Part 9

Spike, with a groggy Dawn in his arms, threaded his way through the tangle of old machinery on the warehouse floor, trying to stick to a path which wouldn't give his night-blind compatriots too much trouble. They couldn't risk the flashlights now, as Vespasian's men were entering the factory. Buffy followed right behind him, keeping an anxious eye on her sister, and Xander came after carrying Willow. Tara, Giles and Anya brought up the rear, having grabbed as much of Willow's magical apparatus as they could. They’d been forced to leave the hibachis, which wasn’t going to make Mr. Rosenberg happy. Willow's duffle bumped at Tara's side. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and possibly trapped, and he couldn't stop grinning.
Buffy. Buffy. Buffy's back. He could smell her, pure unadulterated Buffy-scent, hear her heartbeat and the faint scuff of her bare feet on the dusty floor. Yeah, she was a little confused, but it was Buffy in there, looking out at him through those gorgeous hazel eyes. She'd be back, full strength. He was as irrationally certain of that as he'd once been that Drusilla’s health could be restored. That had meant traveling across an ocean, finding a Hellmouth, and tracking down Dru’s sire to steal his blood--all in a day's work, wasn't it? This was no different.
A small hand grabbed him by the belt loop of his jeans, slowing him down so that the rest of them could catch up. Buffybuffybuffy. Damn, he was glad it was dark; he must look like a right loon. Badass vampires did NOT do the Snoopy dance, no matter how much they felt like it.
He set Dawn down when they reached the narrow stairs which led up to the catwalk. She rubbed her forehead and put out a hand to steady herself against the metal railing. Spike could sympathize; he felt as if his brain had been put through a clothes wringer, and he found himself casting occasional envious looks at the unconscious Willow. "Think you can manage the stairs, Bit?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
Dawn made a face. "I'll be fine." She still looked pale and shaky, and though Buffy followed close behind her as she began to climb, Spike didn't relax until the both of them were safely at the top. He stood at the foot of the stairs as the rest of them went up one by one, shooting jittery looks over his shoulder. Vespasian's men were quartering the factory now, shining big industrial-sized flashlights into every dark corner and pawing through the detritus of Willow's spell.
Spike grabbed Willow's duffle from Tara as she reached the ladder and slung it over his own shoulder. He might not be feeling anywhere near a hundred percent yet, but it would still be easier for him to carry up a rickety staircase. Tara was climbing intolerably slowly; he reined himself in from reaching up and giving her a good push. Then at last they were all up on the catwalk, trying their best to walk softly on the clanging metal grating. Xander led the way to the freight platform. The door was still hanging ajar from their previous entrance, and Buffy practically ripped it off the hinges in her haste to get Dawn outside.
From the look of the sky outside, it still wanted an hour or more till sunrise. From their vantage point on the freight platform, they could see the two cars parked in the factory yard below, and three more dark, anonymous vehicles huddled together nearby. Each vehicle sported an equally dark, anonymous driver, waiting stolidly in the front seat. Another pair of men stood on either side of the Corvair, where someone, probably Hank, was hunched behind the wheel. Spike would have laid money on there being someone staking out the driveway and the door to the factory as well. "Ten to one they're carrying more than a few nancy little air guns," he muttered.
"We've got to find someplace less exposed," Giles said. “They’ve only to look up at the wrong moment to spot us here.”
Buffy looked down at the field, made an unhappy noise, and sat down on the platform. She started to tug on the laces of Willow’s sneakers, and Tara helped her get them off; if Willow was being carried she wouldn’t need them. While Buffy put the shoes on, Spike pointed to a line of trees in the distance. "There's an irrigation ditch in the field behind the factory."
Ten minutes later, the vampire handed Dawn down to her sister, collapsed onto the sloping earthen bank of the ditch, and exhaled the breath he'd been holding ever since they'd left the freight platform. Xander and Tara were trying to make Willow comfortable in the rank growth of weeds in the bottom of the ditch, which was no easy task--at this time of year they'd died back to dry yellow-brown straw, and any which were inclined to go to prickly seed had done so. Willow was past noticing the accommodations; when Spike concentrated on picking her heartbeat and breathing out of the half-dozen others thumping away around him, both were steady enough, but slowed in deep sleep. Their big gun was going to be short on ammunition for quite awhile.
He pulled the half-crushed pack of Marlboros out of his duster pocket and lit a much needed cigarette. He lay there luxuriating in the smoke for several minutes. Yeah. Flat on his back was good. He could just lie here and sleep for a week. Or for three or four hours, until the rising sun hit the bottom of the ditch and turned him into vampire flambee. No rest for the wicked. He rolled over and crawled up to the top of the embankment.
Giles was already up there, peering across the field through the fringe of dead foxtails and pigweed at the impromptu parking lot in the factory yard. “Put that thing out,” he said.
“We’re too low to the ground for them to see it unless they’ve got someone on the roof.” Spike stubbed the cigarette out anyway. He propped himself up on his elbows and gestured over at the cars with the butt. "I'd suggest we all make a run for my car and cram in--boot's roomy enough to hold a couple of bodies--but I expect you lot feel obligated to save that git Summers just because you happen to share a species--ow!" Dawn had punched him in the leg, which he barely felt, but Buffy had wormed her way up beside him and smacked him in the shoulder at the same time. He turned and glared at her. "Niblet, you've got an auntie, haven't you?"
"Yeeaaah," Dawn said.
"Can you introduce me, then? I'd like to meet just one Summers woman who doesn't have an irresistible urge to pummel me."
Dawn snorted callously. "You love it. Now go save my Dad."
Buffy gave him another smack, gentler this time, and Spike gave up on the glare, which was on the verge of dissolving into another goony grin anyway. "Anything you say, pet."
“Whoa, there, pilgrim.” Xander joined them on the embankment. “People. Many. Carrying guns.”
“Mmm,” Giles agreed. “The vast majority of us are not immune to bullets. Some strategy is in order.”
“And Spike’s just not big enough for all of us to use him as a shield at once--ow!” Xander rubbed his shoulder. “Well, all of Buffy’s muscles seem to be working just peachy.”
“We already have a strategy, don’t we?” Anya said from the bottom of the ditch. “We certainly spent enough time arguing about it. Why waste all that good argument?” After a moment of confused silence on everyone else’s part, she added impatiently, “The disguise spell. Remember? Why can’t we use that to get someone in there to rescue Xander’s car? And Mr. Summers too, since he’s in Xander’s car.”
Tara looked up from Willow’s still form with a morose shake of the head. “The disguise spell which Willow and I never got around to putting together because she was too busy raising the dead, you mean?” She looked back down at her lover in mixed worry and frustration, the ends of her long hair brushing Willow’s cheek. Willow stirred slightly, but didn’t wake. “I could try... it’s a pretty basic glamor. Only visual, and not making any big changes. The major problem we were going to work on was making it undetectable to Vespasian’s staff wizards, and without Willow’s help...” She trailed off, lips parted, obviously thinking. “Except... the Raising’s got the ether all jangled up. The... the echoes are swamping out everything else. Any mages they’ve got over there probably won’t be able to tell they were bespelled, even if they try.”
She looked up at the three of them, a crease forming between her brows. “I won’t be able to make this a tactile spell--that’s the most difficult type of glamor, and I’m sorry, but I’m just...” she spread her hands and sighed. “Spike, you can be the driver--you’re really close to his size, and you even look like him a little bit. I guess Xander can be Broom Guy. Giles...” She bit her lip. “Paint Guy was really short, so don’t get too close to anyone. If someone tries swinging something through what they think is the empty space where your head is...it could hurt.”
“Rapture,” Giles muttered. “Are there any materials you need?”
Tara was already rummaging through Willow’s duffle. “Let’s see what’s in here. We were trying to make this into a magical first aid kit, a little of everything... I don’t know how much Will took out to make room for the stuff she used in the Raising...” She pulled out a small bundle of greyish wrinkly-looking things and stared at them. “Salamander tails? I thought we’d lost these...”
Spike was still trying to decide if he was insulted at being compared to Driver Guy when Buffy tugged at his sleeve. “Yeh, love? What is it?”
Buffy pointed at Giles. “Tall.” At herself. “Not. I can... I... make... see... small! Arrgh!” She pounded her fist into the dirt in frustration, then swiped her hair out of her eyes and looked up at him in tight-lipped determination. “I go!”
Spike pursed his lips and cocked an eyebrow at her, then turned to Tara. “Slayer’s got a point, Kitten.”
“Um?”
Spike sighed. Surely it was obvious. “She’s a lot smaller than Rupert here is. Not to mention stronger, faster, and better-looking. Do her up as the runty one.”
Tara considered this. “I guess that would work. Making Buffy look male isn’t that much harder than making Giles look eight inches shorter.”
Spike opened his mouth, took note of the warning glint in Buffy’s eyes, and decided he wasn’t in the mood to get punched into next Tuesday just yet. On the other hand, the glint was accompanied by a very slight upwards twitch of the corner of her mouth. Maybe only next Monday. He chuckled and kept his peace while Tara dug more spell ingredients out of the duffle.
