CHAPTER TWELVE

In the middle of her fourth month of pregnancy, Buffy rediscovers her appetite. Unfortunately for Spike, this occurs most often in the middle of the night.

Buffy lies on her back, alternately hugging the covers to her chin and shoving them all to the foot of the bed. She can’t seem to get her pillows exactly right either. With just one, the cushioning isn’t soft enough. With two, there’s too much elevation. Spike, on the other hand, has been sleeping soundlessly for more than two hours, turned on his side, completely oblivious to her restlessness, though at times her violent shifts have jostled his white head from its resting place.

She can’t stop thinking about something she saw in the paper today, something she had to read over and over again before she could finally believe it. And the memory of it is making her mouth water.

At last she rolls over on her side to look at her lover, silent and sweet in his slumber. She hates to do this, but if she doesn’t, she will not sleep. And a girl in her condition needs her rest.

“Hey,” she whispers, poking Spike in the shoulder. “Hey!” she tries again, more insistently this time.

His eyes flutter open as he jerks awake. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”

“No. No! Nothing like that. It’s just that I was thinking. They have this new Breyer’s ice cream. It’s Almond Joy flavored.”

Spike blinks back at his girlfriend for several minutes before what she is saying completely registers. “Buffy, I was sleeping!”

“Yeah, I know. But I wasn’t. Because I was thinking about the ice cream and how I want some.”

He stares back at her, incredulously. “You mean, right now?”

“Well, yeah,” she answers slowly, suddenly bashful in his gaze.

He flips over onto his back, lying with a hand fanned over his face. He looks over at the clock through his fingers. It’s twenty after two. Just when he’s finally getting used to sleeping at night, this is what she pulls…

“I don’t suppose you’d settle for an ice cream brunch, say, around elevenish tomorrow?”

“But that’s hours from now!” she whines, prodding the back of his naked calf with her toes. “Please, honey? I mean, it’s all I can think about right now. Nuts, chocolate, coconut…and it’s in ice cream! It’s, like, a pregnant woman’s dream!”

He still can’t believe what she asking him to do. And moments later, when he’s on his feet and looking for his clothes, he can’t believe he’s actually going to do it.

Love’s bitch, he says to himself as he shoves his tee shirt into his jeans. I am love’s bitch. Love’s sodding lap dog. Love’s constant concubine. Love’s bleeding---

“Thank you, honey,” she says, eyes shining in gratitude.

She looks so lovely in her contentment now, extending her hand to him. Under the whisper thin sheet, he can discern the rise of her burgeoning breasts and under them, the concave belly that makes itself more and more evident every day. Just this evening she was in the kitchen, reaching up into the cupboards to put away the dinner dishes, he caught a glimpse of the undercarriage of her belly cradled in the waistband of her sweatpants.

He can’t help smiling as he takes her hand. “All I can say is, I’m getting some when I get back,” he warns, kissing her across her knuckles.

“Don’t worry. I’ll share it with you.”

He leans in close to her now, growling into her ear, “That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh. Oh! Well, I guess.”

The blush he is still able to inspire in her cheeks cheers him.

He gives her a wink before shoving off. “Just don’t make a habit of this.”

“I won’t. I promise,” she says resolutely. “But just in case, maybe you’d better stock up. I’m going to be pregnant for a long time.”

A few nights later, there is a repeat performance. Only this time, it’s beef jerky she wants.

“I’m sorry,” she says as Spike stumbles around the room collecting his clothes. “It’s just that Travis and Dawn finished off the ice cream today and I was watching TV and there was this Slim Jim commercial. And I thought about how I haven’t had a Slim Jim in a long time. Then we had dinner and I wasn’t hungry anymore, but now I am.”

“Right,” Spike says, pulling on his boots. “Slim Jims.”

“They usually have them right by the register at the Stop n’ Gulp,” she says. “You won’t have to look for them.”

“Fine.”

“Thank you, honey,” she says, running a hand through the springy curls on top of his head.

He can still smile at this point at the enchantment in her appreciative purr.

Five nights later, it’s frozen Snickers bars she wants. Then, two days after that, cheap frozen pizza. On this particular night, it’s Velveeta on Club crackers she pines for.

He turns to her before he leaves, thinking about what she said when she started having these cravings. I’m going to be pregnant for a long time… “Buffy, do you suppose you could have one of your prophetic dreams that might tell us what you might be fancying next in the middle of the night?”

“Nah,” she says, pulling her knees to her chest as much as she can. “I wish I could. It would take the guesswork out of my weekly grocery trips. Besides. The last dream I had was about all my teeth falling out and I was trying to find a dentist to put them back in, but all the dentists in town went to Las Vegas to work for Seigfried and Roy.”

A few nights later, Spike wakes to Buffy stroking his cheek gently, saying over and over again, “Wake up, honey. Wake up.”

He automatically sits up and slides his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing his face. “What is it this time? Those Fudge Oreos we saw a commercial about tonight?” He is seriously thinking about canceling their cable service. But that would mean disconnecting TVLand. And Hogan. Hogan!

“No,” she replies.

“Those new tortilla chips you can find in the aisle right next to Pringles?”

“No,” she says, tickling the back of his neck.

“Kraft Macaroni and cheese?”

“No.”

“Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing?”

“No,” she says. “It’s nothing I want you to get for me. It’s something I want you to feel.” She grabs his hand and drags it over to her stomach.

Under his flattened palm, over the warmth of her flesh, there is something just skimming the underside of her belly in its floatation inside of her.

He turns, pressing his hand closer to her skin, hoping to feel more.

“I woke up and I felt this fluttering. Like a blind moth had lost its way inside of me. And then I felt it from the outside,” she explains.

“Oh,” she says. It seems the little thing is shy to touch. Maybe his cold pat is sending him away. But he felt that first small quiver. He has seen him. He has heard him. And now he has felt him.

Every once in a while the thought seizes her that she is no more capable of taking care of a child than she is solving the problems between the Israelis and the Palestinians. When her mother died, the bottom dropped out in her life and all things that were real to her vanished. The bond with her mother was the only real relationship in her life. Though Dawn is as true a sister as she could have and she is made from her blood, she is not really her sister. This is hard for her to believe when the memories trot themselves out in her mind for show. The Barbie hair-cutting incident…the actual haircutting incident in which Buffy cut Dawn some jagged bangs with her blunt scissors, the time when Dawn read Buffy’s diaries, the time when Buffy read Dawn’s diaries, the time Dawn thought Angel was evil, the time Buffy thought Angel was evil…

But this baby.

She is so scared sometimes she feels like she cannot hold on. She feels so beyond control at times that she thinks someone else has commandeered her life and she’s watching from the sidelines. She is so helpless some days that she wants her mother to come back, just for one day, to hold her and tell her everything will be all right.

But then she has that feeling. That sense of rightness. For every time she is paralyzed with fear for what is to be, she is pacified by moments like these when she sees her lover’s hand sliding over her stomach and the joy in his face, more prominent than the high cheekbones, more vivid than the blue of his azure gaze.

“I think the show is over for tonight,” she says, drawing her fingers through his hair and placing a kiss on his non-pulsating temple.

He leans his head against her stomach once again, inviting the swoosh of the baby’s heartbeat into his ear canal. His hand remains there, all night, just in case there’s an encore.

A few nights later, Buffy is lying awake again. She whispers into his ear, “Almond Joy.”

He can all but set his inner alarm to these awakenings now. All of his clothes are at the ready, so that he can just slip them on and be off.

“The ice cream or the candy bar?” he asks, swinging his coat onto his shoulders.

“Both!” she says giggling, pulling the covers over her mouth, just enjoying the pre-sugar high giddiness of her request.

At the supermarket, the obviously sleep-deprived checker slides the carton of ice cream not once, not twice, but three times over the scanner before the price registers. She stifles a yawn as she asks, “Expecting a baby?”

Apparently not only is Buffy starting to show, but so is he.

“Yeah,” he says, passing a five-dollar bill to the checker.

“Thought so. When I was pregnant, I was sending my husband out all the time at night for everything from deviled ham to olive loaf.”

Spike nods as he takes the change in his hand. He stuffs the dollar bill and coins into the front pocket of his jeans and heads for the automatic doors.

It’s dead quiet tonight, and for a moment he thinks he’s the only creature stirring at this hour. As he’s making his way to the DeSoto, he hears something, coming from the rear of the supermarket. It’s unmistakable to him as to what it is. It’s the sound of a woman’s desperate scream.

Quickly, he throws the groceries into the front seat and runs in the direction of the now strangulated cry. Looks like he’s in for a spot of violence before bed. And this was supposed to be his night off.

In the alleyway behind the supermarket, the scene is revealed to him in shades of black and gray, but it could not be made any clearer to him even if he were viewing it all in bright colors. A woman struggles under the hulking figure of a vampire, her eyes wide with terror, her fingers clawing uselessly at her attacker’s back.

“Tacky, tacky, tacky,” Spike says, clicking his tongue as he strolls in the alleyway.

His words temporarily distract the vampire who growls his displeasure at the interruption of his meal.

“You must be new, otherwise you would know that this is not the way we do things around her,” Spike says, extracting a stake from the inside of his jacket.

The vampire must think that his quick snack is not worth the fight because all at once, he pitches the sobbing woman to the ground and takes off.

“Hey! Come back here! You don’t run away from a staking! It’s bad manners!” Spike yells after the vampire. He throws the stake, knowing that he’s hit the mark when the figure bows and disappears into flakes of monochromatic dust. He shakes his head disapprovingly. “These young ones today. All cowards. Afraid of their own shadows, they are.”

He turns his attention now to the woman on the pavement, still choking out her hysteria.

“You all right?” he asks, offering his hand to help get her to her feet.

She lifts her face to his. Smudges of mascara star her eyes as the tears continue to fall. Suddenly, she springs from the ground and propels herself into Spike’s arms.

“Oh, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she lets out in one sob-throttled blast as she clutches him.

Spike’s arms remain stiff at his side. This is not the reaction he was expecting to say the least. As thrown as he is by the woman’s actions, he is beginning to see something he has not noticed before. The woman isn’t a woman at all. She’s a young girl, maybe not even eighteen yet. She is wearing a perfume fragrant with wild berries and even through her tears she is still chewing on a piece of gum. The warmth of her arms is permeating the density of his leather coat and he shivers as though someone has run an ice cube down his back.

