Chapter 15: Convergence

Dawn took one glance at the map Willow held, with its single red dot, and grabbed Buffy’s arm. “Let me do it.” Cutting off whatever protest Buffy was about to make, Dawn persisted, “He won’t freak, with me. I’m going.” Still, she waited until her non-question was answered by Buffy’s turning aside: tacit permission.

Mike the imperturbable was pacing. He knew, but he wouldn’t say: at a guess, he’d promised not to. Freakin’ big secret: Spike was hid out at abandoned Casa Mike, all of a block away. Mike responded to Dawn’s indignant glance with an apologetic dip of his head and didn’t say anything, which he was very good at.

Dawn sprinted the distance in a couple of minutes, then hung up outside, trying to figure the best approach to a suicidally depressed vampire. The usual, she decided: be annoying enough to get him talking and then wing it from there.

She opened the door. Cautiously, in case he was right inside, since it was still light out.

Once she’d determined Spike hadn’t returned to the factory last night, Buffy had wanted him to come back under his own steam, of his own choice, and forbidden a direct hunt, opting for putting verbal thumbscrews to Mike, instead. Only when it was plain that was going nowhere had she given the OK for Willow to do a locator spell.

Casa Mike: practically next door, Casa Spike having been fire-bombed and burned to rubble. Not hard to interpret: he could have come home, but hadn’t. The whole invite mixup, maybe. Didn’t want to wake up a rightful resident at five in the morning to let him stumble in, formally invited. They’d both been pretty drunk, according to Mike, and Dawn didn’t doubt it. The uppers, too, which ensured a hard crash, coming down. He’d likely still be asleep.

He wasn’t sacked out on the couch in the dusty living room. He wasn’t in the kitchen in back, either. Nor tucked up in any of the ground-level closets. There was a stairway up and a stairway down. On a hunch, she took the stairway down, flicking the light switch futilely (power finally cut off for non-payment, or maybe just a blown bulb), then taking the steps sideways, bent low to look.

He was sitting on the floor in the inside corner, farthest from the high windows. Back bent, arms slack at his sides, head bowed right into the corner. Made Dawn think of a punished doll. And not expecting anybody to see him that way, so that pose, that was just for him. The way he most felt like being. Fairly grim, she thought, approaching at a cautious sidle in case he was asleep.

But he wasn’t. “Bit, you ever do like I said, get Red to fix you some different anchor?”

She leaned against the wall where she could see his profile. “Nope. Not gonna, either.”

He didn’t move or open his eyes. At least he wasn’t rocking, and sounded sane. “You should. Nearly was gone a couple times last night, never thought till after about how you’d be tied into it. Sorry. For not thinking.”

She slid down against the wall and hugged her knees. Taking a page from Mike’s book, she said nothing. If Spike felt like talking, she wanted to listen. Sometimes silence drew better than questions.

“’F you’re hangin’ on ‘cause you think that’ll make me careful, it don’t work like that. I don’t think it out that far. Can’t, I guess. Don’t, anyway. So don’t you consider me, that don’t signify. You just consider you. ‘F you don’t want to talk to Red about it, some reason, I’ll do it.”

“When are you coming home?”

Long silence. Dawn waited. “Dunno,” he said finally in a colorless voice. “Some time, I expect. When I’m wanted for something or other.”

“You’re wanted now, Spike. They’re having a meeting about what to do about the sweep, tonight. They--”

Spike interrupted quietly, “I’m no use for that,” like it was an obvious fact past arguing.

“Why? On account of the soul?”

“Oh, I can talk well enough,” Spike responded, with the first edge of bitterness he’d allowed himself. “Just can’t do nothing about it, not of any use. An’ she’d want to know why, always wanting to know why, and that’s not on the agenda. Not far’s I’m concerned.”

“I want to know why. You might have noticed,” Dawn mentioned. “Mike’s sitting in, so you don’t have to worry about giving anybody vampire cooties. That’s already all taken care of.”

“Let Mike sort it, then. He’s better off if I don’t mix in.”

“He’s pacing. Doing his trademark strong, silent routine. Waiting for you.”

Spike looked around sharply, yellow-eyed. “He tell you I’d laired up here?”

“The soul of discretion,” Dawn denied, hands lifted virtuously.

“How, then? Oh. Had Red hunt me. Expect that Rayne, he can do that too, now….”

“Murder at sundown, news at eleven?”

“Got enough of my kit now, likely track me easy.” Another long silence: working out the likelihood of an attack in force, here in this basement, as soon as it was dark. Another fire-bombing maybe, Dawn thought. “Have to have that talk with Red, I guess,” Spike decided, and stiffly unfolded, bracing a hand on the wall. Still had the brass bangle on his right wrist, she noticed. But the other one was gone.

Following along, Dawn figured it out far enough to know the tricky part wasn’t getting him to come--it would be getting him to stay. Whatever was coming, he’d want to draw it away, have it be him alone. And the necessary preliminary to that was cutting her loose: a strong enough reason to make him face the dreaded why.

Of course it wouldn’t go that way, but if she could follow his thought, she could get ahead of him and block him when it would matter. It was enough, now, to have started him moving.

Except that he opened the front door and walked right out into the late sunlight. No preparation, no blanket, nothing. Dawn was frozen in the doorway, waiting for him to burst into flame.

He didn’t. Catching a quick gulp of breath, Dawn saw he was unhurriedly aiming for the speckled shade of the nearest tree that still had most of its leaves. Slamming the door behind her, she sprinted to the tree and grabbed him there in a strangling hug.

“Dammit, give a girl some warning! You just scared me--”

“Sorry,” he responded reflexively. “Didn’t think about it. Just how it is now.”

She somehow kept herself from saying the dreaded why, just held on harder, and was rewarded with his cheek against her hair.

“Sorry, Bit. Didn’t mean to scare you. Didn’t think….”

“You owe me seventy-five cents,” Dawn announced in a dire voice, pulling back to look him in the eyes (currently pale blue).

He did the head tilt, puzzled, waiting for an explanation.

“Every time you say ‘sorry,’ you owe me a quarter.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.” Studying his face, she touched his cheek with experimental fingertips. Warm. And so were his hands. Maybe a little pink--she couldn’t be sure. “New parlor trick?”

He shrugged. “Just noticed, is all. Some of it….” He frowned, searching for words. “Think some of it just…radiates. Like I’m channeling it. And the rest heals, fast as it burns. Long as I’m fed up good, anyway. Or that’s how it’s seemed. Long as the sun’s low and I don’t push it too far. Feels something like running a fever, as best I recall, which isn’t much. Minute or so, though, it’s gone.”

She laid her palm on his forehead, then took both his hands. Cool again. “Even for a vamp, you’re a freak,” she reported, and he smiled slightly, waiting for her to finish her inspection. In his way, quieter than Mike…and that was very strange. She wasn’t sure she approved. “What’s the next mark?”

“Tree at the corner should be in range. ‘F it’s not, I’ll tuck into that shadow by the big bush.” He pointed, and Dawn confirmed the strategy. They zigzagged together from mark to mark, Dawn resisting the impulse to run, to drag him. He kept a steady pace, and she kept hold of his hand, feeling the heat build and then dissipate.

“This is so neat!” she couldn’t resist telling him when they reached the large shadow of the house that had formerly been the neighbor of Casa Spike. “Think we can make the back porch all in one go?”

Spike considered the distance: the whole width of the yard of Casa Summers, plus a little. “From the hedge, maybe.”

“Wait--I’ll get a blanket, something. I want to see if you can do it. If you can’t, just drop and I’ll cover you up till you’re cool again, OK?” Not waiting for any argument, she dashed to the break in the hedge, then on to the back porch and hammered on the door until Buffy came to let her in. Running for the stairs, she called, “Everybody onto the sidewalk, you gotta see this! No, Mike: you stay! I’ll tell you afterward.” Grabbing the chenille spread off her bed, she raced down, grabbing up ends and fistfuls of trailing fringe to avoid tripping herself, ordering, “Quiet, and watch the back hedge, OK?”

Dropping off the back porch, she went four long paces out into the yard and shook out the spread, figuring if Spike got into trouble, it would be nearer to the house than to the hedge. She looked around to check that the audience was in position with a clear line of sight, then called, “OK, Spike, I’m ready! Come on.”

He came through the hedge at the same unhurried stroll, smiling at her as he passed, went up the porch steps, and then locked there, in front of the open door.

She’d forgotten about the disinvite.

Dumping the spread, Dawn ran, took the steps in two jumps, and whirled in the kitchen, blurting breathlessly, “Spike, come in, for God’s sake!”

He came inside vamp-fast and was in the hall before she could turn to face him. Definitely pink, this time. “Cut it a bit fine,” he commented, hugging himself nervously.

“Sorry--I forgot!”

"Down to fifty cents, now: debit you a quarter."

“Bet I make it back within fifteen minutes,” Dawn riposted, going out to retrieve the spread. And encountered the audience, spilling into the yard via the driveway, too impatient to get an explanation to circle back through the house. Pulling up successive heavy drapes of chenille and clutching them against her, Dawn reported Spike’s theory, finishing by fixing Buffy with a gimlet stare. “Now I’ve told you all there is to tell. Don’t ask him why. Don’t ask him why anything. And every sorry costs him a quarter, and I’m keeping count, so don’t bankrupt the corporation, all right? You were right, Buffy: don’t push him. Wait and let him come to you. And that’s really good advice, and I hope you take it. Because otherwise, he’s gonna be gone and you’re gonna be sorry, and we’re talking major money here.”

Clutching the armload of spread, she led the parade back into the house.