“Ah! Here it is,” Tara said with obvious relief. She pulled out a folder full of more of the ubiquitous computer print-outs, a roll of scotch tape, and three small cheap plastic-backed mirrors of the sort that came with a child’s toy make-up set. She sorted through the print-outs and passed one of each item to Spike, Xander and Buffy. Spike studied his; it was a small overexposed photo of Driver Guy, wearing the deer-in-the-headlights look common to passports, driver’s licences, and employee photo IDs. Looked like Willow had gotten some use out of the data she’d downloaded from the Van Guys’ computer after all. Tara flipped open the compact and handed it to Xander. “Tear out the photo and...” she tore off a piece of tape, “stick it onto the compact mirror. Look into the mirror while I recite the charm, then rip off the photo. You should see your face change to the illusion face in the mirror. When that happens, break the mirror. That will set the spell for about an hour.”
Spike raised a hand. “Eh... small problem with the methodology here.”
Tara looked nonplused for a moment. “Oh. Right.” She scratched her head. “Um... I guess we’ll just have to wing it. Buffy, do you understand what you need to do?
Buffy nodded. Spike shrugged and began ripping the excess paper away from his photo. The spell was a simple one, the sort of low-powered cantrip just about anyone could pull off. Tara handed out more tape. He pasted the photo into place and held up the toy mirror as Tara began the chant.

“May the shadow become flesh
As through the veil we go
May the eye be deceived
May the seeming be made so!”

Spike tore the photo off; as expected, the mirror showed nothing but the bank behind him. He almost dropped it when a strange face coalesced out of the nothingness in the glass a moment later. He wasn’t as unfamiliar with the current state of his own appearance as people generally assumed; contrary to popular belief, vampires photographed perfectly well, and he’d seen himself in dozens of security cameras over the years. Seeing someone else’s reflection was weirder than seeing his own would have been. He resisted the temptation to play around making faces, dropped the mirror to the ground and ground it under his heel. Beside him Buffy did the same.
“It worked!” Tara sounded as much surprised as pleased.
Spike turned to Buffy and found the thin, rabbity features of Paint Guy looking up at him. For a second blind she’s gone! panic shot through him, until his other senses ganged up on his eyesight and gave it a stern talking-to. She still smelled like Buffy, and Tara’d said she’d still feel like Buffy, but he wasn’t going to try that one out because a bloke only had so much self-control, and touching Buffy at this point would just lead to more touching Buffy...holding Buffy...nuzzling Buffy... getting punched into next Tuesday by Buffy... He was grinning again. Get a grip, mate.
“Remember, we want to avoid provoking a fight,” Giles said. “All you need to do is ascertain the status of the unfortunates they planned to sacrifice, and divert attention away from the rest of us while we get to Spike’s car. Get the keys to Xander’s car if possible, or failing that, get Mr. Summers out of it.”
At the word ‘sacrifice’, Buffy looked startled. “Sacrifice? We’re here... to stop one?” She touched her forehead gingerly. “Giles... I don’t remember. What happened to Willow? Why’s Dawn here? My head’s all... fuzzy.” She looked down at her hands, her lips moving, trying to put the shreds of her memory into order. “Dad,” she said, still frowning. “You said Dad was here? How... when did he...”
Giles looked pained, and began fiddling with his glasses. “You’ve... not been... well... for some time. You--” His voice broke imperceptibly. “You shouldn’t be here at all, I’m afraid.”
“Bit harsh, Rupert,” Spike drawled, folding his arms and lounging back against the embankment. “I’d say the Slayer’s exactly where she’s supposed to be, saving some clueless tosser’s arse from the forces of unrighteousness.”
“We can talk about whether Buffy should have stayed where she was later,” Dawn said, very tightly, and that ended the subject for the moment.
“Bring the cars to the gate,” Giles said as they set off towards the factory yard. “We’ll be a bit down the road, out of sight of anyone guarding the gate.”
Spike lead them around anything which would have required tetanus shots if stepped on, keeping to the cover of the rusting hulks which dotted the field. The dew was starting to settle on the long grass, and everyone’s ankles were soon soaked. Buffy matched his pace easily, but the others, lacking their superhuman agility, lagged a little behind on the rough ground. Spike paused at the edge of the field to let them catch up. The factory yard itself had once been divided from the rest of the field by a chain-link fence, but it had fallen into disrepair long ago. The posts were bent and the chain-link was sagging, and in several places it was torn entirely away, replaced by makeshift plywood patches which were themselves sagging and rotting. Spike crept silently up to one of the patches and stood behind it, listening. “Clear,” he whispered after a moment.
Buffy ducked through the gap in the fence and Spike and Xander followed behind her while the others waited behind the cover of the plywood. Once a safe distance from the fence, the infiltrators straightened up and adopted a purposeful stride, the walk of people who knew where they were going and had every right to go there. The headlights of the newcomers’ cars cris-crossed the yard in a web of light, and Vespasian’s people in their dark conservative suits moved along the strands like spiders. Several of them were holding long slender wands of wood or metal, carrying them slowly about the yard and sweeping them back and forth as if dowsing for something. The tips of the wands quivered erratically. Others, in coveralls reminiscent of the Van Guys’, were carrying boxes of magical equipment into the factory--or they had been; the discovery that someone else had been there before them had thrown the whole project into disarray, and the workers had set down their crates around the main door to the warehouse and were taking the opportunity to stand around and smoke.
“I don’t see any vans or stretch limos or anything that screams ‘prisoners in here’,” Xander said. “Can the Inhuman Bloodhound here tell...?”
Spike shook his head. “Way too many people about, and I don’t know who to look for.”
A slender, dark-haired man in a suit an order of magnitude more expensive than those adorning the middle-management minions in the yard came striding out of the warehouse, cell phone glued to his ear. He appeared to be in his early forties: his hair had exactly enough grey at the temples to register as distinguished, and his face was only faintly lined, in the manner of someone who enjoyed the dual benefits of favorable heredity and an excellent health club. A hovering crowd of half a dozen aides and flunkies followed him at a safe distance. Buffy’s eyes narrowed. “He looks important.”
They edged closer, on the pretext of inspecting the crates piled by the door. Spike picked up the thread of the conversation easily. “...yesterday night? Has he been conscious since? No, no need for that yet. And there’s no sign of the other two? Ah. No, Danner checked in as usual... have Beckman analyze the headers on his last few messages and see if he comes up with anything interesting, and have Enderby alert the local police that the van’s been stolen. Call me immediately if you get more news.” He hung up, punched another number into the phone and stood there waiting impassively for whoever was on the other end to pick up.
Now that wasn’t a good sign. In Spike’s considerable experience, the ones who turned to ice under pressure were a damned sight more dangerous than the ones who exploded. “Mr. Bryce? Extremely bad news. We’ve been compromised.” A pause, in which his face went noticeably paler. “One of our people here was admitted to the county hospital as a John Doe Monday night with a severe concussion. He’s in a coma. The other two appear to have left town.”
Spike snorted. Well, there’s a waste of uplifting moral sentiment for you. Should have gone ahead and eaten him.
Vespasian was silent for a moment, the corners of his mouth twisting with the muted resentment of a man being chewed out for circumstances beyond his control. “No, I hadn’t realized. This complicates... no, it wouldn’t be impossible for us to secure more subjects, sir, even at this point. This is a Hellmouth, after all. But if the living subjects have been waylaid...”
Xander grinned. “Score one for Giles Lite!”
“We have one possible substitute available now, sir. We found an intruder at the warehouse, and though we haven’t had the time to interrogate him thoroughly... No. I’d suggest that you call Lilah Morgan immediately and have her people deal with Immigration. That could be extremely embarrassing... no, I realize that.” One Italian-leather shod foot began tapping. “Here? My assumption would be that this Spike whom Danner reported interfering with them last week took them out. According to our local sources he was Master in Sunnydale for a short time in 1998 before the Slayer disabled him...”
“The Slayer cheated,” Spike grumbled under his breath.
Buffy snickered. “I bet the sun was in your eyes, too.”
“Least I’ve never been saved by my mum.”
Xander made a hushing noise. “Can you two postpone the walk down memory lane?”
“...and he may still consider the place his territory,” Vespasian continued. “He also had an ongoing feud with the Slayer, and from all accounts was involved in her death, so presumably he’d be very eager to prevent her return--”
Spike growled in pure fury, but Buffy and Xander had both seen the yellow flicker in the vampire’s eyes in time and each clamped a hand on his shoulders before he could start the lunge at Vespasian. A second later the hand which was doing the most towards restraining him dropped nervelessly away and Spike spun round, forgetting all about Vespasian. Buffy had gone white as the impact of the words sank in. “Death?” she whispered. “My death?”
And it all hit. Spike could see it in her wide stricken eyes, all the little pieces coming together, remembering Glory, and the tower, and how he’d failed Dawn and failed her and how she’d made good that failure with her own life. She crumpled, sagging against the crates and gripping their corners hard enough to leave finger-shaped impressions in the wood, staring fixedly at nothing. “I--I died. D-died. I died. I--”
Spike squeezed his eyes shut for a second, schooled every scrap of sympathy out of his voice and snarled, “We haven’t got time for waterworks, Slayer, unless you want your Dad to go the same way your sis almost did!”
“Back off, Spike!”
