Chapter 13: Connection

“It’s like double super-strength Ben-Gay or something!” Buffy told Giles, scrubbing her hands futilely on the bottom of her jacket as Giles, carefully not touching, contemplated the logistics of getting Spike, who wouldn’t uncurl and was covered in the stuff, from the floor to the car. “Willow--is there a spell? Something?”

As Willow responded with a wincy-faced lip bite, Dawn held up a finger and in a TA-DA voice, specified, “The Official Designated Tatty Emergency Blanket! Keys?”

Buffy pitched them to her and she raced off.

“Will?” Buffy appealed again. It wasn’t the uber-stinging oil so much as that Spike wasn’t responding. To the rescue. To her. He was out there someplace inside his head and she literally couldn’t touch him and that was driving her spare (she thought that was the phrase). Playing harpsichord on her last nerve. Driving her totally around the bend. She could feel more tears welling and she hated that, hated that, and Giles would eventually run out of handkerchiefs and then the world would end.

With a helpless gesture, Willow said, “He’s so all…stunk up with magic, I don’t dare, since I don’t know what it is.”

Frowning thoughtfully, Giles set spread fingers on an uncovered part of Spike’s face and said a Word. Glancing up, he commented, “He’s asleep now. We can deal with the rest later.”

As Giles began to rise, Dawn came back with her arms full of blanket, announcing with proud casualness that she’d brought the SUV right up to the door. Though Buffy gave her a dire look, unlicensed teens manhandling SUVs over curbs was low priority and Buffy let it go. They laid out the blanket. Then Buffy pushed Spike onto it and rolled him up, conspicuously with no help from anybody. Giles was vexedly scrubbing at his fingers with another handkerchief and Willow took care to stay well clear. But once Spike was wrapped and non-contaminant, Giles consented to take the legs while Buffy took the head end, and they toted their awkward burden out the empty doorway.

Where they found their way barred by Mike, a bunch of vamps in the colors, and the other two SITs, the SITs pushing forward and asking anxiously if Spike was dead--nonsensically since (1) he was already, always dead (2) if he had been, what was left of him could have been put in a teacup and wouldn’t have to be lugged around like a roll of carpet. Tucking Spike’s legs under one arm, Giles fended the girls off, explaining, “You don’t want to touch him: it rather stings.”

Gazing calmly past them, Mike said, “We can take it from here.”

Buffy quickly let her end of the carpet-roll down, then exploded, “I’m not gonna argue goddam jurisdiction with you! He’s mine! Now get the hell out of my way!”

“Mike,” Willow intervened, “there’s magic. And things. We have to take him home. And don’t you have a sweep or something to see to?”

Bending, taking up the whole roll in his arms (which Buffy could have perfectly well done herself, but Giles had wanted to help and Spike would have absolutely hated her doing that), Mike replied, “Thursday. No sweep.” Looking around to the other vamps, he added, “Lockdown at the factory till sunrise: Digger may not like what we done. Tell Huey he’s lead till I get back. Or Spike does.” Then he stepped back, waiting for somebody to open up the SUV.

Buffy glared. But rather than have a stupid snatching match over it, with Spike in the middle, she stomped off to the far side of the SUV, triggered all the doors, and waited, fuming, behind the wheel until everybody got themselves in. Then she shoved the SUV roughly into gear. The vehicle’s wheels tore up the yard--she had to turn, and back (crunching over the flung door), and turn, dodging a tree that had no right to be there--then bump-thumped down the curb.

In the back, Dawn asked, “Was that you? In the park?”

Mike’s voice replied softly, “I guess.”

“What was it?”

“Couple-few of Digger’s crew, sent to mix things up.”

“How did you know to come? Were you following?”

“Got my own ways. Slayer, she do for that Rayne?”

“No. He poofed. Teleported.”

A chuckle from Mike. “Poofed. I guess so. Get another crack at him, then.”

Dawn blurted anxiously, “Don’t unwrap him! He’s all burny or something!”

“Know that.”

“Oh, right. In the basement. Yeah. Doesn’t…doesn’t it burn you, too?”

“Doesn’t signify. Washes off.” After a minute, Mike added, “Can barely smell him, for the stink of the magic on him. He smells hurt, though.”

“It’s fairly ick, smelling him like that,” Dawn mentioned delicately.

“Don’t need your say-so. Not doing you no harm. He get hit with something?”

“Not that I saw, but it was dark. Except for his soul, of course.”

Buffy avoided plowing into a parked car. Checking the rearview mirror, all she could see was Dawn turned in earnest conversation with the air.

Spike’s soul had been put back? This was finally over?

“Is it?” Mike’s voice responded. “Can’t tell, what with the rest of the stink. Lady do that?”

“Yeah. He earned it once, so I guess he was entitled to have it back, no extra charge. He won’t be happy about it,” Dawn reflected.

“Why’s he not waking up, then?”

“Giles put a sleep on him. Until we can wash off the oil. Maybe he’ll wake up then. Does it sting really bad?”

“You can wait, Dawn. Don’t get it on-- Do as you please, then.”

“It’s been so long,” Dawn commented apologetically. “I’ve missed him so much…. It’s not so bad. Burny, sure, but not like you’re gonna catch fire or anything. Do you think he chose the collar himself? Because it matches.”

Beside Buffy in the front seat, Giles said unexpectedly, “I think not. The whole Nijinski effect, that would be Ethan. He likes to play-- Never mind.”

Buffy fumed. Everybody getting to paw at Spike except her. She stepped on the gas.

But still--the soul was back! Everything would be OK now!

Pulling into the driveway at Revello, she tolerated Mike carrying now-unwrapped Spike as far as the porch, then wheeled and took a stance in front of the doorway, blocking it.

“The hand-off is here. My place. My vampire. I’ll disinvite you if you try to make a thing about it.”

With Dawn beside him, irritably scrubbing her right hand on her overalls, Mike handed Spike over with no fuss--not quite as impassive as maybe he wanted to be.

Patting his arm consolingly, Dawn said, “You can get washed up in the kitchen. Then maybe you’d take Kennedy and Xander home? Do you know where Xander lives? I can--”

Buffy didn’t listen to the rest, thumping up the stairs to the bathroom.

Starting the shower, she stepped right in with him. And he started fighting. It was crazy and bad: with the oil, it was impossible to get a good hold, and he was flailing out in every direction. He kicked the whole glass panel of the shower door out of its track, and it smashed on the tiles. When she had to drop him, she fell on top and held him down, which was easier. He didn’t go game-faced on her, just struggled and twisted, trying to get away.

A squeeze bottle of shampoo had been knocked down. With nothing better in reach, she slowed him with an elbow to the temple long enough to twist the cap off. Then she poured the whole thing over him, explosions of suds. As the burning faded from her hands, the fight gradually went out of him. As she scrubbed the shampoo everyplace she found the flare and fade of the oil, his agitated breathing slowed and at length stopped completely. He hadn’t fallen back into the spelled sleep, though: his eyes blinked every now and again, mostly when a drift of suds washed into them.

But he wasn’t there. Just inert. Which was good: let her straddle him backwards and get the unbelted pants off (he was barefoot) and smear the remaining shampoo over the rest of him without worrying about being bitten in the rear.

When the shampoo ran out, she could flip him and do the other side, less frantically, with a bar of soap and a sponge. Finally unfasten the damn collar and hurl it away.

Collaring him didn’t seem like such a funny idea to her anymore.

When the water ran clear and her fingers found no more places that made them want to jerk back, like touching a hot kettle, she stood up, dripping, considering how to proceed. The bathroom floor was covered with glass from the broken panel, but her sneaks should be enough protection if she didn’t dance around in it. Drying off was just a habit, not a necessity.

Risking leaving him alone for a moment, she peeked into the hall and found Dawn and Willow waiting there. “If you don’t want a free show, cover your eyes,” Buffy directed shortly, then ducked back to collect Spike. Wet, he was slippery, but nothing like the oil, and she could heave him up over her shoulder in something like a fireman’s carry. Get a good view of his ass, if they peeked, but that was their look-out.

She shouldered into the hall, heading for her bedroom. And it all started again, the flailing and fighting. And this time, there was no solution as simple as shampoo. She finally had to knock him down and sit on him, holding his wrists locked on the runner and staring into his wide, panicked eyes as he threw his head back and forth, still struggling.

Like Mike, she thought, in the troll dimension, only plainer. Something about the bedroom was setting him off. She hung her dripping head and accepted it, even though she didn’t understand it. Someplace else, then.

“I’ll get something set up,” Dawn offered, “in the basement.”

As Dawn ran off, Buffy wearily met Willow’s eyes. “Can you put him to sleep again?”

Wide-eyed and pale, Willow shook her head hard. “He shouldn’t have been able to throw off what Giles set on him. I don’t dare. I don’t know what’s been done to him.”

“You dared at the gym, and you didn’t know then either,” Buffy snapped.

“It’s different. He was still tracking then--pretty much normal. This isn’t normal. Did Dawn say he had his soul back?”

“I think so. Yes. That’s what she said.”

“Good! It’s of the good, I think. But it complicates everything.”

“Doesn’t it always. You think that’s why he’s this way? Because of the soul?”

“Buffy, I just don’t know. When he quiets down, I can check him again. Like I did before, at the gym. Right now, I can tell you that his aura is all but nonexistent. For all the fighting, he’s putting out almost no energy--like it’s all just reflex. There’s basically nobody home. Everything shut down, except the fighting…like that’s the last thing to go.” Willow’s face twisted in alarmed unhappiness. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

“How did you mean it, then?”

“Not like that.” Willow wrung her hands, then darted off into her room and shut the door.

“I’m not peeking,” Dawn called from midway up the stairs. “The cot’s broken and gone, but I think I’ve got something set up that will do. Not peeking at all.”

There were fewer and fewer niceties that seemed to matter. Buffy dragged Spike toward the stairs. The farther from the bedroom, the less he struggled. So Buffy heaved him up again in the fireman’s carry and carefully negotiated the two flights of stairs.

One hand over her eyes, Dawn pointed with the other.

Down by the sink end of the basement, Dawn had laid out two lounge chair cushions side by side with a pillow and a blanket from the linen closet. Buffy gratefully deposited him there and got the blanket over him. Then she at last allowed herself to lean forward and kiss him, long and deep.

No reaction. Absolutely none. Still locked tight, inside of himself.

From the upstairs hall, Willow called, “Rona put the tribute blood in the vegetable crisper. Should I bring some?”

“No,” Buffy called back. “He’s fed. Might as well throw it out. I don’t care if there are starving vamps in Africa.”

“Is it OK to look now?” Dawn asked, absurdly whispering.

“Yeah: he’s decent. Or as decent as he gets.”

As Buffy straightened, Dawn came with a big towel and caped it over Buffy’s shoulders. “You’re in drowned rat mode.”

“Well, at least I don’t have to go to work tomorrow,” Buffy commented sourly.

“Oh, yeah. There’s that….”

They both stood looking down at Spike. As though the towel had chilled her, Buffy pulled it around her.

With the eyeliner and the oil washed away and his hair drying in ungelled curls, Spike no longer looked like something exotic and alien. Almost normal. Almost like hers. Except it wasn’t like him to be so still. His eyes were half-shut. Buffy didn’t think he’d stirred since she’d laid him down. Not moving, she commented, “I should get into something dry. And the bathroom’s all full of glass. Have to be swept up.”

“Willow said she’d take care of it.”

“Yeah. All right. Good.”

“Is he asleep?” Dawn whispered. “He always looks like he’s dead when he’s asleep.”

“He’s home,” Buffy stated, mostly to herself. “He’s in one piece. He has his soul back. He’s not trying to give you severed hands. All of the good, right?”