*********

Spike was absently patting pockets for a pack of smokes and the lighter and there was nothing, not so much as a matchbook, when he found all the Scoobies gathered around him, smiling in goofy benevolence: fucking puppy had done a trick. Well, he was having none of that, thank you very much. Nobody here he wanted to talk to excepting Red, to get the thing done.

Drunk had cleared nearly all the fog away, he could make her out plain, and was just about to explain about Bit, what had to be done, when Willow informed him brightly, “You’re bronze.”

And the poncy habit kicked in from God knew where and he responded blankly, “Excuse me?”

“You used to be all silver and shadow,” the witch continued, formulating a thesis. “Mirrored, almost. Taking the image of whatever was around you, none of your own. Quicksilver, the cool liquid metal that’s slow death to the touch. That’s why the Mad Hatter was mad: mercury poisoning used to be an occupational disease of hat-makers. But now you’re bronze, a blended metal. Yet one thing all through.”

Head reared back, Spike considered her sternly. “Have you gone completely ‘round the bloody bend?”

“No, you have. And back again.”

Complete nutcase bonkers. Or, he thought uneasily, maybe it was him. That stopped him, made him uncertain. Backing against the staircase wall, he reached out a hand. “Bit…?”

She came to him, quick and graceful, his touchstone. Casually folding fingers into his braceleted hand, she slid between, her back to him to face the confusion and keep it from him. Dawn told the witch, “You’re freaking him. Could we maybe do the fun metal folklore some other time?”

From the back, Buffy’s humorless voice suggested they all reconvene in the front room again, but that was nothing to do with him anymore and he stayed where he was until Willow leaned to start after Harris. Then Spike stepped into her path. “Need you to do a thing.”

“We can talk about it,” Willow offered amiably, “after--”

“Now.”

Willow settled, and after an assessing glance, Dawn evidently found the level of weird acceptable and released his hand. Not about to just leave them to it, though: heading into the kitchen, Dawn commented, “He wants to cut me off. Dawnectomy. I say, first, do no harm. Leave things as they are. So there’s nothing to talk about.”

“’S my soul,” Spike argued, past Willow. “Don’t want you hitched to it. Piece you have, you stole, never asked, just latched onto it. I should have rights what’s hitched up to it or not.”

Dawn leaned out, just her head and the hanging scarf of hair, to say, “I didn’t hear any complaints at the time.”

“Doesn’t signify. Connect up to your sis or whatever, up to you, that side of it.” Because the Slayer was no safe connection neither, and that realization had so much that came with it, it hung him up with his eyes shut to not be totally distracted. Hold to the point. He told Willow, “’S a waste, otherwise, an’ she’s just being provoking. Most things, I’d let her have her way. Not this. Needs doing, and needs doing now. Her holding on ain’t gonna change nothing that happens, except to get her hurt too. Cut her loose.”

“You do,” Dawn warned the witch, “and I’ll make you sorry.”

Willow said, “I really don’t like being in the middle of you two arm-wrestling. And I have no idea how to go about doing what you want, Spike. I can loose souls or restore them--I never read anything that tells about de-fractioning them. Giles? A second opinion needed here.”

When the Watcher came mooching out of the front room, hands in pockets, all smooth reserved surface, Spike was almost as startled as if it’d been Angel. It rearranged reality: not anything he thought about, just something he knew beyond question--that the Watcher was gone. That taking care of the Slayer fell solely to Spike now. That guarding her back wasn’t good enough anymore--Spike had to scout ahead, too, and clear the way before her. The task he’d fallen down on, been inadequate to.

The last of the heat dissipated, leaving him cold and still in his surprise.

Regarding him, Giles remarked quietly, “Hello, Spike. I’ve been here several days, but I gather you weren’t in a position to notice. Oddly enough, I came for you. Because of Ethan.”

Spike backed against the wall again but Giles touched him anyway, setting a hand on his shoulder. Spike vibrated under it, with noplace left to back to. Couldn’t just swat the ponce. He was at a loss. He felt his features shift aspect. His throat was tight with the beginnings of a snarl. Dawn came across the hall fast and took his hand again, telling the Watcher, “Being personal pushes the wrong buttons right now. You should know that.”

“I do know that,” Giles said, not budging, continuing his sober inspection of Spike. “I know exactly what buttons it pushes. And I believe it’s important that he know that I do. Spike. You’re not alone in this. In…difficult circumstances, you’ve done very well.”

Spike burst out, “Fucking hell!” and twisted out from under the touch, pulled away from Dawn, heading for the front door. Couldn’t tolerate the Watcher’s pity…or his understanding. Sun was almost gone, he should manage all right. Get someplace fucking else, that was all. Stupid to have laired up so close, but he’d needed that--

Buffy was suddenly at the door, her back against it, blocking his way. Her eyes said she wasn’t about to move, neither.

Boxed between people he couldn’t hit, Spike flung himself up the stairs and out Buffy’s bedroom window onto the roof. Shrouded within clouds now, the sun offered an even light, directionless, everywhere the same. Some low level of burn to exposed skin but Spike processed that automatically, vaulting over the roof peak to descend and crouch at the edge like a gargoyle. He heard, felt, Buffy behind him, relentlessly pursuing. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t want to.

Coming down the low slant to stand beside him, she wordlessly offered a pack of cigarettes and a silver lighter. Bobbing his head in acknowledgement, he took them and shakily lit up.

“It all can be replaced,” she remarked, looking out over the darkening yard. Her scent flowed across him, surrounded him. “All of it except you. Lighters are easy. This--this is hard, though. Why is this so hard?”

“Dunno,” Spike muttered. “Just is. Let the bloody side down, didn’t I? Not nothing to be proud of. Not up to it. Not good for nothing, like this. Can see it but not do it. An’ before, do it all just fine, couldn’t see the way. Or the meaning. Ramifications. Consequences. In short, fucked. For the mongrel bastard freak I am. Can’t go neither forward nor back, can’t stand still. Doesn’t matter, though. Be gone soon, won’t matter.” Heat that felt like the sun’s burning roiled within him and he didn’t know how to shed it. Let it take him, then. Had it coming. Icarus.

Buffy settled down beside him, legs stretched out, feet dangling, and for a long time neither of them said anything. Spike pitched the butt-end and started another, just to have something for his hands to do.

“Never thought I’d ever do this,” Buffy remarked eventually. “Sit with you in the last of the light. Guess I should have known, though. You’re always surprising me. I no sooner say ‘never,’ and you’ve popped up and done it. I shouldn’t be so quick with the ‘never,’ I guess.”

When he chanced a glance, she wasn’t looking at him--both a disappointment and a relief.

After awhile, she commented, “I figured it out, you know. Why you started this. After the Hellmouth was shut, you waited for me to decide what way to go on. And I decided on the Slayer…and you. And the minute we got back, you started this: set the soul aside, began laying the infrastructure. Got Mike sorted, to be your right hand on your side of things. Began pulling away, so I wouldn’t get sucked into it and because you knew parts of it…wouldn’t be things I could accept. It was for me. To help me make Sunnydale a place a Slayer could live in, and be a Slayer with her vampire lover, and maybe not die quite so soon. Building it up from the vamp side of things, that I don’t really want to know about and I guess never will. Knowing better than I could what that would mean and require. It’s been for me.”

“’S always been for you, pet. Made a hash of it, though. ‘M sorry. Gonna be worse now than if I never started.” Spike pitched the second fag, though a good half of it was left. Had to pitch something, and himself off the roof wasn’t an option.

“No,” she responded thoughtfully, “you took it far enough that all the pieces are in place. It hasn’t fallen apart. And it won’t. We can take it from here, I think. Mike and I have been talking today, in our strange, un-talky way. And we’re both willing to try. Want to, actually. Because the dream you had is a good dream, and you brought it far enough that we both can see it. Most of it. Some of it.” She shrugged. “But it can’t work without you. You have to do the hand-off, then come in for the things nobody else can do. Nobody else is the one true heir of the Order of Aurelius. Nobody else commands Digger’s respect…and caution. Nobody else sees the whole of it, what it can be when it’s done and self-sustaining. Giles helped me see that part of it, because I’m blind as a bat when it comes to you. You know that. I look, and all I’m thinking is Yum, pretty, hot, I want that! Which isn’t too helpful for long-range strategy.” Another shrug and a wry smile.

She was so beautiful. Nothing like her ever before or ever again.

Impossible that she not be let down by his failure. But she was forever impossible. Forever surprising him. Forever dear and precious beyond measure.

He’d long since shifted back out of his demon aspect. Not comfortable to him anymore, most of the time, and soul got real indignant when he left his demon with the running of things. But curiously, neither soul nor demon was nagging at him at the moment. Both content and serene, not trying to grind him to powder between them.

Bronze, he thought, with a glimmer of what Red had been getting at. A true amalgam, not just the disparate pieces. Bronze. Maybe. Might be.

So right away, he came out with the worst of it: “Can’t keep on like I been doing. Goddam tribute blood, pig’s blood, s'all the same. Can’t tolerate it. For awhile I could tell myself I could make do like that, Angel does, an’ Angel ain’t got the option of a taste of you, every now and again. S'not enough. Got to hunt and take it live. That’s one thing that…whatever it was, with Rayne, taught me, made me know. It’s the life I’ve got to have. Starved, without. What I am. 'M not Angel, can’t do like he does. ‘F it ain’t live, has no meaning, and I need that. The meaning, as much as the blood. What I live on. Anything else, it’s just death in tiny sips. For me. Sorry. Can’t.”