“I was sooo scared. I kept thinking, ‘Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,’ but I couldn’t say it. God, I’m supposed to graduate from high school in June!”

There is something else he is noticing now: the scent of her shed blood soaking her store-issued blue blouse. It’s right under his nose and she is holding him in such a way that he cannot turn his face. Her wild, curly hair is obscuring the marks her attacker left, but his keen eyes discern the red streaking the blond locks, making them appear amber in patches. Without any effort at all, he inhales deeply, the scent now coating the insides of his nostrils, coursing down his throat, warming his stomach. A flicker of a flame ignites inside of him as though from a fire stamped out and smothered and thought safe to be left unattended. He is suddenly taken by an urge so potent he is dizzy with need and hunger. His inner self shakes himself awake and before he can coax that part of him back into its slumber, a low growl emerges from his lips. He feels his head being dragged by an invisible force to the girl’s neck

The familiarity of the alleyway resurrects the plaintive voice of his beloved, asking him between pants and thrusts, “You won’t kill, will you? Promise you won’t kill.” And he hears himself swear to her again that he won’t.

His head snaps back now. With all the strength he can muster, he tears the girl away from him. He ducks his head so that she can’t see that while in her embrace, he rediscovered his demon.

“Run,” he says in a low voice, steadying himself by bracing his hands against his thighs.

Startled, the girl stammers, “Wha---? Is something wrong?”

“I said run!” he howls.

He hears a bit of hesitation in her first steps away, but then she breaks out into a full gallop. When he doesn’t hear her footfalls on the pavement anymore, he rises slowly from his crouched position, a vague sickness causing him to sway.

He takes a few steadying breaths. He puts a hand to his face, feeling the coarse bumps across his forehead. He traces his cheekbones to his mouth, drawing his thumb over his fangs, breaking the skin without so much as a wince.

With a shout, he flings himself against the brick, the bones forming the ridge of his cheek nearly shattering on impact. His hands come up to press against the cool surface of the wall. He remains there for many minutes, trembling, afraid that the next step he takes will be in the direction of the girl with the berried perfume and the blood-soaked hair who will graduate high school in June.

“I’m not a monster,” he says.” “I’m not a monster…I’m not a monster…I’m not a monster.”

All of a sudden he hears the wail of a siren piercing the quiet of the night, very near. He can only hope that the young girl is being taken away to the hospital and far away from him.

“Mmm, melty,” Buffy says, pulling the lid off her ice cream before delving into it with the spoon she keeps in her bedside table.

Spike still remains at the foot of their bed, having passed the ice cream to her and the candy bar as well. He feels he can’t step further because there is something off limits about her tonight, something in his own mind that warns him away.

“You want some?” she asks, offering a dripping spoonful to him.

“No,” he answers readily.

“Your loss,” she says, taking the spoonful into her mouth.

I shouldn’t be allowed near her, Spike thinks to himself. She is only allowing me to come so near because she has convinced herself that I’m not a monster, but I am. I am because tonight---

He tells her everything. He confesses all that happened. He tries to voice his need and he sees her quiver. He sees her draw a protective hand against her stomach.

“OK,” she says. “OK. OK,” she says, as though repeating “OK” will make everything all right. “But you let her go.”

“Because I love you,” he can only answer, crawling into bed, black boots making scuffmarks against the floral sheets as he creeps towards her.

But this doesn’t answer anything. Over the swell of her belly, Buffy’s hand almost touches his. Almost. The inch gap between their fingertips seems like a wide savannah that neither of them can navigate without losing each other completely. They stare at the chasm for many minutes, with the ice cream melting under the heat of the bedside lamp and the night deepening. It’s three thirty when Spike undresses and takes his place beside Buffy and they slip into a dreary slumber that couldn’t possibly be qualified as rest. Several times Buffy awakes to the gentle agitation of her child paddling restlessly inside of her and she falls back into a prickly sleep. She feels her lover beside her, his back turned to her. The curves of their spines form inverted parentheses in which they fit all the things they can’t voice to each other. They awake dead from their mutual restiveness, nearly blind from watching the dark, nearly deaf from the voices in their heads damning them to the break of dawn.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Spike clips the newly risen vampire with an uppercut to the jaw, sending the fledgling flailing backwards against a waist-high tombstone.

“You may not be thinking this now, but I’m about to do you a favor, mate.” Spike says, picking up the vampire by his collar, only to slam him back on the tombstone. “You’re new to the game, given the football jersey your family thought you would want to be buried in.” The fledgling snarls and claws at Spike, who promptly reprimands him with a punch to his nose. “Let me tell you a little story. Give you a little glimpse at what the future holds for you.” Spike drags his struggling opponent into direct moonlight and tosses him against the ivied wall of a nearby crypt.

“I’m certain that you awoke hungry, with blood being the first thing on your mind after ‘My God! How do I get out of here?’ Well, guess what? It’s going to be the first and only thing on your mind for a long time.” Spike punches the vampire again. “And you’ll go anywhere to find it. Strip malls, boat shows, family reunions, concerts with festival seating.” He head-butts the vampire. “Any place where there’s warm, gorgeous blood flowing through the bodies of warm people who may or may not be so gorgeous.” Spike releases his hold on his prey, suddenly in the mood for a bit of sparring. “It’s all fun and games for a while. You’ll feel like every day is a friggin’ tea party and you’re the maddest hatter of all,” Spike tells him, dancing, awaiting the first punch. “But then, one day, it happens.”

The vampire, recovering some of the sense Spike has so mercilessly knocked out of him, charges at his attacker. Spike deflects the vampire’s advance with a flourish of his black leather duster as though expecting to hear “Ole!” shouted from an invisible crowd. Spike grabs the vampire by the back of his jersey and hurls him to the ground.

“You meet a girl who challenges you in every way. She’s wily, cunning, a warrior princess without the lesbian overtones. When you meet her, she lays down the gauntlet wordlessly. It’s kill or be killed, she says to you with her kohl-lined eyes and mascara’ed lashes. And she’s not kidding. And neither are you. In your mind, she’s as good as eulogized and buried.” The vampire rushes at him again, but Spike trips him with a quick acting calf, landing the vampire on his back. Standing over his victim, he says, “There’s only one problem. Well, there are lots of problems which, if detailed, would require flow charts and an annotated bibliography. So let me give you the short version. Not only is she a singular force to be reckoned with, but she’s got all these chums to back her up. And though, individually, each one is about as imposing as a crossing guard at an elementary school...” The vampire tries to rise and Spike deftly pens him with the crush of his boot. “together they form a force that almost matches the girl’s. So not only do you have the girl twitching her stuff in your face, all the time saying, ‘Ha ha ha ha ha, you can’t catch me!’, but you also have these miscreants making damn well certain you don’t get near her.”

Spike lifts his boot and then bends to recover the vampire in his grasp. He aims his gaze right into the vampire’s searching gold eye gawk. “But then, one day, after a harmless shag with that bint who will occasionally let you have a poke at her, you wake up. And suddenly the girl is all you can think about. And now you can’t kill her. And it’s not because she’s gotten tougher or that the mouth breathers who protect her have sprouted bollocks. No, you can’t kill her because you love her.” He hoists the vampire into the air, only to drop him onto the hard ground.

The vampire lies groaning, unable to move or even lift a finger. Spike looks up at the sky. The red strobe of a passing jetliner hurries its way through a crowd of twinkling stars. It’s such a clear night and the moon is so full that the whole cemetery is bathed in a soft white as though draped in the fine mesh of the material used to make fairies’ wings.

“You love her with all your being,” Spike continues, swallowing hard as he looks up at the night sky. “You love her so much that you can’t stand to see her hurt. So you find yourself an ally to her cause, going shoulder to shoulder with her whole team against a whirly bird of a god who thought the girl’s kid sister might help her get back to where she once belonged. But all along, even though you virtually pant her name when you talk to her and there’s a visible shift in your trousers whenever she’s around, she’s completely oblivious to how you feel. Because, in her mind, you can’t feel. You’re a vampire. You can’t love. You can’t hope. You can’t hope that she’ll love you as ferociously as you love her. When she looks at you, she still thinks of your heart as place for her stake. Not a place for your love for her. But as long as she looks at you that way, you want her to kill you and make it quick. And hopefully, before the dust settles, she will realize that she has done something wrong.”

The vampire begins to stir and Spike returns his attention to the battle. “Wrong? Did I say wrong?” He kicks the vampire in the jaw. “She never does anything wrong. She knew it was wrong to have feelings for me, but she did anyway. I knew that the night we had that Winnie and Kevin kiss on the back stoop.”

“Winnie and Kevin from The Wonder Years?” the vampire asks.

“Yeah, those two. Were you a fan?”

“In re-runs.”

Spike nods. “Good show. Anyway, we kissed, then a few days later we shagged and God…the minute I was inside of her, that was a minute too quick. I wish I could have stretched that moment into hours, days even. And do you know why? Because I was feeling her and she was feeling me and whatever passion I had for her, she gave back ten fold. I knew then that she loved me, even if she wasn’t prepared to tell me just then. But I was the one to know that everything was wrong. I left her. I came back because every waking moment was about her until there were only waking moments. She almost died. She told me she loved me. We moved in together. I share a nice flat with her and her sister now. And now she’s pregnant. And I’m the Daddy.”

The vampire chuckles. “Yeah, right.”

Spike takes the vampire by the collar again and slams him against the cold marble of a body-length tombstone. He shoves his stake against the vampire’s Adam’s apple and growls, “Of course, my story isn’t typical.” And he lifts the stake, plunging it into the vampire’s heart.

As the vampire’s ashes scatter and as the final howl dissipates into the air, the moon shines a light on the inscription. My sorrow is such that my life dwindles from day to day without your tender caress. When we meet again, our hearts will be fire once more.

He sees the words and it’s as though he’s seeing them for the first time, or he’s reading them in a different context. The dust skitters across the lettering, settling into some of the grooves. He wipes away the vampire’s remains with his hand and traces the words tender caress and almost feels it.

“All for you, sweetheart,” he murmurs to himself. He looks down at the cold stone and it’s as though he is looking into a reflecting pool, with his lover’s sweet face staring back up at him. “If that’s wrong, then it will just have to be wrong. But I don’t think it is. I don’t see how helping the woman I love could be wrong. You worry sometimes your love for me won’t be enough to stop me from doing something evil, but I think it will always be enough, as long as we’re together.”

