Chapter 8: Powers and Persuasions

“But the Hellmouth is a badness. Major badness!” protested Willow earnestly, picking pills off her sweater sleeve. Important to do that or you could become all pill-y.

“But think of it,” Amy insisted, sitting even farther forward on the yellow couch, as if she’d launch herself at Willow any minute. For somebody who’d been in frozen flames until half an hour ago, she hadn’t missed a beat in her transparent attempt to drag Willow into the badness too. Willow wasn’t buying it, not a bit. Willow was all about the topic.

“We’re talking about Spike here,” Willow pointed out, as forcefully as she could with her hand full of fuzzy sweater pills.

“Hell with Spike, he doesn’t matter,” Amy came back at once. “What’s one vamp, more or less? You have to screw the spell practically sidewise to get magic to take any notice of vamps at all. They’re nothing. Magic-null. Practically magic sinks, black holes of power suckage. I’m embarrassed every time I have to open the Arcanum, it’s so baby it practically has training wheels, you know? And those terrible invocations! Geez!”

Willow had to smile a little because the invocations in the Arcanum were particularly dumb. Every noun dangling five or six adjectives, practically gasping for breath it was so smothered, like the sort of really hideous, embarrassing romance novels she didn’t read anymore, except on Valentine’s Day, and that was only to give herself a cheap chuckle.

“Somebody who can create a solid stasis, stop Time in its tracks, what does she want with a training-wheels text like the Arcanum?” Amy rolled on like a river in flood, that would terrify all the small furry animals but probably not the birds, that could watch, perfectly safe, from their perches in high trees, except of course if they’d nested too low and they’d be worrying then, all right, all those little downy chicks peeping away for worms and icky stuff like that except there wouldn’t be any, with a flood. Willow wondered if worms could drown. Frogs would probably like it, though--big ol’ flood like that. Willow didn’t like frogs.

And sure it was great to talk magical shop with somebody who really understood, who could make jokes about the stupid, out-of-scale woodcut illustrations in Branham’s Afrits, Imps, and Malign Spirits, like offering a picture of an actual horse to accompany the text on nightmare, at least it was supposed to be a horse but it looked more like a deformed goat and Tara had always giggled over that one when they hit it looking for the footnotes about incubi, succubae, that directed the reader to the really useful sources, but no, no, no, Willow was sticking to the topic here, with no digressions.

“The sparkly powder--”

Amy made a big get-out-of-here brush-away disdainful gesture, like waving off a bad smell. “Vamps won’t believe anything works if they can’t see it working. So you got to build in all these stupid special effects, flash and whistle, or they won’t believe it’s any good. The more flash and noise you give ‘em, the more powerful they’ll think it is. Utter savages. It was a bitty little nothing spell. The deathwish, that was solid and should have got the job done all on its own. So the follow-up, that was nothing because no more should have been needed and wouldn’t have been, if you’d let things run their course. Never thought you’d stoop to defending a vamp against High Magick!”

“Well, he’s my business partner--” Willow began defensively.

“Oh no! The mutt’s got you, too! And here I believed you really were down and sincere with the gayness--”

Really put out, Willow threw a Silence at her with a snapped word and a gesture, and Amy couldn’t break it. Couldn’t say the release-spell because, well, Silenced. Opening and closing her mouth like a guppy. That should teach her better than to question the sincerity of Willow’s gayness! Hadn’t even re-connected with Oz when she’d had the chance, despite Oz being so cute and sweet, but she’d said, “Oh, no, I’m gay through and through and nothing more to do with the likes of you, buster!” Or at least words to that effect. So what, if she’d gotten all upset when Spike had kissed her, right in front of Buffy and everything? Anybody would be upset and all indignant, promiscuous vamp kissage like that, it just wasn’t right and she’d told him so in no uncertain terms, too, once he’d put her down. Spike wasn’t the hulk and hover type: more compact and sinewy, a little like Oz that way, and it was easy to forget how freaking strong he was, lifted her up and twirled her around like she was nothing, a feather, and it was just being so surprised that’d kept her from exerting Force and making him put her down, right that very instant! And she could have, she really truly could have, but Buffy wouldn’t have liked that, nobody allowed to beat up on ol’ Spike but the Slayer, and you always had to keep that in mind.

“Vamps are not mutts,” Willow declared haughtily, picking sweater pills, “just because other demons look down on them. And the Order of Aurelius is nothing to sneeze at, either: an ancient lineage. And you wouldn’t call him a mutt if you’d ever seen his aura: it’s ginormous. Three times normal size, at least. And he deals with the Powers direct, and is practically an ancient even though he isn’t even 200 yet: he can channel! Yes! It’s how he closed the Hellmouth. Of course the amulet helped, you always have to have a focus, I mean a catalyst, to get things properly started, but he took it from there, burned out practically three whole city blocks and several stories down, huge crater, and now he’s Master of Sunnydale and everything. So he’s a perfectly respectable business partner to have and anybody that says different is just ignorant!”

Willow waited for Amy to admit her mistake, but Amy didn’t say anything, just making those dumb fish faces. Oh. Willow spoke the Release.

Amy made a few experimental noises, like ummm and ah, then said, “Well, no wonder the incendiary spell didn’t set him afire, then, if he can channel. I don’t know what anybody expects if they don’t tell me these things!”

“So it was an incendiary--? You gave a vamp an incendiary spell to throw at another vamp, no gloves or anything, at close quarters? And nobody went up? Flamed out? What kind of incompetent--”

“Oh, no, no,” Amy cut in hastily, “that was just the sparkly flash effect and who knows, it might have caught him, vamps are so freakin’ flammable, after all. But that was just the decoration, the, well, fireworks.” Amy smiled broadly at her play on words, which Willow considered pretty lame and didn’t smile at even a little. So Amy sobered, frowning anxiously, and ran on, “Not the main effect, just the decoration, the delivery packaging, like I said before. And shouldn’t even have been needed, like I said. The deathwish should have been enough, all by itself, and would have been, if you hadn’t interfered. It was never made to stand up against the powers of a witch of your stature. Just one of those silly Keystone vamp feuds, after all, everybody running around, bumping into things, big poof, dust everyplace…. And like that,” Amy concluded meekly, seeing that Willow was not prepared to be amused.

“So what was it?”

Amy knew she wasn’t gonna get away with any more dancing around the topic, going everyplace except to the center. Not around Willow, nosir. Amy hung her head and folded her hands. “Nothing much. I didn’t think it would even be used. A Be as you were, is all.”

“A regression spell?” When Amy bobbed her head affirmatively, Willow asked incredulously, “On a vamp? What were you trying to do: turn him human again?”

“Oh, no, really, I know it would be no use against a major transmogrification, like being a vamp. Can’t undo that. But all vamps start out as fledges, you know? All grrr and uncontrolled and dumb. A fledge could never put together an empire or, well, a town. It’d have trouble stacking two bricks. Never have the patience, and nobody would listen to him anyway. After all, a fledge, for cripe’s sake! And Digger seemed to like it, he’d have no problem putting a fledge in its place, even though with a vamp as old as Spike, it would naturally take a while to unspool and have any effect anybody else could notice. Digger’s patient, for a vamp. Unusual that way. And he pays right up in advance, well, a little held back for completion and satisfaction, but since I’d already quadrupled the price over the cost of the materials, I don’t mind that, you know? Vamps have no idea of what things cost. They make ideal customers that way. Except they don’t much have any money, either. So pretty much a niche market. But with business so bad, and me with start-up costs and all, you have to take some pretty dismal commissions just to get the business off the ground. Like you and this cockamamie smell. Not even remotely worthy of your gifts.”

Although Willow was rather proud of concocting the smell, somebody who didn’t realize how complicated and detailed it was, layering a smell, working out the release, persistence, and sublimation rates, could think it sounded pretty piddly. Learning the basics, and even many of the subtleties, of the perfumer’s art in a couple of weeks when it generally took lifetimes was no small achievement. Even if it didn’t sound like much, viewed from outside.

Willow shrugged. “Like you said: it was a commission. Passes the time between classes. I’m in college now, you know.”

“That’s what I heard. What’s your major?”

“Double major: communications theory and chaos theory. I suppose sometime I’ll have to change schools, study with a major Chaotician, but--”

“Communications theory and chaos theory? But isn’t that the same thing?” Amy waited eagerly for Willow to see her joke. “Like a redundancy?”

“Tautology,” corrected Willow aloofly. Not funny. And Amy was trying too hard.

“And here I am still working on my GED. I really missed out, all that time as a rat.”

“Well, the mayor’s commencement speech would have been a happy miss,” Willow reflected. “And I could have done without the time I tried to destroy the world. But overall--”

“You did?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

"Of course. I understand. Tell me about that girl you had with you before, then. The tall one with no shape and the mop on her head. How could you pull all that power out of her? I mean, I assume she's a virgin, but geez!"

Amy’s nose was twitching. Habit, probably.

**********

Sunday mornings were generally a good time to get hold of people, have meetings. If they were churchgoers, they likely weren’t the sort of people Spike would be dealing with anyway. Those accustomed to late rising would have to learn to adapt to his schedule.

Sunday’s agenda was packed to bursting, if Spike was to get to sleep at a decent hour in the afternoon. The first appointment was shortly after the sunrise delivery of the tribute blood ration. Spike made a point of being extra polite to his visitor, thanking him for coming out so early and offering him morning food, coffee and pastries, that humans seemed to find suitable, before going to the gap and yelling for Huey. Needed some sort of paging system, intercom, something like that, he thought, walking back.

When Huey came in, Spike introduced them. “Huey, this is Rudolph Murchison. He’s a lawyer, represented that nest of Harnish by the bowling alley on that trespassing and unlawful deprivation of enjoyment and what-all case a couple of years back. Unlike most people in Sunnydale, he pretty much knows what’s what, has no problem dealing with demons.”

Huey nodded. When the human set down his cup, stood, and offered his hand, Huey shook it, faintly surprised but agreeable. Then they both sat down.

Spike went on, “He’s agreed to act as my agent for daytime things. Mr. Murchison, Huey’s my castellan. Would translate as something like major domo. Takes care of internal arrangements, procurement, personnel maintenance, that sort of thing. Anything Huey says will already have been cleared with me, so you won’t need a separate go-ahead. You’ll be dealing mostly with him. Want you two to get acquainted, rough out what we’re gonna need done in the next few months, what contacts need to be set up, and like that. A reliable car is first, to start the airport pick-up. Huey, Mr. Murchison will arrange for that today, till we get a regular courier who can move around in the daytime. Not gonna lumber Rona with that. All right?” When both nodded and made noises of agreement, Spike left them to it.

In the southwest corner of the factory, there was a hatch in the floor. Pulled open, it revealed a descending stairwell where Spike understood the cheerleader, that Cordelia, had contrived to fall and get herself impaled on a piece of rebar one time. All cleared out and fixed since then, of course. The steel staircase led to a large, windowless open space: once the factory receiving/shipping area, now designated as the dormitory. The space was completely dark: Spike had to change aspect to see.

On a cluster of mattresses laid on the floor, about two dozen vamps slept, mostly in tangles of two or three, completely motionless. Predictably, the new fledges had bedded down together toward the rear, feeling more secure that way, with the mature vamps between them and any intrusion.

It took awhile--the advent of daylight took fledges down like a hammer-blow--but Spike managed to get Sue something like awake and led her to the empty freight elevator shaft, where three picnic tables, the sort with built-in benches, had been put. Yawning, she braced her elbows on the table and sagged against Spike’s arm, saying blurrily, “My hero. You came for me.”

Shaking her arm made her chin fall off her fists. “Wake up, Sue. Listen here.”

“Yeah. Listening.”

“Can’t take credit for you getting picked up in the sweep. You hear me?”

“Yeah…. All right. Glad all the same. That place, it’s a hell-hole.”

She’d never seen a hell-hole. But no use to tell her that. And no good telling her she’d only been picked up because Mike had made a point of collecting her, whereas Spike had left it to her whether she’d stay down or stupidly stand and be returned to Digger. She’d want to think it was rescue and meant something, some special favor and concern, and it was no good giving a fledge notions of her own importance. Only meant trouble, and fledges were enough trouble as it was.

She was filthy. She stank. Her hair hung in dull, matted tangles. Exposed skin was livid with bruises. Have to do something about getting shower facilities set up. Had water, though only cold; had drains. Spike made a mental note to have Huey see to it. Friday night, he’d showered at vacant Casa Mike, but that was hardly convenient. And the condition of his people reflected on him.

“Since you’re here,” Spike went on, “there’s something I want you to do. Wake up when I’m talking to you.”

Jostled, she yanked her head up, staring wildly. “Listening. Really.”

“All right. Want you to chat up the new fledges, see what you can find out about who turned ‘em. Any description, any detail. Smell, approach, where they were taken, anything. Gonna get that fucker. You hear me?”

“Yeah. Got it. Hungry,” she whined.

All the fledges were in desperate need of feeding up. Enough that they’d always feel hungry, even after a full feeding. Be awhile before that would let up.

“That’s being seen to. But you’ll all have to earn your way. Lose half the day to sleep, then eat the other half, if you could. Bunch of babies.”

“Yeah. Babies,” she said with a drowsy, dopy smile. She leaned, her cheek tipping onto his shoulder. Like she trusted him or something. Didn’t mean anything, except she couldn’t stay awake two minutes at a time.

Spike sat a minute or two, deciding what to do. No harm to just leave her to have her sleep out where she was. Vamps could and did sleep anyplace they’d fit, so long as it was away from the light. He’d slept on a bare sarcophagus for years. But she hadn’t. Didn’t yet know the half of her strengths or vulnerabilities. Didn’t begin to understand what she truly needed, beyond the impulses of the moment.

So he sighed and gathered her up and replaced her among her moveless fellows. With a fledge, some allowances had to be made.

Then he went back up to check in with Buffy by phone, at the start of her day, then catch up with e-mail, deal with responses to certain recruitment initiatives, until it was time to leave for his next appointment, out at the mall. He'd already missed and rescheduled it three or four times. Putting it off, he admitted. So past time to finally get it seen to.

**********

Willow spent the rest of the morning researching spells, then phoned a very annoyed Anya to open the Magic Box so Willow could pick up the needed materials.

Groping in boxes and canisters, Willow remarked snappishly, “I don’t know why your nose is all out of joint, since you were here anyway.”

She’d found Anya in overalls, her hair wrapped up in a scarf, diligently sweeping the floor of the annex around display cases relocated there with the clear intention of exploiting for retail purposes the space freed by its being vacated as Buffy’s training room. Shelves, in different stages of construction, were being built to line the walls. With the appropriation of the annex, the shop had nearly doubled in size. Chivying the dust and scraps from various angles and herding the pile toward some designated point known only to herself, frowning intently, Anya replied, “It’s a distraction, and I don’t need distractions. I have all of one day to prepare this area and set out the stock attractively.”