“You now owe Dawn fifty cents,” said Buffy, and slid closer to gather him in against no resistance. He felt as though her scent and her warmth were soaking into him. She went on, “I know you’re not Angel. I’ve never wanted you to be. It’s not Angel I love--not anymore. Maybe Angel could have planned this all through, carried it out step by deliberate step, and made something like the Thousand Year Reich. But what would it be, what would I be, at the end of it? You’re not a cold-blooded planner. You’re a fighter. Like me. And you made the best start of it any fighter ever could. And brought it to the place we can take it on from here. It’s a good thing you were trying to do, and it will be a good thing when we’re done. Not 100%, but we live in Sunnydale, not heaven. And in Sunnydale, vamps are what they are. And I can’t wish them all gone. I just can’t. So I accept the forest, even though I’ll keep whacking at the individual trees whenever they deserve it. Or get in my way. Or have a real unlucky day. And we’ll do it together. If live blood is what you must have, then that’s what you get, however you have to. First you were forced, and afterward you tried, fair and square. For years. If you say it’s not enough, I’ll take your word for it. It’s not all one thing or all the other. You find out where the balance is. I told you, I love you all the way back and all the way forward, as far as we can go. I know I can’t have you feed on just me, can't be enough all by myself, though it feels great when we do it. If you don’t kill, and I know you don’t, anymore, I’m OK with it. Now the soul’s back, I have no problem letting you, and it, make that call. No explanation or apology needed, ever. You do what you do. I’m not your jailer or your judge. And not your executioner, ever. I only love you and think you’re the finest vamp that ever was or will be. And I don’t want you any different than you are. Scars and all.

Her finger stroked the criss-cross scar on his brow, that was from a Slayer’s magicked blade, and she kissed his eyes, and maybe it wasn’t so hopeless as he’d believed, after all. So long as she still loved him.

**********

Spike was slouched in front next to Buffy, who was driving with her usual grim determination, as though the SUV had to be wrestled into submission at every turn and stop sign, most of the traffic signals having turned to blinking yellow or blinking red so late on a Saturday night. Buffy (Dawn thought) equated a blink with a flinch and gave such indecisive lights no quarter, barging through without touching the brakes at all.

Willow had the front passenger side, reviewing spells with a penlight, muttering under her breath. Glowering and cranky, Mike was with Dawn in the middle seat. They had to drop him up at the factory to choose the crew for the sweep, and he tried out a tentative roster on Spike, who only said, “Anybody you please.”

Mike leaned forward, objecting, “That’s no answer.”

“S’your call.”

Mike didn’t like that either, subsiding with a scowl.

“Keeping that Len as your second?” Spike inquired after a minute or so.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Mike shot back.

“No reason. Just wondered.”

“He’ll keep the fledges in line.”

“Oh. You’re gonna take fledges, then.”

“What of it? Gonna need ‘em, and they’re no loss.”

“Guess so.”

Buffy ran the yellow lights faster.

It was a relief to reach the factory’s driveway, where Mike got out and vanished into the dark as Buffy backed into the road to head back to the named mark.

Easing off on the gas now that stormcloud Mike had been ejected, Buffy asked Spike tightly, “How are you doing? If you say ‘fine,’ I’m gonna smack you.”

“All right, not fine then. That make you happier, pet?” Spike sounded tired and discouraged.

That was good, Dawn judged: it meant he wouldn’t start in about her anchor again for awhile. As Dawn leaned forward, arms folded along the seat back, Buffy demanded, “What’s got into Mike? What’s he so mad about? We agreed to help with the sweep.”

“Bit, you tell her.”

“Power vacuum noises?” Dawn hazarded.

“Something like.”

Buffy persisted, “What’s that mean when it’s in people-speak?” Although Buffy’s voice was sharp, Dawn saw that Buffy had her arm tucked through Spike’s, both her hands dutifully on the wheel. Spike was the only one-handed driver in the family. “Is he on board with this agreement or not?”

“His word’s good,” Spike replied. “He’ll do what he says, though maybe not the way anybody else would want him to. Dunno how he’ll jump. S’hard for him right now.”

“Does that mean you trust him?”

Sighing audibly, Spike slid lower, his knees against the dashboard.

He was unfocused, vague, drifty, uncertain--the most “off” Dawn had ever seen him, sober. Vulnerable. And Mike was affected by it: demanding orders Spike didn’t want to give and Mike resented taking.

“It’s like when Mom was sick,” Dawn formulated suddenly, “and you had to make my lunches. You had to do it because Mom couldn’t, but you hated doing it because that meant things weren’t right and you wanted Mom to get better so you could go back to being a kid again, and Slayer, of course, but she didn’t, and I was miserable because, well, Mom, and complaining about PB&J every day and being a brat because you weren’t Mom and you wouldn’t give me lunch money. And like that,” Dawn finished breathlessly. “Patterns all mixed up and conflicted. And in case I forgot to say, I’m sorry about being such a brat. And Mike absolutely hates not knowing where he stands. A fight would clear the air but, well, fight. Big mess.”

“Huh,” Buffy responded thoughtfully.

The mark was the theater again because it was a high traffic area every night and well lit by streetlights for several blocks in all directions. Buffy parked in front of Evans’ Florist, and Dawn knew what that meant: Buffy wanted to keep the SUV close as retreat or escape, and to protect it. Their Armored Personnel Carrier, fortress, and tank. As everybody got out, Dawn saw a couple figures on the opposite side of the street turn just a little too fast and vanish. Vamps. In a few minutes, the word would be out that no matter what anybody had expected, the sweep was on with the theater as the mark…and Spike was present and apparently presiding.

Giles had emphasized how crucial that was, and neither Spike nor Mike had argued although neither had seemed to like it. Spike had to be seen, and seem in control of things, as if nothing had changed. Otherwise, things would start coming apart real fast. Even though about the last thing Spike wanted tonight was to get into a fight, as off as he was. Dawn heard him mutter, accepting a hand axe from the stock in the back of the SUV, “Forgot to pay my dues in the scarecrow union.”

According to Giles, Rayne would want Spike left alone, hoping to reassert control and use him to manipulate the Chaos Stone. So it was reasonable that Digger would hold off on presenting a major challenge.

Spike had repeated, “Reasonable,” in a certain tone of voice, and Giles had admitted, “Yes, quite. Better double it, then.”

Because if anything was certain, it was that vamps didn’t go by what was reasonable--they saw weakness, vulnerability, and went after it in proper predator fashion.

Even his own. Even Mike, who showed up on his motorcycle a few minutes later, with the chosen crew piling out of three lame-looking vehicles like a bunch of circus clowns, only a lot less funny. Mike couldn’t give an order without half the crew looking to Spike for confirmation and the other half wandering ever-so-subtly into Spike’s personal space, bumping his shoulder or otherwise jostling him. By the time Xander arrived with the SITs, the whole vamp contingent was game-faced and edgy, not just the half-dozen fledges, who’d had to be sent to the back of the alley to keep them from coming at Dawn.

Spike had done that. Predictably and reassuringly. It was why Dawn was there, against Spike’s objections--to need protecting.

Officially, she was present to be a power source Willow could draw on if the mark came under attack. Unofficially, she was there to insure that Spike would actually fight if he had to, not just stand there and get dusted, as both she and Buffy were worried he’d do, left on his own.

After Mike had divided the crew into squads and given them their individual marks, he wandered over, still gloriously game-faced, and murmured, “Dawn Dragonslayer. Got your taser?”

“Right here,” Dawn said, showing him, and shook the bag of stakes slung over her shoulder by way of further demonstration that she was prepared to fight if the opposition didn’t do the sensible thing and came straight for Spike.

“Don’t you do that. If it turns into a scrap back here, you get inside the van, lock everything, and holler. Cell’s your best weapon here. Show me that.”

Dawn pulled the cellphone out of her overalls pocket, but Mike still wasn’t satisfied and made her call him to be sure both cells were charged and working. Then, his face smoothing, he just looked at her: not wanting her there any more than Spike did, but accepting that it wasn’t up to him. Stuck between what he wanted and what he could have, even in this.

It was so plain and so sweet that, having poked her cell away, Dawn caught up one of his hands in both hers, and it just sort of seemed natural that his arm turned her and curled around, enclosing her in a careful steady hug--their backs to Spike, she couldn’t help noticing.

“Don’t like this,” Mike’s voice rumbled in her ear. “Don’t like this at all.”

“I know. It will sort itself out. It’s the between that’s hard.”

A gulped chuckle. “Ain’t gonna say what I’m thinking. ‘Cause I’m a vamp, I expect.”

“Better let go,” Dawn advised, not pulling away, “or Buffy will have a fit.”

He didn’t stir either. “No, that’s fine now. She’s lifted her forbidding. Not up to nobody but you now.”

“What’d you hit her with?”

“Somewhat of a trade. Had something she wanted, so we worked it out.”

“The agreement,” Dawn realized, finally pulling away and turning to look him in the face, not sure if she liked being bartered like that.

Mike let her go, lifting a shoulder slightly. “Might have come into it anyway. But it was a good trade. Good reason.”

Better, he meant, than inadmissible worry about Spike, that would have been awkward for both vamps. Dawn shrugged in turn and scuffed a foot to show she understood the delicate balance of honor, power, and necessity Mike was trying to move through in a way that wouldn’t require settling dominance quite yet.

She told him, “We’re good,” and gave him a smile.

“That so,” he responded, smiling back--his eyes, mostly. “Have to explain to me what that means, sometime.”

“I haven’t figured that out yet myself. There are layers. And complications.”

Mike’s phone squawked, and he immediately put it to his ear, listened a moment, then said, “Yeah,” before stowing it in a front jeans pocket. “Got to go. Len’s got himself and the fledges into something.”

He waited for her nod, and looked for Spike’s acknowledgement, before swinging onto his bike and roaring off.

