Chapter 3: The Doors of Perception

The minute they had Giles out the door, jet-lagged and headed for some motel, Dawn knew they were gonna get it.

As she edged to escape up the stairs, Spike tried to slide through the front door behind Giles except Buffy shoved the door shut and set her back against it, glaring. He innocently displayed his cigarette pack as excuse to be out in the chill where Buffy wouldn't want to follow. When that plainly didn't win him any Buffy points, he shrugged and turned back down the hall to escape in the other direction, onto the back porch.

"We talk. Now. And yes, that means you too, Dawnie," Buffy snapped when Dawn pointed a Who, me? finger at her own chest. Buffy's implacable finger pointed toward the front room. Dawn and Spike obeyed it glumly, both of them sitting on the floor: penitents waiting for just chastisement.

"It wasn't my fault," Dawn protested at once. "I didn't know, and still don't. I just didn't want to get boxed in. I won't contact the Lady, and you can't make me!"

Pacing in the middle of the room, Buffy shot her a dire glance. "You're next." She halted in front of Spike, taking a wide-legged stance, arms furiously folded to keep herself from punching him out, then and there. "You lied. To Giles, and therefore to me. Giles, maybe that's one thing. But you don't lie to me. Never."

"Couldn't know he'd show up on your doorstep, now could I? Caught me on the bounce, like. Thought I could put him off and that would be the end of it. With him right here in my face, nothing for it but to keep on, innit? Wasn't to know he'd been bloody spying on me, was I?" Spike still sounded aggrieved about that, as if Giles' sneakiness surpassing his own was a mortal insult.

"Spike. You. Lied. To. Me."

"Not exactly, no, I didn't! Didn't actually know, did I?" Spike defended himself, but halfheartedly, fiddling with an unlit cigarette, walking it up and down between his fingers. The soul was probably getting after him, Dawn surmised.

"If you didn't know, how did you guess?" Buffy demanded, tapping a slipper toe.

Dawn accused, "You're gonna hit. If you start hitting each other, I'm out of here. And if you break the new front window, Xander will be sooo pissed! Go have it out in the basement, why don't you?"

Seeming to think that an idea with merit, Spike started to stand. Buffy clapped hands onto his shoulders and pushed him down again. Spike looked up at her quizzically: they all knew what their fights led into, that sometimes rattled the walls--before, during, and after.

Cheeks flushing, Buffy backed until she hit the couch and flopped to a seat there--safely distant from the temptation of hitting.

Willow, who'd been hovering by door arch, blurted, "This is private. I'll just--"

"If Giles is in it, and Ethan fricking Rayne, we're all in it. Sit." Buffy pointed imperiously at the straight-back chair, and Willow meekly settled there. Nobody much wanted to argue with General Buffy when she had her rant on.

Looking back to Spike, Buffy ordered, "Tell me what you should have told me from the beginning. All of it."

Spike sighed and slid the cigarette back into the pack and the pack into the pocket of the button-down. "Well, fact is, I didn't even guess. It was something that Rayne said himself, ranting on about getting his own back on Rupert. By way of revenge."

"Revenge for what?"

"For turning him over to those Initiative bastards. And then forgetting about him, seemed like. Three years, they had him, or so he said. Had a pretty bad time of it. No surprise there, of course...."

Dawn thought Spike had a bit of a soft spot toward anyone who hated the Initiative nearly as much as he did, had likewise suffered at their hands. Though not to the point he was all boo-hoo about Rayne's current situation, of course: that altruistic, Spike wasn't. Despite the soul, beyond immediate family (herself and Buffy), friends (Willow, likely Anya, and the handful of remaining SITs), and their satellite connections (like Xander), Spike was pretty much ruthless and careless as ever.

(Mike fit in there somewhere, and probably Giles; but Dawn wasn't sure how and dismissed the issue.)

And it wasn't as if he didn't have good reason to hate and despise Rayne on his own account--the mage had bewitched and separated him from Buffy, brought on another bad siege of craziness, and hurt Dawn and meant to hurt her worse in an attempt to reopen the Hellmouth, just a couple of weeks back. Spike didn't forget or forgive things like that. His sympathies were difficult to arouse; but once he'd accepted you, you were in for keeps. His anger, a lot easier to rouse, was also enduring. All you had to do was remember his century plus of mutual animosity with Angel to know that.

"Anyway," Spike continued, "he said, Rayne did, that first thing he'd do when he got the Hellmouth open again was shove Rupert through to someplace uncongenial. He named Quor'toth. Then, there at the last of it, he yelled that he wouldn't really have done it. I thought, after, maybe he knew. Maybe at the last, he made out where he was going. And it's the sort of thing the Lady would do: make his word his punishment. Symmetrical, like." Spike turned a hand in a sort-of shrug. "So I started looking. Trying to figure if it was more or less likely a Chaos Mage could work a Chaos Realm so as to get back. Figuring what to do, if he did. Then Rupert called, and I didn't want to give him any encouragement. 'Cause I knew if I told him, he'd want to get Bit into it, and likely you. Besides me, of course. Red, you too, maybe. On account of the only ways in being sorcerous."

"And there are no ways out," Willow murmured thoughtfully, and Spike bobbed his head in confirmation.

"Far as I've been able to tell. Fairly famous for that, actually. And certain sure there's nobody here we'd want to shoot off there, can't come back, no point to it. Unless Rupert's daft enough to want to go himself, keep his...whatever Rayne is to him...company there. Or Harris. Wouldn't miss him a bit."

Willow warned, "Watch it, Mister!" and Spike smirked unrepentantly.

But it wasn't a serious suggestion, and they all knew that.

After a silence, Buffy said to Spike, "You were trying to protect us."

Spike nodded. "Us. And what we have. Apocalypse, that's one thing--everything's at risk then and we do whatever we have to, to get through it. Get it done. But I don't subscribe to that level of risk just because Rupert's got the guilts for past oversights or lonesome for his other half, now he's finally got rid of him. Too bad for him, but s'not ours to see to, any way I can figure."

Another silence, as Buffy thought it out. Finally she said, "And that's all of it? All the pieces?"

"Yeah," Spike lied, lifting a clear, untroubled countenance. "As far as I've got so far. Don't want nothing to do with it. Because there's nothing of use to do."

Dawn tried not to squirm too obviously. Although she didn't know full details, tonight wasn't the first time she'd heard of Quor'toth. Months ago, in the bad time before they'd shut out the First, Spike had named it. The time when Angel had been here, large and in charge, and in an uncharacteristic fit of sympathy, Spike had inquired about helping him with a small problem. Very small problem--an infant son kidnapped away there. Into Quor'toth.

Dawn had shut down that idea fast and hard then and didn't like it any better now. It would have involved her importuning, uninvited, her larger self, who above all things didn't like being meddled with. Any attempt at coercion was a gilt-edged invitation to disaster and a likely termination of the inconvenient Dawn. Likely Spike, too, since he wouldn't let her go into something like that on her own even if she'd been willing, which she was most extremely not.

Spike had yielded only the first turn of the knot and was plainly prepared to go on lying like a trouper to avoid giving Buffy any reason to yank and undo the rest. The prospect of doing the same made Dawn feel all itchy and uncomfortable. So she invoked the sovereign remedy for awkward situations: blurting, "I have to go to the bathroom," she escaped upstairs at a dead run.

**********

As Spike and Buffy were talking quietly, Willow was thinking.

To her, the problem of Quor'toth was mainly a puzzle and a challenge--like the ultimate locked room mystery. She'd never taken particular interest in portals or other dimensions, too busy trying to understand, moderate, and control her powers to want to venture far from home and known forces, familiar parameters. Her stint with the coven in Devon had been forced on her, pretty much. Although she'd accepted that she needed the supervision and strict rules, she'd been desperately homesick the whole time.

She'd never created a portal or traveled through one.

Just the same, she didn't have to twirl and tug at the elements of the puzzle very long before coming up with a different approach and perhaps an answer.

She considered telling Spike privately--let him decide what to do or not do with it. But that notion was entertained only for a moment before being discarded. She didn't want to be in the position of having to keep things from Buffy...or Giles, for that matter. She imagined his situation as being like her learning an estranged Tara had been consigned to a hell dimension and was being tortured there. The imperative to rescue, to do something, would have been overwhelming. If she'd learned someone had kept from her something that would have let her end that torment, she never would have forgiven them, no matter how pure and well-intentioned their motives. Would have quite likely gone all black-eyed, veiny, and vengeful on them: she was uneasily aware of how close that My will be done mindset was, even now.

So, no. Clearing her throat, she said, "Guys? There might be a way."

"To get into Quor'toth and then back out again?" Buffy asked. Spike was looking around at Willow too, conspicuously silent. Reading his lack of enthusiasm, Willow made an aimless gesture. "Doesn't mean you have to actually do anything about it, but I think you should know all your options before we have to deal with Giles again."

Bright-eyed and interested, Buffy asked, "So? What is it?"

"Basically, portals are for people. Human people," Willow clarified. "Demons tend to use natural rifts, like the Hellmouth, because demons are more...singular. Focused. Not all-purpose, like humans. Anyway, I was thinking--"

"Cut to the chase, Red."