Separating a tangle of dried asters on a countertop, Willow said over her shoulder, “I’ll come back and help, after I’m done at the factory. And maybe Buffy could put in an hour or two. She has no plans today, at least that she’s told me.” Getting no reply, she looked around. “You did ask Buffy if it was all right to coopt this space, didn’t you?” Her question grew softer and more uncertain as it progressed, and she suddenly knew Anya had done no such thing. “Or even Giles?” she added hopefully.

“Giles sold his interest to me before he left. Since he’s resident abroad now, it’s much simpler that way: with any degree of foreign ownership, the paperwork is appalling.” Grabbing a pump bottle, Anya crouched down to spray the front glass of a display case with the same intent vigor as she’d attacked the floor. “I’m the sole proprietress. Why should I ask anybody how to set up my displays?”

Not wanting to get in a brangle with Anya, especially when they both knew she’d been high-handed and wasn’t going to admit it, Willow said brightly, “Here’s a list of what I’ve taken. Do you want to ring it up now, or wait till I--”

Anya swooped past, collecting the list on the way to the register. So Willow muttered, “Guess deferred payment is not an option here.”

Making grudged change of a twenty, Anya asked tartly, “And how is the Power settling in?”

“I don’t know,” Willow admitted. “I mostly don’t see her much.”

“You mean you avoid her,” Anya corrected. “Wise choice.”

“It makes me a little nervous trying to research how to get her to leave,” Willow admitted, putting the change and the materials away in her tote.

“Don’t,” advised Anya, passing by to resume her cleaning. “She’ll leave when she’s good and ready and not before. Try to interfere with her, you’re liable to end up in the cornfield. Like in that story?”

Willow shivered and took her leave.

It was what vamps might consider a nice day, Willow thought, looking up through the windshield: solid overcast sliding in from the west, threatening rain. No sun to be seen anywhere. The factory, on its desolate rise, looked particularly unwelcoming against the gunmetal sky. Mostly, Willow admitted, the place gave her the creeps, though short of a full wiggins, since she knew any vamp attacking her would be severely disciplined. Afterward. Which wasn’t all that reassuring, now that she thought about it….

Bustling up to the sentry room, she was disappointed that the vamp wasn’t anybody she knew. “I’m here to see Spike. I’m his business--”

“He ain’t here.”

“Oh.” Willow looked at her watch, confirming that it was past noon. “When is he coming back?”

“Didn’t say.”

Willow started to ask if she could wait here, then thought better of it. The vamp didn’t seem much for small talk, and she hadn’t brought a book. Backing out, she said nervously, gesturing, “I’ll just wait in my car. Over there. Would you let me know when he gets back?”

The vamp just looked at her.

Returning to her car and locking all the doors made her feel marginally more secure, even though with the overcast, any vamp could walk right up and rip off a door. She reviewed spells, trying to choose which would be best to try in that scenario. Or the other six she promptly came up with.

When half an hour had passed, she dug out her cell phone and punched in Spike’s number. Half the time he had it turned off and the other half it was dead because he’d forgotten to recharge it, but he was getting better about that, she thought contritely. On only the eighteenth ring, the connection was made, and she had Spike’s voice in her ear, demanding, “What?”

“Spike, it’s me, Willow. I’m up at the factory. Where are you?”

“What’s up?”

“I found out what the sparkly dust was. A regression spell. I’ve brought what I’ll need to dispel it.”

Silence.

Willow offered, “Would it be better if I met you someplace?”

More silence. Then, “No. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes. If you can’t wait--”

“Oh, no, I’ll wait,” Willow assured him. She was quite willing to help out Anya but certainly wasn’t in any hurry about it.

“Oh. All right, then.” With his usual abruptness, he ended the call.

After half an hour fiddling with her radio, trying to find anything but sermons or bluegrass, Willow hoped she’d waited long enough and made another try at the sentry post. The vamp opened the inner door for her without comment, so she concluded he’d had fresh instructions. She hustled through the factory, which seemed utterly empty and deserted until something made her look up and she saw a vamp perched on a cross-girder, looking down at her like a gargoyle. That spooked her. Clutching her tote against her breasts, she hustled a little faster--back to the barricade and through. The office was as dark as the surrounding space. As she approached cautiously, the desk light was turned on, and Spike straightened, looking toward her. That was much better.

Plunking her tote down on a chair, she started getting the materials out, commenting, “It’s an insidious thing. Slow and insidious. Pushing you back to earlier and earlier mind-sets, and--”

“Appreciate your concern,” Spike broke in, leaning against the back wall, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not.”

“Excuse me?”

“To be blunt, let it alone, Red. Keep your stuff. Maybe later. Some other day.”

“You don’t want me to lift it? But why?”

Spike took his time lighting a cigarette. “I know what a regression does. How it acts. Nothing like fatal. A nuisance, at best. But…I been finding it handy, like. Things clearer for me.” He smiled at her ruefully. “Maybe I used to be smarter than I am now. Dunno. Just not in any rush to get it lifted. No harm in waiting, is there?”

“Well, probably not for a day or two, I guess. I wouldn’t put it off longer, though. Spike, it’s influencing you: how you think, how you react to things. It wasn’t made for your benefit, you know.”

“That Amy, she make it?”

“Yeah. She admitted it.”

“So she’s out of the stasis?”

“Yeah.”

“On fire, you said. Burned real bad, was she?”

“Well, no. Not even singed.” That was odd, now that Willow stopped to think about it. An effect of the stasis?

“Ahuh. What’s her last name?”

Willow stared at him, puzzled. “Madison. Amy Madison.”

“An’ am I recalling right, she was one of your old chums? High school? Pre rat?”

“Well, not so much chums, but we knew each other, yes. Traded spells, talked about what we’d managed to accomplish. Just starting out then. Part of the time I knew her, she was her mother. It’s complicated.”

“Ahuh. And she’s been de-ratted, what--about a year?”

“A little more, but about,” Willow agreed.

“Come on fast, then, hasn’t she. Considering all that time she missed. Went right for the strong stuff, didn’t mess about with levitating pencils and such. Adapting spells an’ all, casting a deathwish…that worked.”

Willow didn’t see what he was getting at. Awkwardly, twisting the tote handles, she admitted, “She introduced me to Rack.”

“Oh: Rack! Big time power-sucker. I’m all sorts of impressed,” Spike commented sardonically.

“Yeah, well, he’s dead.”

“Ahuh,” Spike said, as if he knew she’d killed him. “But before that, Rack introduced her around, I think. Made herself some connections, back when the power was free for the taking. When the Hellmouth was still blaring at 2,000 decibels on the dark mojo scale.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Just curious, is all. I got a witch, Digger’s got a witch. Trying to size up the opposition. She got more power than you, Red?”

“No way!”

“You sure of that?”

“Absolutely positive!”

“She got more usable magic than you? ‘Cause a lot of things, you won’t do. You hang back from the strong stuff. Probably sensible. But if she uses all she has, and we’re always playing catch-up, reacting to something she’s already done, and you’re being dainty about what you’ll touch or catch hold of….”

Willow felt wounded. “Don’t you have confidence in me, Spike?”

“Don’t like magic,” he said abruptly, frowning toward the cot. “Don’t like messing with it. Don’t even like thinking about it, though that’s mostly what I do, nowadays…. With the translation, an’ all. Like to get the magic out of the equation altogether. Keep things to what I have good hold of, myself. What I know.” He looked up, straight at her. “I know my limits. Don’t know yours. Don’t want to catch you in an awkward spot, where you’d have to go past what you’re willing to do, what you think is right, to get the job done. You have scruples, and I respect that. Don’t believe this Amy puts quite the same restrictions on herself. Catch up with her eventually…but maybe not soon enough to do me any good.

“Have to think it out a bit more, Red, before I decide how to play this part of it. The magic part. No criticism of you. None whatever. But I knew this was gonna get ugly sooner or later. Why I thought it’d be a real bad idea to have the soul along. Built-in limits, y’see. I’m more of Amy’s cast of mind, now, than I am yours. So I need to think it out some more. Sorry I made you wait. Had something to see to. And to me, now, it’s like three in the morning would be to you. Not a real great time for deciding things.” Stubbing out the cigarette in an ashtray on the desk, he came and tucked back into her tote the few things she’d gotten out of it, then took her arm and started steering her toward the exit. “I’ll think about it and let you know. I’ve put it on the agenda.”

Just past the barricade, Willow spun and threatened, “I’ll tell Buffy!”

“You do that, if that’s what you think is right.”

“No,” Willow admitted, deflating. “But Spike--”

“It will all be fine. Just clears the air, clears the decks a little further. Don’t you worry about it.” Turning, he started back toward the office, adding over his shoulder, “’F Rubio--that’s who’s on the door, Rubio: means ‘red’ in Spanish--if he gives you the least lip, you have my permission to turn him into a porcupine. Gerbil. Whatever you please.” A wave of his hand dismissed the matter.

Since he’d refused, there was nothing Willow could do. But she wasn’t happy about it. Decidedly not happy.

**********

By Spike’s watch, it was 2:03 in the morning. Looking at the dark window from the sidewalk, he pushed the #2 speed dial. After two rings, he got a cautious, “Who’s there?”

He said, “Come down to the porch. Bring a coat, it’s nippy,” and ended the call.

A light came on.

She’d come, he thought, because she was curious. Like tying a bit of rag to your rifle’s reamer, poking the reamer upright in the ground, and retreating back behind a rise to wait for the pronghorn to come investigate the flutter. Or so Digger, who should know, had told him, upon a time. When Spike had first come to Sunnydale, there’d been no pronghorn in the folds of its land, only a Slayer who used much more direct methods.

He put down his bag of doings and settled on the glider. Before a cigarette’s worth of time, she came tip-toeing out, bundled up good and warm in her borrowed body. Spike didn’t say anything, just pitched the remainder of the cigarette and took from his bag the knife and the length of branch that were the beginning of it.

Opening the knife, he started. Green wood, but winter wood: it had left off growing for the season. The bark was stripped off easily by the sharp blade. Then he set about working on the bulges, to smooth them out, gradually sharpen the angle from butt to tip. Never make a perfect round but didn’t need to. In the past year, he’d cut thousands of stakes. His hands knew their work without need of eyes.

He told her about the winter wood, how it wasn’t seasoned and would warp with time, but that was no problem if not given time to do so. She settled warily on the far end of the glider, watching his hands.

“The tricky part,” he continued, “is finding the right tree. The right age. Sunnydale has a gardening club, plants a few trees each Arbor Day. That’s a holiday they have here, out of guilt for so many forests leveled, trees cut, so the erosion sets in. And not a proper holiday, just one of those made-up ones, like Secretary’s Day. Anyway, they’re a proud bunch: got their own website and put their back records on there. What tree planted where in what year. Each a year-old sapling. So wasn’t hard at all to find the right one. Had the choice of a Bradford pear, a pin oak, and a maple. Oak is always good, strong wood, so I picked that and took this bit, clean against the trunk, not leave an unsightly nub. A tree of her years.”

“They don’t talk to me,” said Lady Gates in a sudden burst. “They’re afraid of me. Even without looking into their minds, I know. They’re also angry.”

Steadily working, Spike responded, “Well, that’s not to be wondered at. You’re powerful and unknown. That pretty well kills casual conversation. And you’re keeping shut away someone they know and love and feel protective toward. Imprisoned, like. I’m a bit angry with you on that account myself.”

“You don’t fear me. Why not?”

Spike hitched a shoulder. “What difference would it make? You’ll do what you please, regardless. An’ you’ve known what I was from the beginning, yet considered I’d make a useful instrument. Smooth to the hand. Like this instrument here. ‘F you meant to end me, you’d have done it long since.”

Having finished the preliminary rounding, he passed the stake across for her inspection.

“It feels slippery,” she mentioned, touching it with a cautious fingertip.

“That’s because it’s green wood, love.” The endearment slipped out reflexively. “Only a couple of hours from living. Hold it. Test it out. Tell me what you think.”

She closed her hand around the thick end and made a couple awkward stabbing motions. Then she went away within herself a moment and changed her grip: underhanded, stabbing up. More confident. Drawing on what her other, smaller self knew.

Though he couldn’t smell or feel her, Bit was here. An onlooker.

Passing the stake back, she touched one place with a fingertip. “It’s weak there. A lump, deep inside. Too deep to be cut out.”

“I’ll allow for that. Thanks.” He got a marker out of the bag and began the sigils, the stake braced against his knee.

Lady Gates watched him inscribe it around and down its length. She asked quietly, “Do you imagine this to be a weapon against me?”

Spike laughed. “Didn’t even occur to me you’d think that. No, ‘course not. Bit of a problem here, you see: I can’t get in ‘less I’m invited. And she, having half a brain, won’t invite me. So she has to be brought out to where I can get at her.”

“Wood from a tree of her years. Yes. I see now. But you’re no mage: how will you power it?”

Spike finished the markings and lifted the stake by the tip so the writing could dry completely. “All I’ve ever had is myself. Red, she tells me now that I contain magic--silly little regression spell I been hexed with. This will give some teeth to it. One tooth, anyways. Bite deep, this will. Trick is getting it from me out into this.”

Laying the stake aside on the glider seat, he pulled from the bag a small brass bowl into which he poured the ingredients he’d swiped from the Magic Box. Not hard: he had a key to the back door. Demon Girl had asked for it back, but Spike wasn’t yet ready to give up that access. If she noticed her stock was down, he’d pay her full value.

“Has to burn hot,” he explained, “to make up for the green wood, that will want to smoke and smolder, not burn.” Setting the bowl on the metal glider seat, he dug out his lighter and lit its contents. It sprang up into white, intense flame. When he was sure it was well caught, he quickly dropped the bark and shavings from the stake on top. The flame hesitated a second, then accepted the fresh fuel.

As he applied the knife to the thick of his right palm, below the thumb, she reached out reflexively, crying, “No. Don’t!”

“Power’s in the blood, love. Has to come from someplace. Won’t come out of the air, except for those made a study of it.” When the flame accepted the blood, too, Spike stuck his bleeding hand into it.

It was painful, of course. Waves of pain running up his arm, old impulses making him want to flinch away. But that didn’t signify. He’d closed that hand around molten metal and burned it to the bone. A little pain was no deterrent. His hand obeyed him, not the pain. Felt a little strange, but he’d expected that.

When the blood broke through the surface of the skin, he figured that should be enough. Pulling his hand back without haste, he forced it shut around the stake, methodically coating it. Just enough. Not wet or thick enough to smear the sigils.

“People got this idea,” he said, “that vamps burn real easy. But it’s just the sun, something in the light, that hates us and does us harm. Regular fire, it doesn’t burn us any more than other folk. No less, but no more.”

