Chapter 3: Contacts

“So they didn’t get him?” Digger asked, looking up from lighting his pipe.

Mike shook his head.

“Incompetent fuckers!”

“Fledges.” Mike shrugged, emptied his glass, and set it back on the table. Wasn’t a hint: he knew Digger would refill it when the old vamp poured another for himself.

Digger wasn’t obvious about such things.

Digger could outdrink him and would send him home incapable, with an escort, as often as Mike was willing to accept Digger’s calculated hospitality. Which he did, two or three times a week. Unless he passed out, of course, and by default accepted the further hospitality of one of Digger’s many beds. With Digger for company. Sometimes Star, too.

Mike added, “If they’d held off another ten minutes, would’ve been a different story: would’ve found him passed out cold on the floor and nothing between them and the food but the Slayer.”

Digger chuckled, puffing smoke. “Drunk, was he?”

“No. Just trying to push himself past what he could do. Slayer calls ‘frog,’ he’ll hop or bust himself trying. He loses that patronage, it all comes down. So I’m running the sweep tonight. His people and a couple of mine, test ‘em out. He’d expect that.”

That was one of the reasons Mike had swung by Digger’s lair--to tell him that before the fact instead of learning about it later, as he surely would. Digger would rather the sweep be abandoned on account of Spike not being able to stretch himself that far. Have that part of the new ways falling down when it was barely begun.

“That’s right, boy,” Digger surprised him by saying, refilling both glasses. “Get him to depend on you, then pick a good time and let it come down smash.”

“I expect.”

“Get him to hunt with you. Nothing makes a couple of vamps easy with one another like sharing a kill. Except maybe sharing a bed!”

“Leave off,” Mike said without heat, batting away Digger’s hand. “Not goin’ out there stinking of you, you putrid old coyote.” He sipped his drink, shut his eyes while it went down. “I’ve asked. He’s never taken me up on it. Always ‘Some other time.’”

“Thinks he’s too good for you.”

Mike opened his eyes, gave Digger a stare. “He is too good for me. Gave me a district, named me his get and his ‘Favored Childe’ in front of God and everybody. Told you, not gonna cross him, Digger, till I got my own patch locked down tight, till I can last out the disruption on my own. Hold onto what I got.”

“You know I’d see you through any bad times. Like I always done.”

Mike looked lazily around the big earth-walled room and its rickety, mostly hand-made furnishings. “Yeah, you and your four soldiers, dozen minions, half dozen raw fledges. That’d be such a help.”

“Building back, boy: building back. Sometimes you win, sometimes the bear wins. Ain’t forgot who sided, last time, with the bear.”

Mike shrugged. “Wasn’t hard to see who was gonna come out on top. Real dumb, Digger, yanking that child for a pax bond, no dickering or agreement beforehand, when she’s his particular pet.”

“Child? Pet? He’d marked her!”

“Doesn’t signify, except to get him mad. Mad, he’s worse than a bear: come through a wall, come through fire to get at you, and you didn’t have anything like the troops there to even slow him down. You’re damn lucky I could talk him out of leaving you in an ashtray. And look what it got me in return. A territory and a name: Michael of Aurelius. You played it dumb, Digger. I played it smart.”

“Sure, sure, he gives you things. Gives you the chance to face off against those damn Turok-han, may they all rot forever in whatever hell they gone back to. Gave you a beat-up old motor-whatsis--"

“Motorcycle, and she runs fine, and I ride while he walks.”

“Don’t care if he goddam crawls, and won’t that be fine to see,” said Digger with a wolfish smile, and took a drink. Then he scowled again. “Named you to a territory, gave you a name you don’t rightly own, and don’t think I don’t know what a load of horse shit that is ‘cause he ain’t never sired nobody except those few when he was drunk or something, and then turned around and hunted all of ‘em down again. Too fucking nice to raise up food as an equal or see to a fledge like it should be done, raise ‘em up right!”

Mike spat on the floor. It was an old rant. He’d heard it lots of times. Didn’t interest him. He wasn’t yet old enough to interrupt a kill, rein in his demon to that extent. No felt pleasure in stopping, feeding himself back to near-dead prey. He accepted that it happened but couldn’t understand, with true body understanding, why a vamp would bother or want to, except for expediency, extra hands for the work or the fighting.

Digger went on, “Gives you all manner of toys and gimcracks: everything except the only one that matters: himself!”

“I’ve had his blood,” Mike mentioned mildly. He didn’t add that Spike had also had his because except for Dawn’s blood mixed in, that wouldn’t work. And now that Dawn bore no living vamp’s mark, she likely wouldn’t let Mike feed from her anymore, to mark her fresh. He’d lost that claim, that connection. It was a sadness to him. And a confusion.

“You had that, and more, from me,” Digger shot back, his lined, froggy face somewhere between a scowl and a pout.

Mike held up his glass. “And very fine it was, too.”

Digger slapped the glass out of his hand. Mike shoved out of his chair, out of reach, pointing, declaring, “Told you, ain’t gonna carry your stink on me all night. Stink up Star, if you’re that desperate. Told you: not gonna lose that patronage.”

“While it lasts.”

“Yeah: while it lasts. And your little schemes around the edges ain’t gonna affect things one way or the other, you pitiful old fart.”

Digger smiled like a shark. Like he knew something Mike didn't. “You’d best be gone then if you’re gonna manage that sweep.”

“Plenty of time. Got the bike,” said Mike, and headed out through the tunnel handiest to where he’d left it.

He never asked Digger directly about his schemes. Just stay skeptical, keep assuming none of it could amount to anything, and eventually Digger would start bragging to prove him wrong. Mike only hoped that it would be ahead of time, to give him a chance to decide what to do about it. Decide what he wanted to do about it.

Digger’s lair was an extensive warren running miles, in three dimensions. Mostly under some tract housing but also back into the hills that were Sunnydale’s southern boundary, the founding site. Digger had been excavating and extending the passages, shoring them up with timber, for well over a century. Originally a silver mine, by Digger’s account. Now long forgotten and appearing on no maps except in the minds of those who’d learned their ways. Nobody knew all their ways except Digger himself. No finer interlace of caverns, shafts, and reinforced passages in town except those that had radiated from the hub of the Hellmouth. And they were now mostly collapsed and dead-ended.

So in one way of thinking, Digger had the finest territory to be had: made by and for vampires, with long sheer drops and climbs no human could negotiate without dragging in a whole lot of gear; tunnels near the central chambers that could be collapsed with an inhumanly strong tug on a rope; multiple exits where no sunlight could intrude. No invasion or pursuit would ever find Digger in this maze, or corner him in it.

No electricity. Just the occasional lantern or candle. No heat. Never warm here. Nothing clean or wholly dry. No books or television or music, which anyplace Spike settled into for even a day had to have for him to consider it minimally habitable. And now the computer, up at the factory, that Spike was half blind from, most days, staring at, and the continual headaches Spike still refused to connect or blame on it. Working for pay. Not even tangible money but numbers on a screen. Theoretical money. From the Watchers Council that was behind the Slayer--the ultimate and absolute enemy of all vampires. Not hunting anymore. Instead, having dead, cold blood delivered twice a day and joylessly feeding--again, from the Council. Pacing the same dull round like a tiger at the zoo.

Though Mike found it disturbing, he understood it well enough: it was the price of Spike’s partnership with the Slayer: there was nothing Spike wouldn’t do to preserve that. And old though he was, Spike had a hankering for the new things. Anything that kept the boredom at bay.

Spike took real and obvious satisfaction in being a vampire. But he still wanted what he wanted, even when those things were incompatible with the needs and limits of being a vamp. Wanted Buffy, wanted to fuck her and fight her, feed on her and mark her (which was all fine) but also wanted her content with it. Trying to give, when all that was natural for a vamp was to take, use up, move on. Not try to stay, keep…. Wanted Dawn, but only her company: hoarding that jealously, but taking nothing else of her nor allowing anybody else to have it neither. Wanted Willow’s friendship and the support of her power but didn’t turn her, which would have given him control, and her obedience, besides. Instead, he left her free to turn on him anytime she took the notion.

Mike didn’t think that would go well for him in the end.

It was, he’d come to think, as if Spike wanted the sun. Digger was content with the dark and would likely be mooching around this old dirty warren long after the rest of them were dust, with their alien dreams and hungers.

Mike wasn’t sure what he wanted but he was prepared to wait and find out.

He lifted his head, catching a smell. Different, but he still knew it. He said favorlessly, “Hi, Sue.”

The fledge came out of a cross-passage. She was dirty, muddy, wiping broken-nailed hands on her hips. “Look,” she said, “you know where I can get a shower? A bath? Anything?”

“Shoring up passages is dirty work,” Mike commented neutrally.

“I’m so sick of being dirty! Do you have a shower at your place?”

Well, that wasn’t subtle. “You allowed out?” Mike asked, knowing she wasn’t.

Mike knew Digger’s rules, having been a fledge here himself. Taken in for his broad back and his willingness to accept orders, but given a place to be, something reliable in all the confusion after he’d risen, alone and terrified and deep in his demon’s bloodthirst, as most fledges did. He still owed Digger for that.

Sue twisted a bare foot in the dirt. “I could if I was under you. Instead of Digger.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Spike!” Sue spat venomously.

“Not just that. Wouldn’t have taken you on anyway. Got too much to do, working up a new territory, to bother about a fledge.”

Her game face was uglier than most. He didn’t tell her so. Only make her feel worse, she couldn’t help it. And she might flash out at him, and he didn’t have the time or the inclination to hammer her down the way pushy, uncontrolled fledges needed.

Mike continued down the passage. Sue trailed along like an importunate pup. Mike said, “You’re lucky to have any place at all. Get used to it. Get to where you can shed game face ten minutes at a time, Digger will let you go out. Still lots of abandoned houses: likely you could find one with a shower.” Reluctantly, not sure it was a good idea, he added, “There’s water at Casa Mike. You could use that, if you want. No matter to me, I don’t lair up there anymore.”

She looked up with human features and a sad/angry expression. “Can’t. Spike told me I couldn’t go within five blocks of Casa Summers.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Ten minutes--that’s what Spike said.”

“The usual thing. You’d best get back to your work crew before you’re missed. And punished.”

With a harsh laugh, she dragged up a sleeve, displaying bruises. “Yeah, punished,” she said scornfully.

She considered a few bruises as punishment. Well, no point telling her. She’d find out.

Sue complained, “I’m supposed to be a spy. But nobody’s contacted me! Unless…. Are you my contact?”

Mike belted her then, knocked her back into the wall. She rebounded, fell onto her knees. Mike said sternly, “Don’t know what arrangement you got going with Spike. Don’t want to know. And if you had an ounce of brains, you wouldn’t talk about it--ever. Don’t you know how far vamps can hear? Idiot.”

Slowly standing, again game-faced, sullen, she said, “How am I supposed…to do that when nobody tells me anything?”

“You figure anybody’s gonna trust you with a secret? When you blab out whatever comes into your head? You listen. Watch. Figure out until you can make some sense of what’s going on.” Like I do, he added, in his mind. “Then, maybe, you’ll be worth something. Long as you’re bleating, you’re not listening. Now get back to where you’re s’posed to be.”

He gave her a shove and continued on, to get to where the bike was parked, thinking maybe when she’d developed decent control, he’d take her out: to the Bronze, and then hunting.

She’d never been his favorite among the SITs--that was Amanda--but things were different now, and being around somebody known and familiar had its appeal. Somebody he could actually talk to, be at ease with. Missed that, since Dawn had pulled away, shut him out. Might not be bad. A change, anyway.

**********

Buffy had known it was a risk to put Spike in her own bed to have out his forced sleep. Last Sunday, after a similar long sleep, he’d come awake and then gone totally berserk, rendering Willow’s bedroom down to flinders and scraps. Willow was still grumbling, even though all the furniture had been Buffy’s.

But in the gym, she’d seen what she wanted: what she’d been frustrated, lonely, and desperate without. That muggers pretense could easily have turned into something X-rated, right there on the gym floor in front of everybody, and she’d hit him hard when he’d flashed his eyes at her and grinned, well aware of what she was going through. And then his eyes had changed a different way, wide and wanting…and then the fledges had burst in.

Damn. Double and triple damn.

So she’d made sure that when he woke, he’d be right where she wanted him: in her bed. With no goddam agenda, nothing to distract.

She’d tried to think of everything. She’d spent the morning putting lamps and other breakables in boxes and storing them safe in the hall closet. She had the morning’s cooler of bagged blood handy at the side of the bed because it was minimally a day and maybe two since he’d fed: he’d be hungry that way, too. And she’d pottered around all day unshowered because, however eww to her, that was a turn-on to him--the concentrated smell of her. Wearing a tatty bathrobe she didn’t care about…and nothing underneath. Her hair loose, the way he liked it. Aching with pent-up passion and he’d know that too because he always did.

She felt a little weird, setting up a knock-about, anything goes, grope and shag session in cold blood. But then she’d look at him and be certain he was as starved for her as she was for him, and go lay her heated face against his cool cheek, give him a hopeful kiss, then shiver and retreat, hugging herself, when he didn’t stir. Blood not so cold, after all. Then she’d find some other way to make the time pass.

Finally in mid-afternoon she ran out of patience and didn’t retreat. Almost twenty hours should be enough for anybody, right? Dropping the robe, she pushed back the covers and began petting him. When he did it, he called it “starting without her”: she’d sometimes wake with him already inside her and moving, his eyes gone dark and blank and intent, as they did at such times. And she’d smack him and he’d give her one of those slow, sunrise smiles, all happy at her waking, with the least edge of mischief to have surprised her, and usually she would have been dreaming it, aroused by his attentions, so to wake and find it real was even more wonderful and she’d forgive him his mischief and just let the gladness pour in.

My turn, she thought, to surprise him.

It took longer than usual to get him hard and intermittently breathing: must be real deep down. Sliding onto the bed to straddle him, she nipped and pinched and tickled, seeking out his most sensitive spots. Though she got some twitches and deeper responses, he still didn’t wake. (Don’t, don’t, don’t think about fucking a dead body. That’s a whole ‘nother thing, and don’t think about it!) As a last resort she fumbled in the cool-carrier for a bag, opened a corner with the nail scissors she’d put handy on the bedside cabinet, and attempted to feed it to him.

She didn’t expect the bag’s seal to give way, dumping its entire contents. She didn’t expect him to come up in roaring, bloody game-face, drawn like a magnet to the mark and biting down hard, tumbling her over backward and driving into her convulsively. Suddenly being ferociously taken was a detonation in her mind and body. Everything seized up, whited out in astonished sensation. She spasmed, aimlessly flailing, wholly caught up in being simultaneously drained and explosively filled. Everything violent and immediate gradually went floaty and faded.

And she was gone.

**********

Willow had prepared carefully for her meeting with Amy. She’d reviewed a few familiar short spells--she could hold only so many ready in her mind, and the longer ones were no good: she’d be flamed or immobilized before she could finish--but mostly she’d put in some serious time considering how she felt about Amy. Because Amy was a power junkie, just as Willow was. Amy also liked the “my will be done” kind of spells for the rush of safety/control, even if it was illusory and ended up making everything worse, with a side order of guilt cookies coming right up.

Amy had introduced Willow to the wonderful world of direct power drains: every square millimeter of skin tingling with it, barely able to contain it, flashing out with it on the smallest whim because there was always more. And no possible retaliation except for her own eventual disgust, fear, and remorse. Which for months, until her blow-up after Tara’s death, hadn’t been enough to keep Willow from going back to it, having that wonderful feeling again.