"Yeah, all right. Astral travel. Manifestation on the aetherial plane. I bet, with your strong aura, you could do it, Spike. Your astral body is probably at least as coherent--pretty much the same energies, after all. And there's your soul-tie to Dawn, to keep you anchored and maybe draw you back, if we had to. Whatever you found there wouldn't be likely affect you, especially not in your astral body--not even fullscale sun, fire, deep water. Being immaterial, it couldn't even be staked. You could have a look around, then we'd reel you in again. After all, we don't actually know if Rayne is even there. It would be good to be certain of that before we even consider anything more fullscale." Willow looked at them hopefully, waiting for their reactions.

Spike got up and started stalking away toward the back porch.

"I'd go too," Buffy offered, and that stopped him, made him turn.

Pointing at Buffy, Spike said, "You'll do no such of a thing."

Buffy was up and on her feet, too. "Since when do you tell me what I can take on and what I can't?"

"Since now. Anyway, I'm not going, so it's dumb arguing about it. S'not our concern. That's the whole point!"

"No, the whole point is that Giles needs our help, and we owe him, Spike. He dropped everything to come and help get you away from Rayne. We couldn't have done it otherwise. We all owe him: Willow, too. When he comes looking for help, I'm not gonna turn him away. So we go and take a look: how bad can that be?"

Willow cut in uncomfortably, "Buffy, Spike's right. Sure, you have the super strength and quick reflexes, the super endurance and the fast healing going for you. All the Slayer attributes. But none of that extends to your astral emanation. Your aura is filmy and it has big holes and ragged patches. Even a moderate barrier would pull you to pieces. And if you got into trouble, we'd have no way of reeling you back in. You're not connected to anything the way Spike's connected to Dawn. Sorry, but it's true."

Buffy was making with the sad puppy eyes and trembling lower lip. "I have aura mange? And nobody told me?"

Predictably, Spike melted, went and held her. "Love, you've died twice. Been pulled out of heaven once. Things like that, they leave their mark, even if it's not one that shows in a mirror. You never had to work getting the Slayer part of you all connected to the Buffy part and it's not a smooth fit."

"I have aura split ends?" Buffy mourned.

"Just not what you're cut out for, love. Please." Hugging her closer, Spike shut his eyes, laying his cheek on her hair. "Please don't grieve yourself over such a thing--"

"But we're a team, we go together, I couldn't bear being left behind--"

"Hush. An' I couldn't bear-- Look. All right: if you promise to stay, I'll go, like Red says. Try it, anyway. Not gonna do it otherwise--not for no persuasion. So you got what you wanted, each of us taking on the part we're best at. Nothing fragile about a vamp, except maybe in the head. Always send a vamp in first, advance scout, test out what opposition you're facing so you can choose the best way to meet it. Only common sense, innit? And doesn't make no sense otherwise. Hush, now. You got your way."

"You've been played, Spike," Willow mentioned drily.

"Doesn't signify. Things are how they are, no matter whether I like it or not. So, love." Leaning a little away, Spike tilted up Buffy's chin with thumb and forefinger, then put a quick, soft kiss on her lips with the ease and precision of the utterly familiar. "We gonna do this thing? We got a bargain here?"

Buffy's answer was to rise onto her toes and kiss him back as though it were a wrestling move or one of the lesser known martial arts.

Willow figured that was her cue to exit, start researching methods and safeguards. In the door arch, she turned for a moment, observing. Their entwined auras were huge, completely filling the room, shivering golden with flares of deep tantric red. No telling where one began and the other ended.

With a sigh that was only a little envious, Willow went on to begin her research.

**********

Once Spike had decided to do something, he was impatient to begin and could seldom be prevented from beginning, right then and there. But the first experiment was to be tiny training-wheels only, Dawn gathered: to see if Spike could manifest and inhabit his astral body, venturing no farther than the borders of Sunnydale.

All the same, Willow judged it prudent to have Dawn present in case Spike needed help finding his way back.

By midnight, they were ready to begin.

Yawning, Dawn looked on as Spike stretched out on the couch, far too jittery to relax, Buffy kneeling on the floor and holding his hand. Willow had a ceramic smudge pot fuming on the floor. The smoke made Dawn sneeze and her eyes prickle.

Spike jerked upright to direct Buffy, "'F this goes wrong, don't tell Rupert we even tried, all right?"

Turning to look over her shoulder, Buffy asked Willow, "Are you sure I can't go along? It's only Sunnydale, after all."

Spike snapped, "Sure, with rifts and leftover spells everyplace waiting to suck you in like blowers in a funhouse. Not a chance!"

Buffy objected, "Blowers blow. They don't suck."

"No matter. You're not going. You promised,"

"But that was Quor'toth: this is home!"

Willow interrupted their bickering, thrusting a cup at Spike. "Lie down. Drink this. Relax!"

"'F I lie down, can't drink it," Spike grumbled, but chugged the contents of the mug in two deep swallows. There was barely time for Buffy to catch the mug before Spike dropped slack on the couch, his eyes unfocused.

Placing spread fingers on his forehead, Willow remarked apologetically, "A better mage wouldn't need a potion. But Spike doesn't meditate, and vamps are so hard to influence magically anyway, have to practically hit 'em with a hammer but not really, but otherwise we could be all night before we could even get started--"

"Will," said Buffy tightly, setting the mug aside with her free hand. "Get on with it."

"Right." Closing her eyes briefly, Willow muttered a few words, and Spike's eyes shut. She waited a few minutes, then leaned in close. "Spike. Listen. Hear my voice. You're anchored here, safe. Feel your aura. Spread it now, as wide as you can." Her own eyes vague, Willow looked around, obviously checking, then returned her attention to Spike. "That's good. Feel it extended, aware of the room, and us, and the night. It's not something strange, it's you. Feel the wards around the house that keep out anything with ill intent. All safe here. Safe to let go. Your aura is a part of you, you know that, you can feel that. Bring it to a shape that feels good to you. Feels easy and comfortable." Willow paused for another vague-eyed check. "Good. Now go into it."

Dawn felt a wrenching something within and made a strangled gulp of distress.

"Dawnie?" asked Willow anxiously.

Whatever had changed, steadied--the soul connection, Dawn guessed. Different, attenuated, but still there. And then a yank--like what she felt when Spike opened a rift and went through alone.

"Dawnie?" Willow asked again, as on the couch Spike went game-faced, snarling--shifting restlessly as if trying to awaken. Buffy and Willow both pounced on him, Buffy holding tight, kissing and petting his changed face, Willow muttering words and tapping him at the magically receptive points of forehead, eyes, heart, groin. He surged up, then subsided, lapsing back into the trance but still game-faced, still making grumbling, growling sounds of discontent.

"What?" Buffy asked Willow, both of them leaning away, leaving off the efforts to calm and constrain.

"I don't know."

"Is he all right?"

Dawn put in listlessly, "He's gone."

"What do you mean, gone?" Buffy wanted to know.

The drowsy fumes of the smudge made Dawn's head swim. All at once, she was terribly tired. She curled up on the floor, her head pillowed on an arm, and was instantly asleep.

The agreement was that on this trial run, Spike was only to stay away an hour or so: long enough to get accustomed to inhabiting his astral body, learning how to direct it, how to interpret its perceptions.

When Dawn awoke, the smudge was cold, the front room was full of indirect morning light, and Willow and Buffy were both asleep, leaned awkwardly on the couch--Buffy at the head, Willow at the foot. And Spike was still in game-face, head twitching as though in the throes of dreams of slaughter and mayhem.

Full light, out. Couldn't be good, might be bad.

Scuffing on her knees, rubbing her eyes, Dawn moved to the couch and closed her hands around Spike's left arm, that was hers because of the spiral green tattoo he'd had marked there, that signified Dawn. Nothing magical, just the outward representation of the connection between them, but with its own power because of the meaning with which they invested it.

"Spike. Come home now. Come back, it's daylight. Time to come home and rest, lair up quiet in the safe dark." Trying to feel the inward connection, pull on the immaterial tether, Dawn kept calling him as first Buffy, then Willow, roused all full of cricks and stiffness and tried in various ways to add to the summoning.

After about fifteen minutes Dawn felt a sudden shift within and knew Spike was back. Game face was smoothed away. But he still seemed entranced--eyes wide and amazed, mouth slightly open, completely still and seemingly unaware of them, no matter what any of them did to try to fully awaken him.

Since he didn't seem hurt or in any distress, they finally left him to attend to bathroom breaks and breakfast. Distractedly crunching cereal, Willow was arguing with herself about the advisability of peeking into his head, just a little, only for a second, hardly at all, in spite of his unambiguous order that she do no such thing, but these were different circumstances, and--

Dawn carried her plate of toaster pastries into the front room, but found Spike gone. Oops! She checked the den, then left her plate there and dashed for the basement, calling an alert as she passed the kitchen so Willow and Buffy scattered to hunt, too. He wasn't in any of the shadowed corners of the basement, so Dawn charged up the stairs again--and found him wedged small in the corner under the upstairs staircase--a windowless triangular space where absolutely no light natural could reach.

Calling, "Found him!" Dawn went down on her knees, to meet his eyes on a level. "Spike, are you OK? Just tell me you're OK, and we'll leave you alone, if that's what you want.... Spike?"