“But generally he breathes, every now and again,” Dawn commented, as though she hadn’t heard. “Sometimes he even snores, though he swears up and down that he doesn’t.”

“Yeah,” Buffy sighed. “I know.”

**********

Sitting in an opened lawn chair, Dawn wrote addiction on the notebook page. Under that, watching Spike rock and occasionally bang his head against the wall, listening to him break into occasional sieges of tuneless humming, she wrote:

withdrawal?
tattoo gone
watch gone
X me
X time
collar
rocking = rhythmic motion
wall banging = self-stimulation? self-punishment?

Willow came downstairs with a bowl of magical oddments. Looking at Dawn with head cocked, she asked, “Dawnie, shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“It’s my birthday. I can stay up if I want to,” Dawn responded absently.

Willow looked a little longer, then went and knelt down by the lawn chair pads. She already had the liquid pre-mixed this time. Before beginning the ritual, she said, “Spike? It’s just me, Willow. Spike?” When he didn’t respond, she looked disappointed and worried, then commenced anointing Spike with the feather at pulse points and heart.

However, there wasn’t exactly no reaction. Spike leaned back against the wall, both hands clasped tightly together. His gaze still wandered around the basement without fixing on anything. No more motion or head-banging. During the time it took Willow to complete the ritual, no humming.

He knew Willow, or somebody other than Dawn, was there. He didn’t want to interact with her.

Giles had come down earlier, before going to find somewhere to stay, and stood quite a while studying Spike, much as Dawn was doing. Spike hadn’t moved or breathed the whole time Giles was there. There’d been the hand-clasping, too. After awhile, Giles had gone away without saying anything.

When Buffy had come down and insisted on touching him, he’d locked up completely--the Willow/Giles reaction only more so. Rigid. Shaking. Breathing in tense little hitches. If he could have flinched through the wall, Dawn thought, he would have. Like Willow, Buffy had tried to talk to him. It had taken a good half hour before Buffy seemed to catch on that she was upsetting him and announced to the air that she was going to bed.

It was only afterward that the rocking, head-banging, and humming had started.

Once, he’d turned and patted at the wall, reaching: searching for something, maybe. Whatever it was, he hadn’t found it and had let his hands drop again.

Writing functional autism? in her notebook, Dawn asked, “How’s his aura?”

Willow was quiet perhaps a minute, presumably observing. “The same. Minimal. About vamp normal.”

“And magic?”

“Nothing at all. No reason why he’s like this. Not magical, anyway.”

Dawn made a neutral noise. As Willow passed, Dawn asked, “Could I borrow your laptop awhile?”

Willow rubbed a wrist across her eyes. “Sure, if you promise not to delete anything. Yes, I know you know better, but just saying. Council archives?”

“Just something I want to look up. Would you bring it to me?”

“I guess. All right.”

While Willow was gone, Dawn added to her list:

clasped hands = manacles?
fear
humming--?
music is rhythmic
no focus
oil--punishment? Not strong enough: Mike indifferent. Vamps have a higher tolerance for pain and sometimes enjoy it (e.g., Dru, per Spike. Also Spike, per Spike, convo that time he was drunk that summer.)
oil--counter-irritant?

The humming had just started again when Willow returned, delivering her laptop. The humming stopped immediately. Clasped hands again and retreat--back against the wall.

Setting up one of the outdoor tray-tables to open the laptop on, Willow commented, “It has about six hours on the battery pack, so remember to turn it off when you’re done. If it’s completely drained, I can’t recharge it. In other words, don’t go to sleep with it still on. If you’re gonna save things, make your own directory, OK?”

“I save things in the notebook. I won’t forget to turn it off.”

“What are you doing?” Willow bent to kibitz.

“Observing. Residual effect of the Lady, maybe.”

“Is…. Do you still hear her?”

Dawn shook her head. “Not a peep since we left the mansion. Other fish to fry, probably. I don’t think she’s ever confined herself to the microcosm before. Certainly never for that long at a stretch. I think she was getting claustrophobic. She doesn’t have to be here to watch--that’s what she has me for.”

“And you don’t know when she’s watching?”

“Good night, Willow.”

“Do you want a blanket or something? It’s pretty chilly down here.”

“There’s a dryer full of towels. I’ll be fine.”

“Well, good night, then.”

“Yeah.”

Dawn wrote mute: X words.

After Willow had gone back upstairs, and Spike had relaxed into alone mode, Dawn thought awhile, watching him rock.

When he’d been retrieved from the First, intermittently hallucinating, Spike had been uneasy about her coming down unless the shackles were in place. He’d been visibly relieved, reassured, to get them locked and secure. Because he knew that no matter what weirdness popped up, he couldn’t mistake her for Angel or a Succoth demon (or whatever) and take a swipe at her.

Although the chains and manacles were long gone and gladly discarded, it might be possible to improvise.

Laying the notebook on the chair, she went to her room and poked through the contents of her jewelry box, concentrating on the metal pieces. She only had one click-shut bangle bracelet and one other solid one, of brass. She chose out a couple of her sturdier necklaces, removed their pendants, and hitched them together into one loop about two feet across. Should hold, she thought, against a moderate pull, though of course they’d be no real restraint.

The important thing wasn’t actual restraint, she thought, but the perception. The meaning.

On the way down, she took a freezer marker out of the kitchen pencil pot, then returned to her chair in the basement.

She waited a little while to let Spike settle if he needed to, although she’d heard the humming before she’d descended the stairs. She ventured being a little glad that her presence was about the same to him as being alone.

She spent awhile reading up on autism, confirming her impression that it was a matter of degree, not a yes/no absolute. Everybody had a certain amount of disconnect, refusal (or inability) to process sense data. A good example, she thought, was Buffy and vamp names and recognition. Unless Buffy really beat it into herself and made herself memorize it by sheer stubbornness, she found it almost impossible to retain a vamp’s basic identifying info from one night to the next. Dawn blanked out on algebra but sailed through plane geometry because it was visual and logical, not just numbers. Something about numbers made her brain go into a stupor. She could add a column of figures six times and come up with six different totals. Yay, calculators!

When she’d finished the third article, she unfastened the looped chain and threaded it through the fixed bangle, then refastened it. She went over to Spike and picked up his lax right hand. Though his hand was broader than hers, she folded it as narrow as it would go and worked the bangle up, millimeter by millimeter, wryly thinking, Where’s oil when you need it? Then she thought of something funny about the oil and giggled, trying to decide who she’d share it with.

Fortunately, vamps were more flexible than other sorts of people. Eventually she edged the bangle past the protrusion of Spike’s folded thumb and onto his wrist, where it fit snugly. Probably have to cut it off. No matter.

Through all this process, Spike had rocked and ignored her, letting her do anything she pleased with his hand. She probably could stick her pinkie in his eye with no result beyond maybe a heavy-lidded blink. Not that she wanted to, of course: she was only testing parameters.

Catching up the chain, she waved it in front of him. She let it fall a few times, to let him hear the chime of the links, feel the weight and the coolness of the metal. Finally, making as much of a show and a noise about it as she could, she put it through the open bangle and clicked the bangle shut around his left wrist.

“All fastened up safe now,” she commented, patting his cheek casually.

Then she returned to her chair and read some more. After another article, she checked and was momentarily disappointed to see only the same “alone” behavior. Then she smacked her forehead and called herself a dodo: there’d be no true test until somebody else came downstairs.

“How is he?” The shadow by a three-panel screen set next to the dryer was Mike. He glanced at her. “Sorry, thought you knew I was there. Was watching you…do whatever you were doing. Didn’t set out to surprise you.”

Dawn gulped and let go her death grip on the laptop. “You could make a noise, you know.”

“Did.” He wandered past, studying Spike.

“What were you gonna do if he was up in Buffy’s room: peek in? Sneak in?”

“Light’s been off, up there, quite some time. Could tell you were down here.”

“Me? Or just somebody?”

“You. Smelled you. Spike, too, when I got closer.”

“From outside?” Dawn demanded incredulously.

Mike glanced around at her briefly. “Down along that tunnel over there. Harris better set those doors. No vamp can get in without an invite. But there’s plenty of bad things that ain’t vamps could come, invitation not required.” Turned back to Spike, sitting slowly down onto his heels, Mike added, “Thought I’d stand sentry till daybreak. Should be all right then.”

“Thanks. I guess.” She thought, Tunnel?

Then she noticed: the humming had stopped. But that wasn’t definitive: that was on and off anyway. The rocking, though--Spike was still doing that. Not all rigid and still, as he’d been when Willow and Giles were here. She hoped for a moment, but Mike didn’t hold his attention: Spike’s vague, half-lidded gaze passed him by indifferently.

But the hands weren’t clasped. Wrists still set on knees, hands hanging.

“Still not definitive,” Dawn muttered, vexed. It might be that Spike wasn’t as anxious about hurting Mike as the occupants of Casa Summers. He might figure, down deep where he was, that Mike was capable of defending himself and the protection of even symbolic shackles wasn’t required.

“What?” Mike said, when Dawn left the chair and started for the stairs.

“I need a better test. I’ll be right back. Watch his hands.”

Willow was always easy to rouse, startled by the least noise. Not that she really woke up, but her eyes were open though the brain wasn’t in gear. She was apt to be up and down at all hours. Without explaining, Dawn was able to persuade her, in robe and fuzzy slippers, to come back to the basement. And when Dawn looked at Spike, while Willow blurrily tried to find a non-existent website Dawn claimed she needed, there was confirmation: Spike was backed off against the wall again. No handclasp. Instead, he was tightly holding opposite wrists: assuring himself the token shackles were in place.

“It says the site doesn’t exist,” Willow reported, bent over the laptop. Yawning, she noticed and asked, “What’s Mike doing down here?”

“Helping me watch. It’s all right, maybe I got the reference link wrong. Sorry.”

Dawn shepherded Willow back up the stairs and watched her fill a glass of water, then raced down again, triumphant, ready to launch a test of her next theory.

“Mike, I need you to leave. All the way to the end of the tunnel, wherever that is--where Spike can’t notice you.”

“He’s not noticing me now,” Mike pointed out.

“He is. You just don’t know what to watch for.”

“I watched his hands. Like you said. Minute you and Willow hit the hall, he clenched up, and--” Mike demonstrated the wrist grab. “Only he’s not doing that no more. Still smells hurt, but I don’t smell any magic about him. So why’s he like this?”

“It’s a theory. I’m testing it. I don’t want to say, in case it turns out to be dumb.”

Mike straightened. “With me?” he responded, merely surprised.

“For myself. Please, Mike--” Dawn asked, looking up at him.

“All right. If you say. I’ll go to where I can’t hear your heartbeat. Should be far enough. But I’ll still stand sentry. Nothing’s gonna bother you here. Except for me, and I’ll quit doing that.”

Dawn didn’t see or hear him go, uncapping the marker. Sitting down beside Spike on the pads, Dawn waited until he relaxed, then reached across him to claim his left forearm. All in capitals, she wrote on it D A W N. From his wrist to the bend of his elbow.

He smelled the marker odor, she thought: his head moved slightly. After a while of not moving at all, he appeared just slightly puzzled. After a longer while, his right hand lifted and rubbed slowly at the letters.

Maybe ten minutes later, hoarse and uncertain, he said, “Bit?”

Dawn hugged him hard.

**********

Dawn formulated, “Vampires have a desperate hunger for meaning. For things to make sense to them. More than blood, or fighting, or anything. They need things to matter. Because otherwise, what are they? Parasites. Empty motion across a landscape of empty time. They invest themselves in elaborate hierarchies, to matter to each other, because nobody else cares. They’re the mutts of the demon world. Finally, even if they’re successful at that, top of the tree, it’s not enough. Because they’re not impressing anybody except a bunch of mutts. So either to make an impact on the world or in despair of ever doing so, they set out to destroy it. Sour grapes, writ large.”