Amy owned magic. Amy was magic. And Willow found that perilously appealing.

That was one of the reasons she’d made arrangements to pick Dawn up after school and bring her along.

“You’re a conduit,” she told Dawn, wrenching the old Fiat around a corner. With magic, or even power steering, she could have maneuvered the car more smoothly. But she’d deliberately chosen a manual shift car without assisted anything to make herself remember. To make her deliberate and careful. “If she whips out something I can’t handle right away, I can draw on you to resist, counter-attack.”

“I don’t know, Willow.” Dawn sat hugging herself in her red cardigan, over her school clothes, looking straight ahead. “The last time I went along with you on something like this, I got my arm broken.”

“You won’t get hurt,” Willow assured her for about the sixth time. “I have much better control now: all that time with the coven. Breathing exercises, floating a pencil or spinning a ball for hours until I was totally sick of it. Learning all the therapeutic herbs. I’m humble: I know I need the back-up, can’t do everything on my own just because I want to. And if she’s the one who’s been bombarding Spike with malign spells, I have to find out what they are before I can do anything about them!”

“Yeah, all right,” Dawn responded without enthusiasm. “I said I would. I don’t have to like it too. Can I get a sandwich after? Buffy forgot to pack my lunch.”

“Yeah, sure, sweetie,” Willow agreed abstractedly.

“All I had was potato chips and some extremely vanilla yogurt. Blecch!”

In the pause after shifting gears to stop at a red light, Willow held out a hand. “Give me your locket.”

Looking around with her face screwed up indignantly, Dawn clutched the necklace defensively. “No!”

“It’s only for an hour or so,” Willow argued. “If you’re wearing it, I can’t draw on you. And that’s the whole idea here.”

“Not my whole idea. So, fine, if I’m not a key, I’m a battery. But I’m not giving up my locket: that would leave me open to an-y-thing!”

Willow needed her hand to run through the gears again as the light turned green. “How’s Spike doing?” she asked, dragging the car around another corner.

“How should I know? I’ve been at school all day.”

“I just thought you might have called,” said Willow, fiercely enforcing patience on herself, keeping her tone mild and level.

They both knew Buffy had taken a sick day to stay home with Spike. Who was almost certainly still asleep but might get rowdy when he woke, finding he’d lost a whole day. Fine, Willow thought rancorously: let him wreck her bedroom this time! Her turn to do penance for having a vampire boyfriend!

Then she muttered a mantra that was supposed to enhance calm and serenity. She could see the white clapboarded side of Amy’s house ahead. Pulling up against the curb, she set the hand brake but left the engine running. She was really, really tempted to erase Dawn’s reluctance, enforce her cooperation, with a Bidding; but she couldn’t have, even if she wanted to. Not as long as Dawn had the locket containing the most powerful influence-deflecting talisman Willow had been able to devise. Not enough to completely shunt aside a really powerful spell designed and tuned to Dawn’s own nature, as the deathwish had been tuned to Spike, latching onto his weaknesses and uncertainties and launching itself from that secured beachhead. But the talisman was enough to hold even such a spell at bay, unable to inflict its full effect, long enough for an equally focused counterspell to be assembled and set running to dissipate the attack.

Willow had one like it. So did Buffy. And a few others Spike had thought in need of such protection.

Hold me harmless of all hurt, Willow recited in her mind, grimly determined to be calm. Hold me in the Light, to do what is in accordance with the Earth, and the Goddess, and all benevolent Powers.

“Dawn, I’ve told you, promised you, that you won’t get hurt here. I’m trying to do what you asked: find out who’s been getting at Spike, with what, and why. But if you won’t give me the locket, there’s no point. If Giles were still here, I could draw on him. But he isn’t. Potentially, you’re an even better reservoir than he was, because of your residual keyness. But if you won’t let me tap into it, it might as well not be there.”

“Isn’t there another way?” Dawn asked in a small voice. “Can’t you scry him some way, find out--”

“No, baby. I can tell that it’s there, but not what it is or how it’s affecting him. It’s been absorbed: it’s part of him now. I can’t disentangle it until I know what it is. How it was made. It’s a custom job: not something I can just go look up in a book. But if you’re that scared, I’ll just take you home and try to think of another--”

“What about Halloween?” Dawn interrupted, sounding rather desperate. “Isn’t there power in that, you could draw from?”

“Not for me,” Willow answered grimly. “It will be around, all right. Samhain: the Sabbat night. Feast of All Souls. You’re right: it has power. But nothing I would dare touch. Whatever’s done has to be done before sundown.”

Willow found herself thinking, If Tara was here, she would have lent me her power. Which just started her thinking about Tara, which was still so painful, in so many ways, it made her want to throw her head back and scream.

“Or Anya,” Dawn blurted. “If Amy’s the one who’s hurt Spike, couldn’t he do a wish against her? Makeher tell?”

Willow pulled her thoughts away from the sucking black hole that was Tara’s absence. “Vengeance wishes tend to yield torn viscera, not information. And I don’t know if Anya’s Vengeance Demon status is on or off at the moment. Do you?”

Dawn shook her head, flinging hair. “I owed her a wish, but she used that,” she muttered. “I don’t have any other…. I’m sorry, Willow. I didn’t realize it would mean taking the locket off. I’m still connected to the Powers, except the locket keeps them out of my head. Keeps them from knowing whatever I know. And some things I know…are none of their business.”

“Like where Spike’s soul is,” Willow suggested, and Dawn bobbed a tight nod.

“If I took it off…I don’t know what would happen. What they’d do. They really, really don’t like being shut out. I think. I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.” Dawn’s fingers plucked at the air as though trying to grasp alternatives. “Maybe…maybe we should just go home. Phone Giles, we could do that! Maybe he’d have some different idea? Don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” Willow responded without interest, releasing the parking brake, grimly working the gear shift and the clutch, then hauling at the wheel, to pull away from the curb.

Consulting Giles, long distance, on handling Amy the Rat had less than no appeal. All Willow knew was that the confrontation with her once-friend had been derailed, averted. She couldn’t easily decide if she was more disappointed or relieved.

**********

Buffy blinked. Her head felt like a dizzy pumpkin balanced on a straw. Her mouth was dry and tasted foul. Then she remembered, jerked, and shoved herself to sitting, seized with the fear that she was too late, that Spike would have freaked and broken out a window and the sunlight and….

And he was sitting on the floor, finishing off a blood bag. Naked. Face and chest covered in blood. The stuff that had erupted from the bag, probably. Mostly. Still in game-face. And she…was on the floor. Just sprawled, limbs leaden. Not even a pillow.

Glancing around, Spike remarked affably, “Made a proper mess of me, didn’t you? And yourself. And the bed. Fifteen sorts of sticky.” Dropping the empty wrapper, he collected a fresh bag and bit into it, his throat working as he swallowed it down.

Buffy blinked some more, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

He’d bitten her. Soulless, and he’d still bitten her. Damn near drained her. And fucked her while he was doing it. She’d passed out. And then…he’d calmly pulled away, leaned around, and pitched into the contents of the cool box.

She felt a shaking inside as her heart tried to speed up, pump what wasn’t there. The dizziness got worse and fog began to gather at the periphery of her vision. Maybe it was a good idea to lie flat. Staring blankly at the ceiling, she tried to relax, control the shaking. Not black out.

Spike slid in next to her, leaning on an elbow, nuzzling at her neck. “Ready for another go, are you?” he purred into her ear.

She couldn’t find the breath or the words to say No. It was taking all her concentration to keep the fog at bay. And he didn’t notice. Or didn’t care. Was quite ready to start without her, indifferent to her lack of response. Was kissing her, tasting her, with that blood-fouled mouth. And she couldn’t move, couldn’t….

“Pet? Buffy? Something wrong?”

She found herself drawing in a really huge, huge breath. Until her lungs and her chest ached with it, until she felt as if she’d burst. “Get away! From me!”

Her arm swung randomly, forcelessly, and bounced off him somewhere. She breathed a second, recovering from the effort, then swung again. This time met nothing. The motion flopped her over onto her side. She lay panting. Heat flashed through her, followed by cold achiness, as her body tried to recover.

He’d always been more afraid of this than she had. Because he’d known it could happen. Now it had. And she supposed it meant something, that in the full intoxication of bloodthirst, he’d still stopped and left her alive. Something…but not much. Not enough.

She rolled her head enough to see, and he’d backed off, obedient to her command. Looking at her. Concerned. Perplexed, she thought. Though it was hard to tell under the blood mask. She shut her eyes as the deep shuddering got stronger.

“Spike: shower. Hot!”

She couldn’t have stood, much less made it to the bathroom on her own. But that was all right because he gathered her up and carried her. She could still depend on him for things like that.

Still held in the shower, she tipped her head back and opened her mouth to let the water run in. It seemed forever before the blood taste was washed away and another forever before she'd swallowed enough to appease her thirst. Eventually the water’s heat banished the chill, and she felt herself break into a full-body sweat the water washed away. Slayer healing going into high gear to repair the damage, replace the lack. She didn’t know how long he held her like that, cradled passively against his chest, except it wasn’t an hour: the hot water would have run out. Long enough for her fingers to go pruny, though. She studied them in vague bewilderment as he put her down on the toilet to get her dry. Then he wrapped the towel around her shoulders and continued to sit on his heels before her. Knees all knobby. Head bent, not looking at her. Waiting for her verdict.

He’d been thinking too.

“Dressed,” Buffy decided: she couldn’t face that sodden, sticky bed. Couldn’t stand remembering the smell.

He thought a minute, then left, shutting the door behind him. The room was warm with steam, and the towel was large, soft, and comforting. When he came back, he was wearing an old pair of jeans and had brought clothes for her, so she wouldn’t have to go back into the bedroom for them. Silently, he helped her dress, then assisted her downstairs to the front room. When she was settled in the big chair, she said, “We have to talk.”

Spike shook his head and left without replying, turning kitchenward at the hall. With only time to go and come, he returned with a mug of warm onion soup in one hand and a glass of cooking sherry in the other. He set both on the weapons chest beside her.

“Oh, I couldn’t--”

“Drink the soup. You need the salt,” he said curtly, turning away.

He must have opened the can and started the soup heating before he’d brought her clothes. And the cooking sherry because, well, he couldn’t find anything else.

Lifting the mug carefully in both hands, Buffy took a tentative sip and then gulped until the soup was gone. He was right: she was desperately hungry for salt. Well, he should know. The sherry was faintly salty, too. She felt better when she’d finished it.

Sitting on the floor, he reached up a bare, hard ivory arm for the empty mug: he’d lit a cigarette and wanted somewhere other than the floor to tap the ashes. Buffy seized his wrist a moment, then let go, let him take the mug. Cigarettes were forbidden anywhere except in the basement. He wasn’t going to the basement and really needed the cigarette. Nothing there to be discussed.

“You put up,” Buffy said softly, “and put up, and put up. And then you explode.”

“Yeah. Seems like.”

He looked so grim and forlorn. Buffy patted the front of the chair. “C’mere.”

A pause while he thought about it. Then he slid himself so his back was between her knees, facing away from her. Maybe it would be easier to talk and not see each other’s faces. She began working on the muscles of his shoulders and the back of his neck, under the damp ends of his hair. Everything predictably rigid, bunched up.

She said, “No apologies?”

“It’s way past sorry this time. Tried to keep it all clear of you. Didn’t work very well.”

“You have to put the soul back.”

He bent his head. “Can’t.”

“We can’t go on this way.”

“Yeah. Well, then.” He pulled away, stood. Blue eyes blank, face expressionless. “Marked Bit. And now this. Can’t be doing things like this, love. Best let you both be, then. Till this is over.”

“No!”

He made a sudden, aimless gesture with the mug. “Got no goddamn fucking choice! You know what I am. You want--” Breaking off, he hauled open the weapons chest, heedless of the sherry glass smashing against the wall, and came up with a stake he forced her to close her hand around. Bent over her, arms braced to either side, he said, “You want to stake me, go ahead. Be done with it. What the hell am I supposed--”

Wrenching her hand free, Buffy grabbed his neck and pulled his head down into a frantic series of gnawing kisses. When she had to stop to gulp air, he yanked himself away, took two wandering steps, and dropped down on the floor again. Back bowed, head bent: all folded into himself. When the chair creaked, he said, “Don’t. You wouldn’t like…what would come of it. ‘M right on the edge--” She could see his back move with breathing. “It didn’t. Feel wrong. Felt all sorts of good.” He shuddered: maybe a head-shake. “Always…feels all sorts of good. Can’t take care with you anymore. Not without I think it all out beforehand, can’t….”

She waited, but he didn’t finish the thought. “You have to put the soul back.”

“No.”

“I’ll find out where it is and do it--”

“No!”

Noise at the front door. Willow and Dawn came in, arguing, then stopped in the doorway, staring.

Dawn said, “Are you two having a thing? Because if you are, I don’t--”

“Bit,” Spike interrupted, unfolding to stand. “Get the soul.”

“You mean--?”

“Get it.”

Dawn stared to be sure he meant it, then dropped her backpack and hustled away down the hall.

Willow asked, “What’s going on? Did your room get wrecked?”

Buffy and Spike both ignored her.

Thumps and bumps from the basement. Then Dawn returned with a different backpack, holding it carefully before her.

Saying anxiously, “I’ll have to refresh on the ritual,” Willow reached for the backpack but Dawn avoided her, continuing past to present the backpack to Spike. When he didn’t take it, she set it on top of the TV and unzipped it, removing from it an Orb of Thessula glowing with its contents. Scooping it one-handed, Spike hurled it against the nearest wall. He’d flashed into game-face. He glared at Buffy for a moment, then turned on Willow, who looked startled and appalled, leveling a finger at her.

“You try to undo that, Red, and I’ll finish what I started in your bedroom.”

“Is it back?” Buffy asked.

“No,” said Willow, “it’s gone.”

“I guess,” Dawn said shakily, “that means we can visit Amy after all.”

**********

Dawn pinched herself and said softly, “Ow.” She guessed that meant she was still here.

It also apparently meant Spike’s soul wasn’t gone gone: not like he’d dusted or anything. No longer contained in the smashed jar, it had been released to the air, or the aether, or wherever souls went when they weren’t attached to anybody.

She wasn’t attached to anybody. Only to an untethered soul. Majorly shiversome.

Spike’s sudden glance told her he hadn’t thought about that side of it until now. He told Willow, “What I said before. About fitting up some different anchor for Dawn. See to it.”

Dawn burst out, “I don’t want that! I never wanted that! Stupid vampire, it wasn’t so you’d be my anchor: it was so I’d be yours! So you wouldn’t do something dumb, get yourself dusted. So you’d know it wasn’t just you, that you were risking! So you’d show a little sense sometimes about what you let yourself get into. And now you’ve thrown it all away, let it go smash, you idiot! Moron! Fool! Jerk!” She found herself pounding on Spike’s chest, doing no damage whatever, and he didn’t even hug her or anything, just stood and let her do it. She couldn’t reach him. Not really. This time, he’d gone too far away: inside himself. She couldn’t reach, and he wouldn’t.

Willow dragged her away, saying, “There’s no time for this.” She tried to steer and push Dawn out the door.