“Sod off, Harris.” Ask him to be kind, to be comforting, and he had to stumble in the dark. Compassion didn’t come naturally to his kind, and he had to struggle for it, fight for the right gestures, search for the right words. For her the fight was worth it; he would rather have taken a stake than see that hurt, shocky look in her eyes. But there was no time for struggle, no time at all.
“I died,” she whispered, as if repetition could leach the words of horror.
Ask him to piss someone off, on the other hand... that he could do in a heartbeat. “Yeh? Well, join the bloody club. Unless you’re keen on a repeat performance I’d suggest you get off your delectable arse and help us get out of here in one piece.”
Buffy stared at him, and her eyes flickered, banked coals suddenly fanned into flame behind Paint Guy’s illusory features. She straightened and pushed herself upright, shooting him a look of loathing. “Let’s go, then,” she said, heading for the cars. As she brushed by Spike she said, low enough that only he could hear, “Right now I hate you.”
The muscles in his jaw twitched. So do I, love.
“But... thanks.”
Spike stared after her, not quite believing that he'd just heard Buffy Summers say 'Thank you'--to him--for the second time in one night. She'd never thanked him for anything before, not in so many words. It had always been I'm depending on you, Spike, or Spike, you're the only one who can... whatever it was she'd wanted him to do. He hadn't minded much. Gratitude was an emotion that tended to go sour. Knowing that she relied on him had been satisfaction enough, or so he'd thought then--now with two little words she'd set him looping off through the clouds.
No time for that, either. Spike pulled himself back to earth, aided by Xander's dagger glare, and followed Buffy down to the end of the stack of crates. She stopped, hands on hips, her eyes taking in the factory yard and the positions of everyone in it.
The DeSoto and Xander's Corvair were parked about fifty feet from the main doors to the factory. The three dark shiny rental cars Vespasian's people had arrived in were ranked at an angle off to the right, their headlights trained on the main doors to the factory. The beams from the headlights of the nearest one clipped the right front fender of the DeSoto, but the rear end of the cars were in darkness. A fourth rental, a brand new Caravan so sleek it was hard to tell from one of the cars, was backed right up to the main doors so the magical supplies could be unloaded. Seeing the sheer amount of junk they'd brought for their ritual gave Spike a new appreciation for Willow’s ability to cut a spell down to the bare necessities.
The two men guarding their cars and the three more waiting beside Vespasian's vehicles were the most immediate danger; several of them sported tell-tale bulges in the lines of their jackets which signified a shoulder holster, and the one standing beside the DeSoto was carrying something that looked like a double-barreled shotgun. Spike wasn't too worried about the guns; taking a few bullets might hurt, but it wouldn't kill him. As long as they didn't have anything fully automatic--a whole lot of bullets fired in the right places could potentially chop him to messes, and discovering just how well vampires healed from being ripped in half on the dotted line was not on his to-do list for the winter.
The four men who'd been unloading the Caravan were still milling around in the factory doorway, awaiting further instructions, and Vespasian and his little coterie of followers stood about ten feet away from the door, even with the stack of crates off to one side. The two women with the strange-looking wands had left the yard for the inside of the factory. Occasional shouts and moving lights from within signaled the continued efforts of Bryce's staff wizards to determine what exactly had occurred in their ritual space. It wouldn't do to assume that none of the three flunkies hovering at Vespasian's side had any magical training, either.
"How many do you make it?" Buffy asked.
Spike squinted into the darkness; the headlights were interfering with his night vision. "A dozen out here, half a dozen in there, give or take," he whispered. "Half with guns or magic enough to make our lives unpleasant. The blokes inside won't be able to get out here very quickly."
Buffy nodded. "So--what are we doing here? I've been out of the loop." She sounded resigned, grim... tired. Deathly tired. He wanted to hold her so badly...
Xander crouched down to get a better look around the crates. He pointed to Vespasian, who was still talking to Bryce. "He's trying to cast a spell to, uh, bring you back from the dead. We’re trying to stop him." He glared at Spike. "Or some of us are. Were."
Buffy's luminous hazel eyes were unreadable. Xander licked his lips nervously and continued, "They were gonna be bringing in some human sacrifices from L.A. for the ritual, but it sounds like Angel and his band of Merry Men were able to mess that part up. All we need to do is make sure they don't try to run out and grab a few ringers and go ahead with the spell anyway. With you not being dead and all, it would probably fizzle in some entertaining way I'd really love to watch, but their lucky volunteers would end up just as dead."
"And my dad's in your car?”
“Number one on the ringer list." Xander peered round the corner of the crates again. "Will guessed they had a copy of this scroll... Azi-something. Sounded like a Harry Potter title. If we can get hold of that it should slow them down."
"We don’t even know who’s got the sodding thing. Just smashing up some of their tackle should slow 'em down." Spike slapped the crate in front of him. "No toys, no spell."
"We get Dad out first." Buffy's tone brooked no argument. "We'll have to cross right in front of him to get to the cars." Her eyes moved to Vespasian; he was still talking to Bryce about the technical difficulties of re-scheduling the spell. "Xander, you'll have to do the talking when we get over to the guards," she said, clipped and businesslike. Of course, the whelp would have to be the one to do the talking, Spike thought. The spell didn't affect voices, and Buffy would sound like a girl and he'd sound British. "Draw their attention. Find out who's got the keys. Spike, when he does, get them. Quietly." She paused, a worried look overtaking her for a moment. "Uh... you’re Larceny Guy, right? You can pick pockets, can't you?"
"He can pick pockets," Xander said darkly, one hand going protectively to his wallet. Spike smirked at him.
"Good. Let's go." Buffy left the shelter of the crates and strode boldly out across the yard, right past Vespasian, with the other two trailing her. Halfway to the cars, Spike fell back a few steps and headed off at an angle to the other two. As Buffy and Xander drew closer to the cars both guards straightened suspiciously. Spike kept walking, circling behind their cars until he was past them and out of the glare of the headlights. He took a look over at the gate. It was open, and from the look of it he wasn’t sure it could be closed, there were so many layers of weeds and old trash drifted about the bottom. If anyone were stationed there, they were outside the fence and invisible from here. The air was dead still, and the tangle of scents in the yard made it impossible to tell anything by that route.
Xander shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled over to the guard by his own car, gawking around him open-mouthed, the perfect image of local talent overawed by the arrival of the big boys. Buffy stopped beside the DeSoto. The two of them kept just far enough away from one another to make it difficult for either guard to keep both of them in sight at once. "Hey there," Xander hailed the guard on the Corvair. "Where did the big boss want us to take these cars?"
The guard adjusted his cap and looked Xander up and down. Mostly up. Broom Guy being a big Neanderthal lug was finally to their advantage. One corner of the guard’s mouth twitched scornfully, and his wary stance relaxed a trifle. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"The cars," Xander repeated, with the air of someone talking to a rather dim child. "We can't leave them here. Where's the keys?"
"Who's asking for them to be moved?" the second guard asked,
suspicious.
Spike observed the second guard's hand twitch slightly in the direction of his jacket pocket as he spoke, and began drifting silently forward between the two cars. He wondered if the Initiative doctors who'd saddled him with the chip would have appreciated the irony: in preventing him from being an effective killer, they’d forced him to become a much more effective thief. Aside from the occasional necessity of nicking things from Angelus or Darla back in the old days, he'd never had much reason to play Artful Dodger before the chip. If he wanted anything, it had been much easier just to kill the owner and take it. Nowadays having cash on hand made his unlife a lot easier, so he'd worked his way up from palming people's tips to lifting wallets. It kept him in blood and fags... and besides, it was fun.
Not a skill he expected the Scoobies to commend him for any time soon, he thought with a mirthless grin--unless they needed him to employ it in their behalf, of course. He moved into position behind the guard and nodded to Buffy. While Xander kept talking, and the guard failed to be convinced, she began wandering around the hood of the DeSoto, gradually edging towards the second guard. She bent over by the front driver’s side window, shading her eyes as if trying to see through the cloudy glass.
"Quit messing with the car," the second guard snapped.
"Sorry!" Buffy said, with none-too-convincing gruffness. She stepped back hurriedly, faked a stumble, and fell awkwardly towards the guard. He stepped back to avoid her and bumped into Spike. The vampire caught him and shoved him forward again, slipping one nimble hand into the man's pocket and extracting the keys to the Corvair as he did so.
Spike tucked the keys into his own pocket and stepped back, trying for a note of injured surprise. "Hey! Watch it, ma--dude!"
Unfortunately for their hopes for a quiet getaway, the guard wasn't an idiot. He could tell he'd been set up, even if he wasn't sure exactly what for. He thrust the butt of the shotgun back, driving it hard into Spike's stomach. The vampire grunted, but the human's strength wasn't enough to hurt him badly. The ominous ka-click of the gun being cocked hadn’t entirely died away before the vampire's fingers were locked around the guard's arms.
He couldn't hurt the bugger, but he didn't have to. Buffy lunged forward, batted the barrel of the gun aside as if it were a toy, and drove one small fist into the guard's jaw. The man’s head snapped back and his eyes rolled up. He slumped back against the vampire’s chest. Spike and Buffy both froze, the guard sandwiched between them, and glanced warily around to see if any of the drivers over in the rental cars had noticed the altercation. There were no shouts, no running. Spike draped the guard up against the side of the car and pried the shotgun out of his fingers. He got a good grip on one of the barrels and cocked his head to one side, holding the gun up with a smile. “Make a wish, luv?”