“You know what that is?” Spike commented, still rocking and staring blankly around. But out of that could come words now, to her. A connection had been made and was open--like a phone line. “That’s a total crock of shit, that is. That what the Lady thinks?”

“Shut up: I’m practicing.”

“Oh, fine, practicing. Gonna out-git Rupert, are you?”

“Shut up. What do you know about it, anyway?” It was a leading question: Dawn smiled to herself.

“Oh, nothing much. Hundred twenty-some years of nothing much. Hardly any vamp has big plans. Live in the now. In the moment. Sometimes bad, sometimes….”

He’d drifted away again. Eyes open, but blank. He couldn’t stay with her very long at a time. It was two in the morning.

Dawn poked him with an elbow. “The three F’s: feeding, fighting, and fucking.”

“Yeah,” he said, vaguely. “Yeah. S’not enough, though. Don’t make anything. Accomplish anything. Water all smooths out again." He seemed quite unaware that he was confirming her crocky theory. Jumping the tracks, he continued, "S'not like fucking, not really. No fun to it. Sort of takes up all your attention, though. Just happens and happens and happens.”

“Yeah?” Dawn encouraged, though she knew she wasn’t following all the connections. Neither was he.

“Yeah. Oil, that was nice. Balanced it out. Was real. Could feel it, all the time. Not like fucking in your head. Nothing to touch. Sure, hurt a little, but what doesn’t? Smell it, touch it, even taste it if you were desperate. Have to be, wouldn’t you? Like licking battery acid. But you sure knew was definitely something there. Not all in your head, like that other. Since you weren’t there to sort it for me. He’d took that.”

“The verse,” Dawn guessed, and Spike bobbed his head, his empty eyes bereft. He rubbed his arm, where the printed name was: where the spiraling tattoo had been.

“Took it all. Nothing left but me, and what he was doin’ to me. S’not enough. Or too much, maybe. Dunno.” A few minutes’ silence, rocking, trying to find a loose end of thought to hold onto. “Can have it put back, if you want. Didn’t mean to lose it. Was a promise, wasn’t it.”

“Yeah,” Dawn said quietly. Confirming that connection, that meaning.

“Didn’t mean to lose it. Just forgot, some way. That other, it’s real distracting. Demon liked it, too. Liked it real well. Better than the real, because, well, no waiting. Nothing to do, to get there. Earn it, like. Nothing to give and nobody to give it to. Just come in and come in and come in….”

Dawn hugged him until he could settle.

“Without the oil, though, there was nothing at all. Couldn’t take that. Sure, quit hurting, but…. Nothing at all. Tried music in my head, but I can’t do that. No good at it. Has to be outside to be any good.”

When Dawn hopped up, he started breathing anxiously. She patted him, reassuring, “I’ll only be gone a minute. I have an idea.”

“No.”

“I’ll be right back.”

“No.”

She lost him then to the rocking, the rhythms that kept him aware of his own body. Stimulating the kinesthetic sense. The way the oil had kept him aware, inside his skin.

The oil had looked pretty, too. On him. She suspected Ethan Rayne was into pretty. To buy exactly the right collar and then put it on and make Spike not mind wearing it.

Beautiful pain. The price of the awareness of being alive, not lost in a fog of meaningless but powerful stimulation.

Since he’d already lost contact, five minutes would be the same to him as an hour or a minute. A sense of the time was another thing Rayne had stolen from him, along with his watch. So Dawn didn’t hurry, going upstairs to her room and pawing in her school backpack for the CD player Buffy had finally broken down and bought her in replacement for the one Buffy had crunched some months back.

The player itself was no good: Spike wouldn’t like her music.

Detaching the headphones, she dug in a bottom drawer until she located the Tiny Tuner: a radio receiver smaller than a deck of cards. Plugging in the headphones, she searched up and down the minute dial until she found a 70’s heavy metal station. It wouldn’t be appreciated if she blasted everybody out of their beds.

Almost immediately, the sound began to fade. The batteries were too old. She shouldn’t have left them in, they’d corrode the connections. That was an ironic thought. Tripping back down to the kitchen, she replaced the exhausted batteries with fresh ones from the oddment drawer, then returned to the basement.

We were having a session of head-banging now. Well, Dawn had a pretty good replacement for that. She put on the headphones first, cranking up the volume as high as she could stand without wincing. Of course he could hear it, even without the headphones: the banging stopped, his head turned, and he looked at her.

“Bit?” he said, in the same uncertain way he had before, looking for confirmation.

“Yeah, me. I’ve only been away a few minutes. I have a couple of more things I have to do, but I brought you something to keep you company.”

“No.”

“Most of the time, I’ll be here. You can see me, see that I’m here. Or if you want, Mike could come--he’s doing sentry on the tunnel….”

She’d lost him. Too many free-floating nouns he hadn’t yet reconnected with. He looked puzzled and wary, which was one of the ways he showed scared. Nouns had never been his strong suit anyway: he was much more attuned to verbs. He was a verb, much of the time.

Leaving out extraneous nouns, she said, “There’s blood in the fridge, I think, unless it’s already been thrown out. Do you--?”

“God, no!”

That was a bad one. He didn’t unlock for over ten minutes, and she didn’t want to surprise him with the headphones--add to the undifferentiated storm of sensory input already bombarding him.

Induced autism was as good a name as any. An analogy, a guess, not a clinical diagnosis; it wasn't as if Spike could look for professional treatment, and Dawn’s choices of ways to reach him, based on observation and conjecture, so far seemed to be more helpful than disastrous. Whatever it was called, it involved overwhelming Spike with charged sensory input he couldn’t avoid or retreat from, then taking it all away. Absolute overload followed by absolute deprivation. Fracturing and impairing his synergies with his demon. Then throw a soul into the mix--couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t truly imagine it, but the result was pretty devastating.

“Bit? Did I do something? Hurt you?”

This, this was just plain scared, no interpretation needed. She set the headphones down to seize his hands. “No, nothing like that. Spike? You only went back inside your head and slammed the door for a little while. It’s OK: you do that when you need to. You have a door, so you’re entitled to shut it. Whenever the inside or the outside is too much.”

“Thought I’d hurt you. Never mean to, but I don’t properly know what I’m doing, some of the time,” he confided. “Losing the time. In big chunks, sometimes. Lost the whole agenda. Never get caught up now.”

He was breathing again. Beginning to be overwhelmed as more pieces of the puzzle made themselves known to him, looming out of the fog.

“It’s OK. Mike’s taken care of--”

Spike started looking around him wildly. “Where’s the cell? Have to call Michael, he’s gonna--”

Dawn got up and took two steps toward the screen. “Mike? Spike needs-- Oh.”

Prompt as a genie when its name was spoken, Mike appeared from behind the screen and hunkered down in front of Spike: silent, waiting. They looked at each other for awhile, Spike rocking slightly, getting accustomed to the fact that Mike was there. Spike’s breathing slowed, growing less anxious.

“Michael. Said something bad, something that shouldn’t happen. Maybe it’s happened already. Dunno--”

“Noun, Spike,” Dawn prompted gently.

“Yeah. Yeah. Those fledges. That were digging. Told you to see they got dusted. Sue and all. Did…did that get done?”

“No,” Mike responded warily. “We got use for them. So I didn’t, till I’d argued it out and you’d said it twice. Didn’t do it like you said.”

Spike hauled off and hit him. Knocked him off his feet, flat on his back. Mike lifted his head and they looked at each other some more. Then Spike tipped his head crooked and shut his eyes, and too fast to see, Mike was suddenly bent over him and biting down. Dawn got out of the way not quite as fast, but as fast as she could, retreating to the lawn chair and finally remembering to turn the laptop off. Willow would kill her otherwise.

Watching Mike feed from Spike was scary and important in ways she had no words for. It was noisy and messy, some blood escaping and running down Spike’s naked chest. Dawn didn’t know if Mike was gonna stop and except for screaming, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it: she didn’t have her taser. And screaming probably wouldn’t do any good in time and would upset everyone. So she just held onto the chair arms as hard as she could.

Finally, in a shaky voice, she got out, “Leave some for later?”

That registered in Mike’s back. Then his head moved. He leaned away onto his heels again, licking his bloody mouth, in magnificent leonine game-face, wonderful and deeply scary. He said to Spike, “That’s all right, then.”

Spike, leaned back on his elbows and looking very dim, didn’t respond. Dawn guessed if anything was apt to be too much, what she’d just witnessed fit the description. Maybe the headphones would be good now. They was were still blaring away, tiny and tinny: even Dawn could hear it. So it wouldn’t be a surprise. Kneeling on the lounge chair pads, she slipped the headset into place, adjusted the fit, and kept a hand on Spike’s shoulder and watched hard to check his reaction.

Nothing for a minute or so. Then, eyes still shut, he smiled. A happy, almost drunk-loose smile. He tipped over on his side and maybe was asleep, it didn’t matter. He was connected to the music. Plugged in. Dawn rearranged the blanket and reached for the pillow, but it was too far. Mike handed it to her.

“Mike, what time is it?”

“Going for four. Something like that. You need exactly?”

“No, that’s good enough.” Dawn got the pillow set so the earpiece of the headphone wasn’t pressing on it. That always hurt, when you did that. Pulling her knees up, she snuggled against Spike’s chest, and he knew she was there, shifting to let her find a more comfortable way to lie. “It’s been a real long day, and I’m not on a vamp schedule. I think Buffy’s gonna have to write me a note. Even if she lost her job, she should still be able to write me a note, right? Just gonna nap here a little while….”

She felt Mike drawing a corner of the blanket over her. She knew nothing would get in, not while Mike was watching. She could practice her explanation more later. It was OK to sleep.

**********

Spike looked, Buffy thought, like the visiting head of state of a country with which they might soon be at war.

He wandered into the front room after-breakfast Scooby conference accompanied by his interpreter (Dawn). Plonking himself down in the big chair by the weapons chest (Dawn perched solicitously on the arm, leaning against his shoulder), he proceeded to ignore everybody.

He had headphones emitting tiny loud music, like a hornet yelling, hung around his neck--to Buffy, an unpleasant reminder of the collar, that she’d flung in the trash this morning with vicious satisfaction. Sitting with bare feet stuck out and crossed at the ankles (another pair of boots gone missing), mostly still, he was nevertheless pacing, or at least the feel of it was the same: working a circle of loose chain over and over between his hands. Like doing a violent rosary or something. Thin bracelets on each wrist--one brass, one silver. New fashion statement there. Or maybe he missed his watch.

Dawn leaned in and whispered to him from time to time. Spike said nothing and rarely glanced up when anything was said to him. When Buffy asked him if he wanted coffee, a tight headshake was all the answer she got. He didn’t look at her. With his head bent, she couldn’t see his eyes.

He’s not happy, Buffy thought. He doesn’t want to be here. He’s mad about the soul. Or he’s mad about being rescued. If he keeps this up, I’m gonna belt him. Why won’t he look at me?

Despite the addition of Giles, it was a diminished group since Xander and Anya were separately absent. Xander had to work, and on the phone, Anya had declared herself much too busy to attend. Just Buffy, Willow, Giles, and the delegation from Mars.

Willow had given a tense report on the fight from her perspective, mainly making the point that if Rayne became able to access and focus the stone’s random energy flow, she doubted she’d be able to do anything effective against it.