Dawn found Spike looking at her with no particular expression, but his only comment was, “Like he said--‘f this goes pear-shaped, you get in the van.”

There were just the three of them left. Buffy, the SITs, and Xander were one squad, sweeping an area four blocks on a side, centered on the mark, in constant touch with Willow, who’d set her spell book on a pile of empty cardboard boxes just inside the alley and was bent over, still studying it, the penlight poised in one hand and her cell held to her ear with the other.

Spike had picked a wall to lean against and smoke, looking bored and half asleep. Dawn didn’t see the axe and didn’t know what he’d done with it.

Wandering over, Dawn said, “I should have brought the headphones. Sorry--I didn’t think of it,” just to be saying something.

“Fine: only owe you twelve dollars and fifty cents,” Spike responded, naming the accrued total of the “sorry” penalties. “You hear anything lately from the Lady?”

“Nope. You?”

Spike shook his head, a frown between his half-shut eyes. “Wish I knew what the hell she wants to come out of this. ‘F I’m even s’posed to still be here.”

“She put back your soul,” Dawn offered. “Kind of a waste, if you dusted right away.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Spike studied the coal of his cigarette. “I expect she just don’t want Rayne to have me. Past that, it’s all good.”

“Drama queen,” Dawn accused.

“That too. Got the kit for it….” Dawn thought he added, “And a lot of fucking bloody use….” Pitching the cigarette, he headed slope-shouldered down the alley to check something or maybe to avoid increasing his “sorry” debt.

The front of the theater had become busier, the last few minutes--one show was letting out, and people were lining up to buy tickets for the final show: on a Saturday, nearly always a creepfest of some sort. Big market for that in Sunnydale, Dawn had thought sourly more than once. Watch on the screen what they wouldn’t admit seeing on the street.

Naturally, that was ringing the dinner bell for vamps. All that inattentive food wandering out into the dark, trying to recall where they’d parked, scattering into small groups, pairs, and singletons. That was the main reason the theater was a regular gathering-mark--to keep unauthorized vamps off the people leaving, especially those wearing the smell. And sure enough, Dawn spotted some vamps drifting in, casual and inconspicuous except for the glide of their walk and the calculating way they eyed the flow of the people around and past them.

Because they were coming through, straight for the alley. At least half a dozen: none game-faced, none in the colors. Using the crowd as cover to get close.

Backing deeper into the alley, taser out and extended, Dawn sang out, “Spike!”

***********

Spike was thinking about architecture. Towers, in particular. With gothic angles and swoops. Flying buttresses and the like. The sort rarely seen in California, where flat was much admired, or cheaper, or something or other. Tapered towers in Slovenia or whatever the hell it was now, with roofs like fish scales, nasty to climb but neat to look at, like the tower was a living thing. And then you had your medieval Norman towers with arrow-slit windows you could skinny through although it made the place fucking cold in the wintertime, never get warm no matter how you built the fires up after you’d eaten all the inhabitants and there was no other source of warmth handy though enough brandy helped some with that. Lacework Spanish towers, all symmetrical, builders expecting to get struck by lightning or something if one of the patterns actually made a picture though you couldn’t help looking for them (habit probably, or not being in the right mind-set for the Moorish influence), beautiful by moonlight.

He’d got into the habit of tower climbing whenever he was ejected from the current residence for Angelus to have both the women for himself, the bastard, and Spike left to cool his heels, useless, frustrated, and furious. So he had quite a collection of towers in his mind to review, since the mood was on him again, though he didn’t have Angelus to blame for it, not even for the fact of being a fucking vampire, since that was Dru’s whim and none of Angelus’ doing.

Nothing worth the name in Sunnydale, not even a church steeple (lots of Mission-style flat) except for Glory’s rickety, jerry-built model that he didn’t like to think about even yet.

Probably for the best, since if he’d had one and tried to climb it, he probably would have fucked that up too. Useless git.

Pacing the alley, he felt Rayne at the edges of his mind but that didn’t signify, he wasn’t interested in that at all now, not even his demon, that was embarrassed to have been so easily sucked in for something that was only in the head, fake, nothing real. Sullen and silent within him, temporarily tamed by the lash of his contempt. Fucking bitch, roll over and beg for more, give it up to the first smooth-talker that asked, bloody stupid ugly worthless cunt of a demon.

When Dawn yelled, Spike barely took any notice. Witch would take care of that though vamps were coming from the back of the alley too, both directions. He felt it pass through him like the shock of hitting a disinvite--a bubble of force that closed off the alley and the three of them inside it. Opposition couldn’t get through. Nothing he needed to do about it, just as he’d expected. He pitched one cigarette and lit another, recollecting a tower in Prague.

A lance of force pierced the bubble and it collapsed. Grabbing Dawn’s hand and the both of them retreating toward him, the witch remade the invisible wall but it felt shaky now, flowing and changing like a soap bubble. Spike began to be concerned. Then Dawn went down all in a heap and the witch swung around, pale and wide-eyed, and it was a fight after all.

It’d been stupid to toss the axe onto the boxes, being so certain he’d have nothing to do. Should have expected that would be wrong. He went past the Witch and over Dawn in a rolling forward dive, catching up the long band of the bag of stakes, and plowed into the front wave of vamps swinging the bag to back them off: wood hurt, no matter what part of a vamp’s anatomy it hit. Less effective in the sack, though. As quick as he could, he grabbed a pair out and was in business, Willow meanwhile dragging against the nearer wall to put it at her back and casting baseball-sized clumps of glowy stuff at the vamps coming in from behind. Not much power in those, though: the vamps startled and held for a second when they were hit, then came on, not hurt at all that Spike could tell.

He’d taken out three vamps, and that left about ten remaining, and he was only engaged with four of them. The fight wasn’t balancing and he couldn’t cast the choreography, the flow of it, out in his mind. Didn’t matter, he supposed: Buffy and the SITs would be along soon to sort it. Only have to hold awhile, long enough for them to arrive, and afterward didn’t matter.

But the vamps he was engaged with should have swarmed him by now, two were big sods he recalled seeing sometime at Willy’s, but they were treating him like an incidental nuisance, belting him into walls and such but not locking him down for the kill. More intent on getting past him, he thought while hooking a leg out from under one of the smaller pair and stomping the knee before spinning out of what’d been meant as a headlock, with no time to place the stake. When the witch yelled in fury, behind him, he understood: they weren’t after him. They were after Dawn.

It felt like waking up, all over. His demon roused at the insult and even the soul was incensed, aflame with the need to defend, protect. Everything slowed down slightly because he was seeing it all, the true target at the center and therefore all the other motions comprehensible, even predictable.

Being flung into the wall for maybe the fifth time slowed him down a little but he had it mapped now, how to weave the blows, one, two, three, and duck and ease back, spin, take out the last one and be clear to confront the bunch behind.

It wasn’t gonna wait for Buffy, he already knew that, and if the witch couldn’t keep them off, there were enough to keep him engaged while Bit was hurt or taken or whatever they meant to do to her. Go to the fallback, then.

He’d used the alley of the theater as the mark often enough that he knew every inch and had a whole variety of contingency plans formulated and stored. Most didn’t cover this situation, with Bit down and the witch not able to jump the twenty feet to the bottom of the fire escape. So he went with another option, using the relative freedom of not being specifically targeted to get past and haul open the metal fire door, illegally locked to prevent anybody from sneaking in and seeing their crappy movies for free, setting off alarms inside, and that was fine with Spike: the more noise and confusion, the better. He yanked harder and took the whole door off its hinges and slammed it edgewise into as many vamps as he could reach, then flung it flat into the rest. That bought enough time for the witch to drag Dawn inside as the first panicked patrons came the other way, tangling with the vamps just getting themselves sorted again.

Spike shoved and elbowed himself inside with the half-formed intention of yelling “Fire!” to stir things up even more. Instead, some weird freak of habit made him lift an arm and yell, “Here!” as he backed Willow into the angle between the side of the stage and the rear wall and took a stance to guard the corner.

One, and then two, and then another pair, and then five, weren’t running. Hearing, they came to him, the untried ignorant children, veterans of the class, helping keep that corner protected from the storm surge of bodies trying to get out the door all at once. He saw Candy’s erect topknot and the two improving trippers and a couple of other known faces, and when he directed, “Lock arms. Stand,” they did that, swaying as they needed to, to make and hold contact with one another until the crowd thinned, most having headed for the front when the alarms started going off.

With the counter-flow easing, the vamps came in. So did Buffy and the SITs. The children had no business mixing into that, so Spike told the nearest one, “Stand. Stay put,” and dove into the melee.

The SITs had their tasers and it seemed to be settling nicely, with all but two down and then dusted, the SITs fighting efficiently by threes, two engaging and the lead going for the kill, when a new bunch barged in and they were fighting all over the clear area between the first seats and the stage, and some of the children were getting hurt and tossed around, unable to hold. But the tasers were still the margin: get in a charge clean, and the vamp was down, could be tended to later. SITs, they could mind themselves: Spike turned to get the children out of it. Some injuries as he pried them away from attacking vamps and shoved them clear, but that was better than getting their throats torn out. Stupid fucking movie still playing, everything flickering from the change of scenes and angles, screaming on the speakers as some idiot teens or other ran from some lame monster doing about an inch a year and still being overtaken, watch out for the root, oops, same every time, and until he caught the terror in the children’s faces, he hadn’t bothered to think he’d gone game-faced, of course he had, needed the velocity and the sight and the ferocious single-mindedness of his demon, didn’t he, and not about to shed it to avoid frightening teenagers who’d otherwise be so much dead meat.

It was Mike who had the good manners and consideration. Spike stuck to what he knew: direct, bloody mayhem.