Holding the stake, he put his hand back into the flame. There was a threshold, he’d found. Had to be at the point of actually kindling to set off the reflex. Couldn’t do it otherwise. As he felt the flex, he took the pain, and whatever might be of magic within him, and pushed.

Fire was gone, just like that. Every spark. Setting the stake aside a bit awkwardly, he drew ointment and a roll of gauze out of the bag with his good hand. Holding them out to her, he commented, “See, that’s what I needed you for. Miserable trying to wrap one hand with the other. And knots are a bitch.”

Slowly and with great care she spread the ointment over his hand, front and back, and then wound it around with the gauze, attending closely that the wrap was even and laid smooth. “I’ve seen mummies wrapped.”

“Have you now.”

“And in other places, other rites. It’s charged,” she reported, with a small nod at the stake.

“Good to know that.” With his good hand, he got out a cigarette. After a tap to settle the tobacco, that cigarettes didn’t need anymore, what with the filters and all, he put the end in his mouth and passed her his lighter. She got it open, consulted within, and got it lit. “Ta,” Spike said, pulling in smoke and accepting the lighter back from her.

“May I have the knife, please.”

He passed that to her and she divided the gauze, to have two ends to wrap in opposite directions and then tie in a neat knot, cutting off the excess afterward.

She asked, “How long will it take to heal?”

“Be fine by morning. Surface, is all. But the salve takes away some of the sting in the meantime. And the wrap holds it there.”

Having slid closer to bandage his hand, she pulled away again and tucked her bent legs up close beside her, sitting as small as she could, as far away as she could get and still be in the glider. “I take your point,” she said abruptly. “You’re not afraid of pain if it serves your purpose. Is that how you think of me? As pain to be endured?”

“Haven’t given me much reason to think of you otherwise. And you’re no good swap for Bit.”

She stood, lanky long-legged and sudden, brushing her hair from her face in a very Dawnlike gesture. “You can’t force me.”

“Know that. Hope you’ll decide you don’t want to keep her much longer. When you done what you came for. Enough, anyway, to begin it. ‘Cause this is not your place. Not what you’re for. And we miss each other, Bit and me. She would have had fun tonight, and wanted to come along to see the end of it. But that’s not what you want at all.”

“No,” Lady Gates said softly, hugging her coat tight against her. “No.”

“Get yourself back to bed then.” He put everything back into the bag. “Shank of the evening, to me: got places to go, people to do. Good night.” Stepping down the stairs, he added, “Good night, Bit.”

“G’night, Spike,” Dawn’s voice responded behind him.

**********

Spike’s right hand was sore and seeping through the gauze when he set the kickstand and left the bike near Amy Madison’s house. Necessary.

With her name, it’d been easy to find her: she was in the phone book, and a simple search had yielded her birth date and her mother’s high school achievements and honors. Amy hadn’t had any of those, though, having been a rat.

The thickened sky was finally delivering its threatened rain in gusts and drifts. No sensible person would want to leave a warm, dry house to stand in it. Spike’s fingers, forced to close around the stake, provided the necessary coercion. Broken blisters and blood freshened the magical affinity between the spelled wood and the witch. She came, dream-eyed, in a long flannel nightgown the rain soaked and weighted against the contours of her body.

He’d slid into his vampire aspect so she’d know him. Holding the stake that in turn held her, he circled her once around, widdershins, then twice more. The stake was eager to get at her, like half of a pair of magnets pulling to unite, but Spike held it fast. It was important that she understand.

“You bespelled me twice now. Not gonna let you do it a third time. I can embed in wood the harm you tried to do me. And deliver it back.”

He plunged the stake deep in her shoulder. She cried out: a wordless, inarticulate noise. Because the regression spell he’d bound to the wood with his blood and pain was no longer gradual. A year’s growth in comprehension was instantly erased; and a rat knew no defensive spell to undo the sorcery or the damage.

Terrified and in pain, glancing about her wildly, the witch dropped to fingers and toes and skittered away into the rainy night.

Chapter 9: Symbolic

Sunday, Buffy attempted a cake. Frowning at the recipe, she decided margarine should do as well as butter, and besides, she didn't have any butter; and all that sugar certainly would be bad for anyone, so she used half; and the recipe didn't specify exactly how long or vigorously the cook was supposed to stir the batter, so she stirred like fury until it was practically hardened in the bowl, and it plopped into the pan like cement. She had to push it into the corners.

All that could be said of the result was that it was the right shape: square. It was black, and hard as a brick. So maybe she had left it a little longer than required, being distracted by Xander showing up to measure windows; and maybe the oven ran a few degrees hotter than it was actually set for (she thought she recalled Willow saying so, but wasn't sure). Whatever.

She got up first thing Monday morning and bought a cupcake. No way she could have fit 123 candles on the square thing anyway.

It was symbolic, she decided. And it was the thought that mattered, wasn’t it?

Rushing through the two scheduled conferences based on her evaluations (done over the empty, miserable weekend, with only a few uncaught typos) got her clear about eleven thirty, which should be in time because her impression was that Spike generally retired about noon. Grabbing her tote and her jacket, she broke several speed limits driving out to the factory.

The vamp sentry said his name was Huey. Buffy vaguely recalled seeing him before, though she didn’t know where. She didn’t really care, except she was making a dutiful effort to learn their names. It would have been easier if there hadn’t been a different one every time she came. She asked, tentatively, after Deuce and was told, politely but mystifyingly, that Deuce was gone. So she just said, “Oh,” and let it drop, with the disquieting suspicion that meant she’d dusted Deuce on patrol without recognizing him, only Huey was too polite to say so, right out.

Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea, trying to learn all their names.

Anyway Huey passed her right through, let her go back to the office without an escort. The factory seemed deserted. She wondered where the vamps were in the daytime, when they apparently weren’t here.

Spike, though, was right where she expected him to be: in the office, at the desk, at the computer. Not how she expected him to look, though. Never would have expected that.

Halting in the doorway, she stared, then blurted as he looked up, “You’re wearing glasses!”

Annoyed and defiant, he reared back his head a little and said nothing. She couldn’t see his eyes at all.

They were big, tinted, aviator-style glasses. Thin silver metal frames. Rather showy, actually, not that that should be a surprise. But she was surprised because she found she’d expected something old-fashioned, not something so aggressively new. Not that she’d ever imagined him wearing glasses at all. But the glasses she’d imagined him not wearing were little clear granny glasses, like you saw in old photographs. Not in fashion accent ads in GQ.

She blurted, “You look like a movie star. Slumming as a clerk.”

“You got a problem with that, Slayer?”

“No, no, no. No problem. Just real surprised, is all. Never thought you’d break down and actually do it.”

“Yeah, well. Doin’ this, now,” (he waved at the computer) “made me reconsider. No good bein’ half blind and headachy all the time. And that laser surgery, s’not an option. Would only heal back to what they were. So.” He shrugged, then folded his arms: still all defensive, except that she couldn’t see his eyes, to be sure.

Way to go, Buffy, she thought: piss him off, first thing.

She grabbed in her tote for the cupcake--protected from squashing by a clear plastic shell--popped it on the corner of the desk, and opened the shell. Inserted a single candle from the pack. Held out her hand, requesting, “Lighter.” When Spike passed it over, she lit the candle, returned the lighter, and took a deep, fortifying breath.

“Happy Birthday to you,
“Happy Birthday to you.
“Happy Birthday, dear Spi-ike,
“Happy Birthday to you!”

Finding only the impassive glasses gazing at her, she explained, “November 5th. Your new official birthday, courtesy of Giles.” She gestured at the burning candle, now running wax onto the icing. “It’s symbolic. I made a cake, but it came out wrong. Bad recipe. You’re supposed to make a wish and blow it out. And I hate not being able to see your eyes!”

He consented to remove the glasses. His eyes were bright blue in this light: wicked-happy and speculative. He leaned forward and blew out the candle with a single short poof of breath. “Are there prezzies?”

“Yeah, just a second.” She grabbed in her tote and brought out a gift-wrapped, angled oblong, about the shape of a pancake-turner, and plopped it onto the corner of the desk next to the cupcake. Smiling, Spike delicately unwrapped it, having cut through the curly blue paper ties with the viciously sharp knife he used to whittle stakes.

“Well, now,” he said, holding up a right-side mirror for a Honda Shadow. “Isn’t that just fine.”

“I knew it was something you needed, something I hoped you’d like, and I know it’s not your real birthday but you wouldn’t tell me that, and it’s all symbolic anyway. I love you,” Buffy said, all in a burst.

“Love you too, and do I have to eat the cupcake?”

Buffy shook her head hard.

“Then give us a kiss, love,” he said, pushing out of the chair, and proceeded to prove why Buffy had long ago acknowledged him the champion kisser in the known universe.

Eventually he let her breathe, still holding her, foreheads touching.

“Not yet,” he said softly, “and not here. But soon. Someplace.” Before Buffy had thought of any response to that except more kissing, he released her to turn away and open a lower desk drawer. Holding out a small white box, he remarked, “Kept meaning to give you this. Either didn’t have it with me, or it wasn’t a good time. Maybe it’s the good time now.”

Buffy removed from the box a thin silver ankle chain decorated with a silver skull with ruby eyes. She laughed. “Like my engagement ring!”

“Put me in mind of it, yeah. Except that was only a spell. And this is real. And you don’t wear rings, and I know why. Silver’s break-away: won’t hobble you up, fighting. Not for your birthday or any occasion. Just because.”

“Because is the best reason of all. Put it on for me?”

Feeling a little shy, Buffy dropped into one of the plastic chairs and extended her left foot. As Spike fastened the chain around her ankle, she said, “Right foot means you’re available. Left foot means you’re taken.”

“Yeah.” He bent and kissed her ankle-bone. “All symbolic…. Missed you real bad, these past couple days.”

Buffy held in the comment that the separation was his doing, his choice. He knew it. No point saying so except meanness, and she tried not to do that.

Instead, she said, “Hard times,” on a sigh, and kissed his bent head.

“Hard times, true enough. So you don’t think the glasses make me look like an utter git?” he asked diffidently, looking up with a wary expression.

“They make you look dashing, dangerous, and mysterious,” Buffy said firmly.

“Kind of the effect I was going for, yeah. Won’t wear ‘em in public, only need ‘em for reading, but….”

“Did you wear glasses, you know, before?” Buffy asked carefully.

Asking a vamp anything about the before was always tricky, she knew, and felt as an intrusion.

Kneeling at her feet, Spike nodded solemnly. “Was an utter git, if you must know. Lied about that, what I told you once. Thought I’d got shut of it, tossed it all away forever. But it all comes back. For all the pretending, I’m still what I was. This, that I’m doing now, brings it all back to me: wet, silly chap that knew attic Greek, basement Greek, fancied himself…a kind of scholar, I suppose. Ruddy git. Don’t mind you knowing, but….”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

“Bit, she knows, claims not to think the less of me for it. Which reminds me: her birthday’s this week. Turns seventeen, this Thursday. What’d you figure to do about that?”

“Nothing! Oh, I have her presents and everything, but I’m not gonna give Lady Gates--”

“Think again, sweet. Bit’s there, too. She knows. Would want her due, regardless.”

“How can I pretend it’s normal when that bitch--”

“It’s special: maybe she’d feel bad, not to let Bit be there for it. And Bit will know, regardless. Would know if she’d been stinted. Do it extra, not less. Only once, that a girl turns seventeen. Symbolic. Make a proper do of it.”

“All right,” Buffy agreed slowly, thinking of the singular disaster that her seventeenth birthday had been--soul-losing Angelsex--something that she did not want to discuss with Spike. Or anybody. Ever. Glancing at her watch, she felt a small internal jerk. “I have to go. But I’ll be back after, like I promised. And you need to grab some sleep.”

“Want to hold you,” Spike said, rocking back, away, sitting on his heels. “Grudge the time apart. Every minute.”

Again, Buffy kept herself from pointless meanness. “Motivation,” she said. “To get past this time.”

“You being so good, so steady, about it all--that’s been a help. Dunno if I could have managed, otherwise.”

“We deal the best we can,” Buffy said. “Just like always. Got to run now.”

“Yeah. See you later, then.”

“Absolutely,” said Buffy, rising, feeling the slight weight of the ankle chain acutely. At the doorway, she added, “And next time? Ditch the glasses. Not that they look bad, they don’t. But…I need to see your eyes.”

“All right,” he responded with a chuckle, straightening. “But don’t you make fun. It’s a bit of a sore subject.”

“You know what? I’d figured that out all by myself. I do that sometimes.”

“Yes, you do. Sometimes.”

**********

Hostile 17 has survived the procedure. The degree of ancillary damage, we won’t know until it regains motor functions.

Yeah, that was one of the regular repertoire, that was. Indifferent anonymous clinical voice reporting. ‘Cause of course they’d only paralyzed him, not knocked him full out, so they could tweak and test reactions all the while they were doing it. Feel muscles firing off, no control over himself whatever. That was enough for him to rouse with the shakes and the suffocated desperate panting when it made its visits.

Giles’ soft, shaken voice announcing to nobody, I believe she’s gone.

That was fit for a good few hours of sleeping misery and grief but couldn’t compare to what came afterward, his own unspoken awareness of helpless loss that encompassed that and cast it forward into an unendurable future of never. Hadn’t had that one lately, which was a blessing. Had him staggering and staring and making aimless convulsive gestures for days afterward when it hit.

But this one, now: this was new.

An unfamiliar voice remarking warmly, What a delightfully savage pet you are! And the sense of his demon stroked, rousing, warily uncurling to bask in the approval no one had ever given it except Dru. The sense of warm, seen, valued, lifted into light that was frightening but didn’t hurt at all, the bright wicked appreciative gaze of something as large as a skyscraper that could pick him up in two fingers and then a spread hand to inspect and pet him, all approving of what it had found. Reflexively, despite yearning toward the bright/warm, the demon snarled out its defiance that it served no one, nothing, and was its own. And the voice in his mind replying, as if shocked, Of course not, dear boy! An unthinkable waste, a crime against such fine experience and potential. No, I think I’ll have you as my pet, small creature of Chaos. And I’ll teach you such tricks and we’ll have such a time of it, you and I!

And his demon submitting ecstatically to the immense petting hand, never having developed any defenses against being loved.

Cold and naked and perfectly still under the thin blanket, Spike stared at the vague dark ceiling and felt the aftershocks of the dream running through him, replaying the words and sensations and his demon’s adoring responses.

Only a dream. Probably.

When he could move, he grabbed the cell phone, hit a speed dial, and waited.

When the line was opened with silence, merely attending with no need for words, he suddenly didn’t know what to say. Blanked out.

“Spike, I know it’s you,” murmured her voice patiently. Quiet because she’d be in some class, others around, interrupted by the sound or vibration of her phone.

That sense of context made it real and freed him. Not Bit; but yes, Bit! Needed her: right away. Now!

He didn’t know what he said. Her reply was made in the same calm murmur: “I’m coming.”