Buffy grabbed hold of the other barrel and pulled. Both of them threw their shoulders into it, and the metal made tortured little spanging sounds as both barrels parted ways. There was a good three or four inch gap between the barrels when Buffy let up the pressure. Spike examined their handiwork with pleasure and set the shotgun on the ground beside the guard’s feet.
"Look, all I know is I was told to move them," Xander was saying loudly. His guard was looking antsy; they’d have to move fast.
Spike fished his own keys out of his duster and made a quick check that all the doors of his car were unlocked. "Harris! Catch!" He held up Xander's keyring and tossed it in Xander’s direction. They arced over the Corvair’s roof, flashing briefly as they passed through a headlight beam, and Xander, looking up, reached up and grabbed them out of the air.
“Hey!” Xander’s guard yelled, going for his pistol. Xander dropped to the ground like a rock, and Buffy tore around the front of the Corvair, grabbing the guard’s shoulder and spinning him around. The pistol went off with a muffled crack as she twisted it free of the guard’s grasp, and the heady scent of Slayer’s blood filled the air like perfume as the gun went spinning away into the night.
Her blood.
Spike’s mind went utterly blank, no thoughts, nothing but flame-colored rage. He was over the Corvair’s hood with an inhuman roar--you heard panthers scream like that--vaulting through the air, face reverting to fangs and twisted snarling demon-ridges you couldn’t see through the illusion, and it wasn’t that he’d lost the balance he’d sought and found in the grip of the spell, oh no, not at all: man and demon were screaming for his foe’s blood with one voice. Through a scarlet fog he saw the guard’s confused face as the man went down beneath him, and William the Bloody laughed as his fangs closed on the man’s throat and oh yeah there were times when it still felt good, still felt absofuckinlutely great--
In the corner of his eye, Buffy staggered over to Xander, clutching her arm where the bullet had creased her.
Alive.
In the space of a heartbeat the single-minded fury which had allowed him to ignore the fact that his brain was exploding dissolved into abject relief. Pain hit him like a freight train to the head. Spike keeled over, fangs tearing free of the guard’s neck. Black spots rimmed with gold crawled before his eyes like a resurgence of the vortex, and if he’d eaten anything in the last twenty-four hours, it came up. The guard lurched backwards with a hand clapped to his bleeding throat, realized that whatever the hell had just hit him was no longer a threat, and began laying into the vampire with both fists.
Spike had been living with the chip for two years. He was used to it, as much as one could ever get used to something that shot a few hundred volts through you every time you lapsed into doing what came naturally. Given a few moments to plan, he could work around it a bit, come up with things to do in a fight which would keep his own hide in one piece without directly harming his opponent. Problem was, people he wanted to beat the crap out of were so sodding unreasonable about giving him those few moments. Spike flung both arms over his head in equal parts pain and fury, trying to roll out of the man’s reach. He managed to scramble back around to the passenger side of the car on hands and knees, the guard stumbling after in hot pursuit and both of them looking as bloody stupid as it was possible to look in a fight to the death.
Xander, on the other side of the car, had clawed his way to his knees and jammed the key into the Corvair’s door lock. He ripped the door open and shoved Hank unceremoniously aside. “Don’t shoot!” Hank yelled, fumbling with the lock on the passenger door and swinging it open with the force of terror. Spike saw it coming and plastered himself flat to the ground with every bit of speed he could wring out of his supernatural reflexes. He felt the door graze his shoulders. A second later it slammed into the pursuing guard’s gut. Another second later Buffy’s good hand latched onto a fistful of the guard’s hair and cracked his head into the top of the door. He collapsed with a groan.
Buffy pushed her father back inside the car and slammed the door on him. “Get back in there, you’re being rescued!” She reached down and yanked Spike to his feet; he swayed for a moment, trying to shake off the chip-induced wooziness, and grabbed the door handle of the DeSoto to steady himself. Now there were yells aplenty, as the other three drivers, alerted by the gunshot, left their stations to see what was the matter. All three of them were racing towards the two cars, pistols drawn. Spike slid into the DeSoto and gunned the engine. Xander was already pulling his car into a hard left to circle back out to the drive as Buffy jumped into the passenger seat of the DeSoto. As the engine roared to life the vampire hunched forward over the steering wheel with blood in his eyes, gauging the distance to the factory doors. Growling deep in his throat, Spike slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the DeSoto rocketed forwards, tires screeching. The unfortunate guard who’d been propped up against it rolled off and bounced to the ground--and that didn’t produce a single twinge from the damned chip; Spike had honestly forgotten the wanker existed.
"What are you doing?" Buffy yelled. She sounded more brassed off than anything else. Her voice was drowned out by a crash as the car's front end plowed into the pile of crates outside the warehouse, and a series of crunching, snapping noises as the contents of the crates went flying.
"Smashing things, pet," Spike rasped through clenched fangs, punching the car into reverse. It would delay the spell a bit, which was fine, and after that fiasco with the guard he bloody well deserved to smash something.
Buffy wasn’t paying attention. Her eyes had narrowed. "Wait," she said before he could hit the gas. She was out of the car and racing across the pavement like a tigress. One of the drivers was taking aim at the departing Corvair; the other two had returned to their cars to chase after it. The web had been shredded, and the spiders were in a panic. Buffy wove in and out, a mote in the beams of moving headlights. Again like a tigress she pounced, and then she was running back, dragging a dark shape with her. She flung Vespasian through the open door of the car and jumped into the back seat. Half a second later Spike was peeling out towards the ramshackle gates, swerving to avoid the limp form of guard number two at the last moment. He didn't know if deliberately running someone down would make the chip activate, and he didn't want to find out.
The Corvair was already through the gates, having pulled up for only a moment outside the fence to load Willow, Tara and Anya inside. Spike slammed on the brakes just outside the gates, and Giles and Dawn flung the back doors open and swarmed inside. “Buffy!” Dawn cried, flinging her arms around her sister.
“Buffy, are you all right?” Giles asked.
Buffy glanced down at the blood-soaked rip in her shirt and nodded. “Flesh wound. Xander’s shirt is toast, though.”
Two shots rang out behind them, followed by the metallic whine of a ricochet. Spike didn’t even bother to flinch. Couldn’t be more than twenty-two calibre. God, he could stand out there and let the bastards use him for target practice if he felt like a laugh, but he couldn’t take chances with the humans; shock was tricky and he’d seen a man die of an apparently superficial wound more than once in a long and violent life.
The other cars were rumbling to life behind them. Pity they hadn't had the opportunity to slash all the tires, Spike thought, flooring the gas pedal again and taking off down the road in a squeal of burning rubber even before Giles had the door closed. Ahead of them the road distorted and wavered like a heat mirage, and the hot tingle of magic scorched the air. Spike had a split second to decide whether to drive through or try to go around; recalling the condition of the field, he grit his teeth and plunged forward. There was a fizzling noise and the illusion of Paint Guy in the rear-view mirror was replaced by Buffy’s pale, strained face. If they’d had any magical defenses, that had probably been a spell designed to neutralize them. His own disguise must have disappeared at the same moment, for Vespasian suddenly registered the fact that the person driving the car was a vampire in full game face and a very bad mood.
Vespasian flung himself into the door, scrabbling for the handle. It came off in his hand. Spike was about to add that to his list of things-to-be-killed-for when he remembered he’d taken the thing off himself to prevent Dru from getting out on the way to South America, and never tightened it up again properly after he’d put it back on. Never mind, he’d blame Vespasian for it anyway. Buffy's left arm snaked around Vespasian’s throat from the rear and pulled him back against the car seat. “Dawn, get the phone out of his pocket,” she said.
Dawn rummaged through Vespasian’s coat for the cell phone. She handed it to Buffy, who shook it in front of his face. "Call them," she said. "Call them and tell them to leave us alone. Now. I’m back, your spell won’t work, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll take your sorry asses back to L.A. on the next bus because I am NOT a happy camper.”
Vespasian's eyes were rolling wildly in his head as he tried to get a look at the woman who was half-choking him. "You--you're..."
"You wanted the Slayer," Spike said with a fangy grin. "You got her."

Part 10

Negotiating Vespasian's return took the rest of the waning night. The eastern sky was streaked with peach and gold by the time the little cavalcade of dark cars pulled away. Dawn sat curled in the back seat of the DeSoto, huddled in her windbreaker, and watched their taillights dwindle to an ant-trail of red sparks in the distance. It wasn't really cold, but she was shivering with exhaustion.
Giles and Buffy stood out on the shoulder of the road watching them leave, Spike a dark watchful presence at Buffy's shoulder. At last the brightening sky drove the vampire back into the car. Spike exhaled loudly as he dropped into the driver's seat; he looked as tired as Dawn felt. Not just tired, old--old as Mom, old as Mr. Giles. The faint morning light which made it through the blacked-out windows showed up the little lines at the corners of his eyes. Despite that he looked as happy as she could ever remember having seen him.
"You almost killed that guy that shot Buffy," she said.
Spike draped one elbow over the back of the seat and looked at her. His eyes were half-lidded and a small smile quirked his lips. "Yeh."
