standing still put him in danger of exploding. The silence grew between them as the last traces of sunset disappeared from the sky outside. Tara would be waiting at the dorm, worrying... she should get up, go back... continue doing the right thing. And she had classes tomorrow. She couldn’t muster up the energy to get out of the chair. "So... I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then."
Spike made a vague affirmative grunt, lost in thought. He came to rest by the doorway and stood there staring out into the night, his face hidden by shadow. Willow flipped the laptop shut and began the arduous task of dragging herself to her feet. She felt weak and jittery at the same time, but walking would probably take care of that. If she didn’t throw up first.
"Half a mo', Will..."
Momentum interrupted, she sat down again. Spike had turned back to face her, obviously stricken with an idea. "This spell of yours... any law says it has to be your soul to make it work?"
Willow frowned, running over the restrictions and clauses of the spell in her mind. "Um... no... I don't think so. But mine's the only one I've got dibs on."
Spike was in front of the chair in two long strides. He dropped to one knee in front of her and grabbed her shoulders, eyes alight. "Use mine."
"You don't have..."
"Not now! Not in my hip pocket, pet!" He jumped to his feet again, alive with excitement. "But I did once, and it's out there somewhere, innit?" He waved a hand at the ceiling. "Angel's was. Stands to reason mine is too, dunnit? Not as if I'm using the bloody thing, so call it up and chuck it in wherever sacrifices get chucked!"
"Spike!" It was Willow's turn to be stunned. "I can't--that would be murder!"
"What, you think old William's poncing around in the clouds with a harp and a halo?"
"Well... maybe. I don't know!” Her voice was an anguished wail. “I’m not even sure what a soul is!”
The vampire was on his feet again, prowling round the room like a caged tiger; if he’d had a tail it would have been switching madly. "I know what it isn't. Fine, I'm not William. There's a big piece of him missing, and there's a demon in its place. But what's missing's not his mind, nor his heart--my mind, and my heart, damn it, beating or not. I've got those. They're part of me--they are me. Bloody hell, Will, I know him. I know every day of his life. I know what he'd give up for... for love... as well as I know what I would. Dru didn't take me--him--by force. I may have been uninformed, but I was willing. If I can give up my soul for her I can damned well give it up for Buffy."
“But if you--him--William--Arrgh!” Willow grabbed fistfuls of her hair with both hands and yanked. “I’m all confused!” She worried at her lower lip, still sore from her having bitten it earlier, and in her mind’s eye pulled up the image of the cursor blinking amidst the lines of the spell. "It... could work. The thing is..." She tried to catch his eyes again, but he was moving too quickly, caught up in an exhilaration every bit as frightening as her own had been. "You know, don't you, that getting your soul back is about the only way Buffy might ever..."
He wheeled impatiently about, cutting her off with a gesture. "I know. But it wouldn't do me any good having a soul if she's dead, would it?"
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather have it back yourself?"
"Oh, right, and end up like Angel, pissing and moaning over my sins for the next century? I think not. Besides, pet, the only spell you've got to stick it back in me is that dodgy piece of gypsy work with the world's stupidest curse built in." He cocked a sardonic eyebrow at her. "And how long do you think that would last, hmmm? Let's face it, I'm a bloody sight easier to please in the true happiness department than Grand-sire ever was. I'd lose the sodding thing the next time Manchester United makes the Cup finals. Hardly worth it, is it?”
He came to a stop beside the chair again, bent down and purred into her ear, “Besides, pet, you know you’re dying to use that spell. It's all coiled up inside you, waiting. When’re you ever going to get another chance?”
Damn. He knew exactly how to get to her. But she’d known that all along. Wasn’t that why she’d come? “We have to tell Dawn,” she whispered, feeling the last of her resistance crumbling.
He laughed, a deep-down rumble that shook the chair. “‘Course we do. Leave that to me, and run home to Kitten. If the Niblet says no, then it’s all off. But honestly, Will, do you think there’s a chance in hell she’ll say no?”
"No," Willow admitted. "I don't."

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