Finally he set the phone down without dropping it. Kneeling by the desk, he poured two of the wake-up pills from the vial and downed them with as much liquor as he could take at one go. Waited for it to hit, for something to be real to him besides the dream. Went on methodically drinking because that was all he could think of to do.

Nothing from memory. Not a dreaded future. This had been real, present, now. Never had one like that before. And surely never wanted it again.

No defenses whatever.

He knew if that voice called to him again, he'd go.

**********

Mike noticed at once: Spike was paying no attention to him. However, Spike was paying no attention to anything. Wearing only bluejeans, Spike was in the wandering around stage of drunk, and smelled scared. Instantly enraged, lacking only a target, Mike admitted the near non-presence of not-Dawn, the Lady with nearly no smell who looked down her nose at everything, even things bigger than she was. Mike growled, “What’s happened?”

She was sitting primly on one of the pink plastic chairs, watching Spike pace the office like some wind-up toy. Aimless motion. Couldn’t be still. Eyes unfocused, might as well be blind. Bottle in fist, nearly to the tossing-away point.

The Lady remarked, “We have another player.”

Mike made a disgusted noise at the cool non-answer and stepped right into Spike’s pacing route knowing it might get him hit. Didn’t care. Spike wasn’t mad, though, which wasn’t right. Finding an obstruction, he simply stopped.

So Mike hit him a good one on the side of the face. Spike rocked back a little, was all. Didn’t come back at him. Seemed to barely notice--too anesthetized by the liquor, maybe. So Mike popped him another one. Spike took that as a hint to choose another direction and started circling the desk.

Standing in his way again, Mike demanded, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Spike said nothing, waiting for his path to clear; but the Lady commented in that dry, passionless voice, “He can’t say. He’s being blocked.”

“So what the hell are you doing about it?”

“Thinking,” said the Lady tartly, as though certain she was alone in doing that.

“Then do something else, because that’s no good!”

Spike said roughly, “Let her be,” and pushed Mike aside, continuing to move.

So Mike put him down, good and hard, and then sat on him for good measure. As Mike had thought, Spike had wanted to be stopped: he curled forward and hid--arms folded over his head, forehead against Mike’s knee. Safe, because locked down. Mike understood that. And at least Spike was finally acknowledging Mike was there. But the dreadful fear smell, of almost human intensity, didn’t let up. Tasted like fear, too, when Mike had a small nip at the thick of his arm. Other things, though, too--too subtle for smelling. Still not the anger Mike expected. Something nearer to collapse. A blankness that was way past blurred sight, way past liquor-stupid. Maybe the block the Lady had spoken of.

“Who’s done this?” Mike demanded.

“That’s what I’m trying to determine. I do not like my instruments being interfered with.” Bright color came into her cheeks, and her blue eyes snapped. Looked nearly human there for a second. Then it all flattened out again, pulsebeat dropping back into calm. “Spike. Replay it.”

“No,” Spike responded hoarsely.

“Just once more,” the Lady wheedled.

“No.”

But they both went still, and plainly something was going on between them. The Lady sat forward in her chair, intent. Mike used their distraction to take another taste. Happy with that but also took meaning from it. Not Spike pacing: his demon, agitated, yet not showing. Spike was doing the hiding part.

After a few minutes more thought, the Lady stood and reached across the desk to collect the cell phone and tapped in a long string of numbers. Following some sputtering from the other end, she said, “I have no interest in the time there or your plans. Spike’s been bespelled. The accent is British and of your generation, I think; a Chaos Mage of considerable power; thinks in terms of ‘tricks,’ phrases include ‘my dear boy’-- Ah. That’s at least a beginning. How well do you know him?” The Lady listened awhile, then said, “Recently?” She listened some more. Giles was being indignant and using what, for him, was bad language. Mike could hear the other end of the conversation well enough despite intermittent static.

Had a name to keep in his mind. Poking at Spike’s shoulder, he said it aloud: “Ethan Rayne.”

Moving one arm slightly, Spike blinked at him. “Oh. That git.”

That seemed encouraging. Mike got up and took the phone. “It’s Mike. Describe the bastard.”

Giles’ voice asked, “Who are you? And who have I been talking with?”

Mike thought answering would probably make things go faster. “Spike’s my sire. And the Lady, she says she’s Dawn’s ma. Come into her, now won’t leave. A Power, everybody says. So what does the son of a bitch look like?” Mike found corollaries for each item and came up with a resemblance to a know-it-all captain he’d been acquainted with, back in the before. Looks like Captain Hawkins, if the jumped-up asshole had survived to forty would do for a picture in his mind. “Anything still left around here, would have his smell on it?”

“I have no idea, and what do you mean, Spike’s your sire? Is he killing again? Is he--”

Since Giles seemed unable to supply any more useful information, Mike ended the call and set the phone back on the desk. Then he noticed the Lady glaring at him, like she might turn him into something. He didn’t know if a Power could do that. Not real clear on what a Power was, actually, except that they thought pretty high of themselves despite having manners not fit for a barnyard.

The phone buzzed. The Lady picked it up and listened. “Yes, substantially. No, I have no reason to think so. No, he eliminated all of them…. Quite certain: Dawn was a witness.”

Mike quit listening. The subject had no interest for him. He asked Spike, “Want me to get the pads laid out?”

Leaning on an elbow, Spike looked at his watch. “Fuck. Is she here?”

“The Slayer, you mean. Not yet. ‘Manda and Rona are, though. Maybe Kennedy. Didn’t see her. And two squads up and waiting, like you said.”

Mike could no longer smell the frightened. Only the drunk.

“Fuck.” Rubbing his eyes, Spike got slowly to his feet, then carefully bent again, holding the corner of the desk, to collect his shirt from the floor. “Tell Huey to get the gear out: that’s his to see to.”

“I can take the training, if you want. Dance with the Slayer a bit. Don’t think she’d dust me.” That last, Mike had meant as a small joke, but Spike didn’t take it that way.

“Slayer’s mine, Michael. You and ‘Manda lead out for the rest.”

Mike went as far as the door. “You sure that’s a good idea.”

“Hell, no. But that’s how we play it.” Spike’s attention shifted, and they both noticed the Lady holding out her locket on its chain.

When Spike made no move to take it, she said, “You are our instrument. I will not allow you to become another’s.”

“Yeah, sure. That makes me feel all kinds of better.” Pointing at the locket, Spike asked, “Little bit of clay gonna keep my head all secure?”

“Perhaps not. However, I’ve now identified the player. On this plane, his power may be considerable but in my own realm of action--”

Spike was lighting a cigarette. Breathing smoke, he said, “Fine, you got your name. What you came for. Great idea: you go home, leave Bit to help us clean up the mess. You do that.”

The Lady let the locket slide to the desk. Showing a small smile, she said, “Nice try, Spike.” Then she went knuckles-down, arms braced, on the desktop, asking, “Why do you want her and not me?”

“We’re used to each other’s ways, Bit and me. She and my demon mostly get on. She looks after me. Want her here now.”

Not until I have what I want!”

“And what’s that, pet?” Spike inquired, nasty and silky.

The Lady turned bright red and stomped out, past Mike, chin high. Couldn't smell anything off her, but that was no news. Mike figured Spike had things besides smell to go by.

“And that was real bright, too,” Mike commented. “Piss her off, why don’t you.”

Studying his cigarette coal, Spike admitted, “Think maybe I did. Have to admit, there’s worse than her. She’s a wretched bully if she’s let to be. Used to having her own way, and what high lady isn’t? But however loud she gets, she’s always left me my own choice. Never tried to force me, that I know of, anyway.”

“Yeah. Guess so. I’ll get that all set up, then.”

Answering Mike’s concern, Spike responded, “I’ll be all right. Just took me to a place…. I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.”

Going toward the barrier gap, Mike looked back and saw Spike drop the locket chain around his neck.

**********

Wasn’t true nobody had ever cared for his demon: Bit did, Spike reminded himself, dizzily trying to locate his boots. Properly cautious of it, she was, Bit, but she liked it well enough and except for the brief time of marking her, his demon showed no special interest in her either, which was the way it should be.

But not the same, memory told him uneasily. Not the same as sharing in full measure the joy of busting things up, tossing things high just to watch them go smash. What he’d been fighting in himself, beating down every day, from the time he’d set himself to the ordering of Sunnydale. Part of him was sick of self-discipline, sick of being forethoughtful and reliable. Sick of meeting expectations, including his own. Sick of even trying to keep track of every fucking detail.

Part of him sided with the Powers. Just wanted to say the hell with it and let it go. How much of that was him and how much was Lady Gates nudging at him, he’d never tried to sort out, except to acknowledge that some of it was him, no question. The pushing hadn’t put there anything that wasn’t there before.

Demon, it was restless and angry, being mostly denied at every turn. Sometimes got past him, exploded at whatever he found to hand. Like in Willow’s bedroom. Like the other night, putting down whatever he found in reach. And harder to control without the balance of the soul. Hard to feel the need for the restraint, the rules and limits he’d set on himself. Only ideas, things he had to make himself mindful of, not things he felt.

And maybe this new git getting at him some of that time.

As avid for destruction as Spike’s demon, praising and affirming it, rewarding it with that deep satisfaction when the lattice of rules came suddenly unglued and he just struck out. Feeding it what it wanted. What not even Bit would give it: freedom to act out its nature. As though he were no more than a fledge. Relapsing to an earlier state, losing what he’d learned and fought for.

He thought that was the trick of spelling a vamp: to latch onto some secret wish, some weakness already within him. Turning an inclination into a compulsion. Making him not only accept it but want it.

Despite the years since the chip being all about not wanting what he wanted. Wanting another thing more. Training himself up with the blinding pain as limit and correction until he’d believed he could do without it and still be fine. Set the soul aside and still understand enough to follow the course he’d set for himself. To make this new thing well enough to have it survive his supervision and stand on its own. Continue beyond him.

But he still wanted what he wanted. That hadn’t changed and never would. Because demons didn’t. Not so much evil, like he’d learned to think of it, but a creature of chaos. Deeply inclined to destruction of any order he found himself within. Breaking through the barriers. Doing the impossible, the forbidden.

Shutting a Hellmouth. Loving a Slayer.

The only thing better than killing one. Two, he’d done, so he should know. And it wasn’t in him to regret any of it.

But he’d never imagined anybody loving him for that, or that in him. Fear, respect, maybe--those were appropriate responses. He understood them. But the self-assured love bypassed all that and spoke to his demon direct. And his demon understood that and responded in kind.

Couldn’t get at him except through what was already there.

That was what scared him.

For the first time, he seriously thought he might not last this out. Capable of imagining it only. Not capable of the execution. And leave everything worse than if he’d never begun.

Which was what Digger had contended all along. That Spike didn’t have the “bottom” to stay the whole course. That it was just stupid naïve vanity to suppose otherwise. Might be Digger was right and the farther along Spike pushed his plan, the worse it would be when it inevitably got away from him. Therefore the best thing Spike could do was abandon it immediately before the repercussions of failure spread to everyone he cared about. Because they’d trusted him. Taken him at his word and depended on him. And therefore caught in the backlash when it all started coming apart.

Nobody he could say this to. Nobody who could offer any reassurance he’d believe. And belief the only thing moving it all forward or holding it together.

Dressed and still drunk, full of manic, shaky alertness from the pills, he crossed the factory, seeing that the gear from the Magic Box annex was nearly all set up and Mike and the three SITs beginning to demonstrate lead and second in a fight, dull weapons only. The SITs watching him pass: this wasn’t what they wanted from him. Wanted him showing them something new, not just going through the motions of what they already knew, reflexes trained into habit. Wanted edged weapons drill, that he didn’t think he was capable of today, not without somebody getting hurt. Couldn’t think through all the cautions, not in motion. Could second Buffy, maybe, when she came. That could be all right and nobody hurt.

Could do. Maybe an answer.

His healed right hand riding the descending rail, he went into the dormitory--mostly cleared out except for the fledges and a few fucking by pairs or bunches: the usual, he didn’t bother noticing--and singled out Sue. Woke her, drew her aside as far as a bench, the way he had before. She seemed a little less dopy than last time, assuming he was in any state to judge that. All the bruising and scabs were gone, anyway. And having fresh clothes moderated much of the stink. Mostly, she smelled like Deuce, whose clothes they’d been before.

He asked her, “You fed up all right?”

“Is there more?”

Should have expected that. He shook his head. “Not till tomorrow. One delivery a day, comes in on the plane from L.A. in the morning.”

“They say other masters have cows, you can just drink from them anytime--”

“We don’t do that here,” Spike replied evenly.

She looked for a second as though she’d argue, but kept silence, swallowed it back. She’d learned that much, then.

“Want you to do something hard, and something easy,” Spike told her.

“What’s the easy part?” she asked warily.

“SITs are up on the floor now, taking my crew of pathetic wankers through patrolling drill. Lead and second, point and flank. What you lot had down pretty much the first evening. When we ran into those Bringers.”

“Yeah. I remember that. That’s easy. You want--” She stopped herself, changed phrasing. “What do you want me to do, Spike?”

Not assuming. Not thinking it would be a good thing to show off, get ahead of him, before he’d had a chance to say. Coming along fine, for a fledge.

“Like you think,” Spike said, indirectly praising both her quickness and her holding back. “Go up and train with the crew, in the colors. ‘F even a fledge can pick it up, they’ll try harder. Keep to it, if you do.”

“Yeah, all right. I can do that. And the hard part? Do I have to keep trueface shed? Because I can’t--”

“No, that’s all right. Doesn’t matter within these walls.”

“What’s the hard part, then?”

“Don’t eat anybody.”

“Oh.”

Spike waited while she thought it out. Finally she looked up, met his eyes. “I’ll try, Spike. Try my best. Could I be sort of toward the back? So they’re not in striking distance?”

“Need you to the front, love. Where they all can see you. ‘Manda and Rona and Ken, they know striking distance, and they all have their tasers. You won’t hurt nobody, even if you go for them. But I’d like to see if you can keep yourself from that. Let you come on a sweep if you can make it all the way through.”

“Even truefaced?”

Spike nodded.

She looked both eager and anxious. “How long?”

“An hour. Maybe a little more.”

She took a quick, nervous breath. “I’ll try. I’m fed up all right: I should be able to keep from going after the first warm meat I find.” She cocked her head. “I can hear their heartbeats. Isn’t that weird? It will be so strange…. But I’ll do my best, Spike.”

“Never expected any different. Come on, then.”

Weaving among the mattresses, she asked him, “How can you be this drunk and keep focus?”

“Practice, love. More than a century’s practice. S’my birthday, you know: Watcher said so.”

“Celebrating, then.” She nodded as if that made sense.

“Something like that. Now, don’t you look too sharp, right off. Ease into it a little.”

“Got you.”

She was shaping fine. As Mike was.

He found hope in such tokens.