“A Chaos Mage,” mused Giles, collecting the last muffin half, “attempting to turn what is currently an instrument of chaos into one of order, capable of being directed and of processing energy in a coherent manner. Ironic. The trouble with that, for Ethan, will be that he likes it best the way it is. Even against his best interests, he’ll be reluctant and possibly slow to attempt to manipulate it himself.” Giles put down the muffin to sip tea. “Much more likely, he’ll try to acquire another cat’s paw to work it for him. A circle of mages might possibly be able to do so. Or he may attempt to reassert influence over the one he had.” Giles looked at Spike a moment, then shifted his attention to Dawn and asked, “What may we expect from the Lady at this juncture?”

“I think,” Dawn responded slowly, “she’s done as much as she’s going to. She’s left it up to us.”

“You’re not expecting her back, then.”

Dawn did a quick headshake. “I don’t think so. No. She hated it here.”

“We noticed,” Buffy put in sourly.

“We can’t expect any further intervention, then, from that quarter?” Giles asked.

“Nope. Not likely. That’s what she has minions for. And please ignore me doing the Dance of Jubilation and Freedom over here.”

Giles said, “So it becomes fairly urgent that we know how susceptible Spike remains to Ethan’s influence,” and waited.

Everybody looked at Spike, and he knew it: shoulders pulling tight, working faster with the chain.

“I’m all right,” he said finally without looking up.

“He’s not,” Dawn contradicted. “He’s better, but he’s still having an awful time making any sense of things. Connecting. Sorry, Spike, but they have a right to know.”

“S’all right, Bit. You do whatever you have to,” Spike muttered.

“Are you still aware of him?” Giles inquired gently, if bluntly.

Spike hitched a shoulder. “Suppose so. Some. Demon’s…pretty shagged out, though. Not taking much notice. An’ it gets lost in the…whirl. Of the everything.” One hand lifted listlessly to mime spinning, then went back to the chain, moving it quickly along the sprockets of his knuckles.

“‘Shagged out,’” Giles repeated, tight-faced and narrow-eyed, inspecting the dregs of his tea for omens. “Just how literally do you mean that?”

Spike didn’t say anything for long enough it was plain he wasn’t going to.

Buffy looked from Giles, to Spike, to Giles again, and gulped faintly, “Oh.”

“S’not like that, pet,” Spike said suddenly without lifting his eyes. The chain was quiet in his hands, gripped tightly. “Don’t mean nothing. Means a whole lot of nothing. Demon don’t care, just like it don’t care what it feeds on. Demon’s not particular. Real distracting, is all. Can’t focus on much else. At all, really. I--”

The chain popped. Part slithered to the floor.

Dawn and Giles broke in together to stop the dreadful explanation, then went into the verbal equivalent of a doorway dance, each trying to move aside and invite the other past and only continuing to get in each other’s way.

“No,” said Giles, “do continue, Dawn. Please.”

“I made some notes,” Dawn said distractedly, stroking Spike’s neck as he hunched tighter in the chair, his empty hands seizing one another so hard you could practically hear the bones crunch. “Vampires need meaning. Starved for it. They--”

Announcing, “Can’t do this,” Spike erupted out of the chair and stalked toward the hall. “Need a fag. What kind of house is it, bloke can’t find a fag anyplace?”

“Cigarette,” Giles translated faintly, as Dawn scampered after Spike. “I should have thought. I’ll get some.”

“No, I will,” Buffy decided, and grabbed the keys out from the weapons chest saucer.

It took longer to park than it did to drive to the corner pharmacy, a few blocks away, and buy a couple of packs of cigarettes. He’d need a new lighter, too, she realized, and chose the silver Zippo most similar to Spike’s Old Faithful.

He’d lost everything, she thought, returning to the SUV. Pride, dignity, self-control, and god, the credit card, on which she’d just charged the purchases.

She drove home fast and reported her realization to Willow. Collecting the laptop from the basement, Willow didn’t take long in confirming the worst: the account had been cleaned out, and even a little more. There were overdraft charges.

“I’ll take care of reporting it,” Willow commented grimly, as Buffy sat stunned and chilled. Carrying the laptop over to the weapons chest, Willow got on the phone there.

“Not to worry,” Giles commented. “Given the circumstances, I arranged for theft protection when the account was set up. The funds should be recoverable. Though it may take some time, getting it all sorted. A lawyer’s services may be required. Has a lawyer been retained?”

“I have no idea,” Buffy said, not really taking Giles’ reassurance in. All she fixed on was gone and lawyer. “I should give Spike his fags.”

She headed for the basement but passing the kitchen, she heard the miniscule din of the headphones. Spike was holding onto the edge of the kitchen island like grim death, his back to her, inches short of where a big crooked rectangle of sunlight slanted in through the window. “Here,” Buffy said, slapping down the two packs of cigarettes and then the lighter.

“Ta,” he whispered, not moving.

“You can smoke in the basement, if you want.”

“Yeah.”

“The credit card’s been maxed out,” Buffy informed him. “Willow and Giles are trying to get it fixed. And I’ve lost my job. Because of the dance. Or whatever it was.”

For no one reason, she was terribly angry at him. It seemed to her that everything was falling apart for lack of him at the center. She didn’t know where he was, except noplace he’d let her reach him.

He started rocking forward and back, hanging onto the edge of the island. In and out of the slant of sunlight. His hair was starting to smoke. She grabbed him convulsively and yanked him back. He pushed and fought to get away, but not in any coordinated way. More the way he’d balked, last night, at being taken into her bedroom.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded, holding on tight, backing into the hall. “Do you miss your boyfriend, is that it? Miss the goddam oil? I’m not totally stupid, you know! What’s--”

He sagged: suddenly dead weight in her arms. Slowly, she bent and let him slide onto the carpet runner. He puddled into crash position: curled up tight, fingers laced over the back of his neck, head clutched between protective arms.

“Way to go, Buffy,” Dawn commented cuttingly, leaning over the banister and then coming the rest of the way down. “A whole night’s progress, pfft!” Pushing between, Dawn bent over Spike, stroking his back, patting his shoulders, softly speaking his name. The headphones continued a miniature orgy of attenuated sound.

Numb and frightened, Buffy backed away as Willow and Giles came out of the front room and stood beside her, observing Dawn’s attempts to get Spike to uncurl.

“Not a good sign,” Willow commented, biting at the edge of a thumb.

“What’s the matter with him?” Buffy demanded in a small voice. “Why is he like this?”

“It’s my fault,” Giles said, removing his glasses for ritual polishing. “I was wrong to force that particular issue. I suppose….” His lips set in a grim line, he resumed the glasses and put the handkerchief away. “My objectivity in that area seems to be nil. It’s not as though he courted it. I believe I owe him an abject apology. It’s Ethan I should be dealing with. I shall make arrangements to do so. Perhaps I can persuade him to abandon this game before matters become even worse. Now that he’s lost his current pet.” His tone was savage. Adding, “I have some materials in the hire car,” Giles turned and left.

“Will, can you get into his head?” Buffy asked.

“He hates when I do that,” Willow responded uneasily.

“Anything has to be better than this. If he doesn’t like it, I’m the one who said so. He can take it up with me, if he wants.” She was thinking of vamp protocols: Spike vamp-Mirandizing her and Mike in the dark graveyard, spelling out their respective rights, then grimly slapping the taser into her hand. “He can talk to Dawn. He can talk to Giles. He’d probably talk to you if he had anything to say. I’m the only one that’s poison, that throws him into a fit. I have to know why. It’s pretty plain he’s not gonna tell me. Even if he could. When he’s conscious. You still can, right?”

“Once a connection like that has been opened, it can never be completely shut,” Willow confirmed, gnawing the thumb some more. “I don’t listen in, though. Not unless he specifically tells me to. And…I think he’s still got Rayne in there. Two might be a bit much.”

“Can Rayne hurt you? On the bounce like that?”

“I don’t think so. If the link were strong enough for that, Spike wouldn’t still be here: Rayne would have reeled him in again. He’s holding against that. The soul, maybe…. Dawn?” Willow appealed for a second opinion.

“Go ahead. I thought I had him stabilized. He said he was OK to come to the meeting. Now we’re back to square one. Maybe square zero or even minus,” Dawn responded in a dispirited voice.

“OK,” Willow said with no enthusiasm, and closed her eyes. Her fingers made a stiff gesture at her side. She recoiled with a wincing expression, like a twitch, a few times. Buffy and Dawn both kept still, watching her. After awhile, the corners of Willow’s mouth drooped and her shut eyes squinched tight, as though she was about to break into tears. Instead, she blinked and looked at Buffy. “It’s no fun in there,” she reported. “Something like strolling into the leading edge of a hurricane. Like they show on TV, I mean. I’ve never been in one. Not a lot of left coast hurricanes. But with all the sideways rain, and the wind, and the lightning, signs and traffic lights flapping, and like that.” Willow waved her arms around, demonstrating. “But there’s something I think you should see. It’s quiet there, otherwise. Maybe I can cut through just the edge to it, like the center. The ‘eye,’ they call it, though that’s only a metaphor here, it’s more deep than it is middle. Pay no attention to the babbling witch behind the curtain. Except to take my hand, that is. It won’t make a lot of sense, at first, but wait and it will. You’ll make the sense, because that’s what people do. They have to.”

Willow offered her hand. With about a ton of reservations but resolutely, Buffy took it.

And Willow had been right: it was like getting whirled around, blown from every direction, slapped hard by a drenching rain. Crashes of thunder and lightning bolts scarily close. Or maybe that was only the influence of the image Willow had given her for what she was experiencing. What interpretation she was therefore predisposed to apply to the primal confusion, to make any sense of it at all. But she was also conscious of direction, Willow pulling her steadily along, a light and a force dauntingly vast. I won’t peek, Willow’s intention said clearly in Buffy’s mind, I’ll just connect, because it’s personal. Private.

The rushing confusion was gone, just like that. At first, nothing replaced it. Only a void. Only emptiness. But there was a voice steadily muttering. Spike’s voice. She couldn’t make out anything more than that and tried to hear better, go closer. The quiet resolved into a room. Small, like an attic. She had to bend down, otherwise she’d bang into something. She had to crouch and get as small as she possibly could to get closer.

She couldn’t make him out plainly but she could see the position: all curled up tight, arms around his head, forehead against knees, bare feet lying pale and vulnerable looking. Without pause, over and over in manic repetition, he was muttering, “Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t hurt the girl. Don’t--”

She grabbed him. Curled around him as tight as he was curled around himself. Was somehow all around him everywhere like a liquid and a barrier, so nothing could get at him, hurt him. Loving him entirely. You didn’t. You won’t. I’m not afraid. Nothing scares me except the distance. You pulling away from me, shutting me out. Nothing between. No distance. I’m here.

She had no thought or awareness of anything else, anywhere else she could be. Any other way to be. Yet she found herself in the hall, on the floor, clutching Spike just as hard as she could. Trying to gather him in, be everywhere around him, which was impossible as well as undignified and slightly embarrassing with people looking on. She held on just the same because it was impossible to imagine letting go.

Within her anaconda embrace, Spike stirred, asking uncertainly, hesitantly, “Buffy?”

Chapter 14: Chaos

What Spike saw was a moving cubist collage. Blocks of bright, patches of color he supposed were the lawn, trees, and houses opposite, oblongs of varied darks that were shadows, smeared contrails that maybe were passing cars. He could guess, make tentative assignments, but it wouldn’t resolve. Add to that the sense of whirling, and it was pretty much like viewing the world from a spinning roundabout.

Only Buffy was he certain of.

Her scent, her voice, the motions of her hands and the warmth of her body were a tether, an anchor, an escape from confusion. He tried to focus just on that but all the rest was too strong. His head was still full of fog.

He guessed they were on the front porch, sitting together on the glider (which he knew because it moved slightly whenever he needed to rock to keep from being swept away) because…well, in back, in the kitchen, the mid-morning sun had been coming in. So that would rule out the back porch, right there. And he still fought off the associations of the upstairs room that was hers, where he’d hurt her, or the demon had, or something like that, he couldn’t get it straight except to know he must stay away until he knew better what he was doing. Had done. Might do. Something like that.