And when they had that nearly all sorted, and Buffy coming toward him in the headache-inducing flicker, with the worst possible timing in the world, more reinforcements arrived: that Len and the fledges, who knew enough to veer around Buffy and the SITs but came straight at the children, many of which were deliciously bleeding.

Spike foresaw the awfulness, shaped in his mind as clear as if it’d already happened, and put himself inevitably between, calling, “Stand. Whoever budges is gone.”

But they were only fledges, and their demons hadn’t yet learned to mind them, let alone anybody else. They came on--swift, unheeding, and ravenous. He took the first two and pitched them into the rest, they were dust already by his word except for Mike’s thrift, and he’d carry out the execution himself if he had to. They checked and looked at him, assessing and smelling, and he knew they were thinking of taking him down. He’d taken damage, no hiding it; and the urge to challenge and pull down a wounded leader was instinctual. He’d watched Mike fighting it for hours. He’d done it himself a few times.

Likely he could take them all. That was one way things could go. If Buffy and the SITs couldn’t keep out of it, any tentative alliance she’d made with Mike was done, right there. That was another way things could go.

Spike twisted and broke the bangle. Using the jagged edge, he opened his right arm from elbow to thumb--offering the fledges a third alternative.

They weren’t of his bloodline. But blood as old as his had its own draw for any fledge--for its rarity, if nothing else. And they were his. He’d said so. They had more claim on his protection than the children.

He opened the other arm and stood waiting.

The first one to come was Sue--latching on high, above the cut, and biting deep. Leaving room for two others, farther down. The next was a stupid little fledge, called himself Teddy, really dumb name for a vamp, have to think of something better sometime. After Teddy, a vamp turned later than most, all starved bone and stretched flesh, smell of dirt, smell of paper, books, dirty clothes, floppy ill-trimmed grey hair, and this must be the new Dalton, the former Cyrus Smith, and Mike had no business letting him out so soon where he might get hurt, Spike would have to have words with Mike about that. Vamp Cyrus made wet, humming noises as he fed.

Couldn’t kill a vamp by draining. Might be awhile feeding up again and might well get dusted while he was weak and unable to defend himself properly, but draining alone wouldn’t do it. So once the fledges were all latched on and occupied, Spike didn’t worry about the situation anymore, let the fog roll in however it pleased because what he was doing goddam meant something, it was a goddam transaction, and nobody would get dead from it, so that was all right and enough. Didn’t hurt a bit.

And Buffy, bless her, knew enough not to interrupt.

When the dizziness got strong enough that he couldn’t hold stance and went down, he figured somebody would come at his throat, to do the thing properly. But nobody did, which was odd. Muzzy headed, he found the fledges all backed off and being chewed out by Len and Mike, except for Sue, kneeling maybe a foot away. When their eyes met, Sue said, “I’m yours. To come and go from your hand and by your word. I remember how that was now.”

After awhile he thought of what to say in reply: “You’re mine, Suzanne. You come and go from my hand. I’ll keep you from true death, the best I can.”

Then Cyrus, all bloody-faced and goggling, apparently with a thing for ceremony, came and said the same thing as Sue had, more or less, since he said it in Bensht, a defunct demon tongue, and Spike had to think how to answer him the same, since Bensht was full of glottal stops and awkward to pronounce.

When Spike had made the reply, Cyrus added, “Eternities of language. Thank you for choosing me.” His face practically glowed. Or maybe it was the yellow eyes.

“Yeah, we’ll talk about how great it was you were turned some other time. Now fuck off.”

“Of course, Master Spike.” Cyrus backed off, still on his knees, making way for the next one. Two was precedent: now they all wanted to do it. Fucking fledges, bending to any wind that blew. Now Mike was going at it with Len, who probably wouldn’t be second anymore, assuming Mike didn’t just wring his head off. Mike seemed really pissed off.

Nothing to do with Spike. He didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

Spike didn’t pay much attention, mechanically acknowledging the declarations, until he realized the person in front of him was Amanda. As usual on sweep or patrol, she was in the colors. But it wasn’t usual that the neckband of the tee had been raggedly cut and pulled apart, hanging in a flap in front, baring her neck and part of her shoulder.

Spike said, “You don’t have to do this.”

Amanda glanced favorlessly at the fledges, now all backed off and meek as milk. “They’re outgo. We’re income. We have a bargain, Spike.”

He couldn’t recall if he’d promised or not, so he said, “Hell with the bargain.”

“Doesn’t work like that,” said Rona, coming and hunkering down. Kennedy stood behind her, looking peeved, which didn’t mean much because she mostly looked that way. Both SITs had torn, dangling neckbands too. Spike shut his eyes and tried not to hear their heartbeats. Rona went on, “We’ve been through this all the ways from Sunday, Spike. You said we were in, and this is part of being in. Don’t be an asshole about it, OK?”

“It would mark you,” Spike objected.

“Funny thing,” said Rona, “we all forgot to bring our little tin cups. Have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

And Kennedy said, “Spike, don’t you think we’re marked already?”

Spike couldn’t think of any good answer to that, so he said, “Ain’t given you the weapons practice you wanted.”

“That’s lame,” Amanda commented to Kennedy. “That’s the lamest thing yet. Will you quit trying to find excuses and get on with it? I have a chemistry test on Monday that I haven’t studied for.”

“Buffy?” Spike looked around for her, found her watching with her arms folded.

“We’ve had this discussion,” she commented flatly. “It’s live, it’s willing, and I’m not getting you off the hook here. Do, or do not: your call, Master Yoda. Besides, I’m dessert.” She grinned at him smugly.

Spike leaned in fast, figuring Amanda would flinch and that would be the end of it. But she didn’t. Then he waited for the soul to kick in, give him hell about it. He was vaguely surprised when that didn’t happen either. Apparently donation wasn’t quite as disgusting as feeding that was forced, involuntary, coerced. Done the soul good, maybe, sticking it out in the noplace for awhile: made it a fraction less absolute and unreasonable.

Very slowly Spike let himself lean the final inch, tasting the place a moment, breathing in the sweet skinscent of healthy young girl. This girl: Amanda. Herself and no other. No more than the barest touch needed to break the skin. Then the fast, hot, blood leaping to him, in him completely like an electrical charge or getting drenched in a storm, no part more than another. He was, literally, alive with it. But even more, with the meaning of it. He’d likely said it wrong or maybe hadn’t understood it well himself. But it was the meaning--the care, the gift--that came into him, that sufficed.

When he gently pressed and licked the bite shut, Amanda protested anxiously, “You barely took any. There’s more!”

“You’re now officially a cow, Amanda,” said Rona, shuffling closer on her knees. “Kindly shut up and move away from the loading area. Next tanker’s here.”

“Wasn’t I good? Did I do something wrong?” Amanda bleated.

Out of the center of a great peace and exasperated affection, Spike told her, “You’re perfect, love. Any more perfect, you’d be in heaven for a saint and Buffy’d have her nose out of joint for…well, forever. ‘Tisn’t like bangers and mash here, by the pound, so much to the quid. S’magic, pet.” He wondered if he’d ever truly realized that himself, or if he’d once known and somehow forgotten. Didn’t stink like magic, maybe because nobody had made it. It just was.

Eyes falling shut, he leaned to Rona and tasted the contour of her neck with the bloodbeat underneath and her good smell that was hers alone, nothing else ever like her, and then the deeper taste, and the vibration as her voice gasped, “Oh, lordy!” But she wasn’t afraid, he could taste that, taste it all, the whole of her. Demon considered it would have been better if she was terrified and subdued to it, soul considered it quite fine just as it was. Spike let them have it out between them, wholly in the moment and in no hurry whatever to be done.

When he had it all, all the meaning, he nuzzled at her breasts, then pushed lower. Ah. Taint of cancer in the blood, very faint. Not her breasts: down below, in her woman-parts. He’d tell her later. There’d be time. Or maybe not. Couldn’t depend on time.

Straightening, he touched her chin, made her look at him, all game-faced as he was. “Rona, first thing tomorrow, you get up to the clinic. Buffy, she’ll tell you who to ask for. Nothing real wrong yet, and ‘f you see to it now, there won’t be. Will you do that?”

Now she was scared. Not with a vampire at her throat. Seldom in a fight. Only now. “You’d just nag me to death if I don’t, right?”

“Certain sure. Some things, you just don’t fuck about with, figure if you don’t admit you notice, they’ll bugger off all on their own, like a proposition from an ugly guy. This ugly guy stays till you chuck him out, good and proper.”

“Yeah, Spike. All right. Ken, you’ll come with me, right?”

“I’m the backup, in case the doc gets personal and needs punching out,” Kennedy drawled, theorizing. “I’m always up for a good fight. Have to check my busy social calendar, but I think the morning’s open. Come on, Spike. Things to break, people to do.”

As Rona pushed to her feet, Kennedy knelt down and Spike leaned to her. She was rigid, vibrating, terrified, angry. Anywhere close, he’d have known it. He stopped, sighed.

In a choked, almost soundless whisper, she said, “You are not gonna not do this. Doesn’t matter if you hate it, or I hate it. Not gonna not do it.”

Because the meaning of his excluding her would be wrong. He understood that completely and bit down. Her blood was full of rage and dread. Extremely charged, flavorful. Determination didn’t have a taste, but he knew it was there, past the reach of his senses.

Didn’t take much to have it all. He licked shut the wound he’d made.

Looking him steadfastly in the eyes, Kennedy challenged, “You sending me anyplace? Got a specialist in mind?”

He let game face fade, having no present need of it. “No. S’all right, inside, best I can tell.”

“It is?” She sounded surprised.

“The rest, that’s nobody’s business but yours. An’ knew it anyway, pretty much.”