**********


For no good reason except being reminded, Buffy had been angsting all afternoon about her 17th birthday.

How could she have been so dumb?

And how could Angel have not known a seventeen-year-old would be that dumb and exercise adult (250, that was adult, right?) judgment and restraint and not frelling fuck her?

Had he known about the “perfect happiness” clause at that point? How could he not have known?

Driving toward the factory after an unscheduled but unavoidable counselor-parent conference occasioned by a student bringing a nail file to school (nail files being currently categorized as weapons of deadly force (WDF), and the penalty for being caught with a WDF was summary expulsion and therefore failing all your classes), Buffy decided she was gonna ask Spike. He’d been around then, right? Sure he had: in the wheelchair, up at that same factory he’d occupied now, though she hadn’t known that at the time--about the wheelchair, anyway. With Dru-goddam-silla, a thought that set her blood boiling right there, that crazy vamp skank he’d trailed around after for better than a century, so what did that say about his judgment and taste in women?

In short, she was spoiling for a fight, and since Angel wasn’t available, pretty nearly anybody would do.

Toting a gym bag containing her workout clothes, she stomped up to the sentry alcove (slight sense of accomplishment when she recognized the sentry as Emil) and demanded where she could go to change.

Big Emil looked nonplussed. “Office?” he suggested.

Big open space, glass walls: the height of privacy. Fulking factory didn’t have restrooms, or if it once had, they’d torn them out like they’d torn out everything else that made the place habitable for anybody but vamps. No restroom, no lockers, no shower. A tad short-sighted, maybe?

That reminded her of the glasses, which made her snicker: she’d pretty much promised not to razz Spike about them, but that wouldn’t limit Dawn, whenever she was allowed to surface and first caught sight of them: Dawn would never let him live them down.

“Thanks,” she said to Emil absently, and went inside. Vamps and SITs were squaring off against each other at the opposite side of the floor. Buffy gave them a cursory glance, passing by to the gap in the barrier--mostly confirming that Spike was there, which he was: leaning on the far wall, talking to a female vamp…who was Suzanne. Former SIT. Frowning, Buffy couldn’t decide offhand if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She’d have to think about it. She was inclined to think “bad thing,” though, because Spike hadn’t shown any sign of noticing she’d arrived. She was fifteen minutes late: he should have been watching for her. Anxiously. Eagerly, even. Instead of obliviously chatting with some nubile, fresh-faced (albeit game-faced) she-vamp.

In the office, she laid out her sweats and sneaks, then turned off the light. Wouldn’t actually help much, given vamp vision, but it made her feel somewhat more secure. For extra concealment, she sat between the desk and the wall to pull off her counselor attire and wriggle into her workout togs and sneaks, that Giles had always called “trainers.” No mirror, of course, to check her hair or makeup. So she turned the light back on to inspect herself in the inadequate mirror of her compact, deciding her hair was gonna be all over her face in two seconds of moderate exercise and pulling out all the pins and securing it with a knotted scarf, fountain style, in a topknot pony-tail.

Then she tramped back into the open space to start her bends and stretches.

The place, she had to admit, had some deficiencies as a training space. For one thing, the floor was cement. No give. No bounce. And frickin’ cold. If she was gonna use it full-time, she needed to invest in leg warmers and sneaks with thicker soles.

The half-light provided by the painted-over windows and the high strip windows above was also non-standard but she could live with that, she decided. She patrolled at night anyway. So perfect lighting conditions for training weren’t a requirement.

The vamps were now facing off against each other by teams--one team unorganized, the other divided into triangular fighting units of lead and seconds. The triads were making figurative mincemeat of the singletons, even though the seconds kept getting in the lead’s way, each of them wanting to engage independently and first. The trouble wasn’t getting vamps to fight--it was getting anybody to hang back. As Buffy finished her warm-up and strolled nearer, Mike had called the mock battle off and was trying, with two of the SITs, to show how a fighting triad was supposed to behave while everybody else stood around and looked bored…or stared nervously as Buffy passed.

Buffy awarded herself extra points for recognizing Mike. She didn’t think he was making much headway.

“OK,” she said to Spike, “how do you want to work this, coach?”

Spike shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall as though she’d asked him something impossibly difficult. She noticed then that he’d been drinking.

“Fine,” she said, swinging away. “We don’t have to do this. I don’t even have to be here. It was all your idea anyway.”

Spike shot out a stiff-arm shove. Buffy stumbled and couldn’t catch herself, landing on knees and the flat of her hands. She protested, “Hey!”

“Balance needs work, Slayer.”

She checked he was still against the wall before warily rising. “Not gonna play around with you, Spike. This is mine: for me. Not to make you look good in front of the troops, wow ignorant teenies by showing a bit of flash. What I need is a trainer or else a mobile dummy, either one. By the smell, I guess I know which one you’ve opted for.”

Spike didn’t say anything. Buffy thought he was counting.

He pushed away from the wall, commenting mildly, “Right you are: one dummy coming up. Let’s get your hands taped first.”

“Look, I only have an hour--”

“Only take longer if you stand around bitching about it,” he responded, so she trailed along behind him to a bench and straddled it sullenly while he, seated facing her, made a meticulous job of taping her hands.

“You’re right,” he said, without looking up. “This is for you and about you. It’s plain you don’t like the audience. So next time you come, they won’t be here. Figure it out as we go. No need to get your knickers all in a bunch about it.”

“What are you doing, drinking in the middle of the day?” she challenged indignantly.

“Well, had myself a bit of a bad dream earlier. Needed to settle myself down, after.”

“When you knew I was coming,” Buffy barged on, unheeding, then caught what he’d said. “A bad dream? You figure a bad dream is an excuse to get drunk? And when did you ever need an excuse anyway?”

Spike finished taping her right hand and began on her left. “If it wasn’t for the fact you’re a blessed saint descended, I might think you were trying to piss me off.”

“Well, sitting and having you tape up my hands isn’t exactly my idea of a good time either,” Buffy shot back, shifting restlessly on the bench. “Tell me: did Angel know about the curse?”

“Don’t understand, pet.”

“When he and I, you know, and then he went all sarcastic and Angelus, that once, did he know?”

“Hold your hand still, pet.”

“But you were there, here, afterward, he must have said something about whether it was what he expected or if it was a surprise or something!”

His face had gone tight and expressionless. “You’d have to ask him. Wouldn’t take Angelus’ word, myself, that water’s wet.”

“Sure, like I’m gonna ask him about something like that, after all this time! I’m asking you!”

“Don’t recall. Had my own problems then. ‘F he wanted to natter on about the Slayer, wasn’t nothing to me. Not then.” He shook his head. “Don’t want to get into this with you, Buffy. Too many fishhooks.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means…. No. Not gonna start with that. Let it alone.”

“This is important to me! Where do you get off telling me to--”

He smacked her ear open-handed and leaned back, avoiding her answering swing. Stepping clear of the bench, he said, “Too much talk. Come at me. Keep on your feet, if you can.”

He wasn’t fighting straightforward or fair. It was all lean and duck, sliding away, dropping into a roll, bouncing back. And tripping her. She was on the floor almost more than on her feet. Trying any kind of kick was an invitation to have her support foot hooked, and land hard on her rear. On the cement. He dodged a lunge by dropping face-down and yanked both ankles out from under her. She made a point of dropping on him elbows first, and braced: that slowed him down for a couple of minutes. Dumped yet again, she folded her arms and refused to rise. “You’re not doing this right!”

He stood comfortably hipshot just beyond kicking range. “I’m not the one with my arse on the slab. What’s it say, that I can get outside a fifth of Jack and still have better balance than you do?”

“But all you’re doing is falling down in inventive ways. Big deal. Anybody can do that!”

“Taking you with me, ain’t I? The point of this exercise, pet, is who’s left standing. So take a stance and hold it.”

She got up, lame and irate. “What, nail my feet to the floor? So you can dance around and make me look like an idiot?”

“Not the point,” he said, exasperated, looking off to where the rest were doing unarmed drills. “SITs, they want edged weapons practice. How about you take them through--”

Taking advantage of his inattention, Buffy bounced on the toes of her left foot and spun into a whip kick with her right. Her right heel connected with the back of Spike’s neck. That would show him! He went down loose: not guarding himself at all. His head hit the floor with an audible crack. He didn’t move.

Buffy was just bending to make sure he was all right when she was grabbed from the side and flung ten yards, airborne--nearly back to the east wall. With time to adjust, she landed in a balanced crouch, ready to spring off in any direction.

All the vamps were gathered at mid-floor. Standing by Spike, still down, Mike was game-faced, glaring at her. The SITs were edging away, to be between Buffy and the vamps if things went bad. Or worse: they’d already achieved bad.

Mike shouted, “That’s no kind of training. That’s pure meanness and spite. You got no business doing him like that!”

“Mike,” Amanda was saying, taser extended. “Back off, Mike. I’ll take you down if I have to.”

“You can try,” Mike challenged, not shifting his attention an inch. The rest of the vamps, all yellow-eyed in the big dim space, were massing up behind him but waiting on a word nobody had yet given.

Knowing that how she handled this was critical, Buffy straightened and walked straight at him at a deliberate, balanced gait. She kept Mike within her peripheral vision--if he came at her, she’d know it; but she centered on Spike. In the next step, she’d have to choose to square off against Mike or put her back to him.

As she took the step and started to go down on her knees beside Spike, a vamp flashed past her and gave Mike the sort of rough shove he’d given Buffy, except that Mike didn’t move. “Are you crazy?” the vamp demanded: Sue’s voice. “Spike wouldn’t want this! ‘Manda, back off. Everybody, back off. Spike would--”

Mike backhanded her. She hit the west wall, fell in a huddle of splayed limbs, and didn’t move.

Spike had finally started to stir: forehead bloody, head bent, he pushed off the floor, rocked, and ended in a sort of sprawled sitting. Meanwhile Mike had called all vamps off to the short south end. Buffy didn’t care what they were doing down there. She pulled Spike to lean against her shoulder. “You took your eye off the weapon.”

He touched fingertips to his forehead, then automatically licked them. Gross, but predictable. “Guess so.”

“We didn’t plan this very well,” Buffy commented.

“Not a good day,” Spike responded, using her shoulder as a brace to push to his feet so he could look around and assess the situation. “Sue’s down.”

“Mike hit her. I don’t think Mike has quite grasped the concept of training.”

“Yeah…. No, you keep clear,” Spike told the SITs, waving them back.

“But shouldn’t we check on her?” Amanda asked, the other SITs turning with her.

“No need. Hasn’t dusted. She’ll be fine. Don’t put temptation in her way. She’s a fledge: she’d just come at you and then there’d be another right mess to be sorted. Leave her be.” Hand still on Buffy’s shoulder, Spike was silent awhile. Then he said quietly, “Could have gone better. Worth trying again, you think?”

“I loathe birthdays!”

“Never paid ‘em much mind, myself. Side mirror’s nice, though. Mice, they’ll enjoy the cupcake. Be awhile, probably, before all the mice can be got rid of. Harder to catch than rats. Taste about the same. What there is of ‘em….” He looked to see the disgusted face she obligingly made. “Can take everything back, if that’s what you want.”

“By now, Anya probably has everything stripped and painted and shelves up to yo,” Buffy reflected gloomily. “Leave it all as it is. Let me think about it some more. We’ll talk about it tonight, on patrol, all right?”

He was turned half away, his expression distant, his eyes vague. “Your call, Slayer.”

“Spike? You mad at me?”

“Had better days. The waiting’s hard….” Standing straighter, he cupped his temple and started toward the back, asking, “Name Ethan Rayne mean anything to you?”

“That prancing lightweight! Ruined Halloween!” Trotting to catch up, Buffy pulled at the tape ends on her right hand. “And then the band candy! That inspired my mom to…get groiny with Giles on the hood of a police car. Twice!”

Spike looked around, somewhere between pained and bemused. “That a fact? Not quite the impression I’d got.”

“Of Mom? I certainly hope not!”

“Of any of them, actually. Tell me about it.”

Buffy picked more tape and started unwinding. It would have to be cut, but she was too edgy and ill at ease to wait. “Actually, you should remember the first one. I chose this great dress, ancient fashion, real fainting-lady-wear, and Willow was a ghost, and Xander was soldier-guy.”

“Yeah, I do recall that dress. And you were acting all girly and helpless and I didn’t know what the hell you were trying to pull. Don’t recall Red doing a ghost, though.”

“Well, you couldn’t see her, idiot: she was a ghost!”

“Like invisible Buffy?” Spike asked, all innocence.

She felt her face go hot. “Not exactly.” Tucking her arm through his, she hurried on, “All the costumes went real. Ours, anyway. Courtesy of Ethan Rayne. Old pal of Gileses, from his Ripper days.”

“Figured they were close: gave Rupert an interesting day as a Fyarl. Luckily, I speak Fyarl.... Never saw the git, just heard Rupert ranting on about him. Fyarl profanity's pretty colorful.... Sounds harmless enough. Might be he’s come up in the world. Has minions now, seems like. Or had.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those Fire Mages. Seems they were Rayne’s.”

“But he’s a Chaos Mage.”

“Confusing, innit?” he responded amiably.

They’d reached the office. Spike went in first and started rummaging through a top drawer. Picking up a pill vial, he turned on the light and squinted at the label.

“Headache?” Buffy asked, carefully neutral. At least the bleeding had stopped. A purple bruise had started to spread.

“If it’s not one thing, it’s something else,” Spike responded, shaking out two pills and popping them into his mouth. “I’ll be fine for patrol.”

So that was all right. Still, she found herself asking again, “You’re not mad?”

“We’ve been better. Mostly not connecting right, and that’s not your doing….” He smiled. “I expect you’ll find some way to make it up to me.”

Talking around the edges had again brought them to the center.

“Oh, yes,” Buffy said most sincerely.

Chapter 10: Accommodations

Spike knew Buffy wasn’t comfortable with his bringing Mike along on patrol, any more than Mike was comfortable being brought. They barely exchanged a word, as if they each were pretending the other wasn’t there. And after decking him in good order at the factory, Buffy was being all polite, enough to make a pig gag, which pretty much ruled out her asking the blunt question What the hell is he doing here? or saying in so many words that having Mike at her back made her itchy as hell.

Spike wasn’t all that pleased with either one of them, and he considered their putting up with each other as part of their penance. How could anybody expect him to keep track of the little things, like the new wide-scale blood delivery or the progress on recruitment, if he couldn’t depend on the big things not going haywire the minute he took his eyes off them?

Plain enough that they were jealous of each other, and neither about to call it by its name, which maybe he was dumb not to have expected and headed off, but there you were. Also plain that Buffy wasn’t easy being around vamps, and maybe never would be, for all her trying, which Spike gave her due credit for, even though it’d turned her all snappish and surly, and she’d flashed out at him for it. Better him than dusting one of his crew, which was the likely alternative. He could take it and she knew that, so she’d done as well as she could, considering. Spike wasn’t put out at her on his own account.