She'd never seen him look like this. The only word that came to her was rapturous and the connected words after: enraptured; rapt. As if, in his excursion in spectral form, he'd seen something, done something, been something that'd taken him completely out of himself and from which, even back within his body, he couldn't disengage. Couldn't even want to: his eyes, when they flicked to her, were full of happiness and delight. He looked indefinably younger and full of joy, and lifted a hand to her, pulling her down to nestle against his side as though he wanted to share some revelation but hadn't yet found a way or the words. When Buffy arrived, all worried and concerned, he invited and drew her close, too, and even Willow, reluctantly pulled into the sprawled group hug on the floor. Not unpleasant but uber weird and very unSpikelike. Dawn had the feeling that if Xander had been there, Spike would have wanted to hug him too, which would have freaked Xander out completely.

Willow was already freaked. Leaning away from Spike's happy attempt to pat her face, she exclaimed worriedly, "What are we gonna tell Giles?"

**********

Buffy was annoyed, upset. First, they couldn't get Spike to talk. Then they couldn't get him to shut up. No decrease of weirdness, either way.

After a few mute hours, he started muttering disjointed phrases, about light, and stars, and crunchy grass, and a house that was so very very sad it put him in tears to even think about. Snagging one of Willow's color-coded notebooks--red, this time--and a pen, he settled on the stairs, a few steps up, alternately scribbling and staring into space. Paying Buffy less than no attention when she went up and down, veering around him; oblivious to her sitting on a higher step and hugging him close from behind.

Leaning to read over his shoulder, she found the whole page full of unpunctuated writing, some words at odd angles to one another as though he was simultaneously trying to draw a diagram and compose a linear narrative. Lots of single words rendered in caps, some circled--STARS; SINGING; SAD. They were the punctuation, standing alone, connected to nothing before or after.

It infuriated and frightened her not to be noticed. It was insupportable that he could be so obviously happy without her, completely absorbed in anything that wasn't her. She had to stifle the impulse to yank away the notebook and fling it toward the front door. Grabbing one of Spike's notebooks had once nearly had dire consequences: she wouldn't do that again.

Finally, that problem was taken care of by Spike himself: after writing, five times, sunrise, sunrise, sunrise, sunrise, sunrise, all in a descending column, he burst out, "Fuck!" and hurled the notebook so hard its wire spiral binding bent as it hit the corner of the den doorway. Gone game-faced and sudden, he grabbed onto the nearest breakable objects, the spindles of the staircase's outer railing, and started methodically cracking them out, flinging them away.

Buffy had seen him explode like this before: he'd have the whole railing down and afterward start hammering on the walls, ripping out chunks of plaster and lath, before the fury had run its course. The last time, Buffy had stayed clear, waited for it to burn out on its own. Now she was already angry with him and, for the first time in over a year, the whole house was set to rights, everything tidy and repaired. He was not entitled to go into a tantrum and bring as much of the house down as he could get at!

When he brought his arm back to hurl a spindle like a javelin at one of the narrow windows set either side of the door, Buffy grabbed his wrist, tore the spindle away, and started hitting him with it. Locking hands around her throat, Spike tipped backward, off the now rail-less part of the staircase, taking her with him.

After that, it got fast and wild as anything between them, ever. In the confined space of the hallway, they rebounded off the walls, airborne more than half the time, all leverages ferociously exploited. No semi-playful, amorous sparring here. An all-out fight, punishing and savage as anything in the bad old days. Ribs gave; bruises bloomed. The hall table was crushed to legless flinders. When he came within an inch of getting a thumb into her eye, she whirled and kicked him, full strength, in the crotch, slamming him against the opposite wall, leaving a Spike-shaped indentation in the plaster. He was down, holding himself, no more than a second before he surged up again, fangs bared, roaring. In mid-leap, he collapsed: Willow, on the staircase, had made a gesture, said a Word. Everything went still.

Descending the stairs a careful step at a time, holding the wobbly cracked-loose railing, pale and wobbly-looking herself, Willow said in a voice about an octave above normal, "Always knew I'd need that sometime. I don't care if he is pissed at me: it was an emergency! Wasn't it, Buffy? An emergency?"

Breathing hard, Buffy was reining in the impulse to kick him in the head. Several times. Hard. She turned around and slammed her fist into the door of the hall closet. It cracked on a diagonal and the top piece fell off. She glared at it stupidly, trying to back off, inside, from full fight mode. Shuddering and dry-mouthed with adrenaline.

"Will, why's he like this?"

Seating herself on the bottom step, Willow gestured helplessly. "I don't know. I never heard of a vampire attempting astral travel before. But his aura's so strong and coherent, he transferred into it all right, there shouldn't have been any problem--"

"Could something have got at him out there?" Sleepily mussed and in flannel PJs, Dawn was leaning hesitantly over the drooping section of railing. "Nasties on the astral plane?"

"I don't know, Dawnie," Willow replied. "We'll have to wait until he gets back to normal and can tell us."

Stepping carefully around Willow, Dawn descended to pick up the broken-backed red notebook, soberly scanning the writing. As Buffy considered what Spike could be tied down to that he couldn't crack and liberate himself from, since the manacles and chains were long gone, Dawn remarked, "Well, at least this tells why he was gone so long." When they both stared at her blankly, she lifted the notebook as though the conclusion should be self-evident. "He stayed to watch the sunrise."

That made no sense: every instinct a vamp had was to escape, hide from the sunrise. Buffy shook the thought away. "Dawn, get Mike over here. ASAP."

As Dawn scampered back upstairs for her cellphone, commenting, "He can come through the tunnel, but he's real hard to wake up, this time of day," Buffy made up her mind and headed for the phone on the weapons chest: they were gonna have to bring Giles in on this, no option.

**********

After lunch they convened in the basement, surrounding the steel-framed school desk-chair Spike was almost too thoroughly tied into. Dawn had given Mike her taser in the certainty he'd use it without compunction if they needed to stop Spike in his tracks again. What with the trance spell and then the stop spell, Willow had declared herself all spelled out for the time being, and Buffy didn't want to risk engaging in another Spike-Buffy go-round for fear of Grievous Bodily Harm on one side or the other. Hence Mike, designated for guard duty.

Evidence of the last go-round was plain--Buffy had sore, swollen knuckles and her ribs bound, preferring to stand; Spike had two gorgeous black eyes, possibly a broken nose, and at least a broken arm, perhaps internal injuries. Nobody had asked what he preferred.

Awake, aware, Spike slouched despondently in the chair, legs out before him, crossed at the ankles. Hints of game-face came and went in his face like shadows. His eyes hadn't quite turned but seemed to have settled on a half-lidded, muddy green.

Dawn approached him tentatively, trying to avoid upsetting him, which was probably impossible anyway at this point. "Spike? Are you OK now? Are you...yourself?"

Spike's answer was a surprisingly bitter laugh and a contorted face and harsh breathing, fighting off tears. Finally he said, "Yeah, whatever that's worth."

"You didn't do much damage," Buffy offered, standing carefully straight.

"But some," Spike replied flatly, awaiting confirmation.

"Some," Buffy admitted. "What set you off?"

"Well, I didn't know it was you, did I?" Spike burst out, as though that were all the explanation needed. "Couldn't hold onto it, couldn't make it go into words, dragged back to the fucking demon and it all furious that I'd got away from it even for that little while--"

Dawn interrupted the rant, "Seven hours, Spike. You were gone for over seven hours."

He finally looked at her, saw her. Focused on her, what she'd said. Frowning, puzzled, responding, "If you say so, Bit. Didn't seem but the whirl of an instant, all of it coming in, and then the light growing and the sun coming, the shining drops on every leaf of grass, so wonderful...."

With sudden insight, recalling what he'd once told her, Dawn said, "It was like being turned, wasn't it." She didn't need an answer. She simply knew. And apparently when he'd shifted into his astral body, the demon had been left behind--the first time he'd been free of it for over a century. "Everything shining and new, without taint, without shadow," she hypothesized softly.

"Oh, shadows aplenty," Spike contradicted. "Hurt and wrong and death everywhere. But I was apart from it, could see it plain. And also birth, the new life shining like stars, and the stars too, so clean, so far away...." His voice had become a rapt whisper. "And then the miracle, the rising sun, pink and golden...." Louder, furious again, he declared, "An' I can't keep it. Can't hold it, what it was. Can barely recall what it felt like, how it seemed. An' it wouldn't go into words, I don't have the words to hold even a bit of it. It's wasted on me, what I am." On the school chair's arms, the narrow one and the broader desk one, his hands were clenching and unclenching in despair and frustration of what he couldn't hold or communicate well enough even to himself.

From the rear of the group, where he'd been quiet and reserved all this while, seeming rather abashed that Spike had taken on this trial willingly to a purpose that was not his own, Giles quoted quietly, "'If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite.'"

"'And Holy,'" Spike agreed, on a sigh, looking earnestly past Buffy at Giles who maybe understood. "Yeah. Something like that, I guess. Can't hold onto it, but just for a bit, it was. Or seemed so. But I'm such a fucking hopeless poet, the words wouldn't come--!" He slammed his hands on the chair arms (the broken bone already aligned and nearly healed, Dawn deduced), and Mike took a step nearer, but Spike merely slumped again.