Dawn didn’t care, and said so, yanking free of Willow, glaring at Spike. “You don’t care. You never cared. Got what you wanted--Buffy--then got rid of the soul the first chance you had. Are you hunting now, Spike? Feeding on people yet? Because the bagged blood is only second best, we all know it, and now there’s nothing to stop you doing it direct again. You--”

Willow shook her, interrupting, “We have to get there before dark!”

Spike asked Willow, “What’s all this, then? Who’s Amy? What's she got to do with anything?”

Buffy stood up behind Spike, hands hovering as though she wanted to touch him but had the nasty suspicion he was red hot, blurting, “Spike…?”

Still tugging on Dawn, Willow told Spike, “I’ll explain later.”

“Won’t be here later. Explain now.”

In a commanding, spell-y voice, Willow declared, “Confutate,” and everybody shut up. Dawn had words to think in, but they wouldn’t come out of her mouth. Not even an indignant Ahh ahh, like when your tongue was impeded by a thermometer and you couldn’t say the truly devastating thing you were thinking. Not that Dawn was thinking anything that devastating. Or, she thought, looking at Spike being all irritated and detached, like he was around his vampire crew but never with them, because they were freaking family, maybe she was.

Her stomach was all knotted up: they hadn’t stopped on the way home and she hadn’t had anything since breakfast except the horrible vanilla yogurt and the potato chips except that now she didn’t want anything anyway, wasn’t even hungry, would probably just barf if she tried, she was so upset because nobody was doing anything about Spike. Not even Spike. And she couldn’t get the words to come.

Pointing demandingly at her mouth, Dawn let Willow drag her back toward Willow’s car.

“Locutate,” Willow said wearily, making a gesture that required her to release Dawn’s arm as well as her words, and bent to unlock the passenger door because she had to: the Fiat came equipped with power nothing. Dawn threw herself miserably into the seat.

Getting in on the driver’s side, Willow said crossly, “If you want to do something about Spike, help me identify the spell that’s making him this way.”

“Yeah, sure: it’s not any spell, Willow. He’s always been like this. Except…not around us.” Dawn folded her arms hard and scuffed at a curved-up edge of the floor mat, muttering bastard; idiot; git; freakin’ numbskull under her breath. As Willow got the car started and yanked through the gears (one pained screeeech!) to get it moving, Dawn demanded, “Where’s his soul now?”

“Some kind of limbo, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well, it isn’t as if I read up on it lately, Dawn! But…there seems to be something like the Law of Conservation of Souls: as long as the owner’s alive, they don’t just dissipate, or I couldn’t get them back. The way I did with Angel.”

Angel was undead too, so Dawn judged that a fair comparison. “How do you know you got his soul back? His very own? Not just one that happened to be floating past when you grabbed?”

Willow sighed, frowning at the road.

Dawn added, “And don’t tell me ‘It’s complicated,’ because I frelling know that, all right? I’m asking you to uncomplicate it! So how do you know you got the right soul?”

“There’s a mystical connection. Between the soul and the person,” Willow formulated slowly, possibly through gritted teeth. “That keeps it waiting, wherever it is, until that person really, completely dies. Or dusts, as the case may be. When you invoke the soul, you’re also invoking the person you’re putting it back into. Because typically, that person isn’t present. So it’s the right soul. Nobody else’s would respond. I think.”

“Oh, great: you think!”

“It’s complicated! And I’m only just beginning, Dawnie! Give me a break here, all right? There’s lots of stuff I don’t know, and I know that. All humble about that, the way I’m supposed to be. Now please, please keep quiet: I have to review my defense spells. I didn’t think I’d have to remember them this long. And I can’t do that while you’re talking!”

“That was a red light,” Dawn mentioned sullenly.

“Rule two: don’t distract the driver. And do you have your seat belt fastened?”

Dawn attended to it. Geez! Like it was her fault Willow had run that red light! And Spike had promised to teach her to drive, except the DeSoto was someplace up on blocks, and maybe now he never would, all detached the way he was, and she’d been so happy for him at first, that he’d set aside the nagging soul that ruined everything, made everything so hard for him, and he’d assured her nothing important had changed, everything still fine between them. Sure, fine. The disconnected drift only begun then. Undetectable.

Stopping the spell wasn’t gonna solve the problem because the problem predated the spell. What had only been simmering had come to a full rolling boil: she wondered delicately exactly what sort of a thing Buffy and Spike had gotten into, between them, to set off the full withdrawal. Probably something about S-E-X. Or feeding. Or both, because he still wasn’t feeding right, or enough, even though the bagged blood was human.

She didn’t truly believe what she’d accused him of: hunting, feeding, the way ordinary vamps did. Mike, for instance. But if Spike detached himself from all human connections, if he no longer had them to anchor him tight, tether him close and safe, he probably would, sooner or later. Because, what was to prevent him? And what was the alternative?

And if he did…and if Buffy found out about it….

Bad, Dawn thought. Could be very bad.

“Dawn,” Willow said, shutting off the engine, “I need your locket now.”

Looking around, Dawn saw that the car had stopped about the same place as it had before. Taking what Tara would have called “a deep, cleansing breath,” she slipped the chain of the locket over her head and surrendered it.

And instantaneously felt, knew, she was no longer alone. Not exactly the “eyes on the back of her neck” sensation--more like an awareness of eyes behind her eyes. A mutter of thoughts that weren’t her thoughts almost like background voices in a polite restaurant. Nothing she could actually overhear, but still there. Lots of them. They hadn’t said or done anything yet but she knew they could.

She wondered if this was how people felt when they were possessed. Or dispossessed, if it came to that. Or maybe it was like having fleas and therefore referring to oneself as “we.” Just the thought made her feel itchy all over.

She trailed along behind Willow to the door and dispiritedly inspected the half-dead foundation shrubs (knowing it was the cement leaching into the insufficiently acidified soil that was killing them, without knowing how she knew: she just did) while Willow rang the bell, waited, and rang again.

The shadows of the opposite houses were long, stretching all the way across the street; and the remaining light was reddish and anything but warm.

The door was opened by a tallish, dark-haired woman about Willow’s age. Amy--assuming that’s who she was--leaned diagonally in the doorway, blocking it. Her eyes looked somehow both surprised and sly. “Oh, hi, Willow. You decide you want to go clubbing again? It was fun the last time, so I’m still game if you are. It’s been awhile since we went out. Together.”

The clear sound of insinuation was there, even for Dawn and her auditors. Dawn didn’t know what Amy was insinuating. Her auditors did, and also judged it untrue.

Not a good omen, meeting someone for the first time and the first thing out of their mouth was a lie.

Squaring herself up, showing resolve-face, Willow said, “I came to talk about Spike.”

“Oh, is he still around? Still drooping around after Buffy, I think you said?”

“They’re a bit past droop. And there’s been some problem--”

“With a vamp? Why am I not surprised?”

“--with spells,” Willow continued, ignoring the interruption. “Being sold to a vamp called Digger.”

“‘Digger’? Really? How totally quaint! And how’s your girlfriend--is it ‘Thea’? ‘Farah’? I’m real bad now with names. Maybe because of all that time I was kept as a rat--!”

Other than mouthing off at each other, Amy and Willow weren’t doing anything. Except they were. Just nothing visible. But Dawn’s auditors and watchers--hell, just say it: the Powers--were aware of it and didn’t care whether Dawn knew or not.

It was like a shoving match: push and counter and push, like two people holding metal garbage can lids. Variously weapon, shield, and deflection depending on how they were angled, how hard they were pushed. Nothing complex or targeted yet--just assessing raw magical force and determining who had more.

Amy smiled: a real nasty, toothy smile. “Tara. Of course that’s it, and how appropriate! Like the house in that old movie. Overblown, overdressed, and…over, I see. Shot by accident, hey? How excessively dumb. But typical.”

Practically crackling with fury, Willow reached out and closed fingers around Dawn’s wrist. Dawn stumbled forward from a sense of push. Amy fell backward through the doorway. Willow advanced into the house, towing Dawn behind her.

Dawn could feel the power drain. Not very strong yet. Barely a trickle gathering, running through her, and away. Something like the feeling she got when Mike had fed on her, without the nice parts. Apparently energy and blood felt much the same.

She remembered Xander joking one time about how, in an alternate universe, he and Willow had been vampires. It had been a different Willow, a whole different universe; but maybe this Willow remembered. Except, of course, that she needed no invitation to go inside.

One way or the other, Willow was feeding on her. And Dawn's occupants were letting it happen.

Amy was tumbled on her back, one knee bent. If Dawn had been someone else, she could have looked up her skirt. Very undignified. Amy scuttled back until she hit a tall cabinet that held china. The standing plates rattled as she pulled herself upright against it.

“You’re crazy,” she accused, swiping hair out of her face. “Everybody knows spells don’t work on vamps!”

“Some do,” Willow replied, still advancing. “A deathwish, that’s not too hard to adapt. Because, after all, well, dead. I can see how the one in Gingrich’s Apothecarium Malorum could be modified. Or did you use Morris’s Arcanum? Yeah: the Arcanum--spiteful little twerp, Morris. Always reminded me of Principal Snyder. I thought it might be, when I made the counterspell. Nice to know I was right. So what was the flashy powder for, Amy? Something lingering, with poison? Play with his head, or play with his body? Because he doesn’t seem to be sickening just yet, but something’s definitely off in that quarter. You see, I’ve come to regard Spike as not only a sort of weird friend, not just my best friend’s boyfriend, which makes him a sort of boyfriend-in-law, but as an actual business partner, and it’s my professional rule never to let anybody mess with my business partners.”

Willow’s smile, though less toothy, was worse than Amy’s: at the same time genuinely happy and genuinely malevolent. And the rate of draw was increasing.

Willow continued implacably, “I’m gonna give you one chance to tell me what you did and how you did it. Your own secret, private recipe for hurting a vamp--for money.”

“Not money,” Amy blurted.

“What, then?” Willow didn’t sound really interested.

“A chance. At real power. Not the feeble, sucky residue, that’s all that’s left. Real power to draw on and use. Maybe I could cut you in…for a share--” Amy said, with effort, as though all the breath were being squeezed out of her.

Willow laughed. It was not a nice laugh. “Power? Please! I have all the power I need, nearly all the power I can use. Freely granted, not stolen or coerced. You want to find out what a brain suck is like, Amy? I might even be merciful: not the capacity, just the contents. I don’t have to ask, you know. I could take! And if you tell me right now, I might not turn you back into a rat. Keep you in the little cage, cute little wheel to run around in, great food every day--all the comforts of home. Except for, well, being a rat. It took me over five years to figure out how to undo your spell, turn you human. Turn you back into a rat, I could do it just like that.” Willow snapped her fingers.

Dawn couldn’t see much in the hallway anymore except the shine of Amy’s frightened eyes. The power draw was fierce…and the Powers were amenable. Shoving Dawn aside, a still point of awareness, just an onlooker, the Powers fed a rush of force through the contact. And Amy burst into flame like a vamp on a sunny afternoon.

“I didn’t do that!” Willow exclaimed, flinging Dawn’s wrist away. “I didn’t spell her to burn!”

(While Amy shrieked and contorted.)

“Yes, you did,” Dawn heard her own voice saying. Except not her voice. The Power she was most attuned to and mostly a part of, the Power she’d taught Spike to call Lady Gates, had assumed control…and residence. Dawn was a frightened observer in her own head.

“I didn’t!” Willow protested, and said a Word that held Amy and her flames still, in a sort of freeze-frame, except it was still happening. Just stopped. “I mean…I didn’t mean to!”

“You’d better do your brain suck now, while she’s available,” Lady Gates (through Dawn) recommended calmly.

“I can’t do that! I just said that. Being all blustery and everything. I can’t just insert fingers in people’s heads and take their minds away! I’m not a fricking god!”

Lady Gates considered saying, I am, but decided it was unnecessary and possibly rude. Good manners were important when among the creatures, though less so than among her peers. Instead, she said, “You should have remembered that before, then. You shouldn’t threaten what you can’t deliver. I believe it’s called ‘bluffing.’”

Looking back and forth between Dawn and flaming Amy, Willow flung up her hands and wailed, “I don’t know what to do!”

“Go home. Call Giles,” Lady Gates suggested, secretly sardonic. “I’m sure he knows some way to get Amy un-flamed and back to something like her original condition. Such as it was. Repulsive little creature. But that’s a nice, solid stasis you’ve created: it should last for…oh, at least a week. I’m sure you’ll have something figured out by then. And then you can ask her your questions again. I’m sure she’ll be more receptive.”

“But I didn’t do it!” Willow insisted, wandering back to the car. “I don’t have the power to do a stasis. I’ve barely read about them!”

“Beginner’s luck,” suggested Lady Gates, with a sweet, Dawnish smile.

Chapter 4: Trick or....

Spike returned to the factory in a really foul mood. Paying no attention to the vamps variously sleeping or performing disorganized hand-to-hand fight moves, he tramped directly back to his office, booted up the computer, and plowed into the neglected translation, which gave him the usual eyestrain headache. Blinking hard, he grimly kept himself at it until he’d finished the bit he’d been working on, carefully zipped it with the notes he’d made, and transmitted it to the Council of Watchers with an attached invoice and a request for confirmation of receipt.

Ten hours, all told. A thousand dollars. Would go maybe halfway toward the first batch of the smell, not including Willow’s consultant’s fee. Not counting payment to the bloke at Oxford whose hobby was Droit, an extinct demon language, except that the bloke mistakenly thought it was a variant of Chaldean. He’d done an article on his hobby, which was how Spike had turned him up. A few of the translation passages had Droit cognates in them, and Spike only knew enough to identify the source language, not enough to read the bloody stuff. And the context had been completely mystifying without them.

Turned out, one had been local slang equating whores with pomegranates: a compliment, if you please; another had been a cognate implying a rival was full of shit. All so very edifying.

Anyway, that bit was finally done.

Eyes shut, Spike slumped in his chair for a few minutes, vaguely hoping something might lift or change. When it didn’t, he leaned to pull a half empty bottle of JD out of a bottom drawer and washed down some painkillers from a top drawer. Smoked about half a pack of cigs waiting for the pills to douse the headache or the liquor to allow him not to care.

Pills finally took effect. He’d only been working four hours or so--not enough for the headache to crank itself into an all-nighter.

Checking his watch, he figured it was time to put tonight’s sweep together and returned to the main area, calling, “Here!”

When his crew had gathered, he started naming off those he’d take with him. He was astonished when they started refusing. The reason? It was Halloween, and vamps didn’t hunt on Halloween. Not even other vamps.

“It’s traditional,” Emil protested.

“And that’s when the really big fuckers are out,” skinny, be-pinned Stait put in nervously. “Stuff that could make a mouthful of a vamp and not even chew.”

Spike didn’t appreciate being reminded that vamps were the red-headed stepchildren of the demon world: regarded as impure halfbreeds, barely to be distinguished from the humans most demons preyed upon. And he certainly didn’t appreciate the suggestion there existed monsters that vamps should rightly be afraid of. He appreciated least of all being refused.

He broke Emil up considerable and dusted Strait, who hadn’t really been working out anyway, and it wasn’t as if there weren’t a dozen more queued up to fill any vacancy, showing up in the sentry anteroom each evening snarling at each other, putting on a huge show of how fierce they were, hardly any of ‘em able to shed game face ten minutes at a time, damn fledges, but there was no lack of volunteers eager to be accepted to the top of the current local food chain and who the hell cared anyway. But it didn’t do any good: the rest were as adamant as before. Spike reluctantly realized he could dust them all and still not get his way.