Easing back from Kennedy, he flipped to his feet and looked around, a little surprised they hadn’t been interrupted, what with the alarms still going on and all. But maybe proprietors in Sunnydale had a sensible reluctance to investigate large fucking melees in the middle of the night. Most likely they’d scarpered, like the rest.

As he’d expected, Buffy was only a few steps off, trying not to glower and looking stiff, sour, and pissed off in consequence. Never would be easy with his feeding off anybody but her, regardless of what anybody paid lip service to. He had the feeling he was gonna hear about this later, from some different direction than where it really was coming from.

“Dessert?” Buffy asked, trying to fake enthusiasm.

“Not just now, love. Bit? You with us?”

“Yeah, Spike. Newest member of ‘I hate it when somebody fucks with my head’ club present and accounted for.” She was leaning on the edge of the stage. Looked a little wobbly and she’d sicked up on the floor, standing on tip-toe well clear of the puddle. Good thing, he decided, to get her away from it.

“Fetch the kit from the van. ‘Manda--”

Still in surly game face, Mike showed Amanda some teeth, warning her off as escort, claiming that position for himself, and the two of them went off.

Spike considered the children. One of the trippers, George, was down and dead, nothing to be done about it. Broken neck, by the look of it. The other one, Andy, was on his feet and had armed himself with a stake from the bag Spike must have dropped sometime in the festivities. The rest were huddled behind, against the front of the stage. Considerable bloodsmell in that quarter, he’d known that before: what had drawn the fledges, that Mike seemed to have sent off, likely to finish their sweep. No present problem from that direction anyway.

Terror sweat coming off them like fog. But they were balanced on a point, waiting. Or maybe just frozen in shock, too many things they really didn’t want to know, all at once and still there, not to be denied or rationalized away.

Spike first thought one way, that it would be best to hang back and let Buffy and the SITs tend to them, judge if any needed to go to hospital, they had a lot of practice with that. Then he thought another way, and strolled toward them, then turned to shove one of the seats open and drop into it, a wide sprawl: not so close they’d take it as threat, not knowing yet how fast he could move when he wanted to. Well within striking distance, every one of them.

“Decent,” he told Andy, “for a first engagement. Wasn’t set up well, though: we took losses. Too many hurt that needn’t have been. But you stood your ground, and--”

“What are you?” Andy demanded, face twisting. “No kind of an angel!”

So Candy, she’d been blabbing. No real surprise there.

“Not hardly. Same as I’ve been all along. The class, and now. Figured to show some of you that side of things…but not yet. And not like this.” As Mike and Dawn came back, Mike toting the big metal first-aid case so that Dawn was absurdly escorting him, Spike went on, “It’s done now, for the moment. Nobody here means you any harm whatever. Get you patched up and sorted, see who needs more tending, who’s mostly all right and fit to go. Then those that want to, we can have that talk.”

Mike opened the case on a nearby seat, and the three SITs gathered in to talk to the children and assay the damage. Dawn plunked down on the seat to Spike’s left to keep him company and try to bruise his fingers with the strength of her grip.

“Not your usual disorganized vamp fight,” she commented, looking straight ahead and talking to the air. “He was ready for us. Each of us and all of us. Didn’t know or forgot about the phones, though. I think. Or we’d have been in deep trouble.”

“Yeah,” Spike agreed absently, pushing out of the chair as Amanda called him to help replace a dislocated shoulder. Buffy could have done it, just as well. But he’d made up his mind: these children were not to be allowed to be afraid of him. So he took care of it himself, afterward moving among them as he was called or needed.

Fed up so fine, he found the blood no distraction, no temptation.

Chapter 16: Renewals

Soaping Spike’s shoulders and back, Buffy had a satisfying sense of continuity. Post-patrol shower check was part of the usual drill and one of the pleasanter parts, as well.

The water was cranked up as near scalding as Buffy could tolerate because tired or battered or both, Spike craved heat and craved close, both of which Buffy was totally on board with. Typically he was sleepy and soft and biddable, quietly announcing ow when she touched something sore, identifying the place for monitoring the healing’s progress.

Today his torso was a mass of bruises just coming on, and he had several lumps under his hair that she found by touch and determined had quit bleeding; there were probably broken ribs, and he showed general evidence of having been considerably knocked about. About par for daybreak on a Sunday morning. With good rest and feeding, everything would likely be 90% healed by nightfall. But Buffy still liked checking. All that warm, wet skin and her fingers identifying the muscle knots for later luxurious kneading. All that comfortable and accustomed intimacy.

She had a banged-up shoulder and a sore foot some clown had tramped on. The usual. She always appreciated the warmth and closeness too and had been known to do him either in the shower or on the cold tile floor with its famous small skating rug: shiversome but urgent and satisfying. Slaying generally left her wildly turned on, and Spike would be there and always interested: one of the benefits of having a vampire lover.

Similarly, if Spike hadn’t burned off enough energy, his checking out her injuries would turn rowdy and randy, leading into sessions of hot shower sex done in frantic haste to beat the chill blast that followed emptying the water heater. But this morning he was quiet, accepting whatever it pleased her to do to him, and that was always good too.

It seemed months since they’d performed this customary small ritual. Buffy had missed it, and him, desperately. Since it was plain the opposition could now locate him no matter where he was, the point of staying away was gone. He’d made no objection to coming back. That interval was done, the soul back in place, and Buffy was heartily glad to have it so. Glad he was finally home and wholly hers again.

She bent her forehead against his back while the shampoo washed out. Then she went up onto tiptoe to murmur, “Let’s get dry. Then I want to do some loving on you.”

Spike didn’t respond except to cut off the water and step out of the enclosure, bending to collect the oversize towels. She loved him sleepy-eyed, with his hair in an untended tumble. After minimal drying came robes and a quick scuttle from the bathroom to the bedroom. Buffy had cranked the electric blanket up to the max beforehand, get the bedding all toasty. As soon as he’d shut the door, Spike shed the robe and slid under the covers with a soft hiss of satisfaction. Buffy paused to pull on lace-trimmed babydolls because she never was comfortable naked, and she liked feeling she looked nice though she suspected Spike would like her just as well slathered in mud, peanut butter (though not crunchy-style--that hurt!), or nothing at all.

When she padded toward the bed, Spike rolled over and opened his arms for her. But his eyes were still tired, not full of glee and mischief, and she shook her head, bending to the bedside cabinet and pulling a zip bag out of the drawer. She’d had Mike bring down the whole pill stash from the factory, and he’d patiently sorted the pills by color and told her what each color meant so she could label the bags. The red-and-white capsules were the pain pills. She picked one out with thumb and forefinger, then sealed the bag again. “Nuh-uh, Crash, the deal is that I love on you, you don’t get to do anything.” She leaned with the pill and a glass of water she had ready on the cabinet, and he took them, eyes uplifted, not bothering to check what kind of pill it was.

He’d mixed them into a complete muddle, she thought. He didn’t like what happened to him being all that predictable. Hurting, he wouldn’t have known what kind to choose. He needed her.

The thought made her smile, setting the glass aside.

She’d already decided that with both his forearms jaggedly sliced from wrists to elbows, play with the silk scarves in the bottom of the cabinet wasn’t on the menu. Some hurt was fun; some wasn’t. And this was for him: her welcome, her praise. So she started with some general cuddling and petting, kissing slow and wet and thorough, until she felt a little of the bracing release and his eyes hazed over, wide and deep. The pill had kicked in.

“Headache?” she asked softly.

“Bit of one, yeah,” he admitted, sagging back even more bonelessly, gazing at the ceiling.

No wonder, with multiple concussions--all those lumps.

So then she admitted to the sore foot and turned around, head to toe, to let him work those muscles with his strong, clever fingers: he liked to do for her, and this was something he could do without exerting himself. “Left shoulder’s bad, too,” he mentioned after awhile. “Come back up here, an’ I’ll see to it.”

She lifted her head to look around. “Nope, I’m just fine and comfy here,” she commented, returning to what she’d been doing--playing with his personal “dangly bits,” as he called them. He was aroused, of course, but not specially interested. She stretched the well massaged foot and rubbed the side of his face with it.

Enough foreplay, she decided. Time to get down to the main event. Nosing into the wiry pubic curls, she began giving his shaft the serious lollipop treatment with mouth and with fingers. Though he’d certainly felt what she was up to, there was a big indrawn breath of startled reaction, held too long.

His abs went rigid. He was not enjoying this. But he hadn’t said anything to stop her, either.

She lifted her head to look again. In the faint light through the new windows, he was braced up on his elbows, head thrown back, eyes shut. His beautiful chest and his face were all piebald with the full bloom of bruises now: purple shadows cast by no light. His hands were fisted tight in the bedclothes. Buffy scuttled quickly around to kiss and cuddle him, asking, “What?”

He shook his head.

Buffy tried to ignore the idiot keen of He doesn’t want me! Doesn’t want me! that her insecurity instantly started whining. Babble, though, was harder to stop. “It’s OK, we don’t have to, if you just want to sleep or something, it’s OK, I just wanted it to be good for you, easy, I could--”

He pounced her. All of a sudden she was flat on her back and being unceremoniously entered, hard and fast, and the sudden gulp of surprised breath was hers. His face, over her, was intent and almost angry, inward-focused the way it sometimes was when the play had been rough and he was all wound up with it and turning loose. Good times too, though. The babble became the noises he wanted and the incoherent encouragements, she’d been aching for him nearly forever, and she could do sudden role changes, dancing the new dance with him because finally it was all the same dance, the shock and turn and pressure of them-coming-together in all the weathers they could be, serene or stormy.