Hadn’t been all that quick on the uptake himself, this afternoon: all shaken up and drunk on top of it, trying to get through the time any old how, and that hadn’t been enough. So his fault as much as anybody’s, what had happened and nearly happened.

And then there was Michael, beginning to get the feel of his authority, taking a stance, just as he should…but without the patience or the sense to finesse the Slayer the way you had to. Seeing her as a threat and then unable and unwilling to back off when she wouldn’t. Going after her on Spike’s account, as though Mike’s claim should override hers.

Big mess.

They got through the patrol without encountering anything but three dumb fledges and later a pair of rambunctious Rolfin, that the Slayer always made a point of taking out despite the fact that they preyed only on domestic pets, no threat to humans, and specially liked the fighting breeds like pit bulls, Dobermans, which would have inclined Spike to let them be if it’d been left up to him, which it wasn’t. So fine, they took out the Rolfin in good order, so all the fluffy spaniels and Pekingese could sleep safer in their posh little beds. All one to him. On patrol, it was the Slayer’s call.

Cleaning her sword before replacing it in the sheath she wore over her shoulders, Buffy said, “That’s enough for tonight. Thanks for the help.”

Spike nodded, catching each of them by the arm, holding them in place. "Then I'll have my say."

“What?” Buffy asked, uneasy but not pulling away.

“Oh, hell, Spike,” was Mike’s contribution. He knew what was coming, or ought to. Nothing except what he was due.

“Michael, you laid hands on the Slayer, that I’d given my personal bond that nobody would so much as look cross-eyed at her whenever she was up there. And you knew it. And did it anyway.”

At least Mike didn’t whine that he’d been provoked or make excuses. Shoulders sagging a little, frowning at the ground, he said, “Fine. Not in front of her, though.”

“Anyplace I say.”

“Yeah. Fine.”

Slayer protested, “He thought he was defending you.”

“Don’t give a goddam what he thought. He’s crossed me, in public, and I won’t have it.”

“Then you two sort it out however you want. I don’t have to watch--”

“You stay put, Slayer,” Spike ordered, quick and flat. And though she was surprised, she left the call to him, which he appreciated. “Now, Michael. Slayer, she’s what’s important here. She takes a notion to dust me, I won’t lift a hand against it. Nor let anybody who answers to me do it neither. Only reason I’m standing here is on account of she’s chosen to go against everything she believes, everything she thinks is right, and let me be. Could have dusted me a hundred different times, and most of those times, I rightly deserved it, according to the rules she goes by. But she still gave me a pass.”

“Because--” Buffy broke in.

“You shut up, Slayer. I’m putting this to Michael how he has to understand.” Returning his attention to Mike, Spike went on grimly, “The right I have over you, that same right she has over me. I continue by her sufferance, that she can change any time, and I got nothing to say about it. And nobody else has the right to interfere with that. It’s between me and her. Now do you hear me, Michael.”

“Yeah.”

“And do you understand it?”

“I guess. Yeah.”

Spike let go his arm, still holding Buffy’s. “Now, Slayer. Michael here is my declared get--I’ve claimed him of my blood and of my making. That means you got any problem with him, you come to me. You don’t deal with him except as I say. He’s mine, and I stand responsible for whatever he does. He gets out of line, that’s mine to deal with, not yours. Today, he was out of line, and you let him get by with it, which is more than he deserves and only because you don’t know our ways. I stand answerable for it.” Spike took Amanda’s taser from his pocket and slapped it into Buffy’s hand, directing, “Do me.”

Together, Buffy and Mike protested, “No!”

“You shut up, the both of you. I want this settled. Don’t never want to deal with such again, not from either of you. Buffy.” Spike held her appalled eyes, trying to make her see and accept that this was necessary. “You can take me out when I’m not looking; you can do this.”

“No!” Mike blurted again. “I’m the one was out of line. If somebody has to answer for it, it should be me. Don’t.”

“You’ll get yours, boyo,” Spike said coldly. “Never doubt it. But Slayer has first right, and nobody comes at you except through me. That’s what it means, that I’ve claimed you for mine. So you stand and you keep shut, you hear me?”

“Don’t,” Mike said to Buffy. “Please.”

Buffy stood looking back and forth between them. Then she flung the taser down. “I’m not part of your damn vamp games, and I’m not playing this one. Sorry, Spike, but no. I don’t shoot 200 watts into…somebody I love…just because somebody tells me to!”

“Slayer chooses to give me a pass. Again,” Spike commented. In one quick motion, he scooped up the taser and gave Mike a charge in the small of his back. Mike went down like a felled pine. Graveyard grass was a better surface to land on than factory cement, Spike reflected, brushing the taser clean of grit before putting it away.

To Buffy, standing all freeze-faced, looking down at Mike, Spike commented, “It’s not the watts, love, it’s the volts. ‘Round about 50,000. Put a chap down nicely for about five minutes, that will.”

Buffy shrugged. “I just figured a two-hundred watt bulb is a pretty big bulb.”

“And 50,000 volts is pretty much like being struck by lightning.” He slid the taser back in his pocket. “Happens, he’s never taken a taser charge. About time he did. Next time one of the SITs tells him to stand clear, he’ll have a little more respect for it. Thing is, pet…Mike loves me in his own peculiar fashion. Not always smart about it. No more than anybody.”

“I see that now. Then how could you…?”

“Letting him off easy wouldn’t be a kindness. Only be worse the next time. Maybe somebody dead. He has to learn how to do. According to the way vamps see things. Just as glad you let me off, though--would have been a bit much on top of everything else, today.”

“But you said--” Buffy began, then slapped her hands on her legs in frustration. “I’m never gonna understand this!”

“Likely not. And maybe a mistake to try,” Spike acknowledged softly. “You stick to the ways you know, love. Don’t bother about the rest. That’s mine to see to. Maybe be best to go back to keeping it out of your way.”

“I’m trying…to connect,” she protested.

“Know you are. But maybe it’s not possible.”

She came and hugged him close and kissed the side of his mouth when he turned his face away. “But it has to be possible.”

“Yeah.” She’d think that, want that to be true. Didn’t make it so, though. But Spike wasn’t gonna argue. Things would be as they could be, and what anybody wanted didn’t come into it. “He’ll be coming to in a while now. You go on home. I’ll see to him.”

“I can wait,” Buffy offered.

“Love, bad enough I took him down in front of you. Be worse if you’re here to watch him stagger around, try to get himself working right again. Don’t think rubbing it in is really what you mean to do here.”

“No. No, I guess. All right,” Buffy agreed uncertainly, and went off.

His back sliding down a tombstone, Spike settled onto his heels and lit a cigarette, waiting for his unruly childe to wake.

**********

“Come in,” said the Slayer, opening the door.

She smelled nervous but didn’t actually show it, and she wasn’t scared about giving him access to her claimed place. Wasn’t scared of him at all. Well, no reason she should be, Mike supposed, though from anybody else, it would have been an insult. Well, nervous was something and as good as he was apt to get, considering that the Slayer outranked him by a fair bit even despite being human.

Mike had never been invited inside Casa Summers before and now wasn’t particularly sure he wanted to be, with Dawn absent. Nobody here he was much interested in talking to. He folded his arms, looking back toward his bike for no particular reason except not to be looking at her. Didn’t want to be rude, stare her right in the eyes like a challenge.

“All right,” said the Slayer coolly, “I’ll come out.”

Her house: she’d do what she pleased. It was nothing to Mike. Except that now he had an invite, he had a choice. That was different, he supposed.

She hitched a hip on the porch railing, facing him. Tiny little thing; but strong as a vamp twice her size and could do the air stuff, the flips and twists, like Spike did. So even though her hands were empty, Mike was properly wary and respectful. Owned Spike like Spike owned him, so she was due respect--Spike had made that perfectly plain last night, after the patrol. So when she’d sent a summons up to the factory for him today, he came as soon as the sunlight faded. No reason not to.

“You don’t like me much,” she said, opening with the obvious. Not waiting for an answer, she went on, “I don’t like any Sunnydale vamps except Spike, so we’re even there. But you’re important to Spike, and Spike’s important to me, so I thought we might have a talk. Try to come to some working arrangement.”

“Don’t need no arrangement,” Mike replied. “You forbade me Dawn, and it’s been a couple weeks, anyway, since I smelled you on Spike. You just want to get another handle on him ‘cause he’s moved out of your reach.”

She was silent, mouth all pursed up tight, for a minute. (Mike took note of her motions and changes of expression with quick side glances, still avoiding straight-on challenge stares.) She said grimly, “All right, that’s more true than not, even though I don’t like hearing it put that way. There’s a distance. Since he began this, he’s been all caught up in vamp things and trying to keep that all to himself. I think he thinks it’s safer that way. For us. Dawn and me and Willow, who live here. But the result is the distance. I don’t like it. So I’ve tried to mix into his stuff, and get him to keep mixing into mine, as much as possible. That’s not working and it just makes everything more complicated. Adds onto everything else he’s trying to keep track of. And I’m starting to think it’s more than he can do.”

“So?” Mike said when she stopped. “What’s that to me?”

“He’s not sleeping right. He’s taking those pills because days just aren’t long enough to get everything done no matter how he packs them and pushes himself. He--”

“Spike manages fine,” Mike interrupted loyally. “It’ll be better, now he’s gonna lair up at the factory as a regular thing. And…and you got a problem with that, you take it to him. Not up to me.” Mike was real annoyed at himself for saying even as much as he had. Nearly as bad as Digger, she was, making him start blabbing stuff that was none of her concern. Or if it was, stuff Mike had no business telling her, anyhow. Up to Spike, to tell her or not.

She stuck her hands in her sweater pockets. “I don’t understand. If we both care about Spike, there should be some common ground here. We should--”

“What do you want, Slayer? Why’d you call me over here?”

Again, the frown and the pursed mouth. “You’re not making this easy, Mike.”

“What’s ‘this’? And why should I care if it’s easy or hard? You’re none of my concern, either way. Except as Spike tells me. He says I got no business mixing between you. So fine, I won’t. Now are you trying to tell me different?”

She flung her hands. The sudden motion was unnerving, but Mike kept himself from reacting except to check her hands for a stake. “Mike, do you even realize that he loves you?”

“Course he does: named me his get, let me feed from him. Gave me a district to run. Gave me his keepsake watch for my protection. I’m useful to him, as best I can be. Others, he assigns to do other things for him, but none of them is a blood connection so they don’t signify. Only me.”

“He’s marked me,” she declared, like she thought that was some daring big thing to admit. “That should count for something!”

“Makes you his cow,” Mike responded, with a wry glance, flick and away. “Signifies that, anyway. Marked himself for Dawn. Don’t bear no mark for you, not that I yet noticed. But,” he added quickly, “he said you had same as sire’s rights over him, and gives you the respect of that; so I’m not saying different.”

Buffy lifted a glance of rueful frustration and sadness. Still didn’t smell anger or antagonism from her, which was strange, seeing as how she’d been questioning his connection to Spike and insisting she had the stronger claim, which Mike hadn’t contended otherwise…out loud, anyway.

She smelled nearly as nice as Dawn, though much more puzzling and therefore less attractive. Mike was pretty sure she didn’t like him. Then again, Dawn didn’t either, anymore, so that was probably no difference that signified.

She said, “I’m not getting through to you at all, am I.”

“Don’t know what you mean. Still don’t know what you want from me.”

“What’s the air speed of a laden swallow?” she demanded suddenly.

“European or African?” Mike responded, knowing that was the right answer.

They looked at each other awhile. Then she shook her head.

“Your logic is not of the earth logic. OK, I get that. Just tell me this: what Spike’s doing. What he’s wrecking everything else, and himself, to do. Is it worth it?”

“He’s Master of Sunnydale. Doing what’s needed, for that,” Mike replied, not seeing what she was getting at. How could Spike be top predator and the eldest, strongest blood in the area, with the will and the ferocity to enforce his claim against all opposition (as was proper), and act any other way than he did?

“I give up!” Buffy said, throwing her hands again. “You win!”

Mike nodded politely although he was certain dominance hadn’t changed, so nobody had won. People were unaccountable. No making sense of them. No use even trying.

“Thursday,” she said, “is Dawn’s birthday. We’re having a party here, after the class. Though she’s not even here. Though nobody that I know of likes Lady Gates very well. Spike says, ‘Have the party anyway,’ so we are. Dawn’s friends are invited…some of them, anyhow. The ones I know about. So you’re invited. Provided you can stay out of game face and don’t try to eat any of the other guests.”

Mike frowned. Last he knew, Dawn was officially furiousfuckingmad at him and wouldn’t speak to him except under combat conditions. Didn’t bear his mark anymore, didn’t allow him to taste her, didn’t want to keep company with him. And to Lady Gates, he had no connection at all. Wasn’t even her birthday, as humans would reckon things. He didn’t think Powers had birthdays, being ageless and timeless. So why he should spend time on such a farce made no sense whatever. Yet the Slayer plainly meant he should, even setting aside her implication that he had no more command of his demon than a fledge would. Classing that as ignorance, not deliberate insult.

“I’ll ask Spike. If he says come, I’ll come.”

“Good enough,” said the Slayer, on a sigh. “See you later, then. At the class.”

Mike thought that meant he should go, though he wasn’t entirely sure. He figured he’d best ask, since he didn’t want to be rude to Spike’s same-as-sire. “We done now?”

“Yeah, Mike. Stick a fork in us, we’re done.”

Taking the steps down to yard level in one long stride, Mike tried to shake his head free of confusion. Every once in awhile, she’d say something that was actually understandable--like about the swallow speed, and about the fork--so he couldn’t quite dismiss the rest as vaporous nonsense. Why couldn’t she talk plain, say what she meant, like Dawn did? And the SITs did, mostly?

It was clear she’d wanted to, tried to. And simply couldn’t.

Starting his bike, Mike decided to ask Spike about that too. Spike would make sense of it for him, or at least tell him how to do about it, which was all that signified.

********

As she approached the gym’s double doors, schlepping the remaining carton of the smell on her hip, Buffy could hear music. Which was therefore loud music. And when she opened the righthand door, that same smell hit her like a breath from a bordello, not that she was absolutely sure a bordello was what she thought it was.

Her dutiful errand was therefore what Giles would have called “carrying coals to Newcastle,” which Xander had explained to her as being like unto delivering an extra stooge, to make four.

The stooges inside were not exercising, or only a few. Nearly all were dancing in bare or stocking feet. Or maybe they were exercising too, since quite a few were gathered doing high kicks, alternate feet, in time to the bass thunder of a boom box set on the bottom row of bleachers. Going toward it to set the carton down, Buffy squinted her eyes and made a wincing face at the volume and the similar intensity of the smell. Absolutely everybody must be wearing it, sweating it into the air. And there was a lot of everybody: the gym was at least half full.