They wouldn’t see that it was vital that the sweeps happen, and be seen to happen, each of the four nights each week that the downtown was interdicted to vamps from all other territories. To them, it was just another hunting night, except that the designated prey was inedible vamps, not humans. That far, he could push them. But not beyond.

And if he wiped out this current batch, he’d only have a new and even less experienced batch to train up afterward so there was no point in it whatever.

“Fine!” he shouted. “The hell with the lot of you!” and tramped back to the office to stock up on weapons. Hell with it: he’d go it alone, then. He really really felt like killing something. For a long time and messily.

Some son of a bitch was still turning out fledges, against the new orders, given the rate at which they continued to pop up. Some maybe were out of towners, like Sue. Certainly not all of them. And the penalty for unauthorized turning was protracted torture: demonstrations of technique for the edification of current legitimate fledges. Spike wished he had the fucker trussed up and ready to start on right now: might have been able to get a good hour in before he had to turn the doings over to somebody else, and that was another thing his court lacked--an expert torturer. Because beyond a certain point, Spike got bored and itchy inflicting pain on a helpless victim. No contest in it. No satisfaction. And, if he admitted it, a significant amount of ewww. Anyway, that was Angelus’ thing, not Spike’s. Never had been, never would be.

And Buffy expected him to take that on with a soul, that'd want to sick up or faint at the first smell of burnt flesh. Want him to nag Michael to cut loose, once and for all, from that wily old wanker Digger: force Michael to choose and maybe lose him, and for what--so they could be friends?When Michael was so useful just the way he was and maintaining some kind of watch over Digger was so important? Want Spike to give up blood altogether, fucking starve, on account of the soul didn't think feeding was nice?

Soul had no more notion of vampire realities than Buffy did, and with less excuse.

Be disastrous to have the fucking thing stuffed back in him now, and he’d damn well skin Red if she tried it, Spike thought, having a final few gulps of whiskey to see him through the sweep.

But, he thought, after he’d dropped through the floor hole in the back corner and started trudging through the main storm drain toward downtown, none of that changed what he felt for Buffy or for Dawn. Gave him hellishly bad judgment what he did about it, how he read or misread their signals. But didn’t change the feeling at all. Doing without was already like trying to do without…. Not air, because he didn’t need that. Not even blood, because he could pretty well ignore that too for quite a long time. He couldn’t think of any lack he could compare it to. The love and the connection hummed in him every second: the context that gave his unlife the only meaning that it had for him. Without that, nothing made sense and everything was dust in his hands, ashes in his mouth. Denying that, staying away from them, was gonna be the hardest thing of all to enforce on himself. ‘Cause give him one unguarded moment and he’d be there, trying to be to them what he couldn’t, not soulless; wanting from them what they couldn’t give and he had no right to ask. Doing to them things that would maybe end their answering love for all time. Things they could find no way to forgive or overlook. Things he no longer knew to guard against or might do reflexively, with no thought, when he was taken by surprise and simply reacted; when his familiar demon was running the show.

Like today.

Buffy had good reason to be upset. Spike knew that, in his head. He just couldn’t feel it because what he’d done was natural to him. He’d had to think and plan and guess at reactions and impose strict rules on himself to keep from doing it, over the past months. Since he’d first fed from her with her consent. Because both impulses, fucking and feeding, arose from the same place and were locked onto the same mark. It was unnatural to try to hold them separate or to give in to them only in moderation. They weren’t moderate. They were the sort of thing you forgot yourself in completely. Done timidly and only within limits, keeping a watch on yourself every second, they were hardly worth doing at all.

Impossible not to want more. Impossible not to want all.

So he’d make do with nothing. Somehow. Because there was no alternative.

That didn’t mean he had to like it or accept the limits graciously. He’d take out his fury and frustration on any vamp unlucky enough to cross his path tonight and enjoy the hell out of doing it.

He found only fledges, and few enough of them, and ripped them apart for not putting up a proper fight. For being on the wrong ground at the wrong time and too stupid and new to even know it. He’d stop and shake them and demand, “Who turned you?” and they’d gawp at him as though he were speaking Demotic Greek, which he’d actually had to brush up on lately. Fortunately there now were dictionaries online to refresh coursework done over a century ago. Fortunately Greek didn’t change much. Dead things normally didn’t.

Vamps didn’t. Only him….

He ran across a Cygnos, a Face-eater, in a parking lot, and it gave him a halfway decent fight before he got in a fatal axe-swing to the spine. He cleaned the axe on its belly fur and left it, limping, looking for another good go-round with something worth the time.

Because things worth fighting were abroad: he could feel them. Sometimes even smell them. That little skeezicks, Strait, had the right of it: Halloween generally brought out the biggest of the bads. Spike could feel a charge of extra power shivering in the air--almost like a dim echo of the Hellmouth. It drew. And it empowered…at least those able to make use of it. And it seemed a fair number, human and otherwise, had gathered in Sunnydale tonight to take advantage of it--nostalgia, maybe. Ignorance, more like. Expecting the Hellmouth to be churning out disruptive energy full-bore, to assist and power their workings. Instead, finding a quiet little suburban backwater where the streets were almost safe after midnight.

Spike cast about in different directions, trying to localize the sensation, but found nothing more remarkable than a big, bearded biker dealing grass, hash, and some highly diluted cocaine on a corner. Fairly nice bike. A Honda Shadow, maybe two years old, screaming red, covered with chrome. Nice detailing of a fiery skull on the housing, just behind the logo. Saddlebags; LA tag. Spike circled around and watched and thought for nearly an hour while the customers came and went. He’d declared dealers fair game until the smell was ready and available. But he hadn’t decided for himself whether to move beyond demons to humans. The next step, inevitably, would be hunting, and he hadn’t made up his mind about that yet.

While he was watching and considering, two scruffy guys passed in a late model Cadillac, also with LA tags, and blew biker-san into eternity with a double-bore shotgun out the window.

It was a bit messy retrieving the key, and the wad of small bills would need washing before they’d pass, but Spike was pleased to have the matter of the bike resolved so simply. He stowed stakes in the saddlebag and hung the other weapons from convenient thonging, retaining only the axe, that rested well enough under his leg, blade braced on a foot peg. Then he turned the key, stamped the bike into life, and was cruising.

On Wilkins he spotted a fledge doing a bint in an alley and gave chase, but the fledge skinnied through a break in a fence and Spike couldn’t locate him afterward. When he swung by to check, bint had scarpered too, so no joy there either. Nothing much doing anywhere, at least that he could find. All gone to the mall, maybe--do their big mojo there. Biggest parking lot in town. Lots of room. Except he wasn’t covering the mall tonight.

So he turned right onto Main, just a walking pace. Listening to the engine, feeling out the bike’s balance, checking stability in braking. Getting acquainted. Flash of metal caught his eye, and there she was: Slayer in patrolling togs, with the big two-handed broadsword, pacing by the theater. Not clued by the engine’s throaty purr, didn’t associate that with him anymore.

Spike didn’t question it, didn’t think back or forward. Was simply glad. Cut the engine and coasted right up to her, within touching distance before she jumped and spun, saw, and settled back onto her heels with a glare, like she did when he surprised her, caught her right out.

“Vamps on bikes,” she said. “Is that gonna get to be a thing around here? Am I gonna need a bike now to chase ‘em?”

“Not while I have one,” Spike said easily, setting a foot on the pavement to balance the bike steady.

“Had that awhile, have you?” she asked, knowing better.

“Tonight.”

“Sure: lots of motorcycle stores are open after midnight, right?”

Spike bent his head, smiling, getting out a cig. Saying nothing. He knew the drill.

“Where did you get it, Spike?” she challenged.

“Not where, how. And the answer is, the usual way. An’ before you ask, no. Didn’t do the chap myself. Some humans drove past, did him for me. Shotgun. Didn’t stop to collect the motorbike, strange to tell. So I thought I’d try her out, see if she was worth keeping. Dreadful expensive, these motorbikes. High maintenance an’ all.”

“Even worse when you actually buy them!”

“Expect so.” He got the cigarette lit, drew in smoke. “Wouldn’t know about that, myself.”

Slayer, she scuffed her toe on the pavement. Not to actually put marks on the leather, just one of her ways of showing hesitation, uncertainty. Not gonna give him more grief about the bike, then. Have to find something else to rag him about.

“It’s Wednesday,” she said.

“Thursday, actually.”

“Wednesday’s patrolling night. But you didn’t come.”

Spike studied his hands. Said nothing for awhile. Finally, “SITs would turn out if you asked ‘em.”

“I wasn’t expecting them. I was expecting you.”

“Said I’d keep your back, didn’t I,” Spike reflected.

“Yeah. Often, even.”

“All out of ‘orphan’ jokes.”

A silence.

Suddenly all bright and perky, she asked, “So how’s your sweep going? Where’s your crew?”

Spike gave her a look and admitted what she’d clearly figured out for herself, which was more than he would have expected of her. “Yeah,” he said, pitching the smoke. “Sort of quiet. Didn’t need anybody extra.”

“They wouldn’t come. Because, Halloween. And vamps don’t do Halloween.”

“Yeah. Nothing but fledges abroad. Did a few. And a Face-eater, in a parking lot on Evans. Don’t know what it was doin’ there. Just the one, though.”

“Earlier, I saw a good couple dozen trick-or-treaters, checked ‘em out. All genuine, far as I could tell. No present danger, except hyperglycemia. Cavities.”

“Let ‘em pass, did you?”

“Seemed the best thing. Though quite a few wanted to touch my sword.”

“I get that a lot, too,” Spike couldn’t help saying, though he managed to keep a straight face.

Eyes meeting, they considered the insinuation.

Taking a stance, Buffy said, “You really can’t help it, can you? Give you an opening, you’ll walk right in, every time.”

“You’re the one started it, Slayer, with the filthy innuendo. ‘Touch my sword.’”

“At least it’s a clean sword!” Then she gazed off down the alley, so as to be looking in some other direction. “So,” she said. “You gonna patrol with me or not?”

“Still thinking about it. Might do. Tradition an’ all. Good for your blood pressure.”

“And you gonna come home, sleep in a bed like a normal…person?”

Not looking at her either, Spike shook his head. “Thought that out already. Doesn’t seem such a good idea right now. Stay to the sewers, the odd dumpster and such till the factory’s fitted up against flame-throwers, rocket launchers, cannon. Then I can settle down proper up there. For the duration.”

“And how long is the duration, you think?”

“Couple months. Six at most. Unless it all goes smash first, of course. Then…I dunno.”

“Can’t you change your major or something? To Landscape Design or Small Pet Management with a minor in hamsters?”

“Can’t do it, love. Got to see it out. See it through. Take my best try at it, anyways.”

He waited for the bleat of Why, that he knew he couldn’t answer any way she’d understand.

What she asked was, “Gerbils? And they say weasels make good pets. If you’re into weasels.” More boot scraping.

So she was gonna leave him some room, still. Not come down with an ultimatum or a stake. Bear with him a little longer, even though it was like to tear them both apart. Accept his word that it was necessary, like he accepted her Slayer’s necessities.

Like he was a person.

Spike bent his head and breathed. “Suppose you’re gonna want to patrol on my fine new bike.”

“I thought you’d never ask!” she said, sliding on behind.

**********

The third time Spike slowed the bike to a barely-balanced crawl and went into search mode--head lifted and turning: looking, listening, smelling, sensing, with the intent beginnings of a frown or maybe just his forehead slightly thickened but well short of full game face--Buffy attended too. Came up with nothing. As he apparently did, rolling the bike a little faster again, with enough momentum to keep them upright if she moved.

Although Buffy frankly didn’t care if their joint sweep turned up anything fightable--scrunching up behind him on this bigger bike, arms around his waist, cheek against his back when they went fast, feeling the easy, automatic balance and motion like a dime set on edge and rolling, never quite wobbling or falling, was so familiar, happy, and good--she tapped his shoulder. When he turned to see her out of the corner of his eye, she leaned out a little and gave him a What? look. He hitched a shoulder and lifted his chin in unconscious belligerence.

Something, that conveyed to her, that he was picking up on but couldn’t quite locate or put a name to.

She held up three fingers, pointing out how many times he’d caught that indefinite signal, whatever it was. He replied with a spread hand: more than three, then. Something that’d been itching at him awhile.

Leaning close to his ear, she suggested, “School?” In response he bent the bike around the next corner and opened up, the quiet suburban street smearing by, streetlights flashing overhead and gone like a heartbeat. Outrunning their own echo: nothing to hear but wind and the muted growl of the motor.

Bumping across the construction-rutted ground behind the school, weaving among the tractor-trailers and double-wides doing service as temporary classrooms, everything starkly lit by high sodium lamps, Spike halted the bike on the concrete apron that fanned out from the rear door of the gym and cut the engine. Buffy stepped down, asking, “Warmer?”

“Dead cold,” he responded, automatically fishing for a cigarette. "Nothing."

The high school was always worth checking out: with archeological logic of the insane-o variety, this third incarnation of Sunnydale High was being constructed on the rubble of the previous ones. Right on top of the multi-dimension portal, the Hellmouth--once Sunnydale’s major attraction for tourists of the demonic sort, now buried and silenced.

Spike had already swept the downtown; the local cemeteries and hot-spots that usually yielded repeat business Buffy hadn’t checked in her patrol, they’d done a drive-by on the bike. So if the mystery tingle wasn’t here, it must be someplace else. And if vamps stayed home and cozy on Halloween, must be somebody else, too. Or something.

Buffy dug in the drawstring stake bag hitched at her waist, found her cell phone, and hit the #3 speed dial. After seven rings, the call was answered by a sleepy, cranky Willow.

Pacing, phone tight to her ear, Buffy reported, “Spike’s picking up on the edge of something. But we can’t localize it. Can you--”

“Geezul Pete, Buffy, it’s past three o’ clock in the--”

“Now, Will,” Buffy interrupted patiently, “what is the point of having a resident witch if you don’t consult her? Deep breath. D’you notice anything odd? I mean, odder than usual?”

“You’re with Spike?”

“Yes, Will, I’m with Spike. He’s got another bike, and we’re trying it out.”

“Neat-o! You two coming home together, then?”

Trust Willow to put a hopeful, romantic spin on anything. “Negotiations are proceeding,” Buffy reported. “News at six. Meanwhile: this disruption in the Force?”

“What’s the bike like?”

“Topic, Will.”

“What color is it?” Willow asked, unquenched.

“Well, it’s red. Lots of chrome. Big ol’ flaming skull on the front whatsit.”

“Bigger or smaller than the former breadbox?”

“Not much bigger,” Buffy guessed, eyeing the bike appraisingly. “Heavier, though. And more back seat room.”

“Seat vinyl or leather?”

“Who can tell, anymore?”

From the bike, idly smoking, Spike supplied, “Leather,” and Buffy dutifully reported it, reflecting on spooky vamp hearing. She also relayed his answer to Willow’s next question about the make: Honda. Shadow. By Willow’s appreciative reaction, a Honda Shadow was evidently a good thing to be. So Spike was a discerning thief: swiped only the best he could get his hands on. Though to be fair, he’d been uncomplainingly afoot for over a month. Not like he’d been actively shopping for a replacement. The new bike was just serendipity in action, supply meets demand. Abandoned, it’d followed him home.

“Better Spike than the police auto pound,” Buffy conceded, “fondly known to teens as the Parking Lot of Doom.” Before Willow could ask about the bike’s miles-per-gallon, Buffy again recalled her to the topic.