"For some things," said Giles gently, "there are no words."

"But there are!" Spike protested hotly. "There has to be! How can you know it if you can't fucking say it? The thing itself or the shape around it, all luminous-like, meaning rising from it as thick as smoke but shining, everything shining--!" Choking himself off again, Spike turned his head, chin hard against his shoulder. "An' then to come back, be pulled back to this, to what I was...."

"Was the soul with you there?" Giles inquired. "Where you were? As you were?"

"Dunno. S'pose so. Hardly know, now. Wasn't considering myself. Not with all that there, all so plain, so wondrous."

"You forget," Buffy said suddenly, gaze fixed on a point high on the wall. "Remember, maybe, what you felt...but not what it was. I was so sick and hopeless, being dragged away from that, back to this. Losing what had been so simple and right and plain, for everything complicated, all the jagged edges, the violent light...." Kneeling stiffly by the chair, she lifted a hand to the side of Spike's face. "If it's anything like that, Spike, you mustn't ever do this again. Not if it's like losing heaven."

Spike looked at her then as he'd looked at Giles before--hopeful, agonized, seeking some correspondence to the literally unspeakable he couldn't entirely remember or forget.

In a low, apologetic voice, Willow commented, "It isn't, though. Not heaven. Only the astral plane, where things take on their true appearances. Their essential nature. I've seen it, and it's not so much. To me, it wasn't. Of course, I hadn't left a demon, an animus, behind that otherwise moderated everything for me. I didn't have a soul, freshly freed, expanding in joyous awe to at last see things perfectly plain in their spiritual essences. I wasn't crazy-desperate, afterward, to try to stuff it into words." She shrugged and spread her hands. "We see only what we can see, I guess. I was all busy, cool, observy gal, totally locked on finishing my errand, whatever it was. Warding the house, or trying to locate and determine influence, or something basically mundane like that. I wasn't wide open to it, waiting to be struck by the lightning of a visionary revelation."

"Wasted on me," Spike muttered again. "Can't even hold onto anything but a few scraps of shell, but the bird's flown. The sunrise, it was golden and pink and indigo, the glory rising, and I knew it all, felt it all.... But couldn't hold on. An' my demon, s'telling me it was nothing, nothing like that exists, s'not but a glamour and a fake when about the only thing I know about it for certain is that it was true."

"Truth," Giles said, "is best handled in small doses." Going to the chair, he set a slow, careful hand on Spike's shoulder. "That you undertook the Siege Perilous on my account is beyond thanks; and it's wounded you to the heart. Buffy's right: you must not attempt this again. Not and expect to find peace afterward. Even though I didn't ask it, it's too much to ask. I must find some other way."

"Didn't do it for you," Spike responded sullenly. "Done it so Buffy would leave off about it, and so she wouldn't go barging into it with her skin off. She's not suited for such. She's not had the practice I've had, being crazy, seeing everything fifteen ways at once and two thirds of it fake, trying to force it into sense. And 'f you've given over your daft plan of getting that Rayne out of a place there's no getting out from, we'll give you three rousing cheers as we boot you out the door and wish you Godspeed to wherever's not here."

Since Spike seemed about normal again, ill-tempered and ungracious, Buffy apparently felt it was safe to start undoing his bonds.

**********

When it was dark enough, Spike retreated to the back porch to have a cigarette. It wasn't long before he felt Dawn come out behind him, accusing, "You're brooding."

"Am not. No such thing."

"Are too. You're Broody McBroodypants."

"And what would you know about it, Miss I-Have-No-Hips?"

"That's mean. Also low. And people with really elevated tastes don't care about hips. The true connoisseur goes for the enticing smell. Or so I hear," Dawn riposted glumly. "And, moreover, no one but the utterly crass and insensitive would follow trashing the downstairs hall with loudly breaking a bed with a make-up boinkfest."

Spike had to smile, pensively regarding the coal of his cigarette. "Slayer healing, that's a fine thing," he responded obliquely.

"Doesn't beat vamp acrobatics," Dawn stated loyally. "Bet you can even lift that arm now."

Spike lifted the healing arm--still a bit sore, but serviceable--to show yes, he could. Dawn plunked onto the step next to him in the gap thus provided. She leaned in, so he did the necessary: lowering the arm, holding her close. Like Buffy, she was hot as a little furnace. The contact felt good, a living contrast to the isolated place in his mind where he was no more than a passing consciousness contemplating more beauty than he could bear, more significance than he could take in.

That was all he had left--the impact on him, not the thing itself at all. Gold, pink, indigo. The splendid light, powerful and gentle, and he not afraid at all, gazing at the glory, the deadly forbidden.

"You're doing it again. Zoning out."

"Am not. Just thinking. Because I'm a thoughtful sort of chap." Though Dawn was wearing a heavy fleece hoodie, she was shivering. "Here, you should get back in. Catch your death, blood all thin from the summerlands."

He didn't lift his arm, and she didn't move to go.

"My blood's perfectly fine, thank you. I have it on good authority. Although you're not much use as a toaster, you make an excellent windbreak. Summerlands. I'll forego the pun and just put on imploring face," (which evidently involved rounding her eyes huge, raising her eyebrows, and tilting her head to maybe an angle of 30 degrees) "and say, 'What's that, Spike?'"

"Oh, a tale. From when I was a lad. Nurse used to say. That there was an island to westward someplace, hard to find on account of the fogs that were always there, to shield it, like. Where it was always summer, and the good things to eat, and the music. Sailors heard the music and it sent them mad, jumping over the side and swimming until they drowned. Or some washed up on the shore, after a storm, maybe, and some of them got home again after awhile. But they were never content, always listening for that music. Wandering around pale and gaunt, searching for it, always unsatisfied." Spike hitched the shoulder nearest her in a small shrug. "Fairyland, more or less."

"Why did you need a nurse?" Dawn asked. "Were you sick?"

"Sometimes. Not a sound pair of lungs in the lot of us. How my two sisters were taken.... But no, not how you mean. When I was a lad, families with the dosh for it had servants. Cook, butler, housemaid, scullery maid, ladies' maid, groom for the carriage, and considerable more for the higher folk. For children too young to be sent away to school, there'd be a nurse, maybe a tutor or two. Had a nurse, couple of tutors, there for awhile."

"Oh." Dawn thought about it for a few minutes, then said, "Well, you've got the pale and gaunt down cold. You want to get back to it, don't you. Quite a lot."

"Ain't done it yet," Spike replied lightly, and patted her head with his off hand. "Arrow's not short of the mark, though," he admitted. "But thing about the Summerlands, it comes at the price of all you have. Broke enough furniture for one day, I expect. Don't want to sacrifice any more, just 'cause my demon, it's all out of sorts that I slipped that tether for awhile. Left it behind. Flew free."

He thought she'd ask how it had been, to have the demon absent and the soul alone centering him. And he'd have answered "Very strange." But she didn't ask that.

Instead, she asked acutely, "When were you a poet?"

"Never. Always. The sort who'd go all trembly 'cause he'd seen a dewdrop perched on the tip of a blade of grass. You know the sort."

"Like sort of a proto-geek," Dawn theorized.

"Worse. Sort that chases after an Ideal Beauty bare instead of getting down to a good, hard fuck." Spike drew in a long breath. "Never mind that, Bit. Shouldn't say things like that to you. I'm a bit off."

"I'd noticed," Dawn responded dryly. "You don't like the poet much. Why? Wasn't he nice?"

"Oh, very nice. Nice enough to gag a pig."

"Uber-nice."

"At least that. Thought I'd smothered him out of me long since. But last night...."

"--he was back."

"Yeah. Seems like." Pitching the butt-end of one cigarette, Spike morosely lit another. "Terrible waste of the space. Give me some time, I'll starve him out again. Demon can't abide him one bit. Things all roiled up inside." With the cigarette hand, he made a circling motion over his chest. "Since the soul, after the crazy, had a kind of truce in there. Not no more."

"The demon wants to prove it owns everything, runs everything."

"Well, it's what's kept me going all this while. Tending the works, wanting only a tithe of blood for its pay. Doesn't like bein' left alone in an empty house, so to say. Expect it's entitled to be mad. But while it's all furious, and taking every chance to show it runs things, I'm somewhat on edge and...distracted."

"No shit, Sherlock. Did you apologize to Buffy, about the hall and the railing?"

Spike bent his head, smiling small. "After a fashion."

"Ahuh. And that broke the bed."

"About that, yeah. Not much of a bed anyways. Needed replacing. Way too small for a grown girl like her, with...company."

"Acrobatic company. Energetic, even. Enthusiastic."

"I expect. That too. Though she does her share, with the enthusiastic. Or best I can persuade her to. Sorry, Bit. Shouldn't get into that. Things get ahead of me, past me just now."

"Because you're distracted," Dawn formulated.

"Yeah."

"And brooding."

"No! Well, maybe a little. Around the edges."

"Spike," Dawn began seriously, pursuing a related thought, "don't you think somebody should tell--"

"No."