Her voice said, “I don’t want to push--I want to understand.”

“Then that makes two of us.” Freeing his hand from the clasp of hers but leaning against her, keeping the contact down the length of his arm, hip and leg against leg, he opened the cigarette pack and lit up--nearly all of it by touch. Trusting muscle memory to get him through. Considering the cigarette, he remarked, “Dunno why I keep doing this. Could stop anytime, but I don’t. Need something to do with my hands, some way, seems like. Should take up knitting. Smoke, that’s not good for you or Bit. Should quit.”

Undistracted, Buffy asked bluntly, “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing that hasn’t happened, or I haven’t done, before. Had a bit more choice about it other times, is all. Except…. Nothing I think…you’d understand.” He bent his head, to not meet her eyes.

“I’m a big girl, Spike. I know it wasn’t your choice. But I want you to tell me.”

Her demand compelled him. Trying to make sense of it for her might help him make sense of it for himself. He shut his eyes, trying to get his thoughts in order. “Well, he fancied me, didn’t he? An’ he could get at my demon direct. Demon, it don’t say no to that sort of thing. Real or not. Demon, it’s not particular--no more than about what it feeds on. Never thought you’d hear me say I’d got more of that than I wanted, did you?” He was embarrassed--not because of what he’d done in that regard but what he thought she’d make of it.

He continued, “Fact is, problem is, it meant nothing. Generally doesn’t, to vamps. No more than scratching an itch, forget it the next second, unless you’re playing power games, that sort of thing. Not like it is to humans. Not like…us. But so much of it. So strong. Like bein’ forced to drink from a fire hose. Can’t disconnect from it and can’t really want to. And you’d do pretty much anything to keep it coming, stay connected there, even though it’s at the price of everything else. Everything you actually want; everything that matters.

“All the sense…all the sense runs out of things. Everything. Bleeds away. Soul, it wants it all settled and tidy. What’s right. What’s wrong. And it won’t go like that.” He waved at the yard and the sidewalk. “See the sunlight, there, and know quite plain it’s death to me, and I still halfway forget that, or don’t care, or something. I look at it and it’s just bright and empty. Doesn’t mean to me what it should. Expect it will sort itself out some way. But…can’t right now. Can’t let it get mixed up with that other…that didn’t mean nothing. But was all….”

The glider moved: he’d started to rock again. Buffy hugged him, held him close, until he could settle and be still. She said quietly, “So…you miss it.”

“Yes. No. Demon, it’s all satisfied. It….” A memory surfaced and he locked tight, rigid with it. “Oh god.”

“What? Spike, what is it?” She shook him.

The fog was thicker, rolling in blood-tinged, cutting him off from everything else.

He’d been somewhere. Not here. He’d hunted and fed like a ravenous fledge--to repletion and beyond. If it’d been left up to him, he’d still be doing it. He’d been freed and loosed to it, the whole of his desire. A feast to all his senses. An orgy of bloodlust it had taken the oil, and more immediate sensations, to draw him out of to the point that he could attend to new instructions. He remembered, and the soul sickened so that he felt it as horror, not only as satisfaction. But that, still, too. Because he still wanted it. And mustn’t. Soul was repulsed by what the demon craved. And he couldn’t reconcile them.

So he just said NO. Not aloud, likely--only inside. The soul didn’t force him but the soul gave him a place to stand and the leverage. He could not want this. He could not choose it. It still dragged at him but couldn’t wholly carry him away without his consent; and that, he did not give.

Like Rayne himself, whom Spike hadn’t even begun to consider, apart from his effects. Who to some degree still had access, still could get at him. But could no longer force Spike’s acceptance, lacking the complicity of Spike’s demon yearning toward the mage’s sensual blandishments and dragging Spike along.

Once he’d endured agonies to get to YES and surrender. Now he fought the pull of pleasure unending and meaningless to maintain a NO and refusal.

NO: I will not do that, be that. NO: I will not want what the demon wants and delights in. NO: I will not give up choice.

Non serviam. Non serviam. Non serviam. Non serviam.

**********

Dawn leaned in at the front room arch, where Buffy and Giles were in solemn conference, to report, “He’s having another ‘Oh, god!’ moment--at the computer this time.”

Rising, Buffy asked Giles, “What is that--the fifth? Or the sixth?”

Dawn led the way across the hall.

Recovered from the basement, the laptop sat on the long den table cleared of birthday decorations. Spike was leaning over it, talking in mostly incoherent phrases full of swearing over the phone: “--don’t care, just get it the fuck out of there. Right now. And how do we stop ‘em? What d’you mean, you don’t know?”

Until she’d seen it, Dawn hadn’t realized that Spike, Inc. had a web page. Red on black, natch. And full of recruitment (read: bounty) notices. What was on offer for a “specialist in pain application:” a torturer, Dawn figured. Delivered FOB, the going rate (described as a finder’s fee) was $ 1,000. Not to be paid to the torturer, apparently, but to the one who located and delivered the recruit. Another listing was for a “martial arts trainer, black belt level” but was listed as “filled:” Dawn guessed somebody had been recruited (or kidnapped) to fill that position, and the recruiting bounty paid.

Before she could read any more, Spike refreshed the page, which vanished. “Revoke it,” he said to the phone. “I don’t know, put up a notice. Say no more recruiting, no bounty gonna be paid, nothing. I don’t care about the goddam fucking type style, just do it!”

“Hey!” Dawn protested when Spike held the phone away with the clear intention of pitching it against the opposite wall. “That’s my phone!”

“Right. Right.” Spike carefully set the phone down, arm’s reach away. Then he buried his face in his hands.

Buffy leaned against the door casing, arms folded. “So what is it this time, Spike?”

It was plain to Dawn that these successive epiphanies of guilt were wearing down Buffy’s capacity for sympathy.

Spike slid his hands so his eyes showed. Through the day, he’d looked more and more exhausted. Worn out, Dawn thought, by the effort of trying to connect. Which wasn’t being helped by the inventory the soul seemed determined to make of everything Spike had done in its absence and then pointing out to him, in glaring clarity, why that had been the worst possible thing to do, letting him know he was a monster and a stupid monster, at that. She wished the soul would shut the hell up and grant him a little peace. But it seemed perfectly merciless and paid no heed to anybody’s preferences except its own.

“The Dalton was due to be delivered today,” he announced, in helpless misery. “Likely too late to stop it.”

“China?” Giles inquired.

“No, Chicago.”

Buffy put in, “Start at the beginning. What’s a Dalton?”

“The real one, the first one, was the Master’s. Master that was. Expert on ancient languages, mystical texts. I inherited him, but he didn’t last long. Big Blue, the Judge, wiped him out, just like that. For no reason at all. Been missing him,” Spike explained listlessly. “Need help with the translation. Need a new Dalton. And I’d got to talking with this chap at the University of Chicago, good knowledge of Sumerian and related languages. Been sending him pieces I’d had trouble getting straight, context was ambiguous. Cyrus Smith. Another chap at Oxford, but the transport would have been a problem, so I’d settled on this Smith to be my new Dalton. Sent him this made-up thing about a grant, total shit but enough to get him interested….”

Giles said quietly, “You were going to have him turned,” and Spike bobbed his head.

“Simpler that way than having it done at the other end, and there’s no control over who does the turning. Could ruin him.”

Even Dawn was vaguely appalled by the matter-of-fact explanation.

Face pulling into an expression of acute distaste, Buffy said, “People turned on demand? On order? Spike, that’s terrible!”

Spike lifted his head and looked at her with an expression that said he knew exactly how awful it was. “It’s how it’s always been done. How Dalton was done, most like.”

Giles looked as though he wanted to make notes.

Buffy said grimly, “You have to stop it.”

“Dunno if I can. He was supposed to come today. This morning. Had a driver gonna collect him at the airport. Maybe it’s already done. Have to get onto Huey, see where it stands. And Mike.”

“Why Mike?” Dawn inquired, and Spike just looked at her with that horribly weary blank-eyed expression, leaving her to figure out for herself that of course Spike wasn’t gonna turn anybody himself, hated the very idea. But Mike, who’d do nearly anything for him, would have no qualms about doing that. “Oh.”

Spike said to Buffy, “Told you there were parts of this just can’t be done with a soul. It’s gonna all go smash now. Can’t do what’s needed. Can’t even think it out right. Best if I’d never tried.”

“I didn’t say that!” Buffy responded hastily, and went to put her arms around his shoulders. “It was a good idea. It still is!”

Spike shook his head. “Might as well just go on up to the factory and dust ‘em all. Get it over with. Do me too while you’re about it.”

“Now you’re just being all depresso-guy. Because of the soul. It’s good, that you got it back, but I guess it takes some getting used to if you’ve been without it awhile. Don’t try to make these sweeping decisions until you’re more rested. Connected,” Buffy advised anxiously.

Reaching for the phone, Spike said, “Have to get onto Huey,” and dialed with Buffy hovering over him.

Dawn and Giles retreated to the hall, watching, then traded a thoughtful glance.

“This isn’t good,” Dawn commented. “Between Rayne and the Lady, they’ve just about done him in.”

“They’ve certainly incapacitated him from functioning as the de facto Master of Sunnydale. But is that altogether a bad thing?”

“Would you prefer Digger? And the Hellmouth open, blasting the ‘Come one, come all’ dinner bell and making Sunnydale an attractive piece of demon real estate again?” Dawn retorted. “Without Spike, it’s a power vacuum, Giles. And power vacuums have a way of filling themselves. Spike’s the best of the available choices. He’s the cornerstone and the connection. Without him, everything will fall apart. Let’s have some realpolitik here, please.”

She found Giles regarding her quizzically. He inquired, “Dawn?”

She felt herself flushing. “Yes, I’m me. Just because I’m seventeen doesn’t mean I don’t know things!”

“Quite. If I implied otherwise, I apologize. I’m going to contact Ethan now. See if it’s possible to make him see reason. That or threaten him effectively. I’d meant to have Spike in attendance, but….” Giles was again viewing the den.

“Not such a great idea,” Dawn agreed. “Are you inviting me to sit in?”

“I believe some objectivity is called for, yes. Ethan and I…have history.”

“I’d already figured that out. But if you want a referee, an impartial observer, I’m not it: I want that bastard dead. For what he’s done to Spike.”

“I am duly warned. Ethan tends to inspire that view…. I think it would be unwise to involve Willow further at this point. And Buffy doesn’t present an effective threat in this particular instance, since Ethan is human. Regrettably. You, however, are an unknown quantity, especially if Ethan can’t be sure the Lady is no longer in residence. Let’s leave it that way, shall we?”

“I’ll try not to pop my gum or say anything too blatantly teenish.”

“Let’s be about it, then.”

Dawn followed Giles into the front room.

**********

“Why, Ripper!” Ethan Rayne purred. He had no eyelids, Dawn noticed--at least none that showed. Eyes set--black, lively, and sardonic--flush to the face, as though slits had been cut, showing sparking blackness underneath.

About half life-size, the image of the Chaos Mage’s head and shoulders hovered like a hologram within what had to be a genuine crystal ball on the coffee table. Like a low-tech picture-phone. Dawn was seated on the couch next to Giles, violet overalled knees decorously together, intending to be a silent audience unless Giles gave her a cue to be otherwise.

That was gonna be hard, though: anybody as pleased with himself as Rayne made her want to do wretched things to his kneecaps.

“What a delightful surprise,” Rayne continued, all sly mischief. “But I should have known you wouldn’t be able to keep away, sending your little contact niggle. You’d think I’d have forgotten it after all this while, but somehow I haven’t. Now that you’ve seen the makeover, isn’t he sinfully decadent? And surely all bewildered and confused over what he’s been playing at. Rumpled and pliable. Aren’t they delicious when they’re like that? I know I was. Or at least so I was told.”