“Can’t tell,” Willow replied, following an audible yawn. “I put the mouth on automatic ‘cause I was checking. Nothing’s sending up red signals, at least for me. But, Buffy? That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Aetheric planes are all roiled up tonight. On account of Halloween. Something ungood would have to be right in my face before I’d notice. Did you check the school?”

“We’re there now. No joy.” Buffy absently pushed hair off her face. “Well, thanks, anyway. We’ll probably check around a little more, then call it a night.”

“G’night, then.”

“G’night, Will.”

Stowing the phone, Buffy strolled sideways to the bike, her eyes on the gym doors. Spike said, “Yeah,” and she looked around at him.

“You’ve gone in for mind reading?”

“You’re not hard to read, love. I cover your back. An’ I show up for your class, I guess. Have some pattern to the days.”

Buffy made a decision. “And every day after work, I come up to the factory for an hour or two and train. With anybody there willing to get knocked around a little.”

Spike said only, “All right,” but she could tell he was pleased. “I’ll send somebody down to the Magic Box, collect the gear. Might call Demon Girl, tell her it’s all right.”

“I’ll remind myself.”

“And the weekends?” he asked.

Buffy smiled. “They’re for us. And for resting. Major snog: long and slow. Feed you up good beforehand, though.”

Spike held out an arm, and Buffy let herself be gathered in. For once, nothing urgent. Just together and touching, and the quiet happiness of being in each other’s close company. He bent his forehead against her shoulder--against the mark--and just stayed like that, and she felt it as the apology he’d seen no point in making for what’d happened in her bedroom. She rubbed his back to reassure him it was OK, or not OK but past, anyway, and all still good between them. Dumb stuff happened sometimes, and if nobody died, then obviously it wasn’t life or death. Both of them still here, still together.

He was being extra careful, she thought, and extra gentle with her now in compensation. Holding back. He’d get over it. Below the surface storms and upheavals, down deep there was an unchanging steadiness she always believed in even when she couldn’t feel it. She didn’t have to touch it often but whenever she tried, it was still there, comfortable and serene.

What let them last out the rough times…that always came. And always passed.

They had a joint sigh. Buffy always found that weird when it happened, considering he didn’t need the air. It was an ending, an unspoken OK.

As she slid in behind, he started the bike. It had a lower, quieter note than the aggressive blat he’d teased and tinkered out of the other one, that he’d given to his vamp pal Mike as…leavegeld, she thought, retrieving the alien word with dutiful effort as Spike heeled the bike sharply around and sent it on a twisty course back among the double-wides.

It was as hard as…algebra, or some other very hard thing, to hold a place open in her mind for vamp words, vamp concepts. They didn’t want to stick, or else she reflexively shut herself against them so they bounced off, gone the next second, leaving no lasting imprint. It was hard to take in the differences, his differences, instead of dismissing them and insisting that only the commonalities were real. An inner gatekeeper was continually on guard against the foreign, the ambiguous. And especially against the demonic.

A Slayer thing, maybe, she thought sleepily. Should ask Giles….

Whether or not, she was now consciously at war with the gatekeeper: trying to dismantle it, slay it, beat it down. Revoke its mandate to hold her shut against Spike and everything associated with him. Everything important to him, that Willow easily thought to ask him about and Buffy somehow seemed determined to stay pig-ignorant of, stupidly and willfully blind to. Willow was open and interested; Dawn was even geekishly avid, spouting Vamplore 101 even when actively discouraged. So why Buffy had always felt compelled to keep herself pristinely shut, pure, untouched by such things was a mystery to her. But she at least recognized it now and wanted consciously to end it. Because however it arose, its effect was to distance, reject, and refuse Spike. Feeling the distance more keenly in these days and nights of his absence and in his soullessness, that made everything more complicated and difficult, Buffy wanted to let him in. Hold him always as tight as her arms around his waist, never farther than her cheek against his back in the rush of wind. Always be welcoming him home….

“Slayer.”

Spike’s voice roused her, made her sit straight and realize she’d been drifting. The bike was halted, softly purring, by the curb in a stretch of darkened fast food outlets. She recognized the currently empty six-lane thoroughfare as the Mall Extension: the new road that led to the mall, the airport bypass, and the interchange to the main north-south highway a little past the west edge of town. This far from downtown the stars were visible, high and chill, and the breeze bore the salt tang of the ocean.

A few blocks ahead, slightly uphill and on the right, a bonfire lit the sky.

Large, open bonfires were not common or encouraged in Sunnydale. A definite clue, Buffy thought.

“Been itching at me all night, no reason,” Spike commented. “So I thought, what the hell, come take a look. I can feel it plain now: some gits doin’ a Working, up there. Big enough, they need lots of open space, to duck or deflect any reflux coming back at ‘em or in case they raise what they can’t handle. Don’t want to start something like that in your basic closet. Blood magic, most like: dire stuff--got that feel to it, anyway.”

“Hey, when did you get all expert on matters chanty and spell-casty?”

“Been reading up on it lately. So: how do you want to play it?”

The way he said it meant he already had an opinion. So she responded, “Gee, I don’t know, Ollie--what d’you think?”

He scratched the scarred eyebrow, which meant he knew she wasn’t gonna like his suggestion. She could generally read his body language just fine, she thought smugly; only the peripherals she had problems with. He said, “Well, thought you might want to stop here while I had a look-see. Has some advantage, bein’ farsighted. Get a bit of a look at what’s up beforehand, not just go barging in blind….”

Buffy showed him a bright, perky smile. “Barging’s quicker. And has the new wonder ingredient, Surprise. I like that better.”

“Barge it is, then.”

They unshipped weapons--Spike reversing the axe so it was blade-up, the haft securely under his knee, Buffy dangling the broadsword low on the right, just high enough so its tip wouldn’t drag on the pavement.

Spike said, “One pass through, then back, plow into ‘em, ditch the bike, and go for the center.”

“Definitely hot,” Buffy agreed, and braced as the bike took off.

**********

Slayer wanted sudden, he could give her sudden. But a moment’s longer lead time would give him a sense of the whole, where to hit first. With Buffy hanging on with one arm, behind, Spike took the bike to the entrance at the opposite end of the parking lot, rolling slow and soft, seeing what he could see.

A few hundred feet off, silhouetted against the bonfire, were a bunch of blokes in monkish garb except colorful, reds and yellows and greens in the flickering light. Half a dozen or so, gesturing and chanting: their voices reached him faintly. Bloke toward the front, that would be the head Mage, was in black, with silver trim: easy to mark him, then. Take him out first, demoralize his chums, do them after.

Next to the fire, trussed up to poles, were the sacrificial victims. Blood magic: stood to reason there’d be victims. Two poles were empty, surrounded by heaps of coals. Two gone, then. Three still alive, all dressed in white ankle-length tabards or rectangular ponchos or whatever the hell people were calling that sort of laundry-wear at the moment, except that the head Mage was bending to light the kindling around one’s feet. Goddam: virgin sacrifices. Spike wouldn’t have thought it possible to corral five virgins past the age of twelve in any mid-sized American town, let alone Sunnydale, whose working motto seemed to be Live fast, before you die young. Not counting Dawn, of course.

Must be a major Working, to require the shedding of five virgin sacrifices. Spike wondered idly what the spell was intended to accomplish, not that it mattered since he and the Slayer were gonna bust it up. Five virgins. Even Jem-Har-Reesh, a pompous arsehole who claimed to have overseen the erection of the Tower of Babel, hadn’t needed but three to properly anoint the dedicated foundation stone, if his lackey’s account was to be trusted.

Failing to find any switch to turn the bike’s headlight off, Spike reached with the butt-end of the axe and smashed the bulb. No need to give more notice than they had to. Pity to damage the bike so soon and all, but there you were.

Do the Archmage first, he decided, then concentrate the second pass on getting between the colorful monk Mages, Acolytes, whatever the hell they were, and the sacrifices. Stop the thing from going forward, and Slayer would likely be pleased to rescue the remaining virgins, so that was second priority.

Rescuing virgins always sounded good, even though it wasn’t in Spike’s present job description. He’d even let them go, if he had to: the bike was spoils enough for one night.

He patted the Slayer’s knee to warn her, unlimbered the axe one-handed, and let the bike show him what it could do.

Halfway to the target, they were doing sixty and still accelerating. Couldn’t manage a lot by way of finesse at that speed, but Spike braced the butt of the axe haft under his right arm, guided it with his left, and took the Archmage through the face with the blade. Let the haft drop crossways, after, to hold the bike steady through whatever cleavage Buffy was doing to the right, and then they were past and he was braking hard, pulling the bike into the tightest whip-about he could manage, all but standing it on its nose. As the bike straightened and the rear wheel caught, grabbed, and started to push again, he saw a fireball coming right at his head.

Bloody hell.

He leaned, shouting, “Down!” and laid the bike skidding on its side, Buffy springing clear and running past, bringing the big sword around to lay into the remaining rainbow monks. Spike heaved the bike off and started for the sacrifices, gathering in the axe and choking up the haft, limping pretty bad because his right knee and leg had been torn up fairly thoroughly in the skid, but he was still on his feet and moving, so it didn’t matter.

The nearest girl, the one that’d been set alight, was too fully engulfed to have much hope of, and he’d only catch fire himself if he tried. Went at her anyway because the other two were safe, just needed cutting free. Squinting against the heat, he saw a clear spot--rope, post, no flesh--and whacked it hard. Rope was cut through. The burning girl toppled toward him just as something hot hit him square in the back.

He did something, bled the heat off somehow. Didn’t think about it, just laid the horribly injured girl down and limped on to the next, freed her, and likewise with the third. Then he swung around to find out how Buffy was faring with the rainbow contingent.

They were all down and Buffy had her phone to her face--calling Emergency Services, most like, for the burned girl. Looking, all the while, straight at him.

All sorted, then. Bonfire seemed to have gone out some way: big fuming pile. Odd.

Spike dropped down on the pavement to take a moment’s breather, rest the leg, have a cig before he had to right the bike and get them gone. No rush: Sunnydale Emergency Services were not paragons of haste on calls late at night, more’s the pity.

Ex-virgins…no, ex-sacrifices, they were presumably still virgins--had run to Buffy and they were all gabbling shrilly together. Fine, so long as it wasn’t him. He felt strange and couldn’t seem to get his lighter to stay lit. Flame would take and then immediately snuff out. Healing was kicking in, though: pain in his knee was abating, and the whole leg felt as though some cool, numbing salve had been poured over it. Probably do well enough by the time he had to stand on it again.

He was still working on the lighter when Buffy came up, asking with odd hesitancy, “Are you all right?”

The lighter chose that moment to quit being balky, and he finally got the cig lit and took a drag. Needed it, somehow, more than usual. Still felt strange. At last exhaling, he responded, “Nothing that won’t mend. Hope I’ve not wrecked the bleeding bike.”

Using the axe haft for support, he stood and went back to the bike, still buzzing like a toppled locust. Heaved it back upright and got it on its kickstand, to check it out. Some chrome on the pipes scraped and the right side mirror cracked, but otherwise no great harm he could see. And it was still running. Good enough.

As he patted it approvingly on the gas tank, his sense of unease flared into alarm. He finally registered the brightening sky to the east. Bare minutes to sunrise.

Not enough time to get Buffy home, but enough to reach the factory, he thought.

Swinging onto the bike, he said, “Sun’s coming. Stay, or come with?”

Her answer was to slide onto the bike behind him.

They tore off, racing the deadly light.

**********

When Spike hopped off the bike and dove for the alcove, he’d already started to smoke. Buffy turned off the bike and took the keys, following more slowly, trying to think through what had happened, what she’d seen.

Apparently there wasn’t gonna be a repeat of the phenomenon in daylight; but in daylight, she probably couldn’t have seen it anyway.

The sentry had the sense to move clear, so Buffy barely noticed him, continuing into the interior of the factory. Spike was headed toward his glassed-in cubicle in back--no longer smoking and not limping so plainly. Remembering her, he wheeled and waited for her to catch up, setting his hands on her shoulders when she did.

“You look to be all in one piece.”

“Yeah. And you’re not all dusty.” She patted his face, unable to shed the anxiety she’d felt when a red-clad mage had hurled a fireball at his back and there’d been nothing she could do to prevent it hitting him. Whatever had happened, it certainly wasn’t her doing.

“’M fine,” he responded predictably, turning with her toward the back, right arm across her shoulders. “Long night for you, though: want me to send out for some coffee?”

“No time. I’d accept one of your crazy-making stims, though.”

“Yeah, still got a few.”

While Spike pawed through his desk drawers, Buffy dialed Xander, whom she considered her best bet at retrieval, construction work apparently being a dawn-to-dark business. If she hadn’t already missed him….

Xander’s voice greeted her, “I refuse to believe there are now sunrise apocalypses.”

Reading the caller ID first thing, obviously.

Buffy responded, “No apocalypse, just me stuck out at the factory with no transport. Can you swing by, get me home?”

A thoughtful pause. “Would it be indelicate--”

“Xander,” Buffy said wearily, “don’t be a poop-head. Just come get me, all right?”

“One rescue from sinister factory coming right up. I was just on my way out the door anyway. Ten minutes.”

As she put the phone back in the stake bag, Spike was out by the gap in the barricade, shouting for water. In a glass.

She’d now seen him as Dawn once had, in the last moments of the Hellmouth: an Elf lord revealed in his wraith, Dawn had called it afterward. Or less fancifully, Buffy’d seen what Willow reported seeing when she bothered to look--his aura. Enormous flaming wings blazing against the dark, sucking in the flung fireball, sucking every lick of flame out of the bonfire and the burning sacrifice, before going to a bright shimmering web of spangles, and then vanished, all in maybe two seconds.

She’d heard it, known it: how he’d survived closing the Hellmouth, after all, and kept the inferno heat off those there with him, too: Dawn, and Anya, and Mike. Knowing it was one thing. Seeing it…that was definitely something else.

When he came back with the glass of water and offered her a pill on the flat of his hand, Buffy asked, taking them, “Do you know what you did, when that fireball hit?”

"Didn't hit: dodged it."

"No, the other one. Afterward. When you were freeing the burning girl."

“That what it was.” He didn’t seem interested. “Didn’t do nothing. It just went off, some way. Fizzled.”

“No,” Buffy said, and gulped down the pill, shaking her head. “You did it. I saw you. Went all blaze-y. Like big wings. You channeled it.”

“Huh. Well, convenient, I guess.”

“Has it ever happened before?”

He got a cigarette out. His lighter, she noted, was now working properly, on the first flick. “Not that I know of. Except the once, of course. Hellmouth, and all.”

“You’re still doing it,” Buffy said, wanting a reaction proportionate to the vision--Spike as an angel of Light. Lacking only a flaming sword.

He was checking his watch and made an annoyed face. “Two hours before Ken shows up. Want to have her roll the bike inside, so I can look it over proper.”

He just wasn’t getting it at all.

“I can do it,” she offered, puzzled and frustrated by his lack of interest.

“That’d be fine. Ta, then. Give the whelp my love and I’ll see you tonight. At the gym,” he added, when she continued to stare at him blankly.

“Right. The gym.”

"Skip the training today: you'll need the rest. Don't forget, though, about calling Demon Girl, that I'm gonna have the gear picked up."

"Right. I'll remember."