"--Giles about what else is in Quor'toth? Or even--"

"No. That book's shut now. I came, I tried, I totally fucked it up. End of story. No need to hurt Buffy with the rest of it."

"Hurt Buffy?"

"Who's taking my name in vain?" Buffy enquired cheerfully, leaning out the kitchen door behind them. When nobody replied, she stepped out onto the porch, dutifully shutting the door to conserve the expensive heat. "I've interrupted something. Don't bother denying it--I can tell. I'm a minor expert on the different flavors of awkward silence I can produce. Spike, I know you've been busy brooding--"

Dawn barked triumphantly, "Ha!" Presumably she'd scored points with that one.

Spike said, "Afterglow, pet. Enjoying it."

"Sure, with cigarettes, outside, with Dawn and not me. Sure you were. I believe everything you say, because you're a fountain of truth. You drip truthfulness. Not! Anyway, have you seen Willow? Supper's almost ready, and I called, but nothing. Did she say anything to either of you about going out?"

"Nope," Dawn said.

"Not to me," Spike agreed. "But she was pretty knackered. Maybe she's having a lie-down. Put something aside for her, she can heat up later, maybe?"

Dawn leaned away, rearing her head back to give him an incredulous stare. "Sleep? Through that?"

Buffy's cheeks went hot. And not just her cheeks, neither. Spike admitted, "Well, there's that, I suppose. Maybe you should go tap at her door, Bit. Then look and see if she's there."

"OK, I'll do the recon." Dawn bounced to her feet and ran off inside, leaving the door ajar. Grimacing in exasperation, Buffy shut it.

As she turned, Spike began, "Now, pet, about the bed. There's the one I had run up special. Basement's just about ready for it now. Place is soundproofed, piping relocated, all set to specifications, except the bath's not been put in, need to talk to Harris about that.... Anyway, is it time to put it up? Settle in, sort of, till we figure how to fix yours, get another one, whatever you say?"

"No chains?" Buffy asked pointedly. "No manacles? Nothing bolted to the floor?"

"Still don't see what the problem was with that. But if you don't want, no. Whatever you want."

"Then I guess so. Guess we could give it a try. Lose the 'Stag at Bay,' 'Toreador Menaced by Bull,' and 'Elvis on velvet' hangings, though. They'd give me nightmares."

"It's what I could find." Spike was alarmed by another possibility. "You don't want to girly it all up, do you? Pink ruffles, an' all?"

"I think we can find some compro--"

Dawn barged out the door, flinging it back so hard it smacked against the siding. Alarm was boiling off her; her face was bloodless. Before she'd got a word out, or needed to, Spike and Buffy were both past her, going for the stairs.

Vibrant auburn hair fanned wide, Willow lay on her bedroom floor in an elaborate chalked circle--several colors employed. Blue for peace; white for focus; red for intensity and intent; green for sustenance, endurance. Some symbols Spike recognized, but he didn't need that: he knew from the first glance what this was, what it meant.

Buffy almost lunged forward, but Spike caught her arm, kept her clear of the markings. Willow had brought a pitcher of water with her into the circle. A nearly empty glass stood near her hand. Willow had prepared, sort of, for the long haul.

"Don't disturb her, love. Could make her lose the connection," Spike advised quietly.

"She's gone," Buffy stated tightly. "To look, on her own. Without saying word one to me about it. To any of us."

"Red knows what she's about. Has a good bit of power. 'M sure she figured to come back on her own, no one the wiser. Maybe she'll still do that. Be a couple-few days, anyway, before she'll start to go off." Buffy made a repulsed face; Spike took no notice, thinking. "Rupert due for supper, is he?"

"I don't know. I didn't specifically ask him. Things got a bit disrupted today, you might have noticed. I don't even know if he's still here!"

As Dawn ran in, hovering anxiously by the door, Spike told Buffy, "Call him then, why don't you. Might be he'd know if she should be taken to hospital, plugged all full of tubes, or if we should wait it out, see what happens."

After a backward glance comprised of affection, worry, and anger, Buffy ran off to find the nearest phone.

 

Chapter 4: Acala

When Dawn bounced down to stretch out full-length on the front room rug, Spike asked, "You ready?" regarding her narrowly.

"I'm fine," she responded, fluffing her hair so she wouldn't lie on it, have it pull--an habitual nighttime ritual, though it was only about nine o' clock. "Don't worry about me. You just go on and do what you do."

"I don't like it," Buffy said, pacing by the couch. "This'll be twice in one day, Spike. What if you can't get back? What if something happens? What if Dawn can't--"

Though it meant having to arrange her hair again, Dawn sprang up and hugged Buffy and somehow Spike got into it, encircling them both, all macho and protective, which was kind of cute, despite the fact that Dawn was going to protect him. To keep him focused, which she was very good at. Or even to need his protection (fat chance), which anyway would have the same effect.

And there was nothing either Buffy or Spike could say or do to prevent her, Dawn reflected smugly, rather happy to be the middle of a Spike-Buffy hug-a-thon. She felt cool and independent and determined--not afraid at all, though the astral plane was (cue creepy music) the unknown. For herself, she was afraid of things with too many legs, wasps, bees and hornets; unleashed small yappy dogs of uncertain temper; being helpless with the prospect of pain. Physical threats. By Willow's explanation and Spike's report, the astral plane contained none of these dangers. In her immaterial astral body, she should be as invulnerable as some kind of freakin' superhero, and how cool was that?

Buffy would just have to deal. She hadn't been able to contact Giles, who might already be on some trans-Atlantic flight, winging home, disappointed. Despite the fuss he'd made about going the first time, Spike took the necessity of doing what they could to recover Willow as a given, almost without comment. Dawn suspected any pretext would have done, any excuse to give in to his yearning to get back there, to have the real thing instead of just frustrating memories. Which meant she was going with, to keep him on track. It was all very simple.

Of course she hadn't the least clue how to do it. But that was merely a minor detail. She was confident that when the time came, she'd know.

The hug broke up, and hair rearrangement was accomplished. Stretched out to her right, Spike extended his left hand (her hand), as if against his better judgment: he'd said he didn't think she could follow him, and he didn't want her there. So giving her a point of contact should be bad. Contrarily, if she could and did, he wanted to keep her close. Hence the hand.

Smiling, Dawn took it, wrapping her fingers tightly into his palm, feeling his thumb lock down. She'd expected both of them to have to meditate, prepare. Instead, she felt a pull and went with it, flinging herself in the direction of the pull almost the same as when she followed Spike through a rift, except they were still in Sunnydale.

But very high up. High enough to see the entire town cupped in its valley. But not distant, either. Anywhere she turned her attention was distinct and peculiarly itself: a house on the opposite side of Revello, decrepit and peeling paint, revealed a jolly, teasing personality, its loose shutters tipped at a jaunty angle, imbued with decades of happy, if raffish, habitation. The better-kept house beside it brooded in upright disapproval like a fixed glare.

Dawn tried to understand what she saw.

Neither house looked different, and yet it did. It was like comparing a routine photo, she thought, with a painting of the same subject. A photo showed the shell; in a painting, the subject was luminous with meaning. Or like the difference between meeting a stranger and meeting a friend....

The movie theater, downtown, gave off a strange mélange of eager, innocent dreams, lust, hunger, and dread--no wonder, since it was one of the prime vamp hunting sites. In fact, the first evening show was letting out and the hunt was in progress. It was odd to see the people moving like sleepwalkers, so little aware of who and where they were, a little like watching oblivious fish school and scatter; and the half dozen or so vamps, points of emphatic dark, the sharks of this water, choosing their targets and moving in.

One of the vamps was Mike. Not game-faced yet but intent, focusing on one man and then dismissing him because he had a pungent mark, a healed vamp bite, already on his throat. Someone else's mark. Spike's! Dawn conjectured--an astonished realization. Spike's been playing catch and release!

That thought distracted her, made her wonder where Spike was. Following the pull of connection, she lifted and rose, searching, and rose higher, along the edge of a diffuse glittering fog.... It was Spike. Either he'd grown very large, or Dawn was exceedingly tiny. Maybe both.

His outline was like dust motes shifting in sunlight or like fog illuminated by a moving flashlight beam. Contours hazed into visibility--his legs, set into habitual prepared stance, lead foot and anchor foot, at rest but ready to move, a pose she'd seen him assume a thousand times, so she knew the rest of it, the set of his hips and the power waiting, balanced and coiled, low in the spine--and then faded as some new vista emerged. The spread of his shoulders. The column of neck. Finally his face, lifted and sublime: he was looking at the stars.

So Dawn had to be about the size of a gnat. That didn't bother her. What bothered her was that he'd forgotten her: utterly caught up in the hyperreality. As she had been, she acknowledged guiltily, deciding not to get on his case about it. At least not right away.

Spike? Aren't we supposed to be looking for Willow?

He blinked and leaned away, trying to focus, which was funny: apparently in his astral body, he was still farsighted. Or so accustomed to being farsighted that he imposed that on his form. Like having legs, hands, a body at all: his sense of himself, projected. Whereas she was--what?

She felt like herself but couldn't see herself. She was only a moving perspective, nothing beyond her gaze except any outward form of herself.Like a floating eyeball.