She climbed up the bleachers to get a view of the whole floor. From that perspective, she saw how a boom box could impersonate a rock band’s sound system: at least six were parked at intervals along the bottom tier, cranked up to the max. From behind and above, the volume seemed slightly less likely to make her ears bleed. She couldn’t discern a tune, apart from the pounding rhythm that made the bleachers bounce.

There were even more people than she’d thought--over a hundred, few aged above eighteen--jerking in weaving throngs to the thundering beat. She still wasn’t sure which were exercising and which were dancing. Several flavors of stomping line dances were weaving through the recognizable jitter-buggers, frug-ers, and others doing dances she knew no names for: alone, in pairs, or loose clusters performing the same motions. One maybe-dance involved propellering your arms slowly backward and prancing on tiptoes while lifting the other knee smartly against the chest. The mutant offspring of Michael Jackson and Michael Flatley?

Pungent as mothballs although more floral, the smell made it hard to focus or form thoughts. And the driving beat shattered any struggling vestige of thought, like reflections in a stomped puddle.

Buffy was reasonably certain of only three things: (1) absolutely nobody was waltzing (2) she was facing dismissal and possible lawsuits for holding an unauthorized, unchaperoned orgy and/or riot on school property (3) she’d spotted Spike’s bike outside, so he was here…someplace. She caught sight of the occasional red/black blur, but they were just vamps and SITs having a wild good time. She awarded herself points for spotting (and recognizing) Mike. Modest points, because spotting him wasn't hard, since he was a head taller than any guy near enough for comparison, moving with characteristic vamp grace, strength, and energy. No Spike, though: not a platinum head anywhere.

She wilted onto the high bench, knees together, feet apart (and tapping), trying to think what to do. Then Spike came bounding up the bleacher rows as though they were a set of stairs, grinning like a maniac. One sleeve of his scarlet button-down was torn and flapping. The other was completely gone. Before Buffy could enlist his help in solving the problem, she was part of it, her face locked between his cool hands to hold her still during the application of a ten-megaton kiss that went on for several forevers and involved tongue. After that she was too busy hauling his T-shirt free of his jeans waistband so she could get her hands up under there and find skin. Skin was important. Skin was good, cool against her heat. She wanted more of it.

Seized by a perverse impulse, she started tickling and nearly sent them both crashing and bumping down all the tiers to the floor. Convulsing, Spike grabbed her wrists and forced them wide, so they were standing front to front like some interrupted non-standard tango, since they were looking into each other’s faces with loony expressions. Buffy lifted on her toes and licked his chin. Spike laughed and made some comment the music drowned. She felt him start to move and went along, wide-stepping down the rows hand in hand, Spike batting away her renewed threats of tickling.

They latched onto a passing line dance that mainly involved skipping wide to the side and doing a complicated little triple-time hop/bounce at what seemed random intervals. Whenever the line paused in its galumphing progress, that was what you did before being jerked into motion again. Then for awhile they were surrounded by people doing vaguely Egyptian-frieze movements, lots of serpentine arms, undulating torsos, and chins pushed out and then snapped back, over one’s shoulder. Or maybe they were imitating wading birds. Anyway the motions were contagious and imitable, so they mirrored them, sinuously exaggerating each sway and glide.

Most of the would-be Egyptian wading birds just looked herky-jerky. On Spike, whose eyes had kindled with a devilish gleam, it looked good. There was nothing that didn’t look good on Spike.

Then Spike caught her waist and tossed her straight up. Buffy looked down at lots of kids looking up. Descending, she was caught and hurled high again--like being on a trampoline without needing to bounce. This time, to be doing something while airborne, she managed a half rotation and was caught from the back and sent off again with a definite spin in the release. So she tucked her arms tight against her sides and made a full 360 before falling back into Spike and set safely down before he staggered away, doubled over in laughter. The angle was good, so she jumped onto his back and executed a handstand on his shoulders, head-top to head-top, holding the pose as he straightened beneath her. Everybody looked so funny upside down that she started giggling and fell into what would have been a messy collapse if Spike hadn’t grabbed her arm, tossed her out horizontally, and cracked her like a whip. Then she was suddenly back, on her feet, decorously held…and goddam waltzing in defiance of the music.

Spike had his eyes shut and looked as happy as she’d ever seen him. And Buffy could tell that their impromptu gymnastics had been noticed--the kids around had stopped to watch, grinning broadly, some even applauding soundlessly. Some of them were vamps. And it occurred to Buffy that absolutely nothing bad was happening. Sure, she might lose her job over this, but that would be some other time and this was now. The vamps were pairing off with human partners or each other, executing steps a little more light-footed and sure than the rest but otherwise distinguishable only by wearing the colors. Not one single kid with a throat torn out. Nobody terrorized or screaming. Nobody even yellow-eyed. Because the vamps adhered to the limits Spike had set for them; because they knew the punishment would be sure, severe, and quite likely end in dust if they crossed those limits. With feeding prohibited, the picked crew were having a good time like everybody else in the hypercharged fog of sweat and the smell, music and motion.

This enchanted harmony within set limits, established and brutally enforced, was Spike’s doing. His new order. Not to be trusted beyond the limits, but perfect within them on the shared middle ground of the gym.

Freeing a hand, she reached up to cup his ear, and he bent to hear her: “I get it, Spike! I get it, what you’re doing!” When he drew back and blinked, she nodded emphatically, grinning so hard her face hurt. It was so great to finally understand. A connection.

He swooped in for a kiss. When she started to sag against him, he held her steady, his head bowed, and raised his right arm straight up, calling, “Here!”

Somehow, they’d learned that signal. The vamps could probably hear him anyway. With a spread hand descending, he sent them to silence the radios, and as the music diminished and died, everybody gathered around, leaving happy, respectful room for Spike and Buffy in the center.

Looking around, collecting their attention, Spike said ruefully, “Well, we’re for it now. Not exactly the sort of exercise we were s’posed to be doing. Liable to get in Dutch for it, too. Wasn’t the, the instructor’s idea here: you remember that if anybody asks. Just sort of happened. Anyway, though this could roll on fine till midnight, the hour’s up and more, and next time, we stick to business here, all right? And you lot, scatter yourselves around and make certain not a single bit of trash is left anyplace. You lot with the radios, go stand by yours so I know they’re all accounted for and claimed by who brought them. That’s a good idea, music to move to--but not so many. We’ll see to that, next time. No more radios, right?” As the crowd broke into swirling motion, policing the floor and collecting belongings, Spike called, “My lot, help ‘em locate their own footgear, and no good stealing somebody else’s for a lark. And be certain you get your jackets and what-all, too: whatever you brought with you. Can’t leave this place looking like what’s left after the best party I been to for awhile. Long while. Now go on. Not gonna try to get names of the newcomers, that’s next time, supposing they come back for what this class is really about. Not this ridiculous dancing around nonsense. And thank the, Miss Elizabeth here, for not shutting us all down when she first came in, like the good sport that she is.”

There was a scatter of backward-shouted, “Thanks!” and somebody tried to get “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” started but it petered out as the gym cleared. Directed by a flipped thumb, the vamps waiting by the door went out too.

“I’ll get the lights,” Spike said, starting toward the bleachers and the inner wall. Over his shoulder, he added, “See you brought the rest of the smell. Didn’t tell ‘em: enough around already to choke an elephant. Have to talk to Red about that. The fug’s chewable, in quantity, an' stinks of magic something fierce. There were a couple times I thought this was gonna turn into something absolutely else. Didn’t, though--not that I know of, anyways. Save the case for next time, I guess. I’ll take it back to your office for you. Afterward.”

Bounding up a few rows, he killed all the lights. A rattle, shortly after, marked his checking that the inner doors were secure. Buffy stood in the darkness tracking him by sound as he came back to her across the floor and wasn’t surprised when he grabbed hard and started trying to suck all her vitality out through her swollen lips.

“Now,” he growled in her ear.

Following, moving with his motion, everything reduced to smell and touch and taste, Buffy wondered that he’d thought a word was needed. When the time was right, you just knew. And everything followed from that, as it always had.

**********

He’d taken adequate thought. Fed himself up as much as he could take, even to getting a bit into the fledges’ ration. Had all the floor mats laid out in the corner under the bleachers, with some pillows, and a snuggy quilt: for under, so there’d be something between her and the mats’ plastic when he was nailing her into it; and for over, so she wouldn’t get cold in the between times. Nearly a hundred square feet of improvised bed: should do, no matter what they got up to.

With no mats set out for falling onto, the class had turned warm-up exercises into dancing. And it’d all gone on from there.

Taking thought had meant he’d been wholly distracted all day. Yearning toward it. Dreaming of it. Locked in arousal he didn’t want to waste on anything but its proper object. And then walking into the compelling haze of the smell, that fuzzed the edges and made everybody seem desirable and available to him. Could have shagged half the room and been working on the other half before Buffy arrived, so warm and so herself that no one else was the least appealing and he’d pulled out of a spontaneous group grope to get to her.

Good thing she hadn’t been ten minutes later. What she’d have walked in on wouldn’t have been anything like so harmless and innocent.

Have to have a talk with Red about the effect of the pheromone-heavy smell in volume, in an enclosed space, particularly on smell-sensitive vamps. Tone the next batch down considerable or there’d be consequences. Might already have been some, though he’d given his crew a good talking-to before his mind veered off and rejected anything that wasn’t sensation and readiness and need, all focused on her like a spotlight.

Taking thought beforehand meant that now he didn’t have to think at all. Could just turn loose and do.

They did. Frantic after weeks of abstinence, they exploded into one another. Couldn’t even make it as far as the prepared nest for the first few times. Couldn’t separate long enough to fully shed even the minimum clothing--haul it away, rip it, push it aside, and lost again. The taste of her, under her breasts, and her smell of wanting, sent him into immediate spasm. He came in his jeans, constricted, not even inside her. Unrecovered, still caught in that first release, he was back at her, wanting to taste every inch of her skin. Game face emerging and fading unnoticed, flexing within himself as everything inside was welcomed into the warmth. Seized, handled, scratched, bitten, wrestling and rolling, strength matched to need and his joy that she rose to him as would a great wave, capable of hurling him into rocks but instead engulfing and tumbling him, powerful and playful. Everywhere. Nothing he knew that wasn’t her. Again going for the tickling, that sent him into helpless spasms and another blowout stronger than the first and collapse after, passive while she yanked his boots off and able to be of little help with removing the sticky jeans.

“Sorry to put all the work on you, love. Think my spine’s melted,” he said blurrily. Her face came down and her hot mouth silenced him. Or at least dismissed anything but hard-drawn breath and babbling.

Eventually, on hands and knees, he led her to discover the nest, the quilt and the pillows, and swarmed all over her there, and it was so stupid ever to talk of “taking” a woman. It was giving, all giving, tuned to her now in a conversation of touches, finding where and how she most wanted him and giving her that, still incapable of delay but able to surprise her with fingers and mouth and tongue, startling sudden noises from her and pleased with his own inventiveness as she came to climax and convulsed, screaming.

Gentling her down afterward, holding her through the aftershocks, nuzzling at the mark that summoned and assured him that all was permitted. No hurt, no harm, except what she wanted, except what came of itself in the varying torques of their coming together. Didn’t need to hurt her. Nor not afraid of it, neither. All good, the bruised and aching places. Let him know it wasn’t a dream.

She slept a little then, and he continued to hold her, reaching behind and tenting the quilt around to hold her warmth, a little sad that he had none of that to give her when it meant so much to him. Softly petting until she stirred, all wonderfully slippery with sweat and smelling strongly of them both, cheek and sweated hair against his chest, stroking along his ribs, licking and nibbling at his nipples. Then she bit, and the galvanic shock went straight to his cock. Hard again and aching that good ache but patient with it now, keeping things on the simmer, not desperate to be finished. Time for less demanding kisses, investigating the precious inner fold of her elbow and behind her knee. Attending to her poor punished feet, the ridiculous shoes she inflicted on herself, brainwashed fashion victim to accept such self-imposed torture when the turn of a slim ankle, the imagined flare of a calf, was the quintessence of feminine allure in his day, not foot-binding as though modern girls were the inheritors of the heathen Chinese so that the toes withered and dropped off, nothing left but the stub of a foot, and on like that, meanwhile kneading and working the muscles, taking each toe into his mouth for separate attention while she defended her idiot choice of footwear on the grounds of practicality, like a stiletto heel was any help in staking a vamp or pivoting with a broadsword. Completely ridiculous. Happily bickering and all the rest simmering steadily underneath.

Her silver anklet was still in place. Tasted fine. She jerked her foot away, complaining that it tickled, and a fine one she was to talk.

Then she started telling him about Mike coming over and he fizzed as quietly as he could, hearing what she’d said, knowing what Mike would have made of it; touched that she’d even tried, sweet silly cow. Sounded like Mike had minded his manners, anyway, which was good enough and all he expected. But her talking love and Mike surely hearing dominance was just so impossibly funny he couldn’t keep it altogether inside so she pounced him, all indignant, and then opted for her turn on top, controlling the pace, and that was fine too, whatever she pleased. Bossy little minx when the mood took her, and he happy to have it so, changing leads never a problem for him. Had quite enough of being in charge in the ordinary way, glad to lie back and be ridden, letting it all build how it would, deeply sheathed, and the view glorious too, looking up at her: all ribboned and auraed with radiant heat, all the more beautiful for being self-forgetful in her blindness, all inward focused and intent, hair elflocked and wayward, hiding and then revealing her face as she moved on him.

Might not have been bad with the shackles, much like this and skip all the sad waiting but she wouldn’t even try, and that set him off somehow.

He flipped and held her and bore down hard, fast, impatient. Forcing sweet noises from her and making considerable noise himself like they weren’t supposed to at her place on account of Bit, needing her rest and all, not to mention Red, but no reason now not to cut loose and just fly. The mark called him out of himself and he bit down hard, everything clenched and exploding and completely gone into the sensation and the taste of her, smell and taste fused and overwhelming. Taking in the power while giving it back, no will left in the matter whatever. Part of an arc. Whited-out blank.

The voice inside him saying, It could be like that all the time. Lost in an ecstasy of completion.

He thought he said to it, “Bugger off. This is mine. I shut you out.”

Can’t do that, dear boy. Not once you’ve let me in. Besides, if I were out, I couldn’t do this to you.

A wave of pure bodily pleasure washed over him, devoid of context or significance. It lasted however long it lasted and was gone when it was gone. Sense seeped slowly back.

Dazed and lethargic, he thought he said, “Buffy’s better. We’re better. It all means. That, that’s just some trick.”

An appealing trick, nevertheless, isn’t it? Direct stimulation of the pleasure centers. Overloads the receptors with bliss. It’s impossible to feel better than that. Quantity and availability beat occasional, inconsistent quality every time. Over time. You’ll like my service. I absolutely guarantee it.