His mental checklist complete, Spike dropped onto his cot and was asleep, just about instantaneously. Buffy took another sip of water, wondering how long it took the mental-alertness non-sleepy pill to kick in. Leaving the glass on Spike’s desk, she wandered outside just in time to meet Rona arriving with the morning delivery of tribute blood. The SIT was annoyed to have again been given no directions where to bring it. “I mean, he’s all over the frickin’ map, different every day, and he never bothers to call, and how does he expect me--”

“He has a lot on his mind,” Buffy cut in soothingly, accepting the handles of the styrofoam cool box and passing the box smoothly off to the sentry, still taking no note of him except as an anonymous presence to her left. She was trying to decide whether to ask Rona for a lift home or wait for Xander, since she’d already called him out here anyway.

Pointing, Buffy said, “Rona, Spike’s got another bike. Give me a hand getting it inside?”

“That’s Spike’s? Cool! Mike see it yet?”

"Maybe. I don't think so. I don't know." Despite his odd courtship of Dawn, around in the yard or on the porch every night for months, Buffy wasn't sure she'd know Mike unless he stood before her with a big sign.

"He'll be green! Maybe they'll have a race."

"Why?" Buffy asked, inserting the key and turning it until the handlebars unlocked.

"Oh, they're always doing stuff like that. Dominance games. Like all vamps do."

"Oh."

The problem wasn’t the weight, it was the balance. With Buffy steering and Rona pushing, they bumped the motorcycle up the single step into the anteroom. Not knowing how the kickstand worked, Buffy leaned the bike against a bank of file cabinets lining the far wall. Spike could have somebody take it from there. One of his crew. Maybe even this sentry, whom she still hadn’t looked full in the face.

With a sense of Aha!, she recognized it as an instance of gatekeeper-enforced selective blindness. Caught herself at it!

She turned and confronted the sentry. In human face, he looked about twenty. Brown hair, brown eyes, no visible marks or scars; taller than she was, perhaps 5’ 10”, weight maybe 180. Wearing the colors, of course. Buffy demanded, “What’s your name?”

The vamp gulped, nervous and surprised to be addressed. “Called Deuce, Miss. Slayer.”

“Get the bike inside where Spike can look at it.”

“Sure, Miss.”

“‘Slayer’ will do,” Buffy responded dryly, then made herself add his name: “Deuce.”

“Right.” He didn’t seem quite sure if he was supposed to salute.

Idiot, Buffy thought, without rancor, and went back down the step into the sunlight to wait for Xander, since he’d be peeved to arrive and find her already gone.

Chapter 5: Safety Through Fitness

When Buffy opened the gym door, she gulped: wall-to-wall people.

If Spike didn’t show up, she’d definitely murder him.

As she was releasing the door, she heard the basso purr of the approaching bike. Jerking a sudden, hysterical smile at everybody looking at her expectantly, she spun back outside and fled to the bike, looking over her shoulder as if at a pursuing bear.

“Spike--there’s people in there!”

“Yeah. And?”

“I mean, like, thousands of ‘em! I can’t talk to thousands of people!”

She finally looked and found him regarding her quizzically. “Stage fright? Never would’ve taken you for that, pet. Think as though they were vamps: still think they’re thousands?”

Buffy frowned and probably pouted. “Well, no,” she admitted, replaying the one terrifying glimpse she’d had. “Maybe sixty. If they were vamps.”

“Sixty’s still a lot. We’ll just take it like you’d eat an elephant: cut ‘em up in bite-size pieces.” Sliding spread fingers into her hair, he pulled her down into a lingering, reassuring kiss. Releasing her, he stepped off the opposite side of the bike, remarking, “Reinforcements coming, be here soon. I just been on with Red, they’re fetching something. Meanwhile, you just go on, get them warmed up--”

“Oh, no. Oh, no. No way, Jose. You have to go in too. Now. It’s your fanclub!”

Buffy grabbed his wrist and dragged him, laughing and protesting, to the door. She shoved him in first, for good measure.

When she edged in behind, the gabble of conversation had shut up and Spike, perfectly self-assured and composed, was eating the whole elephant up with his eyes, deciding where to make the first cut.

“Well, hullo again,” he said. “Glad the word’s spread, ‘bout this fine class. For you new folk, this is Miss Elizabeth Anne Summers,” (He dragged her around in front, so she could give them all a glazed, demented grin.) “your instructor in ‘How to Stay Alive in Sunnydale.’ That was the course title, wasn’t it, pet?”

“‘Safety through Fitness,’” Buffy responded, adding hastily, “but I like yours better.”

“That’s fine too. Just so long as you people didn’t show up for macramé, tatting, pet care, ‘cause we don’t do none of that poofter stuff here. Who has a notebook?” About five were wildly waved in the air. “Fine: some folk knew to come prepared. Mindy,” he said, with the barest frowning pause to call up the name, which was grounds for murder all by itself, “you tear out a page and pass it around. And you first-timers sign it, so we’ll know who-all you are. Write so it can be read, please.”

Before he could go on, Buffy rose on her toes to whisper, “That’s the first time I ever heard you say ‘please.’”

He looked around. “Well, have to have my public manners on, don’t I? And don’t say you never heard me beg, because that’s a filthy fib.” Looking back to the crowd, he went on, “An’ I’m William, known to my friends and many enemies as ‘Spike.’ Where’s my two tripping blokes? Andy and…George? Yeah, see you. All right, you know from jumping jacks. Get the group divided in two and lead off. Got some setting up still to do here.” To Buffy, he said quietly, “My lot, and the SITs, they’ll be along momentarily. Divide up the herd in smaller bunches when they get here. Meantime, you figure out what’s next. Got some culling to do.”

Buffy hung onto his elbow, holding him place. “What d’you mean?”

“Vamps,” Spike replied tightly.

“If they behave,” Buffy surprised both of them by saying, “they can stay.”

“Don’t think that’s such a great idea, pet.”

“What are you gonna do: dust ‘em? Right in front of everybody, and the lights on?”

“Nooo…escort ‘em outside. Then dust ‘em. Or give ‘em a boot in the rear if I’m feeling kindly. You don’t want vamps in here, pet.”

“It’s my class. I get to say who can stay and who can’t. Steer ‘em over in some corner and I’ll talk to them.”

“Your call,” responded Spike, with a dubious glance and a shrug, and went off to separate the visiting vamps from the other attendees. About half the nearest group, beginning jumping jacks with their appointed pro-tem instructors, turned heads to watch Spike pass.

And he wasn’t even wearing the flash tonight--just the usual well-worn jeans and black tee. Not even the duster. Didn’t matter. Moving, intent, Spike still looked like raw sex on legs.

No sweep and no patrol tonight, Buffy reflected. Hmmm.

It took Spike very little time to cut out the vamps. A tap and a point toward the rear corner was all it took. Then Spike gave Buffy the high sign and they both closed in on the uneasy little group. Doing something like an impression of Principal Snyder viewing a bunch of boys caught cherry-bombing a toilet (only looking a whole lot better, undead, than Snyder ever looked alive) Spike stood with his arms folded, leaving the call to her.

Buffy looked them over: six vamps, probably all fledges, two of them already lapsed to game face. Buffy didn’t take that as hostility or imminent attack: she knew they couldn’t help it, and they certainly looked miserable and embarrassed, features twitching, trying unsuccessfully to recall a more human appearance.

“All right,” she said coldly, “why are you here? Figure it’d be easy pickings?”

All the heads shook emphatic No’s. One of the human-faced girls said bluntly, “Heard Spike would be here. I’ve been up at the factory every evening this week and he wouldn’t even look at me, much less talk to me. Thought maybe this would give me a chance. Spike,” she said, looking straight at him, “I’m volunteering. I can fight, and I can housekeep. By the look of that place, you need somebody--”

Spike said, “Shut up,” in a tone Buffy’d never heard him use before. The girl vamp volunteer immediately shut up but kept looking at him.

Another vamp, one of the game-faced guys, blurted, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s happened. I was coming home from class, and then bang, something jumped me. And I wanted--”

Spike cut in, saying to the first girl, “You know where Digger’s territory is?”

“Yes. It’s--”

“Him, and the rest like him, you take ‘em there when we’re done here. Tell Digger they’re a present.” When the girl nodded, Spike did a point-point directing those in game face (now three) to go stand to his right.

That left two, both still maintaining human face. When Buffy looked at him, the one on the left flashed a look at Spike, then bent his head and contemplated the floor. He was blond (Buffy forced herself to notice), on the skinny side, and looked in his mid-twenties. “I’m Digger’s. I’m a spy. See what’s going on here. Digger heard what happened Tuesday and told me to say it was none of his doing. I can take those fledges back. If you want.”

“Talk to the lady,” Spike responded, in that flat, curt tone. “She’s in charge here.”

“Slayer,” said the vamp, politely bobbing his head, eyes downcast. “I won’t make any trouble. My orders are to watch and report. I would have cleared it with Spike first, but there wasn’t time.”

Buffy delayed a ruling on that one: she’d never had to deal with an admitted spy before and wanted Spike’s opinion before she decided. So she turned to the one on the right. A woman, maybe thirty; short brown hair and a pleasant expression. The woman offered, “I’m Bea, also of Digger’s district in the new ordering. Not sent, just came. I was curious. I’ve been talking to that new fledge, Suzanne. She says she knows you. Both.”

“How old?” Spike asked her abruptly.

“Coming on six years now. About the same as Mike.” Bea’s glance shifted, and the SITs and three vamps (in the colors) were coming in the door, two of the vamps carrying middle-sized cartons they stacked on the lowest tier of the bleachers. The other vamp and the SITs were tossing down long blue tumbling pads--from the Magic Box annex, Buffy realized.

One vamp was Deuce, and another was a black woman--a surly Amazon Buffy would never confuse with Rona. So the third, Buffy figured, the tall one talking with Amanda, had to be Mike. He looked vaguely familiar. Buffy thought she recollected him from a challenge fight with Spike. Maybe.

Buffy drew Spike a few steps aside, asking, “Is the spy gonna be a problem?”

“Not as such. ‘Less he loses his head and goes for somebody.”

“I’ll risk that. What about Bea?”

“Oh, she’ll be all right. Know her a bit, actually. Gut somebody as soon as look at ‘em, good knife fighter for a vamp.”

Buffy gave him a look. “That’s not much of a recommendation for a social gathering.”

“She can hear us, you know,” Spike mentioned, scratching an eyebrow. “Think I’m gonna insult her, say she’s all fuzzy and safe?”

“Right,” Buffy admitted, and turned back to the pair, asking the spy his name. He claimed to be called “Bud.” “OK, Bud and Bea, you can stay on the condition you behave the same as everybody around you.”

“I planned to,” Bea said, and Bud nodded, commenting, “I already said. Slayer.”

“Next time,” Spike said, “anybody figures to show up, no fledges can’t shed game face for the whole hour, and get themselves fed up first, right? This is a class, not a hot lunch line. And you fledges: who sired you? Who turned you?” Despite the explanation, all Spike got back was blank looks. The one who’d been jumped on his way back from class offered feebly, “It was dark,” and one of the others nodded hard, agreeing nonsensically, “Me, too.” The other two looked too slack-jawed, dim, and frightened for speech, being confronted with a contemptuous Master Vampire wanting answers, and Spike didn’t pursue the matter, waving the off disgustedly with their escort--directing them out through the school rather than back through the class, that just might have noticed something peculiar about them--those not too locked in on Spike.

All right,” he called louder, crossing the floor, holding an arm up straight to get everybody’s attention, as though he needed to. “Andy and George got you all warmed up, right? And all the new folk signed the paper?”

Various voices and pointing hands indicated it was on the lowest bleacher seat, all complete.

“Fine. Gonna do something different now. Sort yourselves into six groups, about even. Started last time with easy throws. Tonight, we’re gonna do ‘em for real. Got pads now to cut down on the breakage. You got something pointy or breakable on you, might want to store it on the bench. Sitting this one out, myself,” Spike said, doing so. “Michael, you go at…Miss Elizabeth. Buffy, here. She’s gonna demonstrate a throw on you.”

And Buffy found herself standing near the end of a long blue pad, facing a brown-haired, hazel-eyed vamp at least a foot taller, and at least double her weight. He didn’t look at all nervous and just stood there…waiting, she realized, for her to take a balanced stance. When she did, he nodded slightly and came at her, vamp-fast, arms wide, ready to bowl her over with sheer weight and momentum. Buffy turned aside, bending with the impact, coming up under him while catching one of his elbows in both hands. She lifted with her back, heaved down on the elbow, and he sailed over, landing flat on his back on the pad. He rolled to his feet, looking around a bit shyly to find his demonstration greeted by wild applause.

Buffy understood: Spike wanted the contrast between her size and the much bigger vamp, to show it could be done. However, two could play at that, and more than size and weight to be factored in. “Mike,” she said, halting the vamp, and turned the sweetest of smiles on Spike. “Throw Spike.”

“All right,” Spike decided, getting up leisurely. “The lady says. Get yourself set, pup.”

Buffy ceded her place at the foot of the pad, and Spike made the predictable big show of loosening his shoulders, getting ready. Then he went at Mike…and cheated: grabbed Mike’s shoulders as he went over, hauling Mike with him. With his legs up and bent as he landed, Spike boosted Mike a good fifteen feet onto bare floor, face-first.

Bouncing up, Spike gave Buffy a pleased smirk, then waggled a hand at Mike, inviting him to come at him. Mike tipped his head a moment, considering, then smiled and came: two long running steps, then a full-out dive at knee-level there was no avoiding…unless Spike kicked him in the face. And it was still a social occasion, a class, with lots of civilian onlookers. Not a challenge fight at Willy’s; not a street brawl. Mike apparently had a nice sense of the occasion: Spike was taken straight down on his back. They slid, Mike on top, all the way into the bottom of the bleachers. Straight-faced, Mike offered Spike a hand in getting up. Spike batted it away, then took it and was lightly pulled to his feet, to the applause and slightly nervous laughter of the class.

“Fun and games,” Spike said sourly, loud enough for everybody to hear. “Everybody has to have their little joke. Let me know when it’s my turn to toss you, Buffy.”

“Some other time, Spike. Like never.”

“We’ll discuss that. Some other time. Looks to me like certain people don’t know when they’re well off. All right, people: everybody sorted? All sharp points and breakables put away? False teeth? All right, then, each group line up at the far end of one of the mats and we’ll work you into the act.”

For awhile, everybody was scattered and busy easing the civilians into the fine art of throwing an attacker over one’s back. Buffy was advising Bea not to hit the humans so hard when she caught sight of Spike backed against a wall by a total blonde menace, hair held in a vertical tuft, groping as much of Spike’s anatomy as she could reach and Spike not doing his utmost to dislodge her, either. “Excuse me,” Buffy said, not recollecting she was talking to a vamp, and made her way extremely quickly to the wall. “Excuse me,” she said again, in a much more menacing tone. “Something you need help with?”

“Hi,” said the girl. “I’m Candy, and you were awesome too!”

“She’s a virgin,” Spike explained.

“I certainly hope so!” The blonde looked barely Dawn’s age, though quite a bit curvier in her shiny purple spandex outfit. Or maybe it was paint.

“One from last night,” Spike clarified further. “Sacrifices? Post? She wanted to say thanks…personally.”

“I can see that.” Buffy also could see Spike was having a really hard time keeping a straight face. “You’re welcome,” Buffy told Candy, with hard-eyed civility. “It’s a service we perform. Sometimes. In our off hours.”