She wasn't sure if she'd said that or only thought it. She wasn't sure she could tell the difference.

Bit. You're green.

Never mind that--let's do what we came for. Who knows how much time has passed? Buffy will be having kittens!

Buffy....

She'd only succeeded in distracting Spike's attention in a different direction--back to the house on Revello, and down, and inside, to the front room where Buffy was frozen in mid-pace, one foot hanging suspended in the stopped time as Spike's avatar swooped down and swarmed all over her, and there Dawn's body was on the floor, and it was all just too weird. Some way, tiny as she was, she yanked Spike's avatar out of there back to where he'd been, so power and size weren't equivalent, and she was considerably ticked off.

Spike! For heaven's sake, focus!

Yeah. Right. Look for Willow.

What do we look for?

Dunno, do I? I expect...something like us.

Something the size of a water tower or a pea? That's helpful!

No: something...diffuse. The response was thoughtful, and Dawn quickly realized he was right. The panorama of streets, houses, stores, miscellaneous offices, a gridwork surrounding Sunnydale's abundant cemeteries, was all solid and definite, almost too detailed to take in. They were of different stuff--more fluid, reconstituting themselves in ambient energy from second to second, like the id monster inForbidden Planet.

Look for early CGI, Dawn thought, and adjusted to scan on a different frequency.

Although apt to be snagged by the minutiae of the familiar, yet unfamiliar, surround, Spike mostly stayed with her.Like a dog off the leash investigating smells, Dawn thought. Whereas she was pragmatic and purposeful. She was aware of the fairyland enchantment but it didn't resonate for her as it clearly did for him. Because she wasn't a poet, maybe; or because, inexperienced though she was, she felt this as a normal mode of being, maybe from the time the Lady had usurped Dawn's body and Dawn had been left to rusticate in the Lady's realm, bodiless, exploring the divisions and considerations into which the Lady organized her sphere of interest, the aspects of the multiverse under the Lady's influence and rule.

It wasn't nearly so demanding as steering Spike, drunk, but keeping track of his wanderings did take some of Dawn's attention. So he was the first to spot something, focus, and move to it quick as a thought.

It wasn't Willow because there were two of it: indistinct humanoid outlines, one shedding inchoate energy like a fountain, the other so dim it was barely a sketch of particles against the void.

Dawn knew the two were in conversation, communion of some sort but could feel only sadness, hopeless longing, desperate frustration.

Rupert, you seen the witch anywhere about? Spike asked.

As the solider phantom lifted its head and became recognizably Giles, the fainter phantom dissolved into the dark and was gone.

Bloody hell! Giles erupted.

So you can reach him, Spike observed. Which logically made the vanished wraith Rayne, Dawn deduced.

Barely, and only under optimal conditions, which you've just disrupted!

Dawn decided intervention was in order.

She told Giles,Willow's spelled and tranced herself and is lying in her bedroom like Snow White, sans casket and dwarves. Buffy couldn't reach you, so we came looking. Have you seen her?

Dawn? was Giles' uncertain reaction.

Yeah, Spike replied,gone all Tinkerbell, no notion why. So Quor'toth--if that's where he is--isn't so shut as the accounts claim. Traffic back and forth. On this level, anyways.

He's been haunting me for weeks, Giles replied raggedly.He's not certain where he is, but the very fact that he can't create a portal suggests Quor'toth. Primarily, he's manifested in singularly excruciating dreams. Alone, he hadn't the energy to do more. I hoped, meeting on this plane, both of us trying, we might be able to establish a more stable connection. Then you lot had to blunder in and overwhelm the rapport!

Making a lot of progress, were you? Spike inquired skeptically.All set to drag his backside through and shove it out the other end?

No, Giles admitted.And he's forbidden me to try. If a mage of his experience can't escape, he's convinced the most I'd achieve is to trap myself with him. Which might be an improvement over the present impasse. But Ethan says I only think that because I have no experience of such a place. He says it would send me barking mad, in point of fact. Spike? Giles' tone was acerbic.Since you asked, you might at least do me the courtesy of attending.

Material or immaterial, Spike didn't much do courtesy. He'd let his attention be drawn away, Dawn saw--gazing wide-eyed at the stars. But with purpose, this time. Focus. Because one was moving. Falling.

Dawn wondered if she should make a wish.

Come on, Spike directed curtly and took off, Dawn right with him, toward where the star's trajectory meant it should impact.

Dawn didn't think a star should approach screeching, but this one did. Stars didn't have tails, only comets, but this one was trailed by an energy signature whose eldritch brilliance filled half the sky. Like Giles (arriving to join them) leaking incompletely used magic, only more spectacularly. Mostly, Dawn doubted stars were afraid.

Without impact, it was among them like a cloud. Then with a flick, a change of focus, it was Willow, grabbing at them with immaterial hands, wild-eyed and wailing, "Go! Now! It's coming!"

Before her connection to Spike dragged her away to sudden breath and solidity, Dawn saw that above, a whole swatch of stars had been occluded by something vast and dark, pursuing.

**********

As the storm broke, it seemed as if the house was under occult attack. Buffy barely had time to wince at the flare and crack of lighting before the visceral boom of the thunder hit like a hard punch to the stomach. It was like being pinned down by an artillery barrage. The Weather Channel (just before the power went out) called it a freak winter storm; a few minutes later, in the dark, as Buffy scrambled for candles, hailstones began pattering, then banging, then roaring, almost drowning out the thunder. Small arms fire, Buffy thought, shakily lighting a third candle.

She'd thought she was being metaphorical until Dawn wrapped long arms around her and shrieked in her ear, "It can't get in. It can't get past the wards."

Buffy felt a flood of relief: they were back, then. Much sooner than she'd hoped, even: only a few minutes had passed. Two or three specially loud bangs of thunder, nearly simultaneous, made them both jump. In the bright-black flicker of lightings, Spike was silhouetted against the front window--game-faced, roaring. Apparently he didn't think it was a natural storm either. Before Buffy could reach him, he was off into the hall, headed cellarward, which maybe was a good idea if a tornado or two got thrown into the mix. Given the current level of bombardment, Buffy couldn't rule it out although tornados were unheard-of in any season, west of the Rockies.

Huddled together, the sisters made a sort of sack-race progress along the hall to the basement door, where they found Willow hunched into the triangular niche under the stairs, eyes tight shut, chanting. All three accounted for. Reading her the riot act for taking off like that could wait: pushing candle-holding Dawn ahead, Buffy dragged Willow, still chanting, down the basement stairs.

The freshly soundproofed basement wasn't quiet, but it cut the deafening bangs and booms by at least half. Able to think, and hear Willow chanting, Buffy ran back up the stairs to slam the door and shove the bolts home. She didn't know if that was necessary or even useful, but it made her feel better.

Descending, she saw that the other basement door--the one that led into the new escape tunnel--was ajar. Spike. Racing down the black tunnel with arms stretched wide, she crashed into Spike and the door at the far end just as it was opening. For a second they were struggling--she to shut the door, he to pull it farther open. He let go, so she won.

Setting her back against the door, she demanded, "Are you crazy? Dawn says the wards are all that's keeping it out, whatever it is. And you want to make a hole in the wards?"

She was blind as the proverbial bat, but she knew he was only about a foot away by the harsh pull of his furious breathing. All wound up and probably still in game-face, too. Teetering on the edge of another mindless explosion to vent the rage.

"For a second," he said, more growl than words. "Just a second, to get out. Shut it behind."

"So you can do what?" she challenged.

"Face the bloody wanker! 'F it wants a fight--"

"Face what? Fight what? Rain? A deluge of hailstones that would mash you flat in a second? Oh! The SUV!" Buffy hated to think what the assault of hail was doing to it, parked in the open gravel stretch off the back yard. If its alarm was going off, she couldn't hear it. Nothing she could do. She found Spike and wrapped arms about him. He was shuddering with the frustrated imperative to go out and challenge whatever was besieging them here. Totally insane. Totally Spike. "My house," Buffy said. "My rules. We sit this one out until we know what it is we're fighting. What works best against it. By the numbers: start with research. We've never faced a weather demon before, that I remember. Giles will--"

"He's still here. Someplace. Had to get back to his body, I expect: some motel or another." Spike's arms closed about her and his cheek rested against her temple: tacit acceptance of her calling him off. "'F he lasts this out, we got a lot to talk about."

Buffy filed that as a topic for another time. "You got Willow back. That's enough accomplished for one day. Come on."

They turned, her arm around his waist and his around her shoulders, to return to the upper door.

**********

As the house moaned and creaked, buffeted by gusts of wind, Spike found the custom bed's disassembled frame in a back corner. With nothing better to do, he lifted out headboard, footboard, and side pieces, and began bolting them together. Bolts and locking nuts were all handy in a box on the floor: that Harris was a methodical worker, Spike had to give him that. No wrench, though.

He found if he could snug the wood up good and tight, mitered notches meeting true, he could push the bolt through, then tighten the nut with his fingers enough to hold until it could be done properly. When he moved to the far side of the footboard, Buffy was there, holding the side rail level and ready for connecting. Nodding appreciation, Spike crouched to insert and tighten the next bolt. It was much easier with the side piece held steady and horizontal, the footboard not trying to collapse onto it.