“And we’re done with the hip-huggers,” Buffy says dejectedly, sending her offending pants across the room with a flick of her wrist. “You know what that means,” she says to Spike as she delves into the dark recesses of her closet. She emerges shortly afterward with a pair of navy blue trousers. “The evils of the elastic waistband.”

“Awww…” Spike says. He is stretched out on their bed, under the thin veil of the sheet, his hands behind his head. They’ve just made love and for an hour afterward she lay quietly in his arms sleeping while he was awake, staring at the fullness of her breasts and the bulge of her belly. She is always lovely when cloaked in slumber, but now, with all the curves enhancing her body, she is so enticing he can’t take his eyes off her, even when his lids are nearly slamming shut from exhaustion. Since then, he has been watching Buffy try on article after article from her closet. At the sight of her white panties bunched under the girth of her five-month’s pregnancy and her slight bra carrying the weight of her hard melon breasts, he is aroused again.

“At least Dawn has stopped borrowing my new clothes,” Buffy says pouting as she stretches the waistband, staring at the unfathomably large garment in her hands.

“Let’s face it. Your girlfriend is a pig,”

“No, I’m the pig, remember?” he says. “And I think you’re adorable.”

“Don’t try to patronize me with that ‘there’s more of me to love’ crap because I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Please. The day stretch marks are sexy is the day that Lara Flynn Boyle models for Lane Bryant.”

Spike leaps from the bed and grabs Buffy, slamming her down on the bed. It occurs so quickly that as her back meets the mattress, she’s wondering how she got there. He maneuvers his naked body on top of hers, pressing his hardened muscle against the cotton of her panties, stretched tight over her still moist curls. He scrapes the tip over the elastic gathers fitted around the tops of her thighs. “Does this feel like a man reacting to the sight of his girlfriend looking grossly unattractive?”

“No,” she says breathlessly, caught up in the intensity of his eyes.

He lowers his head to hers and indulges her in a kiss. His hands move down the concave belly until his fingers grasp the waistband of her panties. He slides them down just enough to allow his cock to dance around her outer lips before settling into her heat, wetting his rumpled foreskin with her sweet secretions. His hands are now appreciating the deep tendrils of pink just above her hips where the skin is beginning to stretch. His cock plunders her throbbing clitoris and she moans into his mouth.

“Honey,” she says, breaking the kiss, “We can’t…start---oh!---this now. I have to go---Jesus Christ!---to work.”

His head is now bobbing against her breast as he takes her nipple, made ultra-sensitive by her current condition, into his mouth and sucks it ardently as her inner moisture makes her slick as black ice. He pauses briefly to assure her, “I’ll make it fast.”

“But I have to be there in, like---oh!---ten minutes!”

“That’s all I need,” he replies.

He lifts her knees, her legs forming twin arches on either side of him as he begins to thrust into her. He anchors himself by grabbing onto the back of her knees, nearly swooning when fully immersed in her. She lies before him, her arms stretched towards the bedposts, her eyes closed. She tweaks her own nipple between her finger and thumb and Spike takes that as a hint. He positions his mouth so that his lips completely encircle the rosy areole. His tongue licks at the toughening peak and Buffy’s mouth comes open to a howl of pleasure.

Sensing that he is about to lose control, he moves her closer to her own climax by rubbing her clitoris in time with his thrusts. He can’t stifle the proud grin that springs out on his face when her inner muscles begin to quiver around him.

With a hoarse cry, he falls on top of her torso as she convulses and sends a wild sigh into the air.

She ties the ribbon of her lips into a satisfied smile as she lies there, rifling through her lover’s hair with her fingers. “God, you’re a monster.”

He lifts his head at her comment, a sudden darkness encroaching on the afterglow. “What?” he asks sharply.

Her eyes fly open wide. “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean---

He slips out of her and crawls limply as an injured animal to his side of the bed, curling up on his side.

She touches his shoulder. “Spike, I just meant that sexually, you know, you’re a---

“Right,” he hisses into his pillow.

She lies there for a few minutes, caught in the quandary of needing to clarify her words and needing to get ready for work.

Finally, she rises from the bed and makes her way back over to the closet, carrying her damp panties in her hand. Steadying herself on the edge of the bed, she slips them on and then bends to retrieve her pants. She reaches into the closet to get her work shirt.

Shimmying into her glittery halter-top, she pulls the fabric as far as it will go over her stomach and then puts on her pants. “You know, at least now since I’ve gotten bigger, so have the tips I’ve been getting. I think people are feeling sorry for me,” she says, hoping that a change in subject will distract him from his suddenly sour mood.

“Hhhmp,” comes his muffled reply.

She takes the tip purse from the top of the bureau, making sure there aren’t a few stray dollar bills she has overlooked before she snaps the purse to her belt. “Lately I’ve been walking away with $300 plus a night. That’s all going into the bank, you know.” She has started a fund at the bank, a savings account for the baby. She will need it because she plans to take a month off after the baby is born and she will work up until her due date. She has no choice.

About to leave, she looks at her lover, who has buried his face in the crook of his arm.

“Spike,” she says, “My next appointment is on Tuesday.”

“What of it?”

“Well, I wanted to know if you would come with me. Dr. Hemphill said that she might be able to tell the sex of the baby by this time.”

“Are you sure you want a monster going along for your monthly prod and probe?”

Her shoulders sag. “I’m sure that I want the father of my baby to be with me.”

He continues to lie there in silence as the minutes tick by.

Seeing that the digits on the right hand side of the clock have now flipped to 02 and she’s going to be oh so late for work, she breathes out a defeated sigh and turns to go. “Fine then.”

When she is out in the hallway, she hears him call her name and she stops.

“What time is the appointment?”

“5:00 pm. You can wear your cloak.”

“But the reception area---

“I’ll ask the secretary to have the shades drawn. I’ll tell her that you have an allergy to sunlight.”

“So you really want me to go with you?”

“Absolutely.”

There are a few minutes of uncertain quiet from within the bedroom. Finally he says, “Then I’ll go.”

“OK, I’m beginning to think that the whole Vietnam War thing was wrong from the beginning, but the United States just kinda backed into it and then couldn’t pull out,” Dawn says over books strewn on the kitchen table.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Travis says. “But I think Mr. Jarman’s essay question is going to ask for a little bit more than that.”

“This really sucks because you know Mr. Jarman was all into the hippie scene in the sixties. I mean, you can almost smell the patchouli when he talks about his years protesting everything. And that’s what they did in the sixties. They just hated everything, but they talked about love and the common man and working for a better consciousness and blah blah blah. Anyways, Spike was at Woodstock. He said it was muddy and smelly and too crowded.” She won’t tell Travis the more interesting story about how Spike bit a flower child and watched his hand move for three days.

“Really? How old is Spike?” Travis asks.

Dawn realizes that she may have given away too much just now. “Oh. Old. Boyfriend of older sister old. Actually, I think he may have been a baby at Woodstock. A baby with a good memory. He was in his carriage. He remembers hearing Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner as his mother breast fed him.”

“Oh, I see,” Travis says.

“Anyway. Getting back to the Vietnam War…”

There are voices on the other side of the door now. Cheerful, happy voices. Buffy and Spike emerge from the hallway, still chatting about the doctor visit. Buffy hugs a bucket of chicken. She is wearing a white tee shirt and black Adidas sweats. Spike is wearing his “monk’s” cloak and strips it off the minute he enters the apartment.

They are both startled to see Travis there.

“Oh hey,” Buffy says.

“Hey,” Dawn and Travis say together.

“You guys studying?” Buffy asks as Spike nervously tosses his cloak over the coat rack.

“We were,” Dawn says.

“Well, it’s time for a study break. We’ve brought food. Travis, would you like to stay for dinner? We’ve got plenty and because I didn’t make it, it’s perfectly safe.”

Dawn whips her head around at her boyfriend hopefully. He can only answer yes after that.

“Uh, sure,” Travis says. “I just have to call home.”

“Telephone’s right over there,” Buffy motions.

“That’s OK, I got my cell phone.” He rises from the table and excuses himself to use the phone out in the hallway.

Dawn rocks on her heals, smiling wistfully as her boyfriend makes his exit in his white oxford, tan cargo shorts and Timberland boots.

“’That’s OK. I’ve got my cell phone,’” Spike delivers in a nasal whine into Dawn’s ear.

Buffy takes the chicken out of the box and puts it onto a platter so that it appears she has actually done something to make the meal. Licking her fingers, she warns Spike, “Be nice!”

“Yes, please, Spike,” Dawn says. “Don’t start anything with him tonight.”

“Now when have I ever started anything with Wuss n’ Boots?”

“Like, every time he’s over!” Dawn retorts.

“What? I always make myself scarce when he’s about!”

“You always make yourself scary when he’s around!”

“Guys!” Buffy yells above their juvenility. “Listen, this is Travis’ first dinner with us, so let’s try to make a good impression, OK? Let’s show him that we’re nice, normal people who have a warm and welcoming home. Now Spike, will you be eating with us or should I heat up some blood for you?”

Out in the hall, Travis listens to the phone ring once, twice, all the time hoping and praying, “Please don’t let Mom pick up…please don’t let Mom pick up…please don’t--- But then a feminine voice answers and his heart goes into a free fall. “Hey, Mom. Dawn wants me to stay over for dinner. Is that OK?”

There is a lengthy sigh on the other end. “Well, I guess, Travis. I just hope that your father comes home with a craving for Cornish Game Hen. I’ve got six of them roasting in the oven now.”

Travis swallows. “I’ll come home if that’s what you want.”

“No, no. That’s all right. You…you can use tonight to lay the groundwork for what you have been chosen to do for us.”

He thinks of when Buffy and Spike first entered the apartment. He didn’t catch all they were saying, but he did hear Spike say, “What a wonder. It’s amazing what a camera can catch these days.”

“Yeah,” he replies hoarsely.

Dinner is over. Now, drowsy from the feast, they are lounging around the table like sated Romans after Saturnalia.

Buffy pats her humming stomach and leans back in her chair, still salivating for the last bit of fried poultry sweating grease onto her mother’s blue Fiestaware platter.

“So, how’s your mother?” Buffy asks.

“She’s fine,” Travis answers. “She’s very busy now with the lily show and all. She’s big into her garden club. I don’t see much of her at this time of year.”

“And your Dad?” Buffy asks.