"And it doesn't bother you at all, does it?"
"Nah." Spike considered. "Well, it bothers me I had a nice dinner in hand and didn't think to swallow." His long pale pink tongue flicked out, licking the last traces of the guard's blood off his chin, looking for all the world like a cat polishing cream off its whiskers. Dawn wondered if it were disturbing that she didn't find that disturbing.
"Would it bother you if you had killed him?"
"Dunno, Niblet." His ice-blue gaze fixed on Buffy through the cloudy windshield and he chuckled. "Oh, who'm I kidding, he shot your sis. I'd've loved it." He leaned back and massaged his temples. "Head still hurts, though. That was a bitch of a shock."
Dawn nodded, biting her lip. She rested her chin on her clasped hands and thought for awhile. "So if when he shot her I... kind of wanted you to kill him, that's pretty evil, huh?"
The scarred eyebrow rose. "'Kind of' wanted me to kill 'im? Bite-size, as evil goes, the words 'totally lame' spring to mind." He gave a little hiss of pain; his left hand was starting to smoke ever so slightly. He gave it a shake and shifted position to avoid the worst of the filtered sunlight. He rolled down the window a fraction and shouted "Oi, Slayer, can we cut the sightseeing tour short? Some of us want to avoid spontaneous combustion!"
After a lingering look at the point where the road disappeared over the horizon, Buffy turned and walked over to the car. Giles followed her. In stark contrast to Spike's mood, he seemed broody, in a stiff-upper-lip British way. Now that the immediate danger was over, Buffy had a lost look in her eyes, as though she'd run out of script and wasn't sure what to do next. She got into the front seat and looked over her shoulder at Dawn, then at Spike. Spike looked perfectly content to stare at Buffy all day. They'd all run out of steam at the same time.
"The first order of business is to get in touch with your father," Giles said, stepping into the breach. "Take us to my apartment, Spike. We can call Anya from there and find out where the others are."

It had been only six hours ago that they’d driven along this highway, and it felt to Dawn as if it had been in another world. No one said much. Spike, eager to get out of the sun, drove with his usual reckless abandon and then some, humming some creaky old Ramones number. Buffy laid her head against the window and closed her eyes. Giles brooded on the seat beside Dawn, sitting tensely forward on the old leather as if to relax in this particular car would be some sort of unforgivable personal lapse. He winced a few times when Spike cut another car off more closely than usual, but said nothing.
“A lot of stuff happened while you were dead,” Dawn ventured into the silence. She leaned forward and crossed her arms on the back of Spike’s seat. “I can’t believe no one’s said this yet--I missed you, Buffy. It sucked that you were dead. I’m glad you’re back.”
Buffy ducked her head and said nothing.
“Did you miss us? While you were dead, I mean.”
“Dawn...” Giles said warningly.
Dawn turned on him belligerently. “What? Are we all just supposed to pretend she was in Bermuda or something?”
“Certainly not. Your sister deserves time to--”
“I don’t remember.” Buffy stared down at her hands. Her voice was low, even, almost emotionless. “What it was like. If it was like anything. If I was even...” Her fingers curled, fists clenching. “All I know is... there was nothing more I had to do. Ever.” There was longing in her sister’s voice, and that, more than anything she’d seen or heard tonight, creeped Dawn out. Buffy flexed her fingers and looked up, her changeable eyes grey in the filtered light. “I don’t feel... real.”
Dawn shivered, but plowed on determinedly. “Neither did I, last winter. If you wanna obsess about it for the next six months, fine. I know obsessing’s your thing. But you know what? Mom was right. Soup does help. Glowy energy fields don’t need soup, and neither do dead people.” She glanced at Spike. “Most dead people. But live people do. My advice is have some soup. Chicken rice is good.” Dawn sat back and folded her arms with a decisive nod. Buffy stared at her as if she’d just sprouted antlers, and Spike gave a bark of laughter.
“Don’t be daft, Niblet! Cream of tomato, no contest.”

The closer they got to home the deeper Giles’ frown became. Dawn and Spike regaled Buffy with contradictory and obviously much-edited accounts of what they’d been up to over the summer. Buffy listened to them, slightly bewildered by references to events and people she’d missed out on, occasionally startled into a smile in spite of herself.
He felt slightly guilty that he hadn’t kept closer track of Dawn, but his charge had always been Buffy; he had no responsibility towards her sister. Technically, he could have returned to England and made his report to the Council within a week of her death, received reassignment, and never seen Sunnydale again. He hadn’t wanted to go that far, tempting though it had been to cut every tie cleanly and at once, but his major emotion when Willow had volunteered her parents as Dawn’s temporary guardians, and when the Rosenbergs had accepted, had been relief. Which emotion had only increased when he’d been told of Hank Summers’ return to the States. There had been days when he could barely stand to look at the girl. Sometimes it was still hard. He resented her for being alive when Buffy was dead, for seducing Buffy from her Slayer’s duty by her very existence, for having been slipped into their memories like a cuckoo--and like a cuckoo, pushing the true Summers to her death. None of that was Dawn’s fault, and as an honorable man he tried not to hold it against her... but it was there nonetheless.
Dawn felt it, too. With him she was always reserved, wary, the polar opposite of her casual rapport with Spike--and perhaps, Giles thought a trifle bitterly, that rapport wasn’t surprising considering that at various times both Spike and Dawn had almost been the death of Buffy. He dismissed the thought immediately as unworthy, but he still wished that two of them would just shut up.
Spike stayed in the car with Dawn when they reached the apartment, citing a lack of interest in bursting into flame. Buffy followed Giles inside. She looked around at the piles of books and papers which drifted over almost every available flat surface. After two months away, there was still a thin film of dust over everything, and the place had an air of desertion and neglect more than of scholarship. Buffy wrapped her arms around herself. “Home sweet home,” she said under her breath, then, “You haven’t said much.”
Was that hurt in her voice? Giles shifted a pile of last year’s Miskatonic Journal of the Paranatural to get to the telephone. “I--I truly don’t know what to say. I’d be lying if I claimed I’m not... pleased to see you again, but...” He fumbled with his glasses, avoiding her face. “Buffy... my dear girl... can you forgive me for not wanting you back--not this way?”
She sat down on the arm of the couch and began picking at the frayed ends of the bullet hole in her shirt sleeve, pulling out long raveled threads and working them into fuzzy little balls between her fingers. “Yeah. I mean... yeah. Willow brought me back, didn’t she? That’s why she was all comatose, right?”
Giles nodded. “She and Spike, and your sister. I believe she meant well,” he added. “Willow always means well.”
“I don’t think I wanted to come back this way either.” Tears welled up in her eyes, but didn’t spill over. He hadn’t seen her weep since her mother’s funeral, and that had been only a few lone, stoic tears. All her grief and anger had been bundled up and channeled into saving her sister’s life... and now what? “I was finished, Giles. My whole life got wrapped up in a neat little bow. Now... now it’s all untied again.”
His eyes slid away from her face, from her eyes, not because her eyes were changed by death, but because they were not. =Tell Giles I figured it out.= Sometimes those words had been all that had kept him going through the long summer. None of the others knew why. They hadn't been privy to that final conversation in the training room, hadn't realized just how deeply she'd sunk into despair that last night. She hadn't allowed them to see it. The others had seen her cast iron hard; so few people realized how brittle cast iron was. He had comforted himself that she had, at least, found a measure of peace in death. Now they'd taken even that from her, for the sake of their own selfish comfort, and he’d failed to stop them.
Giles felt his throat constrict. Deal with it, Dawn had said, but that was easier said than done. Buffy made a small, sad questioning noise deep in her throat, and he cursed himself. She didn't deserve his cowardice. He forced himself to look at her. She was back, however damaged, and she was still the girl--the woman, now--whom he loved as a daughter. He took both her hands in his. "My dear girl," he whispered. "I am so sorry. And so glad."
Her eyes searched his face, and then she hugged him tightly, thin strong arms exerting only a fraction of the pressure of which they were capable. Careful of him and his merely human frailty. "It's all right, Giles." She sighed and squeezed his hand, her mouth firming though her eyes were still weary. "I'll... go home and have some soup." Resigned. She was here, she would go on. This was, after all, Buffy Summers. Of course she would go on. Giles drew away from her hastily, lest emotion get away with him, picked up the phone, and dialed the number of Anya’s cell.

Tara opened the door to Giles’s knock late on Friday afternoon. “How is she?” he asked.
“Better,” Tara said. “Sitting up and eating a little.” She glanced back into the room. “You’re not the first one here, though. This may not be a good time for...”
Giles looked over the top of Tara’s head and into the room beyond. The blinds in the twin windows were drawn, and the swags of filmy material which were normally draped decoratively along the tops had been let down to provide what scant extra coverage they could. Willow was sitting up in the bed, several textbooks scattered around her. The bruises round her eyes had darkened to a spectacular purply-black, and the whites of her eyes were a bloody crimson. She looked rather like a hung-over raccoon, and she was in full Willow-panic. “Three days,” she was saying. “Three days! Do you know how much vital lecture time you lose in three days? I’ll never catch up! I’ll get Djuna Barnes mixed up with Anais Nin! I’ll be Behind-the-class Moron Girl for the rest of the semester!”