Given what the bed was gonna be used for when the basement was free of onlookers, Spike liked that they were assembling it together. Though the frame was solid oak and therefore weighed a few hundred pounds as a unit, between them, he and Buffy could lift and walk it into position against the wall smoothly, with no effort at all.

Willow, apparently done reinforcing the wards, and Dawn (giving hand signals and supervisory advice) helped with laying the oversized foundation in place, then the mattress on top.

As soon as the mattress was down, Buffy toppled gratefully onto it crosswise, arms flung high and eyes wearily shut. Wasn't any point, then, to looking around for the bedding, so Spike launched himself and landed hard--by way of a test, like. All the joints held, and the bed barely shifted. Good enough. Buffy curled up against him, all soft in all the right places, warm all down his front, so eminently fuckable that it seemed a pity not to do her then and there, as he wanted to.

But there was Bit, clambering across the half acre of mattress to tuck in at his back; and there was the witch, slowly collapsing like a dying diva, on Buffy's far side. And there was the storm, still raging full-blast, as best he could tell. Not gonna chase Bit and the witch back upstairs, to the dark and the scary noises, while that was going on. This was sanctuary; they shared it with equal entitlement. And Buffy, she'd be scandalized if he tried to start anything with so much company....

There were also all the as-yet unspoken things a storm like this portended, none of them likely to be a whole lot of fun. That gave an extra layer of comfort and satisfaction to being together, all of them, and entirely in the body. Just the simple pleasures of quiet, the warmth of contact, safety from the deluge and pyrotechnics outside that couldn't touch them in this cozy refuge.

So on the whole, Spike was willing to be philosophical about not getting his end away, just now. This was good, too--gently holding, warmly held. Giving himself wholly over to the moment, he nuzzled into Buffy's hair, the fine scent of her, and let himself drift.

**********


No question: the SUV was trashed. All the glass was broken, sagging in crazed, limp sheets where it hadn't been blown out altogether; black streaks on the hood suggested the engine had taken a direct lightning hit; the air bag had done its thing and collapsed, entirely filling the front seat area; every part of the body was dimpled by hail. And as Buffy approached, walking carefully on the still-crunchy hailstones, she could smell leaking gasoline.

"It's history," she called despondently to Spike, who was hovering just within the morning shadow the house cast on the grass--for moral support, maybe.

"Maybe it's just sleeping," he called back, and she wheeled and gave him a glare.

"It isn't funny, Spike!"

"Sorry. So it's an ex-parrot, you figure?"

Buffy gave a flat rear tire a rancorous kick. The axle collapsed. Throwing her hands in the air, she walked back to where Spike waited. "I don't know what we're gonna do. I guess insurance will cover some of it, but what am I gonna claim? Act of God? What--"

"Don't fret, love. Not much, to get the DeSoto running again. Day or two."

Spike started to hug her but she shrugged him off, stomping a couple of paces into the full light where he couldn't follow. She didn't want to be consoled or presented with reasonable alternatives. She wanted to be upset and miserable and worried about the logistics of transporting groceries. She wanted to contemplate patrolling on foot again, three-quarters of the time taken by just going and coming. She wanted to know who (or what) the hell was responsible for trashing what was, in her mind, at the moment, her sole and only means of getting anywhere. So she could cut it/him/her/them off at the knees.

"Or," Spike ruminated, "I could sell the bike." As Buffy swung around--astonished, touched, even--he went on, "No, scratch that. Sell the witch, maybe. She'd fetch a good price in some quarters."

Buffy set her hands on her hips. "You really, really better be kidding, Spike."

"Well, s'not like I suggested selling Bit," Spike rejoined, mildly indignant. "Too skinny. White slavers, they like a little more meat on the bones."

"Your bike is probably an ex-parrot, too," Buffy pointed out with a certain satisfaction, refusing to even think about the bizarre suggestions he was coming up with.

Retreating a step as the shadow's margin slid nearer, Spike turned his head, uncomfortably looking elsewhere.

Checking, Buffy found the motorcycle neither parked at the curb nor smashed to screaming red (with tasteful skull) flinders in the street under one of several downed trees. "What did you do?"

Hands stuffed in pockets, Spike retreated another step. "Got on the cellphone before the whatever, the tower, went down. Told Michael to come, wheel the bike up against the house there in back, by the porch. Seemed like the best place--inside the wards, an' all."

"You are the fricking limit! You brought Mike clear across town, in record incredible bad weather, baseball-sized hail, to move your frickin' motorcycle?" Buffy cared nothing about Mike--it was just the principle of the thing.

"Well, that's what minions are for, innit? Do what you tell 'em? He's a vamp, Buffy: break all his bones and he'll still heal. And wasn't him that storm was after--it was us. Here. And he has an invite, all proper, so he could pass the wards. Who else was I gonna call to see to it? Who else is under my word in this piss-poor excuse for a town? So what if he's the Master Vamp of Sunnydale in all but name? So long as he comes to my word, I still got something of my own here, some choices of my own left, not just--" Spike stopped himself for a second, but the explosion wouldn't be held. "--not just trailing along behind--"

"Hi," said the ten-foot blueblack creature that'd come up without either of them noticing.

It was more or less humanoid, with two visible teeth/tusks, one protruding from the lower jaw, one descending from the upper. Its eyes had epicanthic folds and wandered independently. Large, flattened nose with conspicuous hairy nostrils. Major ugly. Bright red hair--not auburn, not strawberry blond: red--in short flamelike whorls all over his head. Dressed casually in outsized jeans, a blue T-shirt, and a denim jacket.

Buffy thought dazedly, He wouldn't fit into the bed.

The creature gestured apologetically with his right hand. "I can tell I've come at a bad time, you two are having a thing, so I'll keep it brief. I don't mean to be crude, but you and your little witch should mind your own business. Respect the Balance and nobody has to get hurt."

It took the whole speech before Buffy realized the creature was talking past her...at Spike.

She also realized she and Spike were beyond the wards, in broad daylight, and unarmed. And this, apparently, was the opposition.

Sudden as a punch, she shot out her hand, smiling to show every well-aligned, symmetrical, and recently brushed-flossed tooth. "Hi! I'm Buffy Summers. And you are?"

Slightly surprised but deciding to be civil, the monster briefly enfolded her hand with the care of one picking up a pea. So it was tangible: it could be killed. "Make it 'Cal.' I have other names, but they'd sound strange to you."

"Try me!" Buffy encouraged. Information was always of the good. She didn't like Spike so silent behind her but it didn't seem a good time to turn and check. "Is 'Cal' for 'Calvin?'"

"No, for 'Acala.' It's a kind of role, a title--like Slayer. So 'Cal' is better for conversation. Maybe you're the sensible one here: you stay where you belong."

So he not only knew who she was, he knew she hadn't been part of last night's expedition.

Buffy shot back, "I go where I'm needed."

"Well, that's good. Good. Because there's no need for interference. Interference threatens to upset the Balance. Which, as a matter of fact, you've done on a number of occasions. Not criticizing, just observing. I usually don't concern myself with internal matters, and you have an august patron."

That would be Lady Gates. Hence the fence-mending heavy-handed goon visit in person today after trying to smash her house flat last night, Buffy figured.

"So my past misdeeds are not the reason you trashed my SUV?" she inquired pleasantly, still smiling and wide-eyed.

"Incidental damage. I was making a point."

At the last second, Buffy decided it wouldn't be a great idea to give her opinion of what he'd been making.

Acala went on, "I wasn't, at first, aware that an avatar of the Slayer was involved. You didn't 'show up on my radar,' as it were." Having uttered this pleasantry, the monster showed a few more teeth--crooked, the size of tent pegs. "But rather than let that be an issue...." Acala gestured, and the SUV leaped to attention, tires swelling, pockmarks expanding with a barrage of popping noises. The steering wheel unkinked and slurped up the air bag in stealthy embarrassment. The greasy black flash-fire marks vanished from the hood. All the window glass sprang up and flowed into its accustomed GM-approved curvatures. As a coda, all the locks popped.

"A full tank of gas?" Buffy's jaw had begun to ache, holding that smile.

"At these prices? Don't push your luck."

Buffy shrugged elaborately. "It was worth trying." Since for the moment they were playing at being all good pals together, she risked a glance over her shoulder.

At the very edge of the shadow, beginning, faintly, to smoke, Spike was standing with two swords.

Assessing the balance, the implicit choreography, of the moment, Buffy mouthed silently, OK. The right-hand sword flew to her and she took it, already whirling. It clanged against Acala's sword...that hadn't been there a second ago. It was fully six feet long and shivered like living flame. She had no idea where he could have hidden it but it was there now and solid enough to make her arm tingle with the impact. She countered the block, disengaging, waiting to see what the next turn in the dance would be. And she felt Spike come to her back, at her left shoulder, so they could separate and take the monster between them...in the full sunlight.

There was no choice. Solemnly she raised the sword vertically before her, bowing slightly. Acala also bowed...and vanished.

Dropping the sword, Buffy gave Spike a hearty shove, pitching him all the way back to the front steps, crying, "You idiot!"

"What?" he protested, bouncing up. "I could've managed. I was just getting warmed up!"