He was done before she was, and she wasn’t surprised. It’d felt like it would be like that. After a minute or two of collapse, he had his face bent into her neck, shuddering and sobbing and saying hoarsely, “Sorry, sorry,” arms everywhere as though he wanted to hold her but had forgotten how or didn’t dare, and the next minute he’d be flying--down to the basement or even out the door, just had to move when he was this wound up. She grabbed his face, held him still a second, wrapped both legs around his thighs and locked at the ankles. “Wrong side,” she told him, and he just blinked at her, not taking it in. She turned her head, offering the right side of her neck. “Go for the mark. Remember: dessert?”

There was the familiar slight grating of the bones adjusting, fangs elongating. Then his weight shifted, heavy upon her, and the good pain of his biting into the scarred flesh of the claim mark. Instantaneous rapture. All sensation magnified manyfold. The ecstasy of deep communion obliterating awareness of anything else. The joy of being wanted, needed, and sufficient to so great a need and hunger and knowing it was joy to him, too. The perfection of Slayer and vampire, sufficient to one another and at last satisfied and still.

Dozily content, Buffy pushed fingers through his hair and then stroked his shoulders. She couldn’t have said how much he’d taken. Not a lot, though. Enough. When he’d had what he needed, he stopped. The mark itched and tingled with its renewal.

Kissing his again fangless mouth, she whispered, “You home yet?”

“Nearly. Working on it. You…all right, love?”

“Fine. Very fine. Rest now: we have all day.”

She held him until he slept, until they both did.

********

They’d all slept late. Stumbling downstairs about noon, Dawn found Spike in the front room, sitting on the floor in front of the couch and staring in the direction of the TV, currently showing an infomercial about some device to remove disgusting stuff from carpets. The gadget had a piston action, and she hung around a minute to see if there’d be a slogan Bounces as it sucks. But there was no such memorable bizarreity. Wandering on to the kitchen, she drank a glass of extremely cold orange juice that sort of woke her up, then took the paper plate of hot toaster pastries back to the front room and settled down next to Spike.

It was very nice to find him there and she’d missed him, what with him being away and her being away, but he’d know that so nothing had to be said about it. Cracking off an oozy corner of pastry and touching her tongue to the filling to see if it was edible yet, she asked, “What’cha not watching?”

He looked around lazily. “Dunno. Some crap or other.”

“Are we bored yet?” Deciding the corner was sufficiently cool, Dawn dropped it into her mouth and chewed.

“Dunno. Too shagged-out to tell.”

By mutual agreement, Dawn didn’t ask how literally he meant that and Spike didn’t offer details.

The carpet tool was now making farting noises: the infomercial people were looking at it admiringly. Dawn and Spike reacted with similar expressions of incredulous repulsion, traded a glance, and by mutual agreement pretended they hadn’t been watching the hopping obscenity at all. Only the truly bored and insane would watch such a thing; only the immature and moronic would find it funny.

Spike mentioned, as a lame excuse, “Thought there’d be cartoons.”

Dawn commented, “Computer graphics have ruined everything. Too lifelike. No fun.”

“Right about that. No bloody imagination.”

The companionable silence returned.

It was as though they were underwater, she thought, and floating among tall, stirring weeds. Everything slow and languid, coordinated to the flow that carried them both. But not easy with each other, the way floating things should be: Spike was holding himself carefully separate and moved away when she started to lean on him.

She knew what would be great for that and raced up to her room. Returning, she dumped the bottles and tissues and the separators that were like pink foam brass-knuckles, on the rug. “I have indigo,” she announced, setting the bottle upright. “Also black, if you want to be a pig about it, as per usual.”

“Yeah, all right,” he decided eventually, muting the TV sound, then laying the controller aside.

She worked the separator between the toes of his right foot and set seriously to work. Since he hadn’t specified, she chose the indigo: almost charcoal-dark, but with a slate tone that also came through. While his toes were drying for the second coat, she straddled his knees and offered her fingers for being done in violent chartreuse. He did the first nail meticulously, then set it aside on the shelf of his forearm to do the next one.

The undersides of his arms were healed smooth again, she’d noticed. And the other bruises were on the yellow-brown side of green and fading. As he finished a second finger, she lifted her hand to brush pensive fingertips along the freshly unmarked back of his left arm, hand to elbow: where the tattoo that meant Dawn had been. Then she obediently set the fingers back on the right-arm shelf without needing to be told.

“Do tattoos hurt?” she asked.

He hitched a shoulder without changing the precision of the brush strokes. “Some. I expect. Was asleep pretty much the whole time, if you must know. Stings awhile, after. Though you wouldn’t have to soak it in vinegar to have it set, like a vamp would. Thinking of having yourself done?”

“Might. Sometime. How’d Rayne get it off?”

“Dunno. Don’t recall.”

Noticing how his face tightened, she dropped the topic and went on about where tattoo designs came from, if you could search them on the Web, what custom designs cost--was it by the inch or by the color, and were all colors available, and did some cost more than others?--steadily getting more and more comfy in each other’s space. When she leaned forward to inspect the job so far, and her hair was in danger of sliding onto her hand, Spike casually smoothed and held it clear until she straightened, and that was good.

She was perched on the couch and Spike was stretched out on the floor, doing the toes of her first foot propped in the separator, the two of them in a fanciful argument about which new musical instrument needed inventing and what it should sound like, when Xander came in, sliding a high but narrow rectangular box over the sill--another new window, no doubt. He’d been doing two or three a weekend, as they arrived from the manufacturer, fitted with the special glass.

Catching sight of them, Xander stopped, doing a take.

“We’re toe bonding,” Dawn announced regally.

“Don’t wanna know about it,” Xander responded, letting the box rest and setting hands on hips, above his tool belt. “Just clear out, OK? Because this is the big baby, the front window, and the sun’s coming in here for awhile, and that could be poof time. Unless of course you want to practice your new trick, fangless, in which case, you can help get the plywood off.”

“Ruin m’nails,” Spike declined, displaying the back of his one completed hand with its indigo nails and flipping Xander the two-fingered British “bird” in the process. Dawn giggled, and Xander only pretended to look insulted. Spike and Xander were working on finding their comfortable distance again, too, Dawn thought, carefully collecting what Spike would call “the doings” into overall pockets and the fold of a bent arm held tight against her ribs.

After a consultation of glances, they reconvened the toe bonding outside, in lawn chairs dragged into the patchy shade of the big maple. While her second foot was finished, Dawn looked wistfully past the hedge: where Casa Spike had been. She missed the shaded porch and the lazy summer mornings there, with all two-dozen plus SITs doing exercises and drills in the sunlight and she and Spike steadily carving stakes and chatting about nothing much, just being happily in each other’s presence in the part of their day that overlapped, she just awakened and he slowing toward sleep after the night’s patrol or fighting or whatever, casting a critical eye at the SITs and calling a comment or correction from time to time.

“It’s too chilly out here,” Dawn announced suddenly, wrapping arms around her. “No, stay--I’m only gonna get a sweater or something, I’ll be right back.”

But she brought more than a sweater, carefully assumed to avoid smearing the polish: she brought an armload of the drooping lengths of rough pine 1x1 stock Xander supplied, nobody asked from where, and her own sharp knife and a paring knife from the kitchen for Spike, whose genuine Sheffield folding knife had gone somewhere in the events of the summer. Dawn knew fine blades were made in Sheffield because Spike said so.

Dumping the wood, Dawn explained, “That sack last night was about the last. We’ve been…otherwise occupied, and there was nobody to fill in. Do your other hand, though, first.” Settling on the empty facing chair and pointing to her knee, she uncapped the indigo polish and began work when Spike obediently set his spread fingers where she’d pointed. After a few fingers, she asked offhandedly, “You haven’t nagged once about my anchor. Why is that? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Been thinkin’ about that.”

“And?” Dawn prompted.

“Still thinkin’ about it.” Spike had his head bent, so she couldn’t read his expression. “Need me a new knife, I guess. Get one up to the mall, there’s a store there. Buy it, even. You could come with. If you want.”

“Well, be a little offhand, why don’t you?” Dawn responded, brandishing the brush in a threatening manner. “Supper?”

“Sure, why not.” After a moment’s thought, he added, “Have to ask Buffy for her card, though. Mine’s gone west.”

“A lot’s gone west. Now that the soul’s back, and you’re back, and I’m back, it should feel the same. It doesn’t, though.”

“Need a new cell phone of my own, too, now I think of it. Way it is, I’m clear out of the loop: out of touch with everybody, everything that’s going on.” It was clear he knew, as she did, that they’d begun cautiously treading the edges of the dangerous ground, because after the seeming digression, he swung right back like a shark: “What’s doing now, between you and Michael?”

“None of your business. I’m seventeen now.”

“Michael is mine, and that makes it my business. And last I knew, you were mine. ‘Less that’s changed, that makes it my business from the other end, too. An’ I expect you know why Rayne wants you. What qualifies you.”

Dawn’s head made a quick, embarrassed bob. “I know: because I’m a freakin’ virgin. Magically pure and potent, and channel besides for quite a lot of energy for anybody who can take it, or that I’d give it to. Glory’s gone but I still have my Keyness.”

“Yeah,” said Spike quietly. “And I’m kind of wondering what you mean to do about that--the part you can change.”

“I’m thinking about it,” snapped Dawn tartly, giving him some of his own back. “And when I make up my mind, it won’t be you I tell.”

“Never expected it would be. That’s for you to choose and say. Never wanted that from you. Except that while, when I’d marked you….” Spike looked up at her then, the blue eyes piercing and steady, making her hold completely still. “Don’t. Not till this is all over and settled, anyways.”

“Why?” Dawn challenged.