“Well, he’s always at work. He works about eighty hour weeks. But it makes Mom happy. Not that he’s at work so much, but that they’re back here.”

“They’re back here?” Buffy asks,

“Well, Mom grew up here. She loves Sunnydale. And when Dad had a chance to come here, she was, like, yay! Go Sunnydale! Who would want to come back here?”

Buffy laughs a “you had to be there laugh” that is joined by Spike’s chortle. She fixes her gaze with her lover’s and for a moment they are so locked in each other’s eyes it appears they are gone away to another place. Then Buffy puts Spike’s hand on her stomach and his eyes register a secret, covetous smile that Travis brutally understands.

“Is that the baby kicking?” Travis asks.

“Yeah,” Buffy answers drowsily. “He always gets active after his Mommy has overindulged. Or at night when his Mommy’s trying to sleep.”

“So you know it’s going to be a boy?” Travis asks.

Again, there is that unspoken conversation between Buffy and Spike, delivered only in a glance.

“It didn’t show on the scan today,” Buffy says. “But it doesn’t matter. We don’t have a nursery for the baby, so there are no walls to decorate in feminine or masculine colors. We think we’d rather wait anyway to see what he is when we see him for the first time. But I just have the feeling that he’s a boy.”

“I do too,” Spike says, kissing Buffy on her forehead.

“May I?” Travis asks.

“Sure. I don’t think of this as being my stomach anymore as it is my baby with my skin stretched over it.”

Travis places his hand against the drum skin tightness of Buffy’s belly. There is a stirring under his palm, a little pulsation that he doesn’t know how to deal with.

He can only say, “Wow.”

“You and me both,” Buffy says. “Even now. That’s my baby.” She looks at Spike. “That’s our baby.”

Travis feels the child inside the mother. He hears the words poured into his head, remembrances of heated sermons from the pulpit of his church, the minister delivering the promise of the child who will come from the demon and the Slayer who will draw together the crevice defining Earth and Hell.

“I’m going to be an aunt!” Dawn declares gleefully.

“I’ve got to go,” Travis says, getting to his feet.

“Why?” Dawn asks.

“Because…” He looks at Dawn. He looks at Spike and Buffy. He doesn’t have to look at the… “I have to go.”

He runs from the apartment until he can’t run anymore. At the bottom of the hill, when he reaches the line separating the have not’s and the have too much of Sunnydale, he vomits up his chicken dinner on a parked BMW. He hugs the hood of the vehicle as he says to himself, “I won’t hurt Dawn. I won’t hurt Dawn.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Buffy sits on the sofa, a makeshift beret of pastel ribbons and bows positioned on her head at a jaunty slant. At her feet is a treasure trove of all things baby---tiny booties, tiny socks, tiny mitts, tiny sleepwear. Just now she is divesting the final present of its Mylar gift-wrap.

“Wow! A Diaper Genie!” she exclaims.

“Oooh!” Anya coos, munching on a handful of Chex mix. “Is it a real genie?”

“No, Anya,” Buffy says, “It’s a disposal for the baby’s diapers so they don’t stink up the apartment after they’ve been pooped and peed in.”

Anya looks unimpressed. “Would be better if it were a real genie. Then you wouldn’t have to touch those nasty things at all. You could just tell the genie to change them. But anyway. Hey! Great gift-giving idea for those of you still looking for that perfect gift for Xander and me!”

The gathering nods, tucking any comments they may be expressing inwardly into their knowing smiles.

“Well, I think that’s all of it,” Buffy says. “Time for cake!”

“Not just yet!” Dawn says as she gets to her feet. She clears her throat and pushes her long hair back in two dramatic swipes as though opening the curtains for her performance. “You guys may have been noticing that I’ve been writing stuff down as Buffy’s been unwrapping. Well, not only have I been jotting down who gave what, but also Buffy’s reactions to the gifts. And according to baby shower legend, these are some of the very same things she said the night she conceived her little Slayerette. And since I was in the next room, I can tell you most of these are, as Spike would say, ‘Spot on!’”

There is a small ripple of laughter as Buffy gives her sister a look that says “I may be side-lined with this pregnancy thing, but I’m still the Slayer!”

“Don’t worry, Buffy. I’ve edited most of them for the family hour,” Dawn says with a sly grin.

Buffy shakes her head slowly, smiling behind the hand clamped over her mouth.

“All right, all right. Here goes.” Dawn skims what she has written and laughter overtakes her, delaying her delivery for a few minutes. Recovering herself, she begins with, “ ‘I’ve never seen one so tiny!’” The room erupts in laughter. Her first attempt a success, she tries another one on the crowd. “ ‘I didn’t know they came in this color!’”

Once again, it’s as though the long-lost audience from a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast has found its way into the living room. “ ‘Aww…this is so nice!’” After the listeners have quieted down after that one, Dawn readies for the big finish. “ ‘Oh wow! I know just where to put this!”

Once the laughs taper off, Buffy raises an eyebrow to her sister. “You done with the stand up, Carrot Top?”

“Yeah, I think that’s all of that,” Dawn says, wiping a few tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Good, because I want cake NOW!”

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Anya springs up suddenly. She rifles through her purse, extracting a business size envelope. “This is from Giles. He asked me to give this to you.”

Buffy eyes the envelope curiously. “Hmmm…I wonder what it is?”

“Well, open it!” Willow urges, arms flailing at her sides.

Buffy slides her thumbnail under the sealed closure, doubly secured by two equally spaced pieces of scotch tape. She then opens the tri-folded stationery inside. A rectangular piece of paper flutters to her lap. She reads the message first, silently to herself and then aloud. “ ‘Once again, the man of too many words finds himself speechless. I don’t know what to say to you, Buffy, except I wish you an eternity’s happiness with the arrival of your child.’” She looks down at the jettisoned piece of paper on her lap. “Oh my God! A check for $1200!?!?”

“So that’s where my bonus went,” Anya grumps.

The message in the memo area of the check reads, “For a good start.” She looks incredulously at the numbers on the check, not even trying to hide the emotion on her face. He really loves me, she says to herself. He really does.

“OK, since we’re all in a mushy mood now,” Dawn says, “I would like to offer a toast.” Dawn waits until everyone has had time to find their punch or refill their paper cups. She raises her own cup high in the air. “To my sister Buffy. At first I thought it was kind of weird. I mean, you and Spike? Having a baby? Who da thought? But you did. And I’m glad you did because you’re going to be awesome parents. I know that because since you’ve been taking care of me, I’ve had a god after me and all I got was a little bump on my forehead. And your baby is going to be the luckiest kid on earth because most Mommies and Daddies want to give their children the world; you guys can actually save it for him. So cheers!”

There are cheers as well as aw’s all around and Buffy rises to her sister’s embrace.

Dawn whispers into her sister’s ear. “I love you. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do. And I love you too.” She remains in her sister’s arms for a few lingering moments before breaking away, asking, “Now can we have cake?”

“Yes, now we can have cake,” Dawn says, rolling her eyes.

With cake in hand, the attendees sit in a horseshoe around Buffy as she shovels in fork after fork of her Oreo ice cream cake. Mostly, they are too astounded by her appetite to say much of anything until Willow casually breaks the silence.

“So four weeks, huh?” Willow asks, spooning the elegant mix of ice cream and cake into her mouth.

“Four weeks,” Buffy answers,

“Are you ready?”

Buffy smiles. “Ask me again tomorrow.”

“I just can’t believe it’s this close to happening. It seems like you just announced it yesterday,” Tara says.

“I know. It’s been an amazing ride. And except for being sick the first six weeks or so, it’s been pretty much trouble free. I’m getting some swelling in my ankles now from being on my feet all the time at work, but it’s not too bad. I’ve really enjoyed being pregnant for the most part. Every once in a while, I’ll just sit back and think, ‘God, I’ve got a little person with toes and fingers and everything growing inside of me.’ And then the baby will start to move. I swear sometimes he’s gearing up for the next Olympics the way he summersaults and cartwheels all the time. As much as I can’t wait to see him when he’s born, I think I’m going to miss having the little kicker inside of me.”

“Especially when he’s screaming his head off at 3:00 in the morning,” Anya says.

“Oh, he wakes me up enough as it is. He really gets moving late at night. The other night it felt like he had a foot or something caught in my rib cage and I had to rub and rub until he finally dislodged it. And Spike wakes up whenever there’s any kind of baby activity.” She smiles, making a swoosh through the melting ice cream on her plate with her spoon. “He’s been really great throughout this whole thing. So sweet and so caring. If he had his way, my due date would be tomorrow. He studies each and everyone of my ultrasound pictures, looking for any feature that might resembles his. As soon as I finish a book on pregnancy, he’ll pick it up and start reading. He’s so excited sometimes I just want to say, ‘Calm down, it’s just a baby.’ But then I say to myself, ‘it’s just a baby…our baby.’ And then I’m like, ‘aaaaaaahhh!’ Because this is the last thing I ever expected to happen between us. I mean, to think that five years ago he was threatening my life in the alleyway outside the Bronze. And now, somehow, we’ve created life together. And I have to say that I’ve never been more in love with him. Because not only can I feel his love for me on the outside, but I feel it flipping around inside of me. Like right now. He loves the cake and ice cream combo.” She strokes her hand over the hump of her belly as her baby commences his practice session for the day.

“So, have you and Spike picked out baby names?” Tara asks, moving her hand over Buffy’s stomach to catch some of the intrauterine action.

“Mmm,” Buffy says, ingesting another bit of cake. “Elizabeth Joyce if it’s a girl. And Daniel William for a boy.”

Willow shrinks back at the suggestion of the latter name. “Um…Daniel?”

Buffy’s eyes widen. “What’s wrong with Daniel? Oh God, it’s taken us months to come up with these names. Please don’t tell me we have to go back to Hogan Verizon---

“No no!” Willow qualifies. “It’s just that…Daniel. Daniel Osborne. Oz?”

“Oh God!” Buffy says, “Oh God! Willow, I completely forgot! I’m so sorry! It’s just that Spike and I were in the car and the song Daniel came on the radio. And the two of us kind of knew then that’s what we wanted to name our baby if it were a boy. A son should be named after his father but we both agreed that Spike is a good name for a hip movie director but not so much for a baby…and Spike is already my William…Daniel just seemed so right when we heard it.”

“That’s all right, Buffy,” Willow says comfortingly. “I think I’m at the stage where I’m ready for a new Daniel in my life.”

Buffy brings the witch’s red head into her embrace and presses a kiss on her forehead. “Thank you. And I’m sure Spike would thank you too.”

“What is Spike doing tonight?” Tara asks.

“If I know my boyfriend at all, he’s probably chasing down some hopeless thing in a graveyard.”

Spike eyes the Hollaran demon approaching him with a mischievous gleam. “So. I see you’ve brought on the funk,” he says, sniffing the demon’s tell-tale stench. “I suppose it’s down to me to bring on the noise. And I got plenty of that.”

“Slayer boy, I have more in store than just myself tonight,” the demon growls.

“‘Slayer boy?’ Well, that’s a new one.”

From the shadows, another Hollaran demon emerges. Then another one rises to Spike’s right. Another one comes at Spike at his left. Now he is surrounded in a pentagon of snarling Hollaran demons.

“You’ve had time to rally the whole gang,” Spike says. His first impulse is to flee. He knew that they would catch hold of his scent sooner or later. He only hoped that Buffy would be with him. “Oh well. Come to Papa!”

There is a knock on the door of the Magic Box. Giles rouses himself from the mildewed text and heads towards the door to greet an inquiring Xander.

“I was just wondering who was on tonight for graveyard duty. I thought it might be me.”

Giles scans the erase board where the Scoobies have been scheduling their nightly slayage. “Spike is on tonight.”

“Wait a minute. That wasn’t there yesterday. I could have sworn that I was on deck for the dusting tonight.”

“He must have erased your name and sketched in his own.”

“He’s been trading with me a lot. I guess he’s doing all he can to provide for the littlest Scooby.”

“I suppose,” Giles answers.

“You want to go see if he needs help? The guy’s been patrolling non-stop for months now. I bet he could use a break and looking at you, it seems you could use a breather too.”

“Absolutely,” Giles says, removing his glasses from his face. “A slaying would do me good.”

Buffy picks up another plate of oozing ice cream cake and drops it into the garbage bag. “Well, I think tonight went well,” she says cheerily.

“Went well? You cleaned up, Buffy!” Dawn says, collecting empty cups. “You and Spike won’t have to even darken the doorstep of the Super Baby Store now. They brought the store to you.”

“There’s still tons of stuff that we need. Just when I think we have everything, I read another article in another magazine that tells me how ill prepared we are for the baby. I still have to look for that baby wipe warmer.”

Dawn laughs. “You ought to be looking for a cold hand warmer for Spike.”

“He said he would warm his hands up under the faucet before touching the baby.” She smiles. “Always works for me.”

There is a knock at the door.

“You expecting Travis?” Buffy asks.

“Not tonight,” Dawn says.

There is an odd assemblage of voices behind the door. Buffy can hear her Watcher and Xander. And then, her lover groaning. She throws the door open. She sees Xander and Giles standing there, a slumped and profusely bleeding Spike held between them.

As soon as they are allowed entry, they head straight for the sofa. Once they’re there, Xander and Giles deposit the moaning vampire in a heap of black leather and blood.

“What happened?” Buffy asks breathlessly as she bends towards Spike. He seems to be bleeding from every orifice. Then she sees the cavernous slit gushing blood on the side of his neck. “Oh God!”

“Five dull Hollaran demons and an equally dull axe blade is what happened,” Xander explains.

“When we got to the cemetery, he was in the midst of nearly being decapitated,” Giles said. “Apparently the demons had some fun with him before staging his would be execution.”

“Dawn, get some bandages from the medicine chest,” Buffy instructs, wincing as she examines just how closely Spike missed being reduced to dust.

He coughs, spewing a string of blood and mucous from his lips. His spasms wrench his broken ribs and he grabs his chest, whimpering miserably.

“I’m pretty certain one of his arms is broken. He couldn’t manage to walk, so I think he may have a few fractures in his legs as well,” Giles says.

Spike lies there, motionless, his eyes shut, his mouth open in a jagged crevice of misery. His forehead is impressed with the wrinkles of a deep, ongoing pain. Buffy doesn’t dare touch him for fear that her hands will only cause him more hurt.

“My God, what did they do to you?” Buffy asks, tears thickening at the back of her throat. And why wasn’t I there? She damns herself silently. The bruises are already coming to black and blue fruition on his pale face. Tomorrow she suspects there will be a shiner puffing out around his left eye.

“We were able to dispatch two of the demons. The other three got away,” Giles says.

There is a sound from Spike’s lips. Buffy bends closer so that she can hear what he’s saying. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she asks.

He purses his lips and grimaces as though the very action of talking is taxing everything he has. “Don’t even think about going after them.”

Buffy settles her bottom on her heels, wondering if her revenge plotting was loud enough to be heard.

“He’s right, Buffy,” Giles says. “It’s entirely too dangerous for you to be trying to best Hollaran demons in your condition.”

“Giles and I are going to smoke them out tomorrow night,” Xander says. “Don’t worry. We’ll get them.”

Buffy feels as though her limbs are bound to her chest and she’s being slowly drowned. Dawn kneels beside her with an assortment of gauze and tape and she selects whatever she thinks will patch up Spike’s wounds. The Slayer begins with the gaping cut just inches shy of the vampire’s jugular where years before his sire drank and birthed the beast in him. All the time the baby is squirming inside of her as though angling for a peek at what has been done to his father.

Giles and Xander excuse themselves, allowing the two girls to tend to the wounded. At length, Spike is able to rouse himself enough from his injuries to calm Buffy and Dawn’s fears.

“I’m still here,” he says, almost smiling.

For a moment, Buffy and Dawn stitch together a thread of thought between them, along which their twin thoughts vibrate. “What would we do without him?”

Dawn is now stroking his left hand. He responds by taking her fingers in his. He reaches for Buffy’s hand as well and squeezes it, though the effort causes a fresh wave of pain to splash across his face.

“It would take more than some unnecessary roughness by five Hollaran demons to take me away from my girls,” Spike says. “Hey. Was there any cake left over?”

A few nights later, Spike and Dawn are asleep on the sofa. The vampire’s head rests against the back of the sofa while Dawn’s has found a place against his less injured arm. The TV is on and the volume is up at an enormously high level for 2:30 in the morning. As a commercial for Girls Gone Wild begins, Spike awakes with a snort.

He feels the weight of Dawn’s body against his side and realizes right away that he is not in bed and, presumably, neither is Buffy.

“Hey! Little Bit!” he whispers sharply, tugging at her arm. “Wake up, love.”

“Mmmm,” comes the reply as she rolls her face against his arm. She then springs up. “What time is it?” she asks, stretching.

“Very late,” Spike answers.

Dawn thinks a minute. Something is wrong. “Buffy’s not home yet?” she asks.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “Else she would have gotten us up to go to bed.”

“Maybe she had to close.”

“No, she said before she left that she would be home at midnight. She would have called us if she had to stay over.”

“That’s true.”

The two sit there for a few minutes with worry building in their sleepy faces. At length Spike gets up and hobbles over on his still mending legs to the coat rack by the door.

But before he can put on his duster, Buffy enters the apartment.

“What on earth kept you?” he asks, relief invading his concerned features.

“Sorry,” she says tiredly, rubbing her sore back muscles. “We got really busy at midnight and I was asked to stay and help out. I didn’t have a chance to call.” She walks through the apartment, continuing her self-massage. There is a pronounced squish against the floorboards with every step she takes.

The noise, combined with the distinct odor of Hollaran brains, clues Spike in automatically as to what really kept her so busy after midnight.

In the bedroom, Spike keeps his suspicions to himself as he watches Buffy sit gingerly on the bed. She is so exhausted it’s as though she doesn’t know what to do first; take off her clothes or just peel the covers back and climb in. But she does have to get her shoes off, a task which gets harder and harder each day. When she lifts one shoe, Spike sees that the bottom is covered in a glaze of orange goo.

“So, after midnight, everybody converged on the Bronze to let it all hang out,” he asks.

“That’s what happened,” Buffy says, wrenching her slipper from her swollen foot. Her feet look more and more like Fred Flintstone’s every day. She thinks the closer she gets to her due date, the more able she will be able to power a car with them.

“I suppose you’ll be getting some overtime for that,” he asks.

“A little. But like they say, every little bit helps,” she says, freeing her other foot from the shoe, feeling as though she’s just uncorked a bottle of wine.

“Uh huh. I see,” he says. “So you met up with the Hollaran demons…where? In the alleyway? In the cemetery? In that smart little open air café that always gets wrecked whenever there’s some Big Bad stomping about the city?” He watches as her shoulders freeze in the crosshairs of his inquiry

She makes a slow turn in his direction. There is a small measure of guilt on her face, but there is also a look of deep satisfaction. “Spike, I had to do it.”

He lets out an exasperated sigh. “Buffy, after I told you---

“Hey, it’s too late to argue with me about it, OK? It’s been done.”

“That was very foolhardy of you. You know that.”

She shrugs. “Both mother and child are fine and about to be resting comfortably.”

The two commence their nightly ritual wordlessly. Buffy foregoes taking off her make-up in favor of hitting the sheets. She barely manages to put on her pajamas, employing her boyfriend to help her shimmy into the bottoms.

Once they are in bed and the light is snapped off, leaving them blanketed in darkness and in each other’s arms, Buffy is reminded once again why her after work errand to the graveyard was so important when Spike inhales a jagged breath as her arms encircle his chest.

“You should know by now that I don’t let anyone mess with my family,” she tells him soothingly.

“Oh, I think you’ve driven that point home quite often, love,” he answers, kissing her lightly above her left eyebrow. “Once with a wooden spoon to my chest.”

“I couldn’t live with myself, knowing and seeing how much they hurt you and not doing a damn thing about it.”

“You’re forgiven this time. Since it was all done for me,” he says with a smile. “Hey. Did you get them all?”

“Yep.”

“Really? All three?”

She nods. “What can I say?” she yawns. “They didn’t stand a chance against two fierce kickers in one.”

A warm breeze flows through the open window, rustling the sheets of the unattended legal pads lying on the meeting room table. An empty Styrofoam cup skates across the slick surface until it is caught by a quick hand and crushed. It is late summer, early fall, and there is much on the minds of the parishioners of Saint Catherine’s Chapel. The din poring from the now pitcher’s mound size hole in the floor causes them to raise their voices when they speak. They all pass around silently a look that says, “Is anyone else bothered by that?”

Mr. Chapman raps the eraser of his pencil against the cover of his calendar. “Anybody else? New business?” he asks in a roar.

“I have something,” Phyllis Wright says. “The Morning Star Circle---

“You’ll have to speak up, Phyllis,” Mr. Chapman instructs.

Phyllis gives a peeved look before she continues. “The Morning Star Circle is participating in a 6 Mile Walk for breast cancer on October 15. They will need sponsors, of course. If everyone gives---

Stanley Walliston holds up a hand. “Wait, wait a minute, Phyllis. Did you say a walk for Chester Arthur?”

“BREAST CANCER,” Phyllis clarifies loudly.

“I didn’t think that sounded right,” Stanley Walliston says.

“Anyway, they would like a five dollar donation from everyone in the church. Their goal is to raise $750.”

“I’ll ask Reverend Estey to make an announcement next Sunday,” Mr. Chapman says. “Anyone else? New business?”

At that moment, Stanley Walliston’s chair begins to teeter to and fro. There is a crackling sound, as though a hundred head of cattle are being herded slowly across the ground of a leaf-laden forest. The patch of wood on which Stanley’s wobbling chair is sitting breaks free. Mr. Chapman reaches for Stanley Walliston’s hand, holding him fast to the surely bounds of earth while the chair plunges to the fiery depths below.

All the parishioners are standing stunned now, their hands over their racing hearts, their faces dead white.

Mr. Chapman turns to Samantha Singleton as though holding on to one last hope as he lifts Stanley Walliston onto safe ground...for now.

“You have told Travis about the importance of this baby, haven’t you?” he asks.

“He was raised on it,” Samantha Singleton says, viewing the crags of the rocky cliffs that tunnel to Hell.

Still holding Mr. Chapman’s hand, Stanley Walliston says, “I move that we find another meeting place.”

“Second,” the others agree without hesitation.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Spike enters the bedroom, a towel draped around his hips. His hair is still dripping wet from his shower and he’s using a smaller towel to absorb some of the excess moisture before it can reach the carpet.

Buffy is lying on their bed, robed in pink terry cloth, her hand rubbing the exaggerated tortoise shell of her belly in small, circular motions.

“I thought you would be dressed by now,” Spike says, opening the doors to their closet.

“Basically I’m delaying looking like a watermelon as long as I can,” she says dismally, looking at the sea foam green concoction of taffeta and tulle draped on her vanity chair.

“Well, you are pink inside,” he remarks, tongue between his teeth.

“Ha ha,” she replies. She gets up slowly, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed as a geriatric would. As her feet reach the floor, she is gripped by a sudden, sharp pain that seems to go all through her. For a moment she is too agonized to move, pulling her chin down to her chest and fisting the bedspread. “Ooooh…” she groans, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Sweetheart, you all right?” When there is no immediate reply, Spike quickly scampers over to her. “Sweetheart? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she says through clenched teeth.

“Try again. What’s wrong?”

She looks up at him almost bashfully once the pain subsides. “It was just a pain. That’s all. Dr. Hemphill said that I could expect a few pains here and there before actual labor.”

“Where was the pain?”

“Oh. Here. And there.”

Spike shakes his head. For two weeks now he has watched her suffer in silence from all manner of aches. She comes home after her shift at the Bronze, her ankles ringed in two twin inner tubes of fluid, her legs striped red and white like peppermint sticks. Her legs were cramping so badly the other night she almost cried in her sleep. Her back troubles her so much that he doesn’t even ask her if she needs a massage anymore. He just strips her down as soon as she gets home and starts to work. But he’s never heard her complain even once, though it hurts him to look at her enduring such suffering. She has told him to save his sympathy for the delivery when she will really need it.

Still, as he cups her chin in his hand, he feels the need to ask, “Sweetheart, you don’t have to go through with this. I’m sure Anya would understand---

“Anya? Our Anya? Not big on the understanding. The other day she asked me if I could stop growing until after the wedding. Anyway, I promised her I would be her attendant so I gotta do it. Big baby gut and all.”

“But last night at the rehearsal you had to sit down.”

“So? I’ll sit down again if I have to. Reverend Estey said he would have the altar boy’s chair at the ready if I couldn’t stand through the whole ceremony.”

He can see that there’s no point in arguing. The same resolve that takes hold of her features when she’s engaged in battle is in place. She is going to do this. After all these years, he has developed a keen sense of when to back off and this is one of those times.

He bends and kisses her lightly on her lips, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. “I just hope Anya appreciates how amazing you are.”

“She doesn’t. But there are plenty of other people who do.”

“Myself included,” he smiles.

She grins back at him. Lately she has felt so unattractive in her hefty state that when she sees Spike looking at her with such love in his eyes, she is almost breathless. “Besides,” she says, standing up into Spike’s sturdy arms. “I’m looking forward to dancing with my honey at the reception.”

“Yeah? Take your turn with me on the dance floor? As long as it’s not the Macarena or that chicken dance, I’m game,” he says in that plush velvet voice that makes her want to climb the walls.

He takes her in his arms, leading a mimicry of a dance, his pelvis gyrating against the swell of her abdomen. She pulls him as close to her as her belly will allow, breathing in the scent of the deodorant soap he used quite liberally while he was showering. His skin is still damp and warm to the touch. “Hmm…this reminds me of the time we danced. On the rooftop.”

“And all those stars,” he says with a laugh in his voice.

“That was so wonderful,” she says, trailing a hand down his muscular back.

“Shall I dip you?” he asks devilishly.

“Honey, if you dipped me, I’m afraid I’d never get up again.”

He kisses the side of her face. “I can’t think of a million things much worse than being prone with you forever.”

She rocks back and forth in his arms, looking into his blue eyes, wondering if he’s seeing himself mirrored in her green-gold stare. She has heard that this is the only reflection vampires can see. It seems sometime he is seeing something beyond her, beyond anything she as ever viewed. But in this instance, he is seeing his lady love’s features contorting in pain.

Her grip tightens around Spike’s torso, almost to the extent that if he were a breathing human being, he would be turning blue.

He holds her fast, asking, “That was a bad one, eh?”

“Yeah,” she breathes. “But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

But he’s thinking that she’s being too brave as he continues to hold onto him, her fingernails digging into his skin until they draw blood. And he can smell the blood and he can feel it crawling down his flesh at an ant’s pace.

“It’s over now,” she says valiantly, tossing back her growing locks. “I’m not going to worry about it.”

Spike doesn’t share his girlfriend’s optimism. He is going to worry about it. She was dilated three centimeters at her last office visit. The doctor told her she could keep on with her life until the baby tells her otherwise. Right now the two of them are just waiting for the baby’s next instructions. Spike is afraid that he is hearing them now.

Buffy breaks away from him, going over to her gown and picking it up as though it were a large, dead rodent in her kitchen windowsill. “You go and make yourself handsome. I’ll do what I can with this.”

Music from the church’s organ commences from inside St. Catherine’s Chapel as Spike, Dawn, and Buffy make their way across the darkened parking lot. It’s not the wedding march, so they know they’re not too late.

Inside the vestibule, the harried wedding director, sweaty in her light blue polyester shift dress which accentuates all the rolls of fat on her arms and stomach, immediately grabs Buffy and shuffles her across the floor to the gathering of bridesmaids standing at the base of the stairs. She places her in back of Willow, who seems to be having problems with her décolletage.

“I’m all boobs in this dress,” Willow says, wiggling in her discomfort.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Tara says lustily.

“Oh please. You want to talk boobs? I feel like mine are about to come flying out any second,” Buffy says.

“Ladies! Shhh!” the cranky wedding director scolds.

“Buffy! I gotta go pee!” Dawn says, shifting her weight from leg to leg.

“Why didn’t you pee before we left the apartment?” Buffy asks in exasperation.

“You said we didn’t have time, remember?”

“All right! Go pee then.”

Pounding down the stairs to the basement, Dawn meets Anya on the landing, completely decked out in creamy white from head to toe. Her eyes fire lasers through her veil as the young girl flies past her.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Potty,” Dawn says.

Dawn can hear Anya whispering a number of expletives under her breath as she continues down the stairs to the darkened hallway below. She moves along the corridor, noting the strong scent of stale coffee and cheap lemon sandwich cookies. She passes door after door, peeking into the silent and clean Sunday school rooms, the cavernous fellowship hall, and then…

There is one door on her left now. She can hear something humming from inside. When she places her ear close to the door, it takes on an entirely different sound. That of moaning, like the church itself is close to death, breathing its last. She tries the doorknob, but it won’t turn in her hand.

“You don’t want to go in there, little one,” a voice says behind her.

Her heart nearly leaps from her chest as she whips around at the sound of the voice. “Jeez! What the hell?”

In her view now is a diminutive woman, two heads shorter than herself, though she sports a pair of stacked white heels and a flowery pillbox hat to augment her stature.

“What are you looking for?” the woman asks in a helium influenced voice.

“The b-bathroom,” Dawn stammers.

“Down the hall to your left, past the Sacristy.”

Dawn nods her thanks and walks slowly down the hall. All the while the woman’s eyes watch her. Once she’s behind the closed door, she flips on the light, which flickers eerily until the lime green walls are revealed in a wash of fluorescent glow. She steadies herself by propping a shaky hand on the wall. Underneath her palm, the plaster is groaning. She jerks her hand away.

Buffy is looking at an oil painting of a monk, his hands clasped, his eyes trained towards the heavens. A thin rendering of a golden halo encircles his shorn head. She looks down at the brass plaque at the bottom of the frame. “Our Founder, Brother Francis” it reads. Underneath the heavy frame there is still another plaque that shines in brand newness. “Portrait Restoration Provided by the Generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Steven Singleton.”

“Travis’ parents,” Buffy notes to herself. To the right of the portrait is a framed 8x10 parchment listing the names of parishioners who are on the sesquicentennial committee. At the top of the list are Mr. and Mrs. Steven Singleton, co-chairs.

Just now, Buffy feels a clammy hand on her bare shoulder. She pivots around to see Dawn, looking marble white and shaking.

“What’s wrong with you?” Buffy asks.

“Buffy, there’s something wrong. Downstairs,” Dawn gasps. “You and Spike need to check it out.”

“What is it?” Buffy asks, laying a hand against Dawn’s sweaty cheek.

“I’m not sure. But it’s really, really wrong.”

“OK. We’ll look into it after the ceremony. The wedding’s about to start.”

“Please,” Dawn says. She takes her own place in line

At the same time, from behind the altar, where the candelabra and sheet music is kept in a small, airless room, Spike is hearing Xander’s recitation of his self-written wedding vows and is reminded, painfully, of his chip-influenced migraine days.

“You and I…we are as meant for each other as a lathe and a two by four. We balance each other out. I can see the bubble floating right in the middle when I look at you---

“Oh God, you’re not actually going to say that, are you?” Spike groans.

“Well, you heard me say it last night at the rehearsal.”

“Yes, but I thought you were only kidding. Or at least by now you would have realized the error of your ways.”

“Hey, someone once said that you should write what you know. And I know carpentry.”

“That someone was Charles Dickens. And if Chucky Dick had foreseen that sods incapable of penning a decent dirty limerick would be writing their own wedding vows, he would have amended that statement.”

Xander seems too consumed with the tightness of his collar to take offense at Spike’s words. He fusses with the top button of his tuxedo shirt until his bow tie springs open. Helplessly, he looks at Spike. “Would you mind?”

Spike sighs and reminds himself that this must be one of the corollary duties Buffy often hinted at if Spike were to ever think of himself as being a Scooby; he has to occasionally feign interest in her friends. But he does care enough to make sure Xander doesn’t look like a piano bar singer after last call for this day of days.

“I’m sweating through this thing,” Xander says as Spike remakes his bow tie.

“And a lovely scent you’re giving off,” Spike scoffs.

“I guess Right Guard wasn’t so much on guard for today,” Xander says.

“Why are you so nervous anyway?” Spike wants to know. “This is what you want, right?”

“Well, I am taking a big step today that will pretty much change the course of my entire life. That’s bound to make a guy a little edgy, don’t you think?” Xander stiffens. “By the way, you still thinking about making it legal with Buffy?”

Spike is randomly brushing Xander’s lapels when he hears this. Realizing that this might be far too intimate an action between sworn enemies, he stops. “It’s still on my mind,” Spike says, wandering off to the spare pew and taking a seat there, wresting a flask of bourbon from his coat pocket and gulping down a few sips.

“So what’s holding you back?”

“I don’t know,” he says. But he does know. With acute vividness he recalls the memory of the girl in the alleyway, her twin blood droplets racing each other down her tender throat, the scent so near, the punishment of the denial of his being so painful and direct. “I had a slip up a few months ago.”

“You did?” Xander asks, eyes the size of frisbees. “You mean…you jumped the fence?”

“No. I just sort of…straddled it.”

“And what happened?” Xander asks, pantomiming a need for Spike’s flask.

Spike hands over the flask to him. “Nothing. Then. But I can’t be certain that it won’t happen again. And I don’t feel comfortable asking Buffy to be my wife when she doesn’t know who she’s marrying.”

Xander coughs from his uneasy swig of the flask and gives it back to Spike, the back of his hand drawn over his lips. “She’ll be marrying the man she loves.”

Spike thinks at first that Xander’s coughing spasms have prevented an accurate interpretation of what Xander has said. But then he sees the smile. And the wink. And for once the outsider is embraced by someone on the inside, other than Buffy.

The organist begins Sheep May Safely Graze.

“Oh God,” Xander says, eyes wide.

Something in him, rebelliously so, forces Spike to ask, “Are you ready?”

Xander makes two twin fists and replies, “I’m ready.”

Spike is standing at the front of the church now, the ivory-robed minister joining him and Xander as they wait for the procession. There is Tara, looking impossibly gorgeous in her sea foam green gown. Willow follows her, a radiant witch of a girl, her crown of red hair looking as a rich and fascinating fire. And then behind her, someone so gorgeous for many minutes Spike has to tell himself that’s his girl.

Sure he saw her when she was fully dressed in their bedroom, after he had to pull her panties up her legs because reaching down has become an impossibility to her. He saw her wrestle with the gown until her head popped out, flushed and glorious from the exertion. She smoothed the gown over her heavy girth and he looked at her then and thought she looked tired and frail. But now…

She looks utterly amazing in triumph.

She walks down the aisle, a stunning smile gifting all those who turn to see her as she passes. She holds her bouquet before her giant bosom and walks as though she has temporarily forgotten what is it is to feel the burden of her nine months’ pregnancy on her slight figure. What’s more, she looks at Spike and he feels as though he’s looking at her for the first time and finds yet another reason to fall in love with this strong and beautiful young woman.

In the rehearsal, he was instructed to turn towards the bride and groom, but he cannot physically tear his gaze away from his lovely girl, bewitching him eight feet away in her amplified form, exposed bronze skin flowing over her bones like an endless stream of delicious caramel. He wants to lick her head to toe.

Reverend Estey begins, lifting his hands over the soon-to-be husband and wife. “Tonight we gather here to bear witness to the joining of this man and this woman in holy matrimony. The sanctity of marriage is not something to be taken lightly. I am certain that Anya and Alexander have searched their hearts many times up until this moment to make certain this is where they want to be. This is where they want to be for all eternity.”

I want to be with you for all of eternity, Spike says to himself, still looking at Buffy. She stares back at him, her green eyed gaze making a B-line towards his heart. In her stare and in the sudden flush across her cheeks, it appears that her thoughts are mirroring his own.

“I have been privileged to talk with both Xander and Anya in the past few weeks. I know of the terrible struggles they have endured to get here. And yet, here they are, strong in their commitment to each other. God looks down this evening and He is gratified that two of his creatures have met and are going to be fruitful in their ways.”

My little fertile crescent roll, Spike says to himself, still holding Buffy in his watch.

Just now, he sees Buffy’s elated expression change into one of deep shock. She bends slightly, bracing her hand against the bottom of her belly, as though trying to keep the baby in until she can mouth to her lover, “My water broke!”

“What?” Spike asks, immediately making his way over to Buffy, just in time for her to slump into his arms.

She looks up at him, terrified. “My water broke,” she says again.

From what he has read and from what Dr. Hemphill told him, after the water breaks, there’s no way back. This is it.

All at once it’s as though a flaming arrow has been fired against the altar. The congregation erupts in a shared shout of concern. The guests in the back rise from their seats, straining for a better look at the turn of events on the dais. The whole church is vibrating now with sharp whispers, “S” sounds slithering over each other in speculation.

Giles, at the arm of the flustered and now clearly upstaged bride, addresses the agitated crowd, “It’s all right! It’s all under control. Just stay calm. Everything’s perfectly normal…” But then he sees his charge, so consumed in what seems an otherworldly pain. She is now down on the floor, her vampire lover’s arms wrapped tight around her in a possessive embrace.

“Buffy, sweetheart…we have to get you to hospital,” Spike says.

“No!” she protests. “I promised.”

“Is she having the baby here? This is supposed to be my day!” Anya frets, near tears, hands on hips.

“I’ll be fine,” Buffy says, assuring the myriad of concerned faces around her.

“Buffy, you’re in labor,” Spike says.

“I’ll make it,” she says. “They just have to make it quick.”

Spike lifts his gaze to the minister. “You heard the girl. Say your piece. And get it over with!”

At the vampire’s urging, the minister sputters, “Do you, Alexander, take thee, Anya, to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward---

A searing pain courses its way through Buffy’s body and she convulses in Spike’s arms.

“Yes, God, he does!” Spike answers for Xander, wincing as Buffy’s hand grips his hand, driving her fingernails deep into his skin. “If she hasn’t sodding driven him off by now, they’re going to be together forever. Proclaim them man and wife already!”

“Spike, this is bad,” Buffy says. And Spike doesn’t know if she means that he’s handling things badly or if her pains are too intense. If she is talking about the pains they are coming far too quickly together far too soon.

Spike looks apologetically at the minister and then at Xander as he sweeps Buffy into his arms. “Sorry. Emergency here. Girlfriend is having a baby. Our baby.” As he walks off the dais, he tosses the velvet box which contains Anya’s gold wedding band into Giles’ hands. “Rupert, you can take care of the rest. I have got to get Buffy to hospital.”

Spike carries his ladylove up the aisle, all the while telling people on either side, “She’s having my baby. SHE’S having MY baby.”

In the parking lot, Buffy nuzzles her head against Spike’s shoulder, crying softly. “I didn’t do what I said I was going to do,” she sobs.

“Sweetheart, you can always get a note from home.”

In the soft beiges and rose hues of the labor room, the last best hope for humanity is lying in a thin, cotton gown against a raised hospital bed, a fetal heart monitor strapped against her belly. The attending nurse emerges from Buffy’s thighs, a look of disbelief on her face.

“When did you feel your first pain?” the nurse asks.

“About seven thirty,” Buffy says.

“And were there any more after that?”

“A few. But I thought they were those Braxton-Hicky pains. Why?”

“You’re at ten centimeters,” the nurse says.

“Ten! Ten? That can’t be!” Buffy says.

“Well, I’m afraid it is. You’re fully effaced and dilated.”

“But what if…what if I have one of those Spinal Tap type cervixes that goes to eleven instead of ten?”

“Not possible,” the nurse says, patting her thigh. “I’ll go page Dr. Hemphill.”

Spike has just barely laid his tuxedo jacket across the easy chair when he hears the news. Dawn was thinking about going home to change into jeans and a tee shirt and to get the picture of Joyce Buffy requested as her focal point.

All three are still in the aftermath of the announcement. The littlest Scooby is impatient for his debut. And as Spike and Dawn come to the understanding that a baby is going to be born and soon, Buffy begins to huff through a particularly violent contraction.

She seeks Spike’s hand, but he withdraws it, since it was nearly broken the last time she reached for it. He instead leans close to her, whispering encouragement into her ear, swiping a caring thumb across her forehead.

“It’s all right, love. It’s all right,” he says, kissing her lightly. “It will all be over soon.”

She lies back against her pillows, breathless, balling the fitted sheet up in her hands. She grabs for the railing around her bed and then for Spike’s hand, finally settling on the less breakable sheets. Again, another pain rips through her and she greets it with a rising, “Oh, oh, OH!”

Spike watches her face, twisted in agony, and he feels his own innards being turned inside out. He again bends to her, patting her hair down, murmuring against her temple, “S’ok. Shhh…Not much longer now.” He casts an eye over at fretful, youthful Dawn who is so wound up with concern and anguish she is nearly immobile. “You all right, Bit?”

“Yeah,” she says in a hollow voice as she peers down at her sister’s moaning, restless form. “It’s just hard…you know.”

“I know, Bit. I know. But think of it like this. When it’s all said and done, there’s going to be a new addition to the family and you’ll be one up on the totem pole,” he says with a smile as he strokes Buffy’s hair.

She smiles back at him and reaches down to kiss her sister’s perspiring forehead.

When Dr. Hemphill arrives, Buffy’s contractions are a minute apart.

“So I hear we’re all set to meet this little guy who’s been messing with your figure and your appetite for nine months,” Dr. Hemphill says cheerily.

“Unh,” is Buffy’s reply as she rails against the pain of another contraction.

“OK,” Dr. Hemphill says, her gray eyes peering over her paper mask at Spike and Dawn. “Coaches, you know what to do, right?”

“Right,” they reply in unison.

Dr. Hemphill hears the unsteadiness in their response. She reminds them, “She needs to draw in a breath and count to ten. Then let it out. You can help with the counting. And with keeping her legs apart.”

Given their orders, Dawn and Spike position themselves on either side of Buffy, hands braced against her powerful thighs.

Her next contraction hits.

“One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten…” Dawn and Spike count.

“Let it out,” Dr. Hemphill says, her own breathing pulsing her paper mask against her nose.

Buffy exhales and pulls in another breath. Again Dawn and Spike count. One, two, three…

“Good pushing, Buffy!” Dr. Hemphill encourages. “Keep on, keep on.”

Buffy draws another breath, her chin deep in her chest as Dawn and Spike count. One, two, three…

“OK, Buffy. You’re going to feel a slight burning sensation as the baby’s head is crowning,” Dr. Hemphill warns.

Again Buffy inhales and presses her hands against the bed. Spike and Dawn are mindful of her thighs, and now they are cognizant of what looks like a giant peach pit emerging from her depths.

“Oh my God! I see its head! I see the baby’s head!” Dawn exclaims.

“One more push!” Dr. Hemphill urges.

Spike remembers delivering kicks and punches to her in years before and never has he heard her make a sound even remotely close to the one he is hearing now. This is something from the depths of her being, a howl from centuries before she was born, the primal scream of her warrior soul.

“OK, you can stop pushing,” Dr. Hemphill says.

Dr. Hemphill is twisting in her hands a grape-colored ball, the size of a wrestler’s fist. A stream of blood spurts from Buffy’s depths. A shoulder appears. And then another. Then a torso. And two tangled legs. And…

“It’s a boy!” Dr. Hemphill decries.

The trio greets the child with blinks of incredulity. It has all happened so quickly and without the preface of endless hours of waiting and worry. The baby is here, wet and wrinkled and protesting daylight, with all the grace and gorgeousness of a weathered garden gnome.

When the doctor beckons Spike to her side to cut the cord, even with scissors in hand, even when the blades clip through the slug-like string that was the baby’s lifeline for his time on the inside, Spike is doubting reality. No, this quivering being cannot be his. No, it’s not possible that he has given something life with his blood. No, there can’t be a creature in this world who is alive and well with his blood.

But there is.

On Buffy’s stomach now, against the still swollen domicile the baby called home for nine months, the baby is all fingers and toes, all screaming madness. Creased skin lapses over unseeing eyes as the child adjusts to his first minutes seeing something other than darkness. Through swollen lids, the baby stares back at Spike with what appear to be the making of his own blue eyes. In the aftermath of the birth, there is much noise and confusion all around, but for a moment, Spike thinks he can feel his cold, dead heart trying valiantly to stir within his chest.

He reaches for the child just as he is being whisked away.

Buffy is returning to herself, propping herself up to view the goings on across the room as she finds herself draped in Spike and Dawn’s arms. The baby’s weight is announced. 7 pounds, 6 ounces. The baby’s height is announced as well. 21 inches. The baby is absolutely fine and absolutely normal. When he is returned to his parents, he is clean and small, wrapped tight in a restrictive receiving blanket. But they can still see his face. For someone so anxious to be out and about in the world, the baby is awfully nonchalant about his surroundings.

In Buffy’s arms for the first time, the baby seems so fragile she fears she will crush him with her Slayer strength. But when the baby is settled, she is overtaken by a wave of tenderness. The little face is too ready for fondness. The stretching limbs are too reminiscent of the parts that tested her womb’s capacity.

Buffy smiles, stroking the baby’s face. “Oh God, he’s so beautiful…” she says, her voice quaking with emotion. “He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” She lifts her tearful face to her lover and catches him by the hand. “Oh William, do you know what he is?”

“A miracle?” he asks, aching for a chance to hold his son.

“No,” Buffy says. “He’s the perfect little us.”

She passes the infant into Spike’s arms. As the baby conforms to his cradling arms, and as this new life force springs to whimpering fruition, tears course down his face in an immediate baptism over the baby’s sweet head.

“He is that,” Spike says, kissing his child and loving the warmth under his cold lips. His body is shaking with sobs as he holds the baby as close as he can. “Oh Buffy, thank you.”

“It was as much your doing as mine,” she says diplomatically, using some of the Kleenex that Dawn is passing to her and using herself.

“Buffy, I’ve seen you do some amazing things with your body over the years, but this…what you did tonight…” He regards her with a sober stare, his eyes still pouring tears. “I love you, Buffy. I love you so much.”

“And I love you, William.”

He leans over to press a gentle kiss on Buffy’s lips. He then takes a seat beside her on the bed, one arm going around her as the other still holds the child firm. Dawn too grabs a seat on the bed, on the other side of her sister, wrapping her arm tightly around her shoulders.

The three of them have witnessed so many times in which things were falling apart around them. It is rare when they are present for something actually coming together. But this is one of those times.

It is in this moment that the three of them come to realize that their little family is now complete.

At 11:30, Sunday morning, it is already an uncomfortable 93 degrees outside and not much cooler insider St. Catherine’s Chapel. The area is ensnared by an unseasonable and fussy late season heat wave, which the congregation chooses to fight with fluttering church bulletins and open windows. The congregation has listened to the church choir sing, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” and they have listened to themselves sing “Rock of Ages” and they have tithed and “glory be’ed” and now they are silent as Reverend Estey mounts the pulpit and bows his head as though bearing a crown of lead weights.

He finally lifts his head, a drip of perspiration blurring the notes in front of him. He grips the edges of the wooden podium as he begins to speak:

“My friends, we all know that Satan has always been trying to find ways to walk among us. And 150 years ago, a cluster of a dozen believing souls put their faith in one of his minions and damned their descendents to hell on this very spot.”

Today as the congregation was filing into the church, they knew this was coming. The message on the board outside the church read, “Opening Old Wounds,” a sure sign that their yearly reminder of the church’s founding would be retold from the pulpit. This is a story that they all know better than the story of Adam and Eve and it is verses more relevant to them. This bit of unorthodox scripture tells the story of their ultimate demise, and their ultimate salvation.

“It was here that settlers used to gather in a sod and wood shack and pray for the day that they would have a real church, a handsomely built church that would accurately reflect their love for God in its architecture. And as they were praying, a man, shorn of head and brown of robes, entered their midst. He called himself Brother Francis. And he told them that he would build the church they dreamed of. If only they believed in him.

“They had no course but to believe in him. Building materials were sparse and the congregation was poor. He told them that he would build a grand church from the wood of the forests around them, carve the timbers into splendid seraphs of wonder, like fine words. And for forty days and forty nights he worked, without assistance, building the church we stand in today. And when the congregation saw the finished church, they gasped, some so overcome they lost their senses and collapsed under the influence of the beauty shone around about them. This was the most magnificent structure they had ever seen. Some swore that Joseph had been the architect and as they prayed to the Blessed Virgin, Brother Francis stood before them. He cast aside his robes to reveal a throbbing mass of red, veined skin. His feet were cloven. His ears, pointed. His tail was aimed towards Heaven, but it was clear his mission came from down below.”

No matter how many times they have heard this, the congregation suffers a collective shudder. It is still awfully hard for them to realize that though they were brought up on Christ’s love, they have ultimately been raised on Satan’s hate.

“He proclaimed that the congregation’s souls had been taken, wrested by Satan’s hand. The church they were admiring was the work of Satan. But as the Devil was about to take all the Believers down into Hell, the hand of God swept down and collected the Demon into his palm, hurling him back into the fiery depths of Hell.”

The minister briefly turns ghostly pale as he peers out at the congregation. They are all so hopeful, their lives, their souls, hinging on his every word.

“The night of Brother Francis’ transformation, a vision of St. Catherine appeared to each and every one of the members of the church. She told them that they would be saved. That Satan would not prevail and he would be defeated. However, he would try to make another appearance. There would be signs. The opening, closed by the hand of God, would blister and erupt. And then, a Demon and the Protector of Humanity would ally. Satan’s efforts would be thwarted by the sacrifice of a young woman. ‘The Slayer and a demon shall combine and raise for you a savior.’ That being, born from the loins of the Slayer, sired by the blood of a demon, shall be cast into the void, forever sealing off the fires of hell, insuring peace and our promise of Heaven.”

Samantha Singleton clutches her son’s hand. Travis remains fixed in his seat, trying to gulp air that his lungs cannot inhale. The air around him is stagnant and old, like that inside of a crypt. He is remembering Dawn’s words from the night before, over the pay phone outside the birthing room. “Buffy had a baby!” He had to tell his mother. He had to. Because if he didn’t, she would find out somehow and she would be angry about being told second hand. Why does he fear her? He his reminded why when he sees the revelation of her teeth through a grinning mouth as she clutches his hand tighter and tighter and he sees his father bend his head against prayerful palms.

Because she’s his mother.

“Today we give thanks to Buffy Summers and her child, born at 9:47 last night,” Reverend Estey continues. “We give thanks to her sacrifice. We give thanks to her child. We give thanks that Ours is a forgiving God and today we praise Him. The Word of the Lord…”

“Thanks be to God,” the congregation responds.

At this time, the child is having his first Scooby meeting.

No matter how unfathomable it may be to Xander, Anya, Tara, Willow and Giles that the child they are seeing is Spike and Buffy’s, they cannot deny the child’s parentage when viewing the skiff of blond hair across the veined scalp or the blue eyes revealed between puckered eyelids. This is Spike’s child.

This is the son of the Slayer and her vampire lover.

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