“He has a soul now, Ethan. You--”

“What a coincidence! So did I!”

“--You won’t be able to recapture him easily.”

“Ah, then it will have to be hard. Hard boy, our vampire. Or is he? Ours, that is. Hard is really a given, with vampires. And if you think the censorious miss will make me curb my tongue out of dire shame for what she may infer, remember how keen you used to be about the proper education of the young? I’ve come around to your way of thinking: catch ‘em when they’re still credulous and trusting, so as to waste the least possible time in corrupting them. If--”

Giles broke in wearily, “Don’t be such a prat,” and Rayne paused and cocked his head, smiling a surprised, more genuine smile.

“I’m used to being the annoying one. Must see if I’m still the reigning champion, don’tcha know.”

“Ethan, you’ve been in his mind: you know his current obsession. It’s certainly not knackered old retired librarians.”

“But why ever not, dear boy? The librarian was merely one mask; this is only another. Halfway mage, halfway magister, a succession of pious timidities. But we know one another’s true faces, don’t we?”

Rayne’s face changed. The tight lines vanished. The cheeks filled; the forehead smoothed. Dawn was looking at the face of a boy her own age: humorous, intelligent, alert. But the eyes…the eyes were the same.

Giles shut his eyes, looking pained. “Merely another mask.”

“Reality is malleable, dear boy. Infinitely so. I’ve told you and told you but you still won’t admit you see it. It’s very vexing of you.”

“Appearance is malleable,” Giles contradicted curtly. “Reality is rather something else. But you’re far beyond being able to tell them apart anymore. I’m attempting to give you warning, so kindly leave off the piffle.”

The mage’s face slid back to its former fortyish appearance. “But I’m so good at it,” Rayne complained, pouting.

“The reality is that in interfering in this matter, you’ve made some serious enemies.”

“What, my newest pet? I doubt it. Vampires are all children of Chaos, as you well know. I am their natural mentor.”

“Not this vampire. I doubt you’ve known many if you don’t realize to what degree he’s turned his nature to consistency and Order. But I wasn’t speaking of him. This isn't your typical mischief that you've undertaken, Ethan: you've engaged not merely individuals, but forces. You’ve antagonized the Slayer: the oldest and most powerful there has ever been. Who has allied and bound herself to this vampire, and he to her--much against my advice, I might add. An injury to one is an injury to both; it will be repaid in full measure. She is the guardian of the Hellmouth. And then, there’s the Lady of Doorways, who’d gladly have your guts for garters. This matter of the Hellmouth is within her purview, and she was at some pains to have it shut. She’s taken a personal interest in seeing that it remains that way. Not a good enemy to have. Add a third female and you face the Triune Goddess, terrible and merciless. If you persist, they will have you dead, Ethan. I’ve never wanted that. Soundly thrashed, yes. Not dead.”

Rayne said nothing for a moment--remarkable in itself--as the two men regarded one another. Then Rayne turned his face aside, his mouth twisted in bitterness. “I’m touched by your concern. Since our ways parted, I’ve known the Slayer was no friend to me. And when have the Powers ever been kindly disposed to Chaos or those who worship infinite change?” Abruptly smirking, cordial and offensively familiar, he went on, “As to the third, are you put out with me, Dawnie, for giving our Spike a little treat, a small holiday from responsibility? He’s been so glum, so mum-faced, of late. I merely showed him a good time: all the three F’s that define vampire nature, in full measure.”

“Yeah, I just bet you did!” Dawn shot back. “You hurt him, and nobody does that and gets away with it! I’ll make you sorry!”

“Temper, temper,” chided Rayne, the smirk fading into a thoughtful expression.

“All three,” Giles mentioned quietly. “The Hellmouth is nothing to you. If you persist, it will be your undoing. Go play your tricks elsewhere. Leave it, for pity’s sake.”

“My goodness: a chance to annoy three remarkable females and you, in the bargain. However could I give that up? Achieve my greatest work to date--opening a dimensional gate not merely to anywhere but to everywhere simultaneously, random energies flooding out to disrupt and transmogrify mundane reality with the faery kiss of the deeply strange. How could I forego that? Besides, I’ve been paid. I have a contract,” declared Rayne, prim and smug. “Surely, Rupert, you’re not suggesting that I default on my responsibilities? My sworn word?”

Giles, mouth pulled tight, said nothing. And the crystal was suddenly empty. Removing his glasses to rub his eyes, he commented, “Well, at least I tried.”

Dawn thought it was more a matter of “Hell hath no fury like an Ethan scorned,” but she tactfully didn’t say so. After all, she was seventeen and supposed to be cool about such things.

**********

Cyrus Smith was dead and expected back shortly. Day or so. Spike set the phone down on the table with immense care since it was Bit’s and he didn’t want to break it. Too much already broken. Everything, it seemed to him. And no fixing it.

He shut his eyes rather than watch the eddy-spin of shapes and colors that wouldn’t resolve into any sense he could take in or understand.

Michael, he’d been so proud of himself, stopping to let the dying man feed. Never done such a thing before. Might know the one thing that couldn’t be undone, that’d be what Mike would do, exact to orders.

“Too late,” Buffy’s voice surmised.

Spike nodded. He made a graphic throat-cutting gesture, then let the hand thump onto the table top as though he'd lost control, it didn't belong to him anymore. “Michael didn’t do nothing except what I said. S’all on me: the responsibility. You go ahead, do what you have to.” He sagged back in the chair, eyes still shut, not even waiting. Couldn’t bring himself to care. Had it coming, didn’t he, for messing things up so bad.

The blow to his chest barely registered. The punch to his nose, though, he noticed since he hadn’t expected it or actually anything past an initial short, sharp shock.

Buffy’s angry voice ordered, “Look at me!”

No point to that. Already knew he’d failed her and she was furious with him for it. Could smell the rage boiling off of her, hear the quick breath and the blood pounding fast.

“Look at me! I’m not gonna be forced to do that. Not again. You don’t get to give up, leave it all on me. I won’t, and you can’t make me! We work through this together, God damn it! Look at me!”

She commenced slapping at him but it was the crying that hurt. He never could bear her crying. Soul told him it was all his fault and that was certainly no news and no help either and he couldn’t even wish himself rid of the fucking thing because he acknowledged he was pretty well blind without it--do things like decide to dispatch the fledges wholesale, have a new Dalton turned, all blithe and confident. Without it came things like the demon’s eager submission to that Rayne and the orgy of feeding wherever it was he’d been. And the unendurable chasm of distance from Buffy.

Demon, it wanted to fight back against the pain, lash out and make it stop, never mind how. Soul told him any idiot would have made a better job of protecting Buffy than he’d done and now it would all fall apart and be worse than if he’d never begun. Territorial warfare on the streets of Sunnydale and the Hellmouth open again, vamps and others drifting in from a hundred miles roundabout, more than Buffy could ever deal with, and all of it his doing, his fault. Trapped between them with noplace to stand.

Seemed he’d lost some time there because he was struggling on the porch just short of the brightness and had an arm cocked to belt Bit, clinging to his knees, and of course that was wrong so he didn’t and everything whirling and then suddenly he was in the kitchen leaning on the counter there and Buffy had cut herself and was telling him to feed from her and he recoiled because that was wrong too, must never do that again, not if she didn’t love him, and some more spinning and he was someplace dark and quiet except there was small music somewhere, so small as to almost be silence, and he was breathing, which was stupid and useless, so he stopped.

“Hey, evil undead,” came a casual voice, “as long as you’re down here, make yourself useful. Yeah, Spike, I’m talking to you. Hold this door while I get the hinges set. Come on, you’re paying for it, so the least you can do is lend a hand.”

Spike couldn’t get his mind around that, why his paying for it should oblige him to do the work, but hold the door, that he could take in. Guessed he must be back down in the basement and not even token chains anymore to remind him to take care, only the bracelets still there. He rubbed at them uneasily, frowning, because he was hungry and he didn’t think he’d lost so much time as that. And of course Harris was only prey to the demon, food on the hoof and nearby, could smell him and sense him perfectly plain though all his eyes rendered was the heat-blur of hunting sight, which let him know that his demon aspect was ascendant and manifest, the demon running things because Spike was all unfocused and useless.

But he could hold a door, once his hands had been guided to it. So he did that, distracting himself with keeping it steady. Demon couldn’t make him lunge aside and take the unwary food like it wanted to.

Mike feeding on him: that was why he was in blood-debt. So that was all right, then: he’d puzzled out the sense of it.

He winced at the noise of the drill, close by his ear, but otherwise stayed still because he could do that. Not do anything right but at least not do anything wrong.

“You can let go now,” Harris’ voice commented quietly, almost a question there but Spike didn’t understand anything but the words and obediently made his hands open. The door stayed in place, so it must be fastened, hinged, something. No more need of holding. As he turned away, Harris added, “Come on, we’ll get the other one now. Finish up. Then Wills can get ‘em both magicked tight, right?”

Spike felt himself taken by the arm (hot human hands) and steered, cool dirt underfoot and the smell of raw earth and the demon leaning closer and ready to bite but Spike pulled away, stumbling aside into the dirt wall and down on his knees there and Harris much too close, bending to him, and noplace deeper to hide that would let him in. So Spike shoved: a small violence to prevent a larger one. Not that he had any affection for Harris but the witch did, Willow, and Buffy too, some, so Spike had therefore always exempted the oaf from what he otherwise would have done to him, consulting only his own inclinations.

“What’s your problem here, Spike?” Harris inquired, not nearly as nervous as he should be, well within striking distance of a game-faced vampire huddled on the ground. Spike knew himself to be totally pathetic if not even Harris was afraid of him anymore. “Thought you were all into making yourself useful these days. Getting Casa Summers safer than safe. Keeping the streets free of obvious mayhem. Helping Buffy out with her class. Nice tame bagged blood and everything. Soul even back, they tell me. Regular Boy Scout, right? So be useful: hold the door so I can set the hinges and then the lock plate.” Again leaning close, Harris gave him a light punch on the shoulder. Spike bared fangs and snarled, braced and ready for a second, then sagging at the recollection that Harris was protected and not to be taken or even flashed out at. Mustn’t do that. Mustn’t make things worse than he already had. Despite himself he was breathing again and grabbing at the bracelets to remind himself. One broke and fell off. Everything broke. Everything twisted tighter and tighter…then went helplessly slack.

“Get off your lazy butt, fangless, and be some help around here,” Harris demanded, nudging him with a boot. “Got to get that door set before something that’s actually evil gets in. Come on. Hold the door.”

You’d almost think Harris was trying to provoke him, and even Harris couldn’t be that stupid, could he?

But Harris was right: the door at the end of the tunnel needed to be set and shut and secure against the dark. Spike remembered that and didn’t need to puzzle out why because his sense of threat was overwhelming. The people he loved were in terrible danger that he’d put them into and was incapable of keeping from them. Wrong, useless, guilty, and rightly unloved. The least he could do was hold the door in place.

Exhaustedly he pushed to his feet and followed the blood-red blur that was Harris down the tunnel.

**********

“God, he’s spooky,” said Xander, shuddering and rubbing his arms as if against cold, standing in the front room’s door arch to deliver his report. “Game-faced the whole time and itching to come at me, trying so hard not to that he’d shove his face into the dirt rather than look my way. That is one totally screwed-up vampire.”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” commented Dawn scathingly, glumly hugging her knees.

Buffy, sitting next to Dawn on the couch, said nothing. They were none of them in any danger from Spike. Hadn’t been for ages and on some level, even Xander knew it, to volunteer to see what kind of response he could prod out of the profoundly withdrawn vampire.