“Fuck off. Wanking myself unconscious for eternity isn’t how I figured to spend my unlife.”

Then, you hadn’t experienced it. Like the chip’s opposite: pleasure instead of pain. Unending. Your demon understands.

“And the button in your hand. Think not. If it’s so great, you do it. Be rid of you then. Fold all small and disappear up your own arse, why don’t you.”

Deliciously contrary. But your demon understands. Smug.

“I control my demon!”

Then followed an interval of vague drifting in which his exchange with the voice faded into a general unease and was forgotten except for the sated contentment of his demon, which was no very strange thing, after all. He became aware of lying stretched out with his head on the best pillow imaginable, Buffy’s belly, and her weeping onto him the way she did sometimes. Meant nothing bad, only letting all the stored-up sorrow out, which she mostly didn’t allow herself except at such times. Just how she was, how she did. He didn’t take it personally.

**********

Mike was on the hunt.

This player, this fucking sorcerer, Ethan Rayne, had made beaucoup enemies in Sunnydale, his last few swings though. So there were those that remembered. A bit of spite here, a grudge there. Somebody he'd pissed off with a non-delivery or a casual double-cross who wouldn't mind a piece of his hide if it didn't risk or cost them anything. Not many vamps, though--vamps didn't much like magic or those who played around with it. As Spike would have put it, too poncy, too sneaky, for blunt vamp smash-and-slash tastes. Much as Mike heard poisoners were regarded by the more directly murderous elite in prisons. So vamps didn't tend to have much contact with magic workers, not even enough to dislike them on a personal basis. Except, of course, Digger. However, Mike put off visiting with Digger, saving that for a last resort, instead proceeding roundabout.

First he built a network of connections who knew something of Rayne’s prior escapades, information mainly sourced initially from Willow, who’d have a natural interest in such things. With sufficient reason, Mike had gotten his mind around what Spike had finally accepted: that you didn’t need to be abroad in daylight to talk to somebody. Spike had given him a cell phone. Mike used it, sitting tense and intent in his own lair, an abandoned house at the edge of Tryed Stone Cemetery, that he shared with his crew of three fighters and five minions.

Talking on the phone was strange and uncomfortable--no smell or body language to go by, only the words--but it had advantages, too. There was no rank to be considered. No fight could break out over the phone. Those he talked to weren’t reacting to this big hulking guy with a fairly stupid, placid expression. Nor to a vamp that might take a notion to yank them apart if he didn’t like what he heard, since all vamps had a rep as crazy-volatile among the rest of the demon population. He was just a voice to them, as they were to him, and he found things were simpler that way. Much clearer, more understandable.

To Willow, all he had to do was identify himself as “Spike’s Mike” and she opened right up and told him in plain words what he knew to ask and even suggested promising lines of follow-up he hadn’t then thought of. Helpful, direct. He decided he more liked Willow than not. Apart from the magic, of course.

More demons than he would have thought had phones. Most weren’t listed in any book, but there was a network of demons who needed or wanted to contact others, and the connections spun out from there. Within a couple hours of starting, Mike had 127 numbers jotted down, together with their associated names and designations: he found that there were quite a lot of demons in the repair and delivery businesses, servicing those parts of Sunnydale humans avoided after dark. Nearly all the cabbies were demons of the less conspicuous breeds. Utility workers, too. It made sense, though he’d never had any reason to think about it before.

And into the notebook went what they knew about Rayne: where they’d seen him, what he’d been up to, why they disliked the bastard. Mike didn’t come up with a single individual who’d had any contact with the Chaos Mage who seemed to have the least respect or liking for him. Practically fell all over themselves to spew some story of how he’d done them down. Stupid, Mike decided, to piss so many off so casually, with such indifference. Given the chance, they’d turn on you, do you whatever small harm they could. Even mice could do you down, given enough of them; or distract and occupy your attention while somebody else came at you from a direction you hadn’t expected.

Rayne was a bit like Spike that way, he thought then, except that Spike knew and accepted that there’d be consequences of pissing people off on a wholesale basis and faced up to them and then beat them down, toe to toe, whenever they confronted him. So maybe not just stupid. More arrogant. And Mike had nothing against arrogance when it was earned. Like a Master vamp insisting on due respect and beating down any who refused it. Just the natural order of things.

In the first of the early twilight, he rolled over to the Magic Box to talk to the vengeance demon, Anya, that owned the place. In the lull between the end of the work day and the start of nighttime activity, the shop was empty and Anya, a nice looking woman, seemed not at all unwilling to talk to him--even flirted with him a little, which was always pleasant, though not at all serious, as best he could judge.

Leaning on the counter where the cash register was, Mike said, “Trying to get a line on this Ethan Rayne. Figure he has to buy stuff, to do what he does. And where else would he come but here?”

“Naturally,” Anya agreed with a brisk head bob. “I have the best selection and quality of materials to be found within a hundred mile radius.”

“You know him by sight?”

“I do now,” Anya replied with an extremely toothy grin, chin resting on an upright prop of fists. “I’d be a pitiful judge of customers if I couldn’t tell a true Adept from a novice at twenty paces: Adepts won’t tolerate more than a 30% markup, whereas novices can be overcharged wildly and are too ignorant to know the difference. Adepts smell of their profession. Like dentists and garbage collectors.”

“Expect they would. If he comes in again, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.” Mike pulled from a shirt pocket a yellow sticky with his cell phone number and passed it over. “Or just call sometime to chat, if you take the notion. Though I don’t expect a lady like yourself has much spare time, what with running this place. Expect you’re pretty busy, socially, too.”

“Well, I’m very involved with civic groups, the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Merchants’ Association, that’s true, and it does take up much of my time. With the extended evening hours, I seldom get home before midnight these days. Evening business has really picked up, the past few weeks. I’ve seen you patrolling.” By Anya’s expression, she’d liked what she’d seen, too.

Mike returned her smile pleasantly. “Spike, he calls them sweeps. To tell that from what he does with the Slayer. But yeah, I help out how I can. However he wants. Sort of his second these days, though I have a territory of my own. Always back and forth between there and the factory…. Kind of occupied past midnight on that account, though we’ll be going to two shifts soon--to midnight, and then to dawn. Sunrise…. Don’t yet have the hands to run that yet, though.”

“It’s been noticed. Much more repeat business, steady customers that don’t inexplicably disappear. In general, historically, vamps have been considered bad for business. That’s changing. The colors are noticed, even by merchants who don’t have the least idea what they stand for.” Anya tugged with two fingers at the sleeve of his black T-shirt, one he’d found with the slogan Farm Fresh Tilapia--Fewer Bones! and the logo of the Farmed Fish Association, a twisty looking fish caught in mid-jump. She smiled up into his face and gave his arm a pat.

No question: flirting.

She went on, “The Downtown Merchants’ Association is behind this initiative 200%, and you can tell Spike I said so. Or is ‘initiative’ a bad word for you? I know Spike gets an odd look in his eyes when I forget and use it, and no wonder, given his experiences.”

“No, don’t mean nothing to me.”

“Good. Anyway, we’re solid.” Anya shook her clasped hands in what Mike supposed was a sort of cheering-on gesture. Turning pensive, she continued, “I’ve been considering taking on extra staff for the evening. These ten-hour days aren’t healthy for a girl my age. I’m sure I look a positive fright--bags under the eyes, incipient wrinkles.” She offered her wide-eyed face for his inspection.

“Expect you’re tired, but it doesn’t show. Don’t see any wrinkles, not a one.”

“I said ‘incipient,’” she said crossly, rubbing at the space between her eyebrows. “So there are bags, then.”

“No bags, neither. Look like a magazine cover.”

“Really? Which one?”

Mike cast his eyes to the ceiling, visualizing magazine racks at the supermarket nearest his lair. “Modern Bride, maybe. Or Diet Surgery, that had that series about Melanie Griffith awhile back.”

She nodded emphatically. “So sad, when the before pictures look better than the after! A girl has to be extra careful when she’s only intermittently immortal. And the schedule is positively killing. So…before I actually advertise for help, might you be interested? Good-looking retail personnel make the customers so much more likely to think well of an establishment, and therefore much more likely to return. Repeat business: that’s the secret of successful retail.” Anya nodded solemnly, disclosing this sentiment--surely one worthy of a T-shirt, in Mike’s estimation.

“Couldn’t say. Have to ask Spike about it. Maybe. I’ll give it some thought. Now back to this Rayne. Anything he bought, that he had delivered? Maybe an address?”

“I think there was one phone order, now that you mention it: let me look.” She dug under the counter and brought out a ledger-style book. She banged it open on the countertop and started flipping pages, scanning with an intent frown. “There it is: 1601 Oak, second floor,” she declared triumphantly.

Mike got out a pocket pad and borrowed her pen to write down the address. Then he asked soberly, “We gonna be on the outs if I tear the head off a steady customer?”

“Well, that would really depend on why. Though in my profession, it’s not good to be overly inquisitive about final intent, motivation, that sort of thing. So I’m not meaning to pry, or--”

“He’s doing something to Spike. Something that’s….” Mike stopped himself at the last second, before admitting whatever it was had Spike scared--strong enough to smell. “I don’t like it and mean to stop it.”

“Is Lady Gates of no help? I know her attitude toward Spike is somewhat ambiguous, or should that be ambivalent? Anyway, she certainly might be expected to intervene, since she considers Spike her property.”

“Don’t know what she’s after,” Mike responded, scowling. “Except for setting Dawn aside, that is. Hasn’t been helpful so far, that I can see.”

“Then by all means, stop the bastard,” Anya said, nodding several times. “But do be careful: mages aren’t easily approached and tend to have very nasty things up their sleeves by way of defense. Or they wouldn’t live as long as they do. Has Spike authorized you to act on his behalf?”

“On some things. Not about this, though,” Mike admitted unwillingly. “On the other hand, this Rayne won’t look to see me coming.” He quoted, “‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.’”

“Exactly right! And he certainly won’t hear it from me!” Anya placed fingers over her mouth, then made as if turning a key in a lock over her full and red-painted lips. “Everybody knows I’m the soul of discretion!”

A narrow look found no conscious irony. So maybe her eager rattling on about Rayne was only part of the general dislike of the man, or maybe it meant she considered them on confidential terms on account of the connection to Spike. Likely the latter, he decided.

“I’m serious,” Anya said, clasping hands around his wrist and looking into his eyes earnestly. “I’ve never known a vamp who wasn’t far too reckless, charging in without a plan of attack, much less preparing a defense. Spike’s notorious for that. I’ve had to bail him out of several situations over the years. If Spike hesitates to go after Rayne himself, there’s good reason, and you should give it a lot of serious thought before involving yourself.”

“Don’t worry on my account: I’m protected.”

“One of Willow’s lockets?”

“No, a watch. But same sort of thing, I expect. Spike gave it to me,” Mike informed her proudly.

“Willow’s a good ally and a powerful defense, even if she’s often unreasonable about what constitutes a trade discount. But don’t trust that talisman blindly, not against a mage with a taste for influencing vampires. If he can hurt Spike, he can hurt you.”

“That’s so,” Mike admitted. He hadn’t thought about that side of it. His respect for Anya’s shrewdness, already high, went up a notch. “Thanks for the warning. And I’ll take what care I can.”

“Be sure you do. I imagine you’re told all the time that you have the most lovely eyelashes. But the first time I remember seeing you, you had both arms broken, two black eyes swollen shut, and a concussion: you looked as though you’d been through a meat grinder. And that was just Spike! It would be a shame to get yourself turned into something hideous or trivial, like a newt or a Mayfly. After all, who pays any attention to a Mayfly? And they live such short, unimportant lives, too--the epitome of mortality. That’s if he doesn’t dust you outright, of course. Less hideous, but far more final.”

“I’ll take care,” Mike assured her, and thanked her for her help.

Took less than five minutes to get to that address on Oak. No surprise, the second floor apartment was empty, and maybe it’d been no more than a convenience address, where something could be dropped off and then collected later. But Mike thought not. Having forced a window, he stood in the space the drab living room furniture left open, shut his eyes, and pulled what information he could from the atmosphere. Definite stink and prickle of residual magic, though old and faded to nearly nothing. Magic of a dry sort, not the more active fiery kinds. Passive, like a bear trap, set and waiting for you to walk in, not the sort that would chase you down the street or erupt into your dreams, though he wasn’t so discriminating a judge of that as Spike was.

And stronger than the scent of magic was a mix of lingering personal scents: this apartment had been occupied by many over the years, and their smells lingered. Took him awhile to separate the older from the newer and memorize the distinguishing characteristics of the one associated with the magic, indefinably tied to it by smell.

He went in search of that smell. The apartment had been stripped pretty thoroughly but not repainted. He found a hand print on a door. Couldn’t see it, but he could smell it just fine. That helped him refine his original guess at Rayne’s own smell, as distinguished from all the other smell-ghosts that inhabited this place. He thought of taking the door, but it would be hard to maneuver on the bike, so he kept looking and found a crumpled tissue lodged unnoticed behind a bureau. Smell was distinct on it: it would do. Holding it carefully by the least corner with a two-finger grip, he ducked back out through the window and inserted the tissue in one of the set of panniers he’d gotten for his bike, to avoid mixing the scent with his own any more than he could help. A zip-shut bag would be good, but he hadn’t thought of that in time. He could pick one up on the way back to the factory.

When he’d set tonight’s sweep on that scent, if Rayne moved around anywhere in Sunnydale in the open air tonight, they’d have a lock on him they could follow to his destination and likely his lair. A good beginning. Mike wouldn’t have to go to Digger about it after all--not yet, anyway. Didn’t want to show his hand to Digger if he could avoid it, because Digger was almost certainly involved, since the target was Spike. And Mike didn’t trust himself to keep his mouth shut. Hadn’t seen much of Digger lately, except at some distance, at Willy’s. Not since Spike had let Mike feed from him. Digger would have noticed and expect to be told why, and Mike wasn’t at all eager to have that conversation. So best to put it off as long as possible.

Then he headed off to the factory by way of the mall. Picked up a box of zip-shut bags at the drugstore there, then wandered around moodily looking into shop windows, waiting for inspiration to strike. Dawn’s birthday party was tomorrow, and he was going, so human customs dictated a present. Likely why the Slayer had invited him and Spike had said yeah, go: raise the tally of presents.

But nothing looked good to him. Nothing spoke to his senses and said Dawn to him. Been so long since he’d kept company with her or tasted her, he reflected sadly. Caught her scent a few times, but angry words and a cold stare had gone with that, so he couldn’t really be happy at the memory.

She wasn’t really there, and maybe she wouldn’t like what he got her anyway because it’d been from him, so it likely didn’t matter what he got her. So just get something simple, any old thing, and get it gift-wrapped, and a card to go with. Be done with it.

Deciding, he grimly headed for the department store.

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