“But you really, really were,” Candy told Spike, obviously continuing the adoring gush Buffy had interrupted. “With the wings and everything. Are you positively certain you’re not an angel?”

Spike sputtered. “Absolutely positively certain. Not a name I’d have anything to do with.”

“Oh,” cried Candy, dismayed, “I didn’t mean-- I mean, if it’s secret or something--”

“You weren’t to know. Now be a pet and don’t let yourself get caught like that again.” Spike turned her around and gave her a firm push toward the nearest group. To her back, he muttered, “Silly cow.” Then he met Buffy’s angry eyes and did a take.

“You’re too old for her.”

“Love, I’m too old for everybody, with the possible exception of Mae West. Not my fault here. Got mugged.”

“Yeah, sure. Do I need to get you a leash?”

“Oh, and there was this collar, studs like the belt, maybe a whip, just a small one, and--”

Spike was smirking again, and Buffy felt her face heating. She bounced him against the wall, still smirking, and stomped back to the group she was supervising.

The class finished out with all participants having been thrower and throwee at least once apiece with no casualties except some bruises and the nose-piece of one set of glasses cracked, and none of the remaining assorted vamps going game-faced where anybody could see them. Good enough, Buffy figured wearily, watching them scatter to collect their jackets and belongings while the vamps and the SITs took up the pads and started carrying them outside.

“One last thing,” Spike called, holding his arm up, and apparently everybody knew that as an order to gather around him in a semicircle in front of the bleachers. “See, this here,” he said, pulling up one flap of a carton, then displaying a plastic bottle about the right size for shampoo, “this is Sunnydale mugger repellant. I have this consultant who’s a witch, and she magicked it for me. And you’re absolutely, positively not to tell anybody else about this, right?” He looked around for all the solemn nodding. “Now we’re testing this out, and the trial samples are free. But only if you’re really gonna use it, see, because these cost us a fair chunk of change, plus the consultant’s fee, to get this first batch out. So if you’re not gonna use it, don’t take any. Right? This is about a year’s supply: don’t want to use much, you’ll stink up the place. Just a dab on the finger, then under the ear, both sides.” He demonstrated: right over both carotid arteries. “Specially at night, when you’re goin’ out--works best then. You try it a week, let me or Miss Elizabeth know if it’s working right: see somebody you think might be a mugger, they should veer right off, not come near you. If that doesn’t happen, we want to know about that too,” he added, like that was likely, a vamp victim coming back afterward to report the attack. Buffy restrained herself from snorting.

“Candy,” Spike said, waving in the blonde, “dramatic moment here: first smell test. So, tell everybody: is it awful, pet?”

Slinky, purple spandex virgin Candy wasn’t at all averse to getting her face right into Spike’s neck and breathing deeply. “No!” she reported happily. “It’s nice! Smells a little like lilies! Mmmm!”

Spike was not quite mobbed and bowled over by civilians eager to get their hands on the free samples…because Buffy dragged him out of the crush with the comment, “Leash.”

“Only if you get the collar, love. And all the trimmings. Might have to go to a different store for that, though.”

“Pig.”

“Not if I wear the collar for you.”

“You wouldn’t,” Buffy challenged.

“Try me,” Spike replied smugly. “All right if we park the leftovers in your office, for when the thundering hordes descend on you tomorrow?”

“But you said they had to keep it secret!”

Spike looked even more smug. “That’s just to guarantee it’ll be all over the school by morning. Children that age, keeping a secret? Never happen. You test, pet: Red still got it too flowery?”

Buffy gave it a good, thorough test. It wasn’t the overwhelming, funereal odor of the previous test batch. She could separate out a trace of vanilla and a tiny bit of lily, but the impression was…darker, somehow. It smelled…like aroused male. It smelled like sex.

Buffy pulled back, wide-eyed. “We’re giving that away to a bunch of high school kids?”

“Have to make it appealing, love, or they won’t use it,” Spike commented quietly. “Which would you sooner have--the occasional wild orgy, or children with their throats ripped out?”

“Whooh!” Buffy said, waving her hand before her face. Most of the civilians were trying out the scent, and the result was pretty overwhelming. Following the departing class, making way for the crew stuffing the pads into the trunk and rear of an ancient, sagging blue Ford sedan, Buffy gulped air scented only with exhaust fumes. Drifting out behind her, Spike lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall, narrow-eyed against the smoke.

“Cousins have had the best part of a month to get acquainted with it,” he remarked, using what Buffy recognized as a common term for vamps, among vamps. “Guess we’ll see how well they remember it. And if they recall what I told ‘em would happen if they don’t.”

“You gonna do a sweep tonight?” Buffy asked, disappointed.

He nodded. “Just me, on my own again. ‘F they leave the smell alone, I’ll leave them alone. Have to begin the way you mean to go on.”

Passing by, the big vamp, Mike, said, “I’ll help. If you want. Be around anyway.” He continued by without waiting for an answer. Spike’s eyes followed him thoughtfully.

Buffy said softly, “He means hunting. Doesn’t he.”

“I expect. Buffy, I called a meeting for after the class. A lot happening now. Time to compare notes, make sure everybody’s got it all straight. Didn’t think you’d mind.”

“No. Meeting’s good, I guess.” Scuffing her foot, Buffy added, “And I noticed how quick you changed the subject.”

“They’re vamps, Buffy. Not gonna change that. Just spread the damage a little different, maybe.”

“I have trouble with that part of it.”

“Know you do. Knew you would. And it’s still to be seen if it’s gonna work anything like I mean it to. But what would you put in its place? Patrol the cemeteries, take out a few fledges each week?”

Buffy shook her head slowly. “At least it’s not a compromise.”

“Not about to argue with you, Slayer. You do what you feel is proper. And so will I.”

“I don’t know, Spike. The idea still bothers me.”

“You don’t have to know about it. Any more than you choose to.”

“That’s part of what bothers me. Not knowing’s not an acceptable choice, either.” Buffy gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then went back inside. The smell had thinned out considerably. But it was still there. Like a ghost of passion and regret.

**********

Willow and Dawn were a little late for the meeting because Willow had to stop for the munchies and drinks that were traditional at Scooby meetings. Actually, just the drinks: she'd ordered the pastries ahead and picked them up after her last afternoon class, but you couldn't do that with mochas, lattes, and cappuccinos, which were no good, stale and cold. Parking at the school, Willow collected the two pastry boxes--each almost the size of a pizza box because after all, you didn’t want the jelly donuts getting on the bear claws or the donuts covered with confectioner’s sugar getting on the Danish--while Dawn went sedately ahead balancing the first cardboard tray of drinks.

Surprisingly, the gym doors stood open, so kicking on them wasn’t required. Everybody was variously sitting on the floor and perched on the bottom tiers of the bleachers. Dawn set the first tray down a little distance away and turned back for the second while Willow made Anya budge to have a central place to open the boxes and display their contents.

“I got jelly,” Willow announced, “I forgot Giles wasn’t here, but that’s OK, Xander likes the jelly, too, and then there’s the usual….” She started enumerating and pointing until Spike interrupted quietly, “Sit down, Red.”

“Oh,” said Willow, surprised and a bit flustered, because after all, having Spike call a Scooby meeting was a bit flustery, and what was Mike doing here for that?

Before Willow could think of a tactful way to ask, Dawn came back with the second drink tray and Buffy asked sharply, “Dawn, do you have your homework done?”

“As much as it needs to be done,” Dawn responded with a private smile, setting the tray down next to the other one, and everything went chaotic while everybody stirred around collecting the pastry and drink of their choice, and Dawn was taken care of but Willow hadn’t brought anything for Mike, no way she could have known and she didn’t know his preferences anyway, or if he even liked human food, like Spike did, and how could anybody expect her to be responsible for things when they didn’t give her sufficient information. Then she noticed the smell, and stood taking it in, smiling.

Still a little strong: an explanation why the doors were left ajar, to let the gym air out. But pleasant, attractive, and damn sexy, just as she’d intended. Good batch, she decided. They could proceed with that.

“Sit down, Red,” Spike directed again, but she hadn’t collected her drink but that wasn’t hard--the only milkshake, it was the only cup left in the tray--but Mike’s hands were still empty, he hadn’t collected anything for himself--

Interpreting her distressed dithering, Mike told her, “I’m good.”

“Oh,” Willow responded, greatly relieved, and took a seat and tried to look attentive, licking powdered sugar off her fingers.

“Dawnie,” Buffy asked in a slow, thoughtful way that made Willow think she’d crash soon, after being wildly hyper all day, apparently been into Spike’s pep pill stash, and that never lasted, “what are you doing here?”

Willow blurted, “She wanted to come, and, and, I needed help carrying the drinks. Also…something’s happened. With Amy. And maybe Dawn noticed things I didn’t, and it’s pretty awful, actually, and shutting up now until it’s my turn.”

Buffy’s eyes tracked from Dawn to Willow as though she had to push them manually, like a cart on rails. “Willow, have you been into Spike’s pills?”

Willow shook her head hard and emphatically. “Just coffee, honest. Lots and lots of coffee! Hence,” she added, displaying her tall cup as proof, "the milkshake."

“I believe it,” Buffy commented solemnly. “Well, suppose you tell us what happened, then.”

Having inserted her straw through the cap, Willow took a big sip of non-caffeinated chocolaty reassurance and then swallowed a few times. “Well, we went out yesterday afternoon to see if I could get some information out of Amy about the spellcasting on Spike. I tried to get in and out before dark, Halloween and everything, but I couldn’t quite manage that because of, well, you know. Anyway, I took Dawn, she came along, as a power source. That I could draw on, if I needed to. All that latent keyness, you know, and that she’s, well, you know.”

Crosslegged on the floor, as usual, Spike leaned his head back, commenting, “More virgins.”

Willow slid an apologetic glance to Dawn, who showed no sign of minding having her qualifications to be an extra strong power source itemized. “Anyway,” Willow resumed, “I pretty well confirmed Amy had composed the deathwish, so it seems likely she also made the sparkly powder. But I can’t be 100% sure.”

Buffy asked the obvious question: “Why not?”

Willow poked her straw into the cup a few times uncomfortably. “Well, it got dark, I hadn’t noticed, and I suppose I wasted a little time in, you know, bragging and gloating and making threats, it’s traditional--”

“Noun, Will,” prompted Buffy.

“She caught fire, I didn’t mean to, just all of a sudden I had all this power--!” (Willow’s hands sketched its dimension in the air, arm’s length around.) “--and I guess it sort of got away from me some way. And then it stopped, with her all flamey and everything, it just stopped, and some way I’d made a stasis to hold her like that though I don’t even know how to make a stasis, just know one when I see one but what else could it be, after all? I’ve been researching it nearly all day, in the C.O.W. database mostly, it’s really lucky that didn’t get blown up, and I have a call in to the coven, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet, probably the time difference. Or something.”

After a minute of total silence, during which Willow completely wanted to sink into the floor, Buffy asked in an unconvincingly neutral tone, “And you took Dawn. And sucked power out of Dawn, to do all this.”

Staring at her knees, Willow nodded miserably.

“I’m all right,” Dawn volunteered cheerily. “Just fine.”

“And this Amy,” said Spike, “this other witch, hanging there burning all this while.”

“Pretty much,” Willow admitted, chancing a quick glance, and was surprised (and relieved) to find that Spike’s cold eyes weren’t on her, but on Dawn, who seemed to take no notice, busy pulling apart her bear claw with tiny pinches.

“Right,” Spike drawled, finally breaking that intent inspection to light a cigarette.

They were all heavily into displacement activity tonight, Willow noticed. Except for Mike, who sat perfectly still to Spike’s right, quietly watching it all.

“All right,” Spike continued, “so that’s one thing. Buffy and me, we have another. Broke up a Working just before sunrise, out at the mall parking lot. Blokes had five virgin sacrifices to be shed to power it, all lined up, trussed up to poles. Blood magic, it felt like, to me: catching twinges of it clear across town, from about midnight on, though not strong enough for me to home in on. Just twinges. Anyway, these girls, they weren’t gonna shed their lives with knives, the usual way: gonna burn ‘em. Two already gone, and one set alight, when we got there. So, spaced instead of all together, which is not the usual thing, either. And the mages, monks, whatever, were in colors--different colors. Red, green, yellow. No blue. An’ the leader, the Archmage, in black with silver trim. Not usual, for them not to be uniform. Sometimes the leader a different color, or special trim, but not the troops. Victims, they were in the usual white. S’how I knew they were virgins: can’t tell by just looking at ‘em, of course. Buffy,” he asked, turning to her, “how many, all told?”

Jerking, wide-eyed, Buffy responded, “How many what?”

Spike’s face went all shuttered and soft. “No matter, love. Come down here.”

“Why?”

“Come on. You’ll be more comfy down here.” Spike patted his leg.

Like a sleepwalker, Buffy rose from the bleacher seat, stumbled the few yards between, and flopped down across Spike’s lap, head pillowed on a bent arm. Smiling. Spike gathered her in like a whipcord-thin, wrong-gender, peroxided Madonna, solemn and loving.

“Crashed,” Willow stated wisely.

“Seems so,” Spike agreed. “Guess she didn’t catch any rest, after all. Well, I know how that goes…. Anyway. There were about a half dozen of these mages, give or take. Couldn’t say for sure if the number was even or uneven, if that matters. Busy at the time. And like you, Red, I spent a good part of the afternoon poking through the Watchers’ archives. Couldn’t come up with a match for the colors. Figure they had to be fire mages of some sort or other, since they didn’t shed the children direct. Used fire as a weapon, too. Thought if I could get a handle on what they were, I might be able to get an idea of what they were about: what the Working was. Something major, with that many sacrifices…. Haven’t got any farther than that, though. So I thought I’d hand it off to you, Red. See if you could make any more of it than I did.”

“Can’t deal with that now,” Willow responded, and sucked hard at her milkshake. “Have to figure out what to do about Amy. Before the stasis fails.”

“These man-witches,” Xander put in, from the second row of bleachers. “Were they human?”

Spike visibly closed down, and that drew a glance from Mike, as though Spike had said something. What Spike did say was, “Possibly. Slayer, she mostly dealt with them. I was getting the virgins clear, so they didn’t all burn up.”

“Were they human, Spike?” Xander persisted.

“Expect so. Yes.”

“And you killed them.”

“Yes. We did, Slayer and I. You have a problem with that, Harris?”

“I don’t know, Spike,” Xander replied, saying Spike’s name with particular distinctness in response to the Harris. “Maybe. Just wanted to be sure. And was that the same day you threw your soul away? Or was it later?”

“Next night. All yesterday,” Spike confirmed wearily. “Your point?”

“Just that apparently nobody saw fit to tell me you’d had a soul-ectomy until you’d actually thrown it away!”

Willow winced at the anger in Xander’s voice. He was right: somebody should have told him.

“I don’t send out the memos,” Spike said.

“No, but you call Scooby meetings, to which you summon me, and let children in,” (A glance at Dawn, still picking at her pastry.) “and also vamps not of my personal acquaintance. So the question occurs to me, What the hell is going on here?”

“I’m not the one to ask. Just thought enough had been going on, it was time to compare notes, is all. If you don’t approve….” As if automatically, Spike’s hand smoothed Buffy’s hair. “Well, you never have, so no change there, is it.”