“Couldn’t get him to talk,” Xander continued, “but he’s listening OK. Give him an order in words of one syllable and he can take it in, do it. About like Bruno, in my crew. I thought maybe giving him something tangible to latch onto might help. But….” Xander’s shrug said the rest.

Dawn judged, “It’s the goddam soul, that’s what it is. It’s punishing him for putting it away, just when he was trying so hard to keep everything balanced. It’s not fair!”

“I actually feel sorry for the creep,” Xander confessed with a wry expression. “And you did not just hear me say that. But I never figured he’d get as far as he has, under harness, so to speak. Not our well-known poster boy for attention deficit hijinks. I expected maybe a week of good intentions, token efforts, and then he’d get drunk or into some brawl and blow it all off, not just keep plugging at it.”

Willow, who’d come in on the tail end of that, commented soberly, “Vampires obsess. He took that as his obsession and threw absolutely everything he had into it. Including us. Since Rayne broke that connection, he hasn’t been able to latch onto it again for some reason. I wish I understood why he started it to begin with, since he doesn’t want it. I’ve seen him up there--more than anybody, I think. At the factory. And it’s a chore. He doesn’t enjoy it.” Tight-lipped, she shook her head. “Oh, I’ve set the wards. For magical purposes, the tunnel is part of the house, and nothing with unfriendly intentions is gonna want to get near it, much less be able to come in. I’ve sealed the doors to the frames and the frames to the bedrock. It’s as secure as I know how to make it.” She crossed to the weapons chest and sat down on it, looking discouraged.

“I’ll get him a new watch,” Dawn announced. “That might help, don’t you think? Buffy?”

“If you want,” Buffy responded, her thoughts elsewhere. Rising, she said, “I’ll start supper. Xander, you staying?”

“And miss the wonders of lukewarm Thai take-out? You betcha!”

Buffy nodded and went off to the kitchen. Spaghetti, she thought, since there’d be four of them, Giles having taken his jet-lagged self back to the motel. Spaghetti was always good for quantity. She rose on tiptoe to inspect the contents of the freezer: she always made extra garlic bread for Spike--

She leaned hard against the refrigerator as a pang struck her, strong as a knife in the gut.

Vamps were killing and turning people, doing their usual vamp thing…under Spike’s authority and on Spike’s orders. Maybe more discreetly than before, not in the streets and scaring the horses. But it was still going on, all the same. And always would, as long as there were vamps in Sunnydale. The turning of the new Dalton had crystallized uneasiness she’d been able to keep formless and unacknowledged until then. And she’d been implicitly condoning it, turning a blind eye. Because what was the alternative? What alternative had Spike left her?

He’d acknowledged the responsibility and offered, for the hundred-nth time, to let her stake him. He knew. And certainly knew, by now, she’d never take him up on that offer. It was unspeakable, unthinkable. But the offer hadn’t been made cynically, not considering it’d been followed by a blind bolt for the porch. Suicide by Slayer; and absent that, by sunlight. He’d rather be dust than try to sort out the ramifications and the loose ends in which he’d left her entangled.

Tomorrow midnight, sweeps should resume. Tuesday, there was supposed to be a class: Anya had somehow pulled strings with the Chamber of Commerce and maybe others, calling in favors, to get the use of the workout room at the Civic Center. Spike’s active, sane presence was crucial to both of these. Without him, they’d collapse. Then the fallout would begin.

He’d gotten her into this. No way would she tolerate his not helping them get out of it. And trying to tempt him with hot garlic bread was so not gonna do the job!

And sobbing on the fridge’s Matte Ivory enamel wasn’t either.

Impatiently wiping her eyes on a paper towel it was convenient to blow her nose with after, she returned to the den, collected Dawn’s cell phone, and made a call. That done, she returned to making supper and fed the ravening multitudes. As they were finishing, she took the plate of extra garlic bread out of the oven where it’d been left to stay crunchy and warm and took it down to the basement.

Spike looked asleep, curled up small on the lawn chair pads in his grief posture that she’d seen a lot more of than she ever wanted to. Wrists thrust between his knees, trying to manacle himself with his own body: that was new, she thought aridly. Still game-faced. She’d never known him to sleep like that. Some comfort in it, maybe. Like the rocking, before. But he was inert now. If he was aware of her, it was too much trouble to stir or show acknowledgement.

Somehow knowing he wouldn’t touch it, she still thumped the plate down on the floor in easy reach, then went to the tunnel door no longer coyly concealed behind the screen and shot back the bolts: this door wasn’t made to be opened from the outside.

Lighting her way with a flashlight, she trudged down the tunnel and opened the door there. As directed, Mike was waiting outside. She gave him points for prompt.

“Come in,” Buffy said formally. “You’re welcome here.”

“Don’t need to do that,” Mike complained, evidently annoyed by empty gestures, sliding past her. “Had an invite, been here before, you recall?”

Slamming each bolt home again, Buffy replied coldly, “The whole house has been re-spelled. All invitations are revoked. Spike can go out but he won’t be able to come back without a fresh invitation. Tell him, so he’s not surprised. Doesn’t take it wrong. Which of course he will anyway.” She led Mike back up the tunnel, ignoring the alarms the awareness of a not-Spike vamp close behind her set off, and showed Spike to him in the garlic reek of the basement. Nobody moved for awhile. Gnawing at the edge of a thumb, Buffy demanded, “What’s wrong with him?”

“That Rayne,” said Mike at once. “Took him out of himself. He ain’t got back.”

“Not good enough,” Buffy snapped. “I’ve had vamp lore up to yo, and I want an explanation. I know he’s not back, I can see that. I want why.”

Mike looked around at her and didn’t say anything.

It’d probably been too much to expect, that Mike could explain it to her. Vamps weren’t into subtleties, nuances. Not into relationships, not really, beyond dominance and competition, spaces for their own egos to bloom.

Willow said Spike’s sense of himself had been injured, and what the hell did that mean? Dawn seemed to think it was the lack of the watch: that Spike couldn’t tell time properly without it, when all vamps knew dawn and dusk with precision, to the second, with no need of watches. Watches were alien: for appointments, agendas, not the unfolding now that the new Dalton would wake to experience. Along with the crazy hunger of a fledge. And the creature that’d turned him was standing beside her, unrepentant. Proud even of his restraint, his control, to be able to do such a thing, if Spike had been right about that.

Probably was: Spike had been interpreting vamps for her for a long time, trying to make her understand, and she never would. His word for such things would have to be good enough.

They were what they were. It was either dust them out of hand, where they stood, or accept that. Nothing between. There weren’t gonna be any compromises. Or any accommodation, without Spike there to enforce it.

She looked at Mike: wary, self-contained, comfortably silent, with no need to speak to her; without the human need to reach out, offer explanations, make contact. Impervious to her regard. As long as she didn’t come up with a stake, he’d tolerate her company and even respond to her summons, for Spike’s sake. But she had no relationship with this creature. None at all. Their only connection was through Spike.

She felt it--the alienness of it. Spike was tame, compared to this. He’d made himself tame. For her. Until he couldn’t do that anymore. Sleeping in his demon.

“Take him up to Willy’s,” she directed abruptly, “or wherever you want, wherever you think is best. Get him drunk. Start a fight, get him into it. Or if that doesn’t work, if he won’t, then beat the crap out of him yourself.”

“Don’t need me for that.”

“From me, he’d take it,” Buffy responded bitterly.

“Maybe. Maybe,” Mike conceded, finally turning his attention back to Spike. “You giving up your claim on him?”

“Never!”

“That Rayne, he’s marked him. But I’ll see to that. By me, you still got first claim.”

“All right,” said Buffy, not sure what she was agreeing to or why Mike had felt obliged to tell her that. Finally not caring as long as she got the results she wanted.

“And you take the forbidding off Dawn,” Mike added, and Buffy was startled. “She ain’t mad at me no more. Talking to me again. Ain’t nothing gonna happen to her except what she wants, not when I’m close by. So no need of a forbidding. And…she’s seventeen now.”

“All right,” Buffy said again, stifling uneasiness. “But you hurt her, or turn her, I’ll come after you and you’ll be dust on the breeze!”

“Sure. If you could,” agreed Mike indifferently.

“She’s my sister! Mine!”

“She’s her own. Spike made me see how that was. And Dawn herself, of course. Nobody has rights over her except the Lady, and I ain’t yet seen there’s anything to be done about that. Just so it’s clear, then.”

“All right,” Buffy said a third time and made herself turn and go up the stairs, surrendering Spike into the custody and care of his claimed childe, hoping that was what Spike needed now, that she was doing the right thing.

She had to get him back. Whatever it cost.

**********

Obviously the first thing was to get him some replacement boots: he couldn’t be seen in public with his bare shins hanging out like some wino. Since it was Friday, the mall stores would still be open, but Mike didn’t head that way. Best place for boots, in his opinion, was the Bronze. Parking behind some crates in the broad back alley, he ducked in long enough to get Spike a fifth of decent whiskey to keep him company on the bike, then went back inside to make a more leisurely appraisal. Choosing out a rowdy biker everybody would be glad to see gone, he picked a fight, broke some furniture before taking the fight outside, and presently had a fairish pair of boots to try on his charge, all sorts of straps and rings, as well as a gaudy shirt to go over the undistinguished black T.

Spike wasn’t cooperating but he wasn’t objecting, either. So maybe that was good, Mike thought, and maybe it wasn’t. Anyway the boots seemed to fit well enough: Mike thought he had a good eye for such things, and he knew Spike had much smaller feet than you’d think, getting one in the gut.

One of Mike’s T-shirts had the picture of a snarling Chihuahua with the sentiment, Not the size of the dog in the fight, the size of the fight in the dog. That was Spike. What he lacked in size and weight, he more than made up for with sneakiness, skill, and passion. Mike had seen him take on vamps four or five at a time and dust them all, with verve and glee. For a number of reasons, Mike didn’t like the idea of the Slayer’s final command, to beat the crap out of Spike. One bad possibility was that he’d lose. The other bad possibility was that he wouldn’t.

He’d had a couple of showdown fights with Spike so far, testing the limits, and hadn’t yet come out on top. But other than being awake and balancing with the bike, which was pretty much automatic, Spike had yet to say a word or take good notice of anything, which upped Mike’s chances considerably. A fair chance he could have the fight over before Spike had noticed it had begun.

The bad side of that was that it wouldn’t mean anything, any more than if he’d jumped Spike drunk or asleep. The other bad side was that it would. More than one Master Vampire had been dusted in his sleep, choosing the wrong sentry or the wrong bed partner, and sporting or not, they were just as dead.

Mike, the ex-mercenary and expert sniper, had never much concerned himself about fair odds. Nothing counted but the mortal practicalities: who was still moving at the end of things. But now, the idea of taking Spike down without Spike even knowing about it made him feel itchy, uneasy in his skin somehow.

Table that, Mike thought, and instead considered where to go next. Then he noticed that the bottle of J.D. was still capped: listlessly held, likely for no more reason than Mike had closed Spike’s hand around it, figuring he’d do the rest. Well, that wasn’t gonna get the job done.

A fifth, that was just for openers: not enough to get drunk on. Uncapping the bottle himself, Mike downed some thoughtfully although he preferred rum--the thicker, the better. He smiled at the memory of Willow’s rum punch, compared with which Jack was thin, sour tea. But good enough, he supposed, if you liked that sort of thing. Certainly felt warm and got your motor running.

But it wasn’t food; and Mike thought Spike had a starved look that said he hadn’t put back what Mike had taken from him last night. That was just downright stupid in a house full of warm humans with heartbeats let along bagged blood delivered twice a day, if you please; but Spike could be stupid about the most peculiar things. He’d been muy weird about feeding as long as Mike had known him. Deal with that first, then. Then more drinking, when the liquor had something more substantial to float on the top of.