“You won’t get to the Left Bank lezzies for another three weeks at least. All you’ve missed so far is George and Percy.” The rasping North London tones dripped disdain. The vampire was sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed, squinting down his nose at one of the books. “Listen to this rot-- ‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes/Into the tomb the great queen dashes.’ I could bloody well do better than that.”
“Spike,” Giles said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Spike shrugged, tossed the book aside and got to his feet with that mixture of bravado and wariness which meant he’d been caught at something he didn’t want to admit to, though whether it was reading one of Shelley’s less brilliant works or being something approaching thoughtful towards Willow wasn’t entirely clear. He shoved his hands into his duster pockets and attempted to look nonchalant. “Just happened to be passing by. I have to meet the Slayer in...” he looked at the clock, “five hours, and thought I’d see if Red’d croaked on us. I’ll clear off and let Rupert pay his manly yet sensitive respects.”
"No, Spike, do stay." Spike's posture began shifting further into wariness at the quiet menace in Giles' voice. "Quite fortuitous finding you here, really. While I'm pleased to see that Willow's recovering, this is more in the nature of an, er, business visit. One which involves you and Willow both." He took of his glasses and held them up to the light, then rounded on both of them in a fury. "What the bloody hell were the two of you thinking?"
He looked from the vampire to the witch, lips tight with disgust. "I'll be frank, Willow, I hold you most responsible for this. I'm disappointed to find Spike involved, but I can't be surprised that a demon whose natural bent is towards evil would want to get Buffy back at any cost, bugger the consequences to her or anyone else. You, though..." He shook his head angrily. "You have no such excuse."
He was gratified to see shame blossom in Willow's eyes for a moment, but it was quickly extinguished by defiance. "You know, I'm not exactly the first person to bring Buffy back from the dead! How come when Xander uses CPR it's all 'Yay Xander, you the man!' but if I use magic it's 'Oooh, Willow's gone all Dark Phoenix?' It's just anti-magic prejudice is what it is, and it's not fair." She scrunched down in the pillows and looked around pitifully. "I feel sick. I think I'm going to throw up."
Tara twisted her hands together. She was obviously miserable, but as implacable in her own way as Giles. "Science works with the world. Magic works around it. Can't you see the difference? W-willow... you know I love you more than anything, but I can't--I can't just let this go. You how I feel--you know how Buffy felt about spells like this--"
"And it would have been better to let Bryce get her?" Willow cried in frustration. "Because sooner or later he would have. He didn't have to try Raising Buffy in the place where she died, you know, it's easier here, but he could have done it in--in--Laguna Beach! Anywhere! We could have messed up this try, but what about the next one, and the next? And the longer it took the worse shape Buffy's head would be in when he finally did get her. All right, fine, the original spell was full of evil badness, but I didn't use the original spell! And fine, I screwed up the spell I did use! I am a big fat screwup and I almost got Spike dusted! You think I don't feel like crap about that already?"
"No, I'm afraid I don't." Giles voice was arctic. "Or at least, I don't believe you'll feel that way long enough to let it sink in and make a permanent impression. You were terribly sorry after your attempted cursing of Veruca, or casting the my-will-be-done spell, yet here you are, employing black magic again. And yes, it would have been better to let Bryce get her. The violation of Buffy's spirit would have been of equal magnitude, but at least your own soul would have remained unsullied--you do realize, don't you, that simply casting this type of spell is enough to bring you to the attention of powers best not named? I've personal experience in this area, you may recall. At best, you've condemned an innocent soul to who knows what hellish--"
"Oh, give me a bloody break," Spike snapped. "My innocent soul's been a football for powers best not named for a hundred and twenty years and you've never given a toss before today, so let's skip the crocodile tears on its behalf now. It probably appreciates the change of scenery. If souls appreciate anything at all, which I doubt, as I can't imagine a disembodied moral compass being all that much fun at parties."
Giles failed to rise to the bait. He continued polishing his glasses and said mildly, "Spike, I realize that attempting to make you understand, much less accept the point we're trying to make here is very likely impossible. But for the sake of argument, let's grant your--” Damn it, he was not going to fall into the easy, comfortable assumption that the vampire in front of him was in any real sense a continuation of the human being who’d died in his creation over a century ago. “William’s soul is no worse off than it was before. Supposing you hadn't a lovesick vampire with a spare soul conveniently at hand, Willow. How exactly did you propose to cast this purportedly harmless spell?”
If Willow scrunched any further down in bed she was going to disappear entirely beneath a pile of cushions. "Um, well, I wanted Spike to vamp me so we could call my soul back and use it. Except Spike wouldn't do it."
It was a wonder that he didn't snap his glasses in half. Giles groped blindly for a chair and sat down. "Willow... does the fact that this spell requires actions which even a creature of evil finds objectionable tell you nothing?" His head dropped wearily to one hand. "It's not that the return of one person from the dead is so evil a thing of itself. It's the things that we convince ourselves are an acceptable price to accomplish that return. Had you succeeded, what then? Would Buffy thank you for making her first duty upon her return the obligation to slay the creature you'd become? And should Tara or Xander, grieving for your death, then descend to yet more vileness to return you to life? On and on and on, horror feeding new horror?"
Willow had grown white and faint in the dim light. "But it didn't happen like that. It all turned out all right."
Tara shook her head. "Bad means make a bad end. Somewhere, somehow, this is going to come back to haunt you."
Willow's expression grew bitter. "And I suppose you'll all be like, yay, Willow's got it coming."
"No!" Tara cried. "Never! Why do you think we want you to stop and think about what you're doing?"
"I did think!" Willow yelled, rocketing up out of the pillows and then falling back in a severe coughing fit. "I thought all summer," she croaked when she could talk again. "I thought about how Buffy was the best person I ever knew. I thought about how if it wasn't for Buffy I'd be dead, or a vampire, or a twenty-year-old computer geek with no life watching everyone else I knew get killed or turned into a vampire! I thought of all the people who're gonna die because she's not here to save them and I thought about Dawn, and Spike, and you all eating your hearts out because she was gone, and you know what? I didn't do anything! Because it would be wrong! But if she was going to come back no matter what then I wanted it to be her friends that did it, not some poophead in L.A. who wants to brainwash her into being his personal Buffy action figure!"
Giles said, very softly, "Every death leaves grieving people and
unfinished business. Buffy is--in the long run--no more or less
important than anyone else. To pretend otherwise is the height of
selfishness, and to use our own pain to justify causing more pain is the height of evil."
"What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry she's back? 'Cause I'm not!" Willow was starting to sob and Tara looked so utterly defeated that it was painful to see.
Spike's lip curled. "Oh, lay off Will, the both of you!" He exploded into a flurry of pacing in front of the bookshelves and came to a halt in a flare of black leather. "You want to blame someone, blame me. She wouldn’t’ve gone through with it if I hadn’t jollied her along.” He gave Giles a narrow-eyed glare. “You asked me once, Rupert, if there mightn't be some higher purpose in this crackerjack prize I've got in my skull." He tapped his temple with one forefinger. "I laughed. I'm still laughing. Higher purpose? Bollocks. The Powers That Be don't give a flying fuck about good for its own sake. Nor evil for its own sake, come to that. It's all about balance. Creation and destruction, the Worm Ourobouros. One Slayer dies, the next is called. One vampire gets staked, another rises. We. Don't. Matter. So we might as well look out for the people we love, because the Powers won’t--they’ll have you up a tower chucking them into oblivion for the sake of their bloody balance. Good? Evil? Sod 'em both. I don’t care about balance. I care about Buffy. And Dawn. And God help me, the rest of you pillocks. And so does Will."
"Are you quite finished?" Giles asked mildly.
"Bloody right I'm finished!" Spike snarled, heading for the door.
"Then perhaps you can explain to me why caring about Buffy means completely ignoring her wishes and returning her to a world she left voluntarily? She found peace, Spike. You and Willow stole it from her."
The vampire's face, while still human, remained quite capable of expressing demonic anger. "Cheer up, Watcher. Something with big sharp teeth'll be along in no time to give it back to her." Spike flung the door open and stormed out, slamming it behind him. There was a long uncomfortable silence; Tara reached out one tentative hand to her lover's face, but Willow turned away, avoiding her touch. A moment later a knock sounded. Tara looked at Giles, and got up to open the door again. Spike stood there, sucking on his cheeks. He held out a hand. "Blanket!"

Somewhere in the last few days, the tide of reality had deserted Hank, washed him up on some strange beach and left him stranded. The apartment was still the same. He still had an appointment with the realtors tomorrow morning, to put sale of the house on Revello Drive on hold. His allotment of personal time would run out and he'd be due back in L.A. in a week, and the Alpert project was still going to be sitting on his desk gathering dust because Simmons didn't have the initiative God gave a kumquat. But he was sitting in a red vinyl upholstered booth at Denny's at ten P.M. on a Friday night, and there was a vampire sitting across from him on one side and his formerly dead eldest daughter (not a vampire, everyone assured him) on the other.
Buffy had a salad, which she toyed with. Spike claimed to have eaten already (Hank didn’t ask what) and ordered a Budweiser after much complaining about the restaurant's alcohol selection. He kept stealing Buffy's croutons, which she had segregated on the rim of the salad plate as if they were poisonous insects. Hank had teriyaki chicken, but he couldn't taste a thing.