“Because all the players are in place now. Where and as they need to be. I can feel it. Makes the right shape in my mind, like lining up a pool shot. Can’t explain it any better than that. You consult with the Lady, if you want, if you can. She’ll say the same as me.”

“But…he was in my mind, Spike! And I couldn’t do anything! When I tried to throw him out, I just fell down, I couldn’t do anything! And I don’t like him, he giggles--”

“Don’t like him neither,” Spike cut in, making the habitual cigarette-getting gesture for about the fifth time since they’d come outside, each time aborted or changed into something else. This time, he reached out and smoothed her hair, then cupped her cheek. “Can’t promise you won’t get hurt, Bit, but that’s what you signed on for when you latched onto me, the way you did. An’ you know that. May need to risk you like I’d risk myself. Figured you’d be up for that, ‘f we talked it through first, maybe.”

And never, she thought, but didn’t finish the thought. And never…. Wringing her neatly en-greened fingers in an agony of uncertainty, perfectly aware she was being addressed as an adult and not wanting to fall short of that, she blurted, “Will it hurt him? Hurt him really bad?”

“Bad as I can contrive. Figures, Rayne does, I’m just a mutt moron. Pretty, maybe, and nice for a toy for a day or a few but not much of a tool except I can work the Stone. And he’s got other ways for that ‘f he needs to. But I’ve been thinking.” Spike sat forward in his chair, frowning thoughtfully, hands folded on his knees. “Lady, she pushed and she nagged, but she’s never forced me to nothing, never. And whenever I put out my hand, she set power in it, as much as I could handle or understand. She sent the amulet, guided Red an’ Demon Girl to it, same as. Sometimes she can’t stand me…but she’s always respected me. Always left me my choice. If she’s pulled out now, it’s because she figures everything’s in place that needs to be, to end this. And she don’t care to do things direct, barge in and force events. Ain’t got the fine touch for that, I expect. Scale is too small for the kind of thing she could do. Like trying to hit a fly with a mallet, knock down the wall. Seems that’s how Powers are, or we’d all be flat, long since…. Instrument. That’s what she’s called me. And so long as we see the same and want the same, I got no objection to that. Won’t be her dog, run to her heel, bay at her moon like some…. But seems as though she’s prepared to put up with that. Settle for what I’m willing…what I can give. Not so much, maybe, as I thought. But I see this lining up, like I said….”

“Spike, nine tenths of that was utter nonsense,” Dawn mentioned, perfectly fairly, “and the rest was vague to the point of uselessness. You know that, right?”

Spike tilted his head and gave her a slow smile. “Let me tell you about this tower there was, one time, in Northumbria. Had ivy on it so thick, there were whole stretches you couldn’t see an inch of stone. A bit nasty in the wintertime but this was October, still warm days and the trees roundabout a riot, lots more trees then than nowadays, go for miles and miles and never see anything else. Anyway, we were up there because Herself had taken some notion or the stars had told Dru staying where we were was bad luck, or some such nonsense, nobody explained it to me because nobody ever did then, s’how it was--I wasn't but a fledge. Now then, Angelus, he--”

It wasn’t often, anymore, that Spike would spin her a tale of the bad old days. Maybe he figured she was now old enough. Or he was.

He’d made it completely clear it would be impossible to drag him back to the point. So he was cracking the one-inch stock into stake lengths with his hands and regaling Dawn with the unsuitable, gruesome, perverse part when Buffy came out onto the porch, looking around under her hand. “Oh, there you are,” she called, and came toward them. “What’cha doing?”

Holding out her bare green chilly toes for Buffy’s admiration, Dawn said, “Spike is being incredibly non-PC and I think I’ve been blinded with balderdash into promising to die a virgin, but I’m not entirely sure, it was all so philosophical and like that.”

Buffy did a blinking take, pushing a sheaf of uncombed blonde hair off her shoulder and not-so-incidentally revealing a freshly swollen and reddened mark low on the right side of her neck. “Well, I was only gonna say, I’ve invited Giles for supper. He says he has news, so I thought we might as well all hear it together….” Her voice trailed off uncertainly. Face twisting, she demanded, “Die what?”

Dawn and Spike traded a glance that meant Mall now and efficiently separated to collect the necessary.

**********

At a junction in the pipes nearest the factory, Spike set the parcels down and had a solitary cigarette before going further. Buffy, that was one thing, she’d never live to grow old, never die of a disease, and she had that Slayer healing thing going, near as good as a vamp, repairing all damage, both obvious and subtle. But Bit, now, that was a different matter. Coming back into this reformed body, she’d been given the option of continuing always exactly as she was: seventeen because she said so and the right date had rolled ‘round. Said that was what she wanted and had fixed on, but Spike didn’t know, there seemed some wavering from that direction lately. And anyway it seemed an Elvish kind of immortality, like that Arwen Evenstar--eternal youth, sure, but only if they stayed out of harm’s way. Knife or a fall off a roof, drowning, fire, that sort of thing, that’d kill ‘em just like anybody. Spike didn’t want to be the one to put that to the test. Decided he wouldn’t smoke anymore around her, or any of the SITs, or basically anybody with the habit of breathing.

Been a pariah, he had, for the past decade or so. Nothing new, just one more reason to mind what he did around the humans, that were so fragile it scared him sometimes. That would be where his unlife was, far ahead as he could see. So begin as he meant to go on.

Stubbing out the butt, he got the parcels together and put them into the shopping bag, which he hadn’t bothered doing before, then walked the rest of the way. He stopped at the ladder to announce himself, and the sentry up above was a fledge (that Toby or some such stupid name) who dithered and then let him come, though of course he didn’t know the password. Unsatisfactory. Spike set down the bag and belted him as soon as he was clear of the hatch.

“You go by what you were told. Let just anybody past, you won’t last long.”

“Knew it was you, perfectly plain,” the fledge protested, from the floor. “Smelled you, and--”

“That don’t signify. Anybody don’t say the password, an’ you ain’t been given a go-ahead in advance, you leave the hatch locked and yell for somebody else to make the call, if you’re not sure.”

“But I was sure!”

“Shut up. Tell Michael I’m here.”

The fledge looked, if possible, even more nervous. “But he’s…busy.”

Cocking his head, Spike made out raised voices from out past the barrier wall. Mike and…Kennedy, it was, and the fledge nervous of approaching, afraid of becoming collateral damage. Spike told the fledge to carry on, and left the bag by the hatch. Passing, he noticed the Dalton in the office, bent over the computer, but getting things sorted with Mike had to come first. Find out how the lad meant to play things, then make the hand-off in good order, plain, where everybody could see.

Or there’d have to be a fight, which was in nobody’s best interests.

The two of them, arguing, were out in the open space, everybody else backed off or up in the rafters: staying well clear. Kennedy had a clipboard and was waving it about, looking as though she’d try to swat Mike with it any minute, absolutely within Mike’s striking distance, which was dumb, but maybe she’d forgot to take such things seriously in her time with Spike. So that would have to be sorted, too.

Arms folded to not just swat her, Mike was glowering and looming, like he did--Angelus’ get, after all: same demon, and like calls to like--and spending much too much time and attention on whatever was wrong between him and Kennedy, considering everything else going on. Should just deal with it and go on. But that would be for Mike to learn and not up to Spike anymore.

Mike flicked him a glance as he approached, but it took Kennedy longer to notice him. When she did, she wheeled around (that put Mike, unwatched, at her back, and that was wrong, too) demanding heatedly, “Spike, am I some kind of concierge, goes with the place? Did you give me away and not tell me? Where does he get off, giving me orders?”

“Getting that sorted now. Michael, I’m claiming the SITs for mine. Slayer’s, actually, but mine as far as here’s concerned. Marked ‘em, now, so that’s how it will go. You need ‘em for something, you go through me or the Slayer, either one. Oh, an’ I lessoned your sentry on the pipe ladder, and I shouldn’t have. Yours to see to, how that’s set up. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s all right,” Mike responded slowly, watching him steadily, accepting the awkwardness of what they were doing.

It was mostly the fledges, Spike noted, up along the rafter-beam. Showed sense: when there was a scrap, no matter who between, it would be the fledges that got hurt first.

Spike had been most of the day working up to this, how it should go. Going to the mall first, that had been good. No issues of dominance, ever, between himself and Bit. Got himself some fresh plain T-shirts, black, nothing special, but Bit, she’d enjoyed choosing them out for him. And got herself one of those wash-off marker tattoos of a star on her cheek, all pleased with that. Lovely and quick and shrewd and glad-hearted, she’d done a lot to settle him down to the unheard-of thing he was doing and had meant to do all along.

Scratching an eyebrow, Spike went on, “Came up to collect my bike. Few other things. On account of I won’t be up here so much. Got other things to see to. Except where I say directly, whatever Michael says, goes. You all, you go by his word an’ his authority. He’s got that already pretty much settled, I expect, but I don’t want anybody in any uncertainty whatever that he’s who you have to mind. Anything I want done, I’ll relay through Michael. Like about the sweeps an’ all. This place, an’ blood deliveries for the fledges, that’s all set up now like it should be. So now Michael, he has the running of it. So I can tend to other things, like I said. You got any problem with anything, you go to Michael with it, or whoever he says. You hear that, Huey?”

“Hear you, Spike,” Huey answered, from back by the wall.

“Then that’s sorted. Michael, this all suit you?”

Mike knew what this was: a thinly disguised abdication. Kept any change of expression off his face; but he smelled sad, and uneasy.

They both knew Spike’s role as titular Master of Sunnydale had to continue--neither Mike nor his regime would survive without it, without Spike plainly seen, and felt, to be in charge. But for Spike to cede to Mike the day-to-day running of things, and to thereafter defer to that