He’d always wanted to hunt with Spike anyway. This was his chance.

The current approved prey was druggies and pushers, but Mike was wary of getting a heavy dose of unknown chemicals with such a meal and did his cruising elsewhere. He liked the hospitals. Had two, just in his own assigned territory--the only thing more numerous, in Sunnydale, was cemeteries. Mercy General and St. Elizabeth's. He'd spent whole evenings observing, learning their rhythms and their ways. People coming and going at all hours, and some incoming injured that could be diverted and just be speeding the inevitable. Nurse’s aides were also nice, every now and again, as a change from the comatose, diseased, and dying.

So he immediately noticed the Mercy Gen candy-striper, wearing a white cable-knit cardigan over her pastel blouse, waiting in the lit bus enclosure at the front of the parking lot. Usually he’d just invite one for a ride, but that was no good since he already had someone at pillion.

Scrunching up his forehead worriedly, he pulled up to the enclosure and asked hoarsely, “Are you a doctor?” Over her flustered Who, me? reaction, he continued, “Think my buddy got some bad stuff, but I can’t find the emergency entrance. Been around this frickin’ parking lot at least a dozen times and I can’t see where it lets off. Can you help me?” Throwing different signals at her too fast for her to question any of them, looking all earnest and dumb, he edged the kickstand down so the bike wouldn’t fall over, then pointed urgently at the Emergency Entrance sign, at least big enough to be advertising a motel, demanding, “See?” to direct her attention that way.

No more was needed: he had her. Big enough to fold her to him, all seeming romantic if anybody bothered to notice, which nobody did. Noticing wasn’t common in Sunnydale.

He himself was fed up fine, what with last night and then the new Dalton, today, even though he’d had to give some back. So he didn’t need to drain the nicely terrified girl completely. Only to the point where her heart started to falter and she was limp in his supporting arms. He could stop, distract his demon the same way he’d distracted the girl and enforce his will on both. Choose to kill or not, proving he was in control, not his demon. Not a fledge any longer.

He tucked the limp girl neatly back on the bench in a pose of sleep, more or less. Shift change was in less than fifteen minutes: she’d be found and all handy for care and a few transfusions, everything the way Spike would like it, nobody dead and therefore no reason to refuse.

He opened his left forearm and presented it, saying formally, “Sire.”

That got Spike’s dim attention. No bagged blood smelled like that, with all the mingled flavors of respect and terror and fresh, desperate, vigorous life. Wouldn’t stay good long, not like Slayer blood in that way, but for a little while, Spike could feed direct from him and have all the good of it.

Couldn’t turn away from a thing like that, true tribute blood; and Spike didn’t. But he didn’t just plow right in, neither, the way Mike expected. The teeth exploring the wound Mike had made stayed blunt, and eyes slowly blinking were deep indigo blue in the harsh sodium lighting over the bus kiosk. The suction became deep and regular, and Mike leaned against the bike, feeling a little drifty. Then he fumbled in the right-hand saddlebag for the bottle, got it open, and finished it off, passing that along, too.

Would have been too complicated, maybe impossible, to shove Spike into going after the girl himself. But maybe, Mike thought lazily, this was better. A communion. A sort of hazy rapture. A sacrifice. A gift. So many things, all twined together, for the blood to mean. He and Spike leaned heavily together, Mike rather dizzy from the transaction. The wound was closing. Spike licked it clean, accepting the natural term.

“Wouldn’t have been good much longer anyway,” Mike found himself commenting sadly.

“Was good,” Spike responded, head bent against Mike’s biceps. “Was real.” At last he looked up. “Where’s the bottle got to?”

“Dead soldier,” said Mike, and pitched it overhand as hard and as far as he could. He heard it smash satisfyingly on a windshield in the MD RESERVED section, the sound immediately followed by the yelping indignant squeals and warbling siren of the vehicle's alarm. “Could be more, if you want.”

“Yeah. Let’s do that, then.”

**********

“Shut up,” Mike said tightly.

“But it’s true,” Sue said, leaning boozily on an elbow to stare into his eyes, “and you know it. You don’t need him. With all his restrictions and complications, he only gets in your way, slows you down. You’re a Master in your own right now. Don’t have to run around all the time licking his feet or else get pounded on. What if he takes another crazy spell and takes it into his head to dust you?”

Spike wouldn’t do that. Had too much invested by way of time and teaching to end it in a casual puff of dust. He’d given Mike the watch. “Shut up.”

Sue attended to trying to sip her pink drink through the stirrer, under the impression it was a straw, still shooting him telling glances from time to time. Friday, past midnight, at the Bronze, was too noisy to hear yourself think. Mike was getting a headache and was in an increasingly foul mood.

He’d opted for Willy’s, but Spike wouldn’t get off the bike. Wanted noise and dancing, not an assassination attempt. Not even a fight that could easily get out of hand in a demon bar that actively encouraged fighting. Could turn in a flash into a pitched battle, with only him and Spike doing the pitching on the side of the colors.

He didn’t like Spike being all cautious and prudent. Didn’t like him ducking a fight which in fact was the whole point of the outing. Mike had collected four of the crew by the theater in their usual spot, trolling for prey in the departing rush, for an escort in force, but even then Spike wasn’t satisfied. Stepped down from the bike and started walking toward the Bronze, face golden-pale as he lit a cigarette, so Mike had no option except to trail after, feeling like an idiot.

Once inside, though, Spike took a corner booth away at the back and went blank-eyed and comatose again, reeking misery. Not even drinking much, just watching the dancers as though they were all Buffy and all had dumped him.

Shouldn’t have never told him about the general disinvite at Casa Summers. Only factual, but he’d taken it personally, just as the Slayer had said he would. It galled Mike to admit that in some ways, Buffy knew Spike better than he did.

So he’d had an assortment from the pill stash fetched down from the factory to cut some of the gloom. On a free night, nobody much up there, except for Huey tied down with keeping watch over the new Dalton and Emil stuck with guard duty. So Mike had picked Sue to summon, to bring the pills. Figured she’d be all excited and bubbly, allowed to leave the lair for her first permitted public outing, even though she flashed in and out of trueface faster than a yellow caution light. The corner was dark and if she kept her back to the room, nobody was apt to notice. Bought her a couple-few drinks, for a treat. Had been fucking her on and off, mostly because she was there when he had nothing better to do, but women always tried to make something personal out of that and she’d been mouthing off lately about being his exclusively, using his minimal interest to scare off her least-liked partners. Women did that. Specially fledges, who needed all the leverage they could get, indiscriminately used by anybody who was older and stronger, that they didn’t dare say No to. Mike didn’t grudge her that and hadn’t disputed her claims. Showed her a bit of favor, even: bringing her things, a nurse once all to herself as a change from the bagged blood she didn’t get her full share of anyway, elbowed aside by the male fledges. Didn’t cost him all that much and she had energetic ways of showing her appreciation.

Now Spike was drunk and manic, having a shouting, arm-waving argument with the bass player between sets over who was the greatest jazz singer ever. And Mike was drunk and sullen, with Sue gone all Lady Macbeth on him, on the strength of Spike’s ducking out on his responsibilities and Mike’s turning the new Dalton. Change was in the air, electric, and Mike didn’t like it. Yet it pulled at him. Because what Sue said was true.

If Spike couldn’t straighten out and get back to normal soon, all he’d put together and held together by main force was gonna start coming unglued. And Digger would capitalize on every weakness, maybe even commit to the attack in force that’d been simmering ever since the sweeps began. Nobody liked the Sunday through Wednesday curfew on the prime downtown hunting district. A fight over that was coming, of a certainty: they all knew it. The only question was when.

Since Rayne had taken him, Spike the Master of Sunnydale was swiftly deteriorating into Spike the liability. And the smart thing would be to get him out of the way as fast as possible and assert and establish Mike’s own authority before strong opposition could organize. He had one foot solidly planted: in Spike’s absence, Huey and the crew obeyed him. All he had to do was set the other foot down hard and assume the stance. Quick, while there was still a place to stand.

“If you switch sides now,” Sue pointed out, giving the straw pointed and intense suction, “while you still have something to bargain with, I bet Digger would grant you a real good territory. He likes you.”

“Shut up.” Mike knocked back his drink and poured another, scowling.

He liked Spike well enough. But not enough to go down with him if he failed, which now seemed increasingly likely. He’d see to Rayne, certain sure: couldn’t afford to have a mage running around loose with a yen for dominating the strongest vamp he could find. Just common sense, really, to do him before his whim turned in some different direction. Hit him before he saw anything coming.

Wandering back from the bandstand as the musicians got ready for another set, Spike had his head lifted and his eyes shut as though listening to music nobody else could hear. More of the random crazy. Mike pushed the bottle toward him, checking that the escort were still around and paying good attention. Each was ready for his inspection, meeting his eyes in the intermittent flash of the rotating mirror globe overhead. A lot more alert than Spike, still standing rapt in his own private world.

Then Spike’s eyes opened, slow and dark and sad, gazing steadily down into Mike’s. And Mike knew without question that Spike knew everything Sue had been saying, all that Mike had been thinking, down to the least detail. And accepted it.

Intolerable.

Bolted down, the table was only wrenched half loose when Mike shoved it out of his way and came up at Spike. Full of rage and indignation and a dozen other conflicted emotions, Mike knocked Spike halfway across the room, disrupting the dancers, setting off a panic. Slapping away converging bouncers, Mike kept going, determined to pound Spike into the floor, make him fight back, force some unnamed acknowledgement from him. Not knowing what else to do, the four vamps in the colors slid in and started clearing the space, trying to keep interlopers from butting in. Plowing through the confused brawl like a truck, Mike paid no attention, focused only on Spike, who was simply waiting for him, letting it happen, which absolutely wasn’t to be borne. Mike pitched him into the bandstand, musicians and instruments flying everywhere and a huge feedback drone erupting from the sound system, reverberating in the bones. Mike went into one of his rare battle flashbacks, translating the crack of breaking chairs into small arms fire and the harsher reports of AK-47s, the flashing, broken light as tracers and grenade bursts, and the surrounding swirl of fighting bodies as the fierce mayhem of direct hand-to-hand. Whatever he touched, he broke.

“He has it open,” murmured Spike’s voice in his ear, close as a lover’s, quiet and casual.

“What?” Mike stopped with an arm cocked, ready to pound down again into Spike’s belly.

“The box. Has the box open, and he’s playing with the Stone. Can’t you hear it singing?”

Going still within himself, Mike realized that he could. Not the voice of the Hellmouth of old but very like, a shrill threnody that ran up and down his nerves like rats, at once disruptive and attractive. Not quite a sound or a scent, nothing known with the senses but felt deeply, everywhere. An Influence. A door cracked ajar on wild, chaotic energies like his vision of battle. Feeding his rage that went cold, separated from it; feeding his confusion, that scattered like dry leaves the moment he identified the influence and knew it as outer, not within himself. His demon was all frantic and disrupted with it, but Mike stood apart, listening. He could do that now.

“Always thought it would be Buffy,” Spike continued dreamily. “But that’s all right. You’ll do well enough. Might as well get on with it, then. Best, all round.”

Mike couldn’t hold the clarity: the rest came roaring back, sweeping over him. Utterly overwhelmed and deep in his demon, he found himself clutching Spike close and sobbing into his chest, inconsolable. In desperate need of his sire’s close presence and reassurance that the ambient craziness could not unweave him wholly into flapping tatters. Needing his protection and wisdom and strength.

Besides, if he’d actually gone ahead and done anything terminally bad to Spike, Dawn would never have forgiven him.

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