The demon had jumped them in the parking lot. It had been eight feet tall and purple and covered with feelers--or quills, or antennae, it was difficult to tell. It had ripped the front bumper off his car with one hand--or paw--and come after them swinging.
He'd frozen. Buffy and Spike had rolled their eyes, gotten out of the car, and killed it. Killed it with effortless grace and dispatch, left its corpse to dissolve into eerie blue flame in the handicapped space, and strolled into the restaurant still arguing about the fact that he'd recorded Passions over her mother's collection of General Hospital tapes during the summer. They weren't even breathing hard. Or in Spike's case, at all. There wasn't enough coffee in the world to allow him to deal with all this. Hank wondered, as the waitress freshened said coffee, if she had noticed the spot of green ichor on his shirt sleeve. People in Sunnydale, he'd found, purposely failed to notice a lot of things. He couldn't blame them.
He didn't know why Buffy wanted Spike here to begin with. Spike wasn't providing any clues; he slouched bonelessly in the booth, nursing his bottle of inferior American beer, a faint smirk on his angular face. His eyes never left Buffy's face for more than a moment, drinking in her presence as if it were the blood he lived by.
Buffy.
Hank hadn't seen her in almost two years. He hadn't meant that much time to slip away, but it had. She was different. Not back-from-the-dead different. Different with the inexorable accumulation of small changes that any human being acquired in two years, two years of pain and responsibility he still couldn't quite comprehend the extent of. Her hair was longer. She was dyeing it blonder now. She was much thinner than he remembered, her body all hard wiry muscle, her face overwhelmed by those
huge intense eyes. They weren't his eldest daughter's eyes any longer, eyes that had lit up with glee at the Ice Capades. They were the eyes of a woman who expected life to hurt. There was tenderness in them when she looked at Dawn, and something indefinable when she looked at Spike--though she didn't look at him often; Buffy's attitude towards the vampire was that of a commander towards a trusted second. She expected him to be there. He was. No questions asked.
When she looked at her father, there was only measuring... and pity. No laughter for him in those eyes, no smiles in that generous mouth. And once again, she wasn't dead, and after two hours of explanations he still had no idea why. Hank Summers ran a hand through his hair. "I don't understand," said for the fifth or sixth time. He couldn't think of anything else to say.
Buffy sighed. She folded her hands in front of her on the table and fixed him with an unnervingly steady gaze. "I don't either, Dad. But I'm here."
He rubbed his eyes and sat back to let the waitress take away his barely-touched chicken. "Buffy... I can't tell you how glad I am of that. But I don't understand why you're so obsessed with regaining custody of Dawn. You only got custody to begin with because I was out of touch. I know you love your sister. I know you feel responsible for her. If your mother laid some death-bed guilt trip on you about taking care of her, or about not letting me--"
A low, menacing rumble, as of a large carnivorous animal taking notice of something small, annoying and edible, emanated from Spike's corner of the booth. Hank looked over at him, trying to suppress the nervous twitch the sound elicited. Spike smiled at him and bit a crouton in half. Somehow even his human teeth managed to look unpleasantly sharp. Hank tried another tack. "The thing is, honey, you're not that much older than Dawn. You've got the house, and the sale of the gallery took care of the mortgage and the hospital bills your mother's insurance didn't cover...but you have no job. You have... you have no legal
existence." He shook his head. "Look, I know I let you down. I let all of you down. But I'm here now, and you're my daughter too. I have a responsibility to both of you, not just Dawn. Once you get the... the back from the dead paperwork taken care of...don't you want to go back to college, at least? A college diploma is--"
"Pretty much a waste of a perfectly good sheep. Dad," Buffy said gently, "Me. Slayer. Early expiration date. The odds I'll be dead again before I graduate are so high Spock couldn't calculate them. No Slayer has ever, but ever, lived past twenty-five."
Spike stirred briefly, but said nothing. Buffy went on, "Dawn
told me that the Knights of Byzantium were playing 'find the Key' all this summer, trying to unleash her power--"
"Power? Dawn? I thought you had--" This was not fair, damn it! Why did they keep springing these things on him?
Buffy looked disconcerted. "Me Slayer, Dawn Key." She bent over and whispered to Spike, "He doesn't know about Dawn being...?"
He shrugged. "Slipped our minds."
"Oh. Anyway, they wanted Dawn dead. And they aren't the only ones, or the worst--some of them want Dawn alive. Spike killed two Tromor demons someone sent to kidnap her in August. Dad, what are you going to do if something like our parking lot Barney shows up on your doorstep? 'Cause if you take Dawn, they will. Even if you take me and Dawn, they will-- especially if you take both me and Dawn. What we went through with those guys at the factory? Easy, Dad. I do that sort of thing in my sleep. Can you live a life like that? If you take custody of Dawn and let the two of us move in with you, you're getting two sets of mortal enemies for the price of one. Mom did it. She hated it, but she... she coped."
"Oh, I'm sure Daddikins here can do the same," Spike drawled. "Not to mention the expensive bird he's shagging. She'll love the addition of demons to the household." He stretched, every muscle in his lean body rippling beneath the tight black t-shirt. He clasped his hands behind his head and grinned, running the tip of his tongue over his teeth. "In fact, I'm looking forward to chatting 'er up. I did promise the Bit I'd come to L.A. if she went, and she's always good for an invite. Makes you feel all tingly, dunnit, knowing old Spike can stroll into your place any time he's in the neighborhood--OW! Bloody hell, Slayer!"
"Shut up, Spike," Buffy said sweetly, as Spike examined his hand to see if the fingers still worked. "Idiot vampire ramblings aside, Dad, this is something you need to think about." She looked serious. "I'm really angry with you for not being here when we needed you. That won't go away any time soon. But... you're right, you're our father. No court in the world would give me custody now that you're back if you want to contest it. We need to think about what's best for Dawn. I'd be an idiot to try and keep you out of her life..." Her eyes dropped, and for a moment she was only twenty, and vulnerable. "Or mine. But take a good look at the parking lot and tell me if you're ready to have us in your life full time."
Hank waited until she looked up again and met her eyes. “Ready? No. Who could possibly be ready for something like this?” He spread both hands flat on the table and shook his head. “But it doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not, does it? It’s here. You’re here.” He glanced at Spike. Your... whatever the hell he is... is here. “Dawn doesn’t want to move, and whatever she thinks, I don’t really take maniacal joy in ruining her life. If you really think you can handle taking care of her on your own... I’m willing to give it a try. Just remember you don’t have to be completely on your own. I’m willing to help out any way I can. You’ll be getting the child support checks for her from my bank, same as Joyce used to.” He managed a smile. “I’ll even spring for tuition if you decide to try for that diploma after all.”
Buffy swallowed, as if she hadn’t expected this reaction. “Wow. Thanks. I’ll have to reconsider my spare-the-sheep position.”
Spike wandered onto the outside patio for a cigarette while they were busy at the cash register, and Hank watched Buffy watching him through the multiple shadowy reflections in the plate glass window, none of which were Spike’s. “Hon...”
For the last two days he’d watched her drifting from one room of the apartment to the next as if hunting for something she'd lost, her eyes moving ceaselessly from object to object. Now and again she'd pick something upa toothbrush, a magazine, a ball-point pen. It didn't seem to matter what it was; she'd stare at it in puzzlement and turn it over and over in her hands, as if she were trying to re-learn all the shapes of things. She was watching Spike like that now, with an intense, focused concentration. At last she started and looked up at him questioningly. “Yeah, Dad?”
He nodded at Spike. “Why’s he here? Not just here, now, but...” He waved a hand. “In your life at all? I’ll be honest, that’s the main thing I worry about all this. I just don’t like him.”
For a moment Buffy’s laugh was almost the carefree giggle he remembered. “You’re not alone. I don’t even like him half the time. But...” Hank wondered if she realized just how much her eyes softened as she spoke. “I trust him. He was the only one I could trust all the way there for awhile.” A small smile curved her lips. “Besides, he’s like the cat in that song. He just won’t leave. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Hank took his credit card back from the cashier and tucked it away in his wallet. He wasn’t entirely reassured. Buffy went ahead of him on the way out, and through the glass, darkly, he saw Spike turn, his lean sardonic face lighting up at her approach. He tossed his half-smoked cigarette, scattering orange sparks across the asphalt, and opened the door for her. Hank honestly expected to see her take the vampire’s arm; it would have been the most natural followup in the world. Spike didn’t offer, though, and Buffy didn’t seem to expect anything of the sort. They walked out to the car and surveyed the damage to his front end. As they passed the smouldering carcass of the purple demon, it struck him for the first time what a little guy Spike really was, as small for a man as Buffy was for a woman.
Somehow that failed to make either of them a whit less intimidating.
Buffy, hands on hips, kicked his dislocated bumper with one high-heeled foot. “You have Triple A, right?”

They left Hank to wait for the tow truck, and walked down the dark quiet streets shoulder to shoulder. Downtown Sunnydale wasn’t large enough to bother calling a cab for. Buffy wasn’t going anywhere in particular, and Spike seemed content to follow her lead. He didn’t say much, which was a relief. Summoning up several hours’ worth of concentration to deal with her father had drained her. It was so difficult to focus. She still felt like a ghost, unconnected with the world around her, and the world wasn’t helping.