“I’m sorry, Xander,” Willow blurted, hoping to deflect an explosion. “My fault. Last time we all got together was the party for Giles, and that didn’t seem like the best time to drop the bombshell that Spike had de-souled himself. And since, well, I didn’t think of it. Spike, you gave out the smell tonight, right? How did it go? How did they react?”

While Xander glowered, Spike seemed more than willing to accept the change of subject. “Well enough, I guess. Can still smell it, can you?”

“Good penetration and endurance,” Willow agreed, nodding. “And the fragrance: not too lily-ee, this time?”

“Seemed fine.” Spike seemed distracted. The next minute, he made clear what he was distracted by: staring straight at Dawn, he demanded, “Who are you, and what have you done to Bit?”

Not looking up, Dawn produced a slow, catlike, and perfectly alien smile that set Willow’s weird receptors going too. “I’m Dawn. Who else could I be?”

Willow focused with other sight and reported to Spike, “No aura. None at all. That’s not Dawn.” Willow was chagrined that Spike had noticed first, when Dawn had been wafting around, nearly under Willow’s nose, all day, except for the time at school. Asking pointed questions. Offering no answers. And it hadn’t been Dawn!

“Fuck, she doesn’t even smell the same,” Spike snapped, and got an agreeing nod from Mike. “Knew since she came in, something was wrong. Anybody ever know Bit to keep her mouth shut this long at a time?”

“I believe I have a name for you,” not-Dawn announced composedly. “For the monks: The Brotherhood of Lucifer.”

Everybody stared at her.

She continued, “They conform to the elements, hence the colors. And you’re correct, Spike: blue was missing. That would have been your Amy, I imagine. Unavoidably detained…. Correlating all the information available to me, I’ve formed a tentative conclusion about the purpose of the Working: they were trying to reopen the Hellmouth. And if that be the case, I’m willing to set aside lesser differences in preventing that. For the time being.”

Spike cut a glance at Willow, demanding, “Where’s her locket?”

“I took it, I had to, to draw on her-- Oh!” Willow nearly collapsed at the realization that, as usual, this disaster was all her fault. Jamming a hand in her bag, she came up with the dangling chain and concealed ward, announcing frantically, “I can give it back!”

“Too late,” said Spike, contemplating the calm expression of whatever wasn’t Dawn, looking right back at him. “Want to talk to Bit.”

Long silence, waiting. Then not-Dawn responded, “Very well.” Then her tone of voice changed utterly. “Oh, Spike!” she cried, springing up, and threw herself into Spike’s arms, practically squashing Buffy, who didn’t wake. “I was so scared nobody would know it wasn’t me, that I’d be gone and never come back and nobody would even notice--!”

“Now, Bit,” said Spike, and tapped his arm. “I’ll always know. You all right? She hurting you any?”

“She who?” demanded Xander, and was ignored.

“No, not really,” Dawn said in a small, unhappy voice. “If it helps to have me out of the way, have her here and helping, I don’t mind, not really. I hear everything, see everything. Just can’t do anything! In case I don’t get another chance to say, I love you. Anyway.”

“Love you too, Bit. And don’t you be scared, you know better than that. Gonna get her gone, get you back, soon as anybody can figure out how. Nothing more important than that. Not to me.”

“Liar,” Dawn accused softly and with certainty. “You know what’s important, what the priorities are and should be. I’m third-ish. I don’t mind….” Then her expression and her voice changed again, and she settled herself fussily on the floor at Spike’s knee, right in front of Mike, whom she ignored. “The priority is the Hellmouth, and what forces are arrayed to reopen it. I know everyone, all the players so far identified. But I suppose you should introduce me.”

“Don’t exactly know how to do that,” Spike said as though he didn’t want to, either.

“Then I’ll introduce myself. Spike and Dawn are accustomed to think of me as ‘Lady Gates.’ I am a sufficient portion of what some call one of the Powers That Be: the ruling powers of the multiverse--this universe and all others. We seek order, harmony; dynamic peace, gradual evolution. Despite what our more stubborn instruments may claim, we are not the enemies of humanity…or of any of our creatures. If this is too difficult a concept, you may regard me…as Dawn’s mother.”

Anya, silent through the whole meeting thus far, put on her biggest, widest smile. “And we’re all so honored by your presence and attention, Lady! I never suspected I’d actually meet one of the Powers in person! Honored, I’m sure! Bye, everybody!” Anya promptly hot-footed it out the door.

**********

Leaving the gym, Mike said, “There any rule we got to do this dry?”

“Guess not,” Spike admitted carelessly. “My credit ought to stretch that far.”

So they mounted their bikes and rolled the short way to Willy’s, where they’d first met. Spike went inside, and Mike continued to consider the new bike, and the stars, and Willy’s, and the night ahead. Not really ahead, though: it was all around, thicker and darker than nights generally seemed to him. Didn’t bother him, not really. He’d thought it through and decided how it should go.

Spike was gonna kill him tonight.

And that was all right, Mike had decided. It was what he’d do in Spike’s place, with a junior who’d never once been able to keep his mouth shut when he was mad, or drunk, or careless, or just ignorant of the stakes. Who’d never once looked past the present to the consequences.

Likely Digger was inside, and Digger knew how to get things out of him. Push at him and wait and push some more, or praise him, or give him another drink--whatever Digger figured would serve best at the moment--and anything Mike knew would come reliably spilling out. And of course Mike would be sorry afterward, but that was no good, didn’t count for anything.

He’d done it a dozen times, and he was sick of it. Bone weary of being played, being dumb, feeling regret. He thought he maybe understood a part of what had driven Spike to get the soul in the first place: vamps weren’t made to regret what they did. Had no way to deal with that sick feeling of desperately wanting the choice back and knowing at the same time they couldn’t have done any different, it was just how things were. How they were.

Here’s Digger, playing around with magic and wizards, witches, and such. And here’s one of the Powers, way beyond magic, stuck itself in Dawn, that power could be drawn from. And here’s some bunch of mages, the Brotherhood of Lucifer, trying to reopen the Hellmouth, that would put the power back into the air, attract and bring in hordes of vamps, strangers, who knew nothing of Spike’s new order and cared less--more than Spike could hope to organize or contain or even dust. And it would all come apart. Exactly what Digger wanted. And here’s big-mouth Mike, who knew it and wished he didn’t because he didn’t think it was in him to hold something like that still within himself.

In at the ear, out at the mouth. Except if he was stopped. And only one sure way to do that. He’d caught Spike’s eye, and he figured they both knew well enough what the answer to that riddle was.

Six years and a little: not a bad run, for somebody who by rights should be dead and not have known any of it. Been some good times--and only better since he’d run into Spike and known what he wanted. To take a side. To understand a little better what this strange unlife was. How to be, how to do. Even if he couldn’t finally be or do it right. Not Spike’s fault, that Mike couldn’t come along faster, see consequences better, and act accordingly. Spike had given him every chance. Claimed him, named him his get even though he wasn’t, given him an independent part of the thing Spike was trying to make out of Sunnydale’s chaos. Tried his best to teach him though most of the time Mike didn’t listen or even recognize the teaching for what it was until he’d messed up some way. Again.

Spike came back with a couple of bottles, one apiece, which was nice of him, considering. Wasn’t Willy’s cheap stuff, neither. Suitable to the occasion. They each had some, waited for the warm to hit and spread out nicely, then started the bikes again, rolling slow, cruising the places where high school aged children were to be found past ten in the evening on a week night. The movie theater; a few tame bars; the big chalk-smelling auditorium on the college campus where there were sometimes concerts and plays. Picking up those with the designated smell, then shadowing them on their way home or to their cars or their next destination. When they spotted a vamp also shadowing the designated protected prey, getting ready to make a move, they left the bikes and pulled the vamp apart in some discreet alley. With the two of them, wasn’t much of a fight, but it served to pass the time.

Only sensible to get the night’s work out of him before taking care of the other agenda, Mike figured. Thrifty.

After they’d accounted for five or six that way and when, by the turning of the star-clock, it was past midnight, the night went quieter. Fewer people abroad, and it was a school day tomorrow for most of those who’d been in the class, gotten first crack at the smell. They’d mostly gone home. Vamps who hadn’t had a chance to hunt the downtown much in four nights were out in force, really hungry. Mike observed some fights breaking out between different district’s vamps, between those whose authorized night this was and others who were poaching, hoping not to get caught. He and Spike stayed out of those: it was the District Masters’ business to keep their own people in line, enforce their own territorial prerogatives.

They’d stopped by the theater, waiting for the last show to let out. A good dozen vamps hovering roundabout, waiting for the same thing. Sitting comfortably sideways on his bike with the kickstand down, Spike had a cigarette lit; Mike was concentrating on drinking: pity to let it go to waste. His head was buzzing pleasantly, and not just with the rattle and vibration of the bike.

Spike was going on about accepting a few more people, maybe even a few fledges, so as to be able to field dusk-to-dawn sweeps in another couple of weeks. Keep a close eye on the fledges, they should do all right, Spike thought. Wasn’t as if they had to be presentable--just fight. And if they got themselves dusted, no great loss. The problem would be keeping them from eating the people they were supposed to be protecting. “No impulse control,” Spike commented sourly.

“Fledges are like that,” Mike agreed.

“Vamps are like that.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Mike turned off his bike and stowed the bottle away: he could hear the last show crowd approaching the doors.

“Need more stakes?”

“Could use some.”

Spike passed over a handful from his saddlebag. Then they stepped down from their bikes and were ready.

The first few came out. Nothing of interest. The humans wandered past, to take their own oblivious chances with the hovering vamps. Then both Mike and Spike locked onto a pair of teenagers, one wearing the smell, one not. And also a woman behind. Spike nodded Mike at the pair, taking the woman himself.

Mike eased up close. They’d made good use of the time and the dark: he could smell them on each other, enough that he wasn’t positive right away which one had the faint but distinct lily reek. Then the girl looked up and he recognized her: Candy, although in street clothes now, not the purple skin-tight get-up. Mike had to concentrate to keep his trueface from emerging: he would have enjoyed eating them both after a little play, scaring them enough to bring out the stronger flavor in the blood. They smelled delicious. But he wasn’t a fledge anymore: he could do this. And it would be awkward, after, to eat the boy and leave the girl. He supposed he had to leave them both breathing.

“Hi…Mike?” said Candy, and the boy with her was annoyed and trying not to show it. Boy was also a bit nervous, since Mike was a lot bigger and looked older. Would really have felt good to scare a scream out of him.

“Hi, Candy,” Mike responded. “Which way you headed?”

“Just over--”

As Candy pointed, a couple of vamps stopped loitering, having chosen their night’s prey. Also a couple, male and female. Mike gave his charges a push in the direction Candy had pointed and turned to intercept the vamps, giving each of them a good shove.

“That’s the smell,” he warned. “You got one chance--”

It had been stupid to try to warn them. The male vamp came up with a stake, and dealing with him let the female get past. She had the boy down and her teeth in his throat in under a second, which was how long it took Mike to stake her. Boy was bleeding considerable, and Candy screeching, but she hadn’t been touched, so that was all right. Mike herded them into what smelled like the boy’s car, Candy behind the wheel and the doors locked, so Mike didn’t have to think anymore about finishing the boy off, though he could have ripped the door off if he’d really tried. It’d been four nights since he’d had a proper feed. He put it out of his mind.

A few vamps had collected their prey and dragged them away from the street lights to feed, so although the small dispersing crowd was uneasy, there was no general panic. Took quite a lot to start a general panic in Sunnydale, Mike had noticed. He spotted Spike ambling along between the two tripping boys, companionably talking and gesturing and having no trouble: vamps might not yet respect the smell or the colors, but most knew Spike by sight and knew enough to stay clear of him. The two boys also had a car, and when they were in it, Spike came back quick and started his bike. They followed the car to one of the frat houses and saw the boys safely inside. Mike passed back the extra stakes and only then noticed that somebody had swiped his unwatched bottle. That was annoying. He should get saddlebags, like Spike’s bike had. Then he realized it didn’t matter and was vaguely amused at himself.

“What?” Spike asked. “Somebody pinched your liquor? Here.” Spike held out his bottle. After a moment’s thought, Mike took it, meanwhile standing to get his hand in his jeans pocket. As good a time as any, he thought, extending the fist to Spike.

“What?” Spike asked again, frowning at the stem-winder gold watch Mike had passed to him.

“Figure I’ll go hunt now, and back to Willy’s, after. Come along if you want.”

“Yeah,” said Spike quietly, putting the watch away. But it wasn’t agreement, unless by way of confirmation of something in Spike’s own head. “Or just Willy’s: make up for the loss of your bottle.”

Mike shook his head at the counter-offer, finishing the last of the liquor. No warmth left in it. Only a stronger sense of the dark--endless and unchanging. He pitched the bottle into the street. “Need to hunt, Spike. Wasn’t time to have anybody brought in, and we’re not that organized yet. Not to worry: I'll stay clear of downtown. And the smell. In my own district and you're invited.”

Someone turned off the outside lights at the frat house. The night went thicker. Constricting. It wasn’t gonna be later, Mike realized. Not in a hunt, not taken with the hot, good blood in his throat. It was gonna be now.

“Always wished I could hunt with you,” Mike said absently. “Share the hunt, share the kill. Would have been good.”

“Wait,” Spike said. “Wait till morning, when Rona brings the tribute blood. I’m fed up fairly good. You can--”

“Doesn’t work like that,” Mike said sadly, tired of the pretext. Hunting was only what they were talking about, not what was. Wasn't about hunting: was about Digger, and what Mike knew. Wasn’t like Spike to be so coy, run on about the edges when they both knew what was at the center, what had to happen. Why not just get on with it? Trust Spike to make even death annoying. “Can’t be but what I am…. Good thing, me and Dawn are on the outs. And with that Lady Gates shouldering her aside, no trouble there. Won’t bother Dawn none, when she comes to know.”

“No.” Spike's voice was harsh, angry. Disappointed in him, Mike supposed: not what Spike had planned or allowed for.

“No blame to you, I see the sense of it well enough.”

“No.” The bike jerked because Spike was strangling the hand grips. Controlling the lurch, he said, “If I’d known what was gonna come out at that meeting--”

“--you wouldn’t have had me there. I know. Can’t look ahead, know what’s gonna come. Just bad luck, things coming together the way they have.” Setting the kickstand and stepping down from his bike, Mike added, “I’ll make a fight of it, if that’s what you want. Come out the same regardless.”

“No. I need you where you are.”

If Mike had still had the bottle, he would have flung it at him. “You need somebody you can depend on! How many times you told me that? So you don’t get what you want. I don’t fit your plan. I ain’t your get, you’re not my sire. So why make a great thing about it?”

“Because you’re an idiot, that’s why! And you haven’t fucking done it yet!”

“You know I will. And you’re the goddamned idiot if you tell yourself different! What’s to keep me from it? I always have, I always will!”

“No! Fuck it to hell, no!” Spike turned the key and came down from his bike, sliding into trueface, glaring golden-eyed. “We don’t have to do it like that. You don’t need to hunt, Michael. I can do for you.” He set his hands on Mike’s shoulders, fingers digging deep, holding hard. “Go ahead.”

“What--?” demanded Mike, bewildered.

“You goddam fucking moron, I said I’d do for you! I’m not your bloody sire, but I still can. Go ahead: do it!”

Mike’s buzzing head rocked to a hard backhand, and there was no mistaking: Spike had tilted his head aside, offering his neck, the rich, strong blood of an elder in the bloodline. Mike lunged, and bit, and fed, drawing in great ravenous gulps.

Next