"You were smoking, Spike!"

"That's just to get me charged up proper. Then the wing thing kicks in and I channel it. But I have to be right at the point of burning, see, to get it started. I--"

She grabbed and held him hard, face buried against his shoulder, saying indistinctly, "I've seen you burn, Spike. And I never want to see it again. Let's not push our luck." That reminded her, and she turned to look at the restored SUV. "Cheapskate," she spat. "The least he could have done was throw in a tank of gas."

Letting go, turning away, she trudged back into the sunlight to retrieve her sword.

At least the hailstones were melting. So it wasn't a total loss.

**********


"I'm staying," Dawn declared, plunking herself down on the floor in easy grabbing distance of the TV's power cord--an implicit threat. The only way Buffy could get her out would be to drag her, and if Dawn went, she was taking the TV with her.

"She's staying," Spike agreed, dropping into his usual corner armchair, his eyes steadily on Buffy's. For good measure, he barricaded Dawn between his outstretched legs and the TV stand. "Lady Gates comes into it, seems like. That's her patch, Dawn's. An' she was with me, t'other side, which was what tripped that Acala's alarm."

"No," said Willow dispiritedly, puddling on the floor past the end of the couch and wilting against it. "That would be me."

Munching popcorn, seated on the couch with her legs curled under, Anya opined tartly, "As it should be. You were the only one prepared and qualified. The astral plane is noplace for amateurs."

"I concur: Dawn should remain," said Giles, opening his briefcase on the coffee table.

Standing alone in the middle of the front room, Buffy twisted her hands anxiously. "I don't want her to be a part of this."

Dawn commented quietly, "I'm already a part of this. I'm seventeen now, Buffy. By the time you were seventeen, you'd already died once. Let's be a teeny bit realistic here."

Though nobody had yet said the "G" word, Dawn was certain they all had Glory on their minds: ordinary demons could make things happen but they couldn't make them unhappen with a twitch of a finger--Buffy had already described the untrashing of the SUV. So what, if they did? Dawn wasn't a helpless, whining child anymore: she could do things. At least, in collaboration with Spike, she could. And anyway, so far there'd been no specific threat to her in particular. She wasn't the target.

"Could we get started?" Anya put in. "I'm losing valuable retail time and I had to call Wilbur in early. He'll try to charge me extra for that." Wilbur Banks, that Dawn mentally tagged "The Chinless Wonder," was the part-time clerk Anya had recently taken on, now that the Magic Box was open evenings. Mike had told her Anya had courted him for that position but he'd declined, having larger fish to fry than an exciting new career in retail.

A few vamps held steady jobs. Not many, though. They hated routine and conforming to abstract rules like punctuality and not eating the customers. Also, night jobs weren't plentiful and cut into their fighting, feeding, and fucking time--the traditional three F's of vampire existence.

Buffy checked her watch, then glanced out the front window at the early winter twilight darkened by the absence of functional street lights. "Xander should be just getting off. He said he'd come straight from the site. So he should be here in a few more minutes...." Taking a step toward the hall, she asked, "Anybody besides me want a soda?"

"Beer," said Spike, crossing his ankles.

"Beer?" Buffy's tone was between uncertain and disapproving.

"Beer," Spike responded firmly. "Sun's long past the yardarm an' if I have to sit and listen to you lot yammer on, here in the Summers No Smoking Zone, has to be compensation. Beer. Several. Watcher?"

"I'll stay with tea, thanks," said Giles without looking up, inspecting papers from a folder. "Somehow sleep eluded me last night; I'm sure I needn't explain why."

Raising a hand, Willow requested, "Citrus Jolt: I'm undercaffeinated."

"I'm good," Dawn said, doing a small happy bounce as Spike's palm settled reassuringly on her head and began stroking her hair.

It was to be a fullscale Scooby meeting, research cum war council, in full session by candlelight, the power not yet having come back on; and she was being allowed to stay, an equal partner. A first, a milestone.

Before Spike had popped the tab on his second beer, Xander arrived, sporting more layers than Finnegan's Wake from working all day in the cold. Shedding garishly checked and colored flannel shirts and several ragged sweaters, he explained that part of the mall roof had collapsed--a combination of the weight of water and a tree disobligingly toppling onto it--and his construction crew had been detailed to repair it on a rush basis, since their power tools could be run off a generator. Several of the interior shops had already suffered damage to their fixtures and merchandise; their proprietors had banded together to offer triple-time for a super-fast repair job.

Rubbing his hands wearily up and down his dark-stubbled face, Xander also requested beer since "the platinum menace" was being indulged. More from habit than actual annoyance, Dawn thought, Spike showed him two fingers backhanded and stretched out deeper in the chair, cradling the beer can on his chest. Fairly amicably, as Xander reversed the straight-back wooden chair and straddled it, arms folded across the top, they started discussing installing a downstairs bath, complete with humungous tub, until Buffy returned from the kitchen and handed Xander his beer, implicitly calling the meeting to order.

As usual, these days, Buffy presided.

The first thing was to bring Anya and Xander up to speed on the out-of-body experimentation on the astral plane. Willow did that. Then Giles took the floor, explaining with tight control why he had reason to suspect Ethan Rayne had been consigned to Quor'toth, briefly interrupted by Willow's dashing out to get the laptop, to take notes. Clicking the necessary keys, she reported sadly that the local connection to the Internet was still down, but the battery life was fine and should get them through. But she was really, really wanting to Google the name Acala.

Apparently glad of the change of topic, Giles leaped ahead past the storm to this morning, eliciting from Buffy a description of the critter, with occasional comments by Spike, who seemed otherwise content to let Buffy make the running on that subject. He was working on his third beer and frowning, sometimes muttering a rude word under his breath. Dawn surmised that Buffy's preventing him from immolating himself still rankled.

When Buffy had got through the magically-appearing sword and the suddenly vanishing ogre, Giles tipped his head back, murmuring, "Acala. Indigo blue: that suggests Hindu iconography. Attributes including a sword, whorled hair. Associated with fire, lighting bolts and their attendant storms, like the Norse Thor. But Oriental eyes."

"Ring a bell, Watcher?" Spike asked alertly, despite his indolent pose of disengagement. He compensated by sipping more beer.

"A faint one. Perhaps. I wish I had access to my resource materials! The local library.... Even the university library...." A sigh indicated Giles considered them hopelessly inadequate. "My recollection can be amended later, when I can inspect the relevant texts online. But Acala isn't the name I associate with that image, that set of attributes: it's Fudo."

Making screwed-up Incredulous Face, Buffy blurted, "Fido?!"

"Fudo," Giles repeated with patient over-distinctness. "Or more properly, Fudo Myo-o. A staple of one of the offshoots of Buddhism, chiefly in Japan and principally a discipline and practice of the priestly class rather than the general public. Fudo is the principal member of the Godai Myo-o, the so-called 'Five Great Kings,' all fierce and warlike in aspect, who struggle to conquer Illusion and wrong thinking and lead the soul to choose self-abegnation as the path to true enlightment. If memory serves, Fudo is known as 'The Immovable'--that doesn't bode well--and is associated with the sun and fire: not that promising a connection for you, Spike. Typically, Fudo is depicted as holding a flaming sword in his right hand and a noose in his left. The noose is for binding demons," Giles concluded with a Significant Look.

"Not a demon, then," Spike drawled.

"If anything, a demigod. In some urban syncretic sects, in fact, he's been identified with Michael, Archangel, and with the Cherubim--apparently a lesser order of angels--set to guard the closed gates of Eden with a flaming sword. Tradition conflates him with Azrael--the Angel of Death."

"Nasty packet. Well traveled, though."

"Only suggestions, not firm identities. Iconic images and deities are transmogrified in their passage through various cultures. The divinities of one are often the arch-demons of another if the first is conquered or falls into disfavor and persecution. Moloch, in particular, never traveled well. Infanticide, baby-killing, however tempting on prolonged overseas flights, never endears itself in the long run. Pride of progeny, however annoying, seems a human constant."

"Dunno about that," Spike responded, pretending to pick a piece of fluff off his knee. Dawn knew that not being able to get Buffy pregnant (though Buffy swore up and down that children just weren't in the Slayer's job description and that vampires therefore made ideal mates, no ucky precautions needed, and Watchers should therefore be all YAY about such pairings, not all Get thee behind me! and Perish the thought! and Fate--literally--worse than death, the way they actually were), was one of the things, like lacking bodily warmth, he was uneasy about.

Dawn knew this, of course, from Buffy, not Spike, who didn't tell her the really personal stuff anymore.

The doorbell rang, simultaneous with a few measured light knocks. Not urgent, just insistent. Maybe Buffy had ordered pizza delivery. Dawn didn't stop to think that the power and the phones were out. Calling, "I'll get it!" Dawn hopped up, grabbed a candle, and sprinted to the door. She wasn't stupid: before throwing the bolts and pulling the door open, she checked the side window panel. No need for precautions.

"Hi, Oz."

Standing rumpled and diffident on the dark porch, Oz replied quietly, "Hi, Dawn."

But not so quietly that vampire hearing didn't pick it up: from Spike, loudly, "Oh bloody hell!"

 

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