With her feet on autopilot it wasn’t surprising that they ended up on Revello Drive. The house at 1630 was dark and silent, the lawn dry and brown from a summer's neglect. The realtors seemed to have kept it mown short, at least. Buffy stopped at the foot of the walk and looked up at her bedroom window.
"Better view over there," Spike said, pointing to the bush a little further on with his cigarette.
Buffy snorted. "Ooh. Stalking advice from the pros." She started up the walk. Spike followed her. The porch seemed big and empty and echoing with all of her mother's potted plants gone. She peered in the nearest window, but it was too dark inside to see how much of the furniture was left. She stroked the window frame with one hand. “This isn’t right,” she said, perplexed. “This was blue. They repainted it.” She gave a despairing little moan, feeling irrationally betrayed. “Why did they repaint the house? It looked fine the way it was!”
She folded slowly down onto the porch steps, her breath coming in ragged gasps. “I can’t believe they repainted the... my house. And Dad’s back and Dawn’s t-taller than I am, and--” And all of a sudden she was shivering uncontrollably, curled into a tight defensive ball on the steps. “I can’t do this! I don’t know how to--”
There was the light pressure of a hand on her shoulders. It disappeared, then returned with a little more confidence. Spike sat down beside her, and she had a weird flash of deja vu. Then she remembered that she really had lived through this moment before, except this time Spike wasn’t lugging a shotgun. The thought made her dissolve into hysterical giggles. The hand on her shoulder made another hesitant movement, and she heard Spike make a sound which could only be described as a to-hell-with-it sigh. His arm slipped round her shoulders. “Cry it out, pet.”
She was about to say that she was laughing, not crying, but the desperate noise in her throat could have been either, and there were tears rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t cry for long, only a few choked, terrible sobs with her face buried in his shoulder, her fingers clutching the fabric of his shirt. Not even a real hug; more as if he were a rock she were clinging to in a rough sea. In a way he was. The world had gone on without her, but Spike hadn’t changed. He wasn’t older or taller or wearing weird new clothes, and all right, he needed to touch up his roots but she’d forgive him that just this once and he still smelled like leather and smoke and earth...
Realizing her face was still smashed into his shoulder, Buffy straightened up self-consciously and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Oh, yay, she thought, rubbing at the smears of mascara with her thumb, hello Raccoon Woman. “Sorry,” she said, then cleared her throat and tried again. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get salt water all over the leather.”
Spike let go of her without hesitation--much hesitation, anyway--and glanced down at his duster. “It’s seen worse.” He watched her for a moment, and at last, satisfied that she wasn’t going to collapse again, lit another cigarette. Silence stretched between them as the minutes passed; he smoked thoughtfully and she stared at the cracks in the front walk. Once or twice his arm brushed hers as he removed the cigarette from his mouth to exhale, and Buffy found herself thinking almost wistfully that if this were some other guy on some other night it would be nice to be able to lean on his shoulder for more than one brief weak-willed moment. It was a very comfortable shoulder.
“Buffy... I’m sorry.”
She pulled her hair back from her face and twisted it into a knot at the back of her neck. “What?”
“Shouldn’t’ve done it. Helped Will bring you back.” He ran his free hand through his hair. Spike was still supporting the Southern California hair gel industry single-handed, Buffy noted, but he hadn’t gone back to keeping it slicked completely flat. Spike had curly hair. Who’d’ve thunk? “I hate it when Rupert’s right,” he muttered.
She bit down on her thumbnail and was silent for a while. “No. You shouldn’t have. Why did you?”
“How many people have I killed, Slayer?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but continued, “Twelve or fifteen thousand, I figure. Not a record. Not even close.” The whiskey-and-sugar rasp of his voice was hypnotic. “But enough. I'm not going to try and convince you I care deeply about each and every one, ‘cause I don't, but just the once, I had the chance to give life instead of taking it. How often does a bloke get to do that, barring failure to make sure Little Willie's wearing his raincoat? And that last’s not a situation yours truly’s ever going to have to worry about."
Buffy blew out her cheeks and looked up, studying the way the light from the street lamp played chiaroscuro games across the planes and angles of his face. She could never forget what Spike was. Spike never let her forget, and in a way she was grateful for that. “Tell you what: I forgive you. But third time’s the charm. Next time I go, I want you to promise me I won’t come back.”
He didn’t answer immediately. After a long, considering moment he nodded, his pale killer’s eyes fixed on her with frightening seriousness, and held out his hand. “Done.” Buffy quelled a residual shiver as she took it; it was no light thing to extract a promise from a demon to make certain you stayed dead. They shook on it. His hand--large for someone his size--engulfed hers, his grip cool and light but very firm, a subtle reminder that Spike was almost as strong as she was.
“I just don’t know how I’m going to put everything back together,” Buffy said, her voice very low. “I don’t feel like I belong anywhere any longer.” She looked down at the steps they were seated on, tracing her fingers over the cement where it was worn smooth with years of passing feet.
“Ah, well, I know a little about that. I'm a vampire. I get off on killing people. It's my sodding purpose in the universe to be a force of death and destruction. And I can't do it any more. You've ruined me for it, the lot of you--” He gave a derisive snort, blowing smoke through his nostrils. “No. I've ruined myself. I’m not evil anymore. I’m just... not good, and neither heaven nor hell will claim me.” He shrugged. “You get used to it, after awhile.”
She smiled a wan little smile. “What, no ‘It’ll get better?’”
His laugh cut through the sable night. “Better, Slayer?”
She couldn’t help a smile. “Oh. Right. Who am I talking to? How do you do it, Spike?”
“Do what?”
She made a vague gesture with one hand. “This. Going on. Dad asked me why you were here, and I told him you just wouldn’t go away. No matter how many times the world kicked your ass, you just bounced back again.” After Dru left him, the Initiative chipped him, the demon population of Sunnydale turned on him, I disinvited him, Glory all but tore him to shreds... and I died. Damn it, it wasn’t her fault he’d fallen in love with her. She knew, looking into those eyes, feeling the barely perceptible tremor in his body when they touched, of the control he was exerting to keep from just grabbing her and... no, don’t go there, Buffy. That was something else that hadn’t changed. On either side. “When I think about it you’ve had just about as sucky a last couple of years as I have.”
He cocked an eyebrow and took another drag on his cigarette, chuckling. “I wouldn’t say bounced back, love. More like crawled. But y’know...” He grinned suddenly, ground out his cigarette and bounced to his feet. “C’mere. I want to show you something.”
He stuck out his hand again and she took it, curious. He helped her to her feet and took off down the walk, cutting across the dry dead grass to the bush where he used to stand, night after night, staring up at her window. He stood behind her and placed both (large, very strong) hands on her shoulders, turning her away from the house to face across the street to where the streetlamp poured out its cone of golden light on the pavement below. “Look up there,” he whispered, pointing. “See?”
In the lamplight were dozens of tiny moths blundering about the glowing bulb, a whirling, dancing, spinning cloud. “I used to stand out here and watch sometimes when you’d gone to bed. It’s a lot like life, that. We’re all flying around, no idea where we’re going or what it’s all about, just knowing that there’s something glowing and glorious and bloody effulgent just out... of... reach.” He’d drawn closer with each word she felt the cool, whisper-light brush of his breath travel from her ear and across her cheek. “And then BANG!” Spike clapped his hands together in front of her nose and jumped back, laughing as she started and shrieked. “You smack into a glass wall and you’re ass over teakettle into the dark again.”
“Spike, you asshole!” she yelled, swinging wildly.
Spike dodged the half-hearted blow easily, still laughing. “I felt for the little buggers. They’re dying up there. But from down here... look at ‘em!”
Buffy stared up at the flickering cloud of insects. “I don’t get it.”
His laughter had devolved into a deep-down contented growl that was almost a purr. “You always were a bit thick, Slayer. What’s to get? It’s beautiful, innit?”
“Bugs keep you going?”
“No, nitwit. I wasn’t just larking about that time I told you I liked the world. It’s got... bugs, and street lamps, and they look bloody marvelous if you just look at ‘em the right way.” For a moment his voice changed and he sounded young, earnest, almost shy. “In the midst of death, it’s a beautiful world, Slayer.”
Buffy stared at him, trying to figure out what, if anything, she could say in response to that, when she felt a familiar tingle along her nerves. A dark figure was staggering towards them across the neighbor’s lawn, golden eyes flashing cat-green in the lamplight, fangs bared. Vampire, new risen, probably hadn’t fed yet, drawn irresistibly to the scent of the nearest fresh human blood...
“Beauty, and killing things,” Spike said reflectively. “I think that about covers it.” He looked down at her, then over at the approaching vampire with a wolf-grin, and extended a courtly arm. “Shall we, Slayer?”
For some reason words she’d said to another vampire, years ago, flitted through her head: When I kiss you, I want to die. For all that she often felt like killing him, she couldn’t ever remember feeling like dying when Spike was around. A smile curved her lips, and she felt around inside her purse for a stake. “Yeah. We shall. Come on, Spike, let’s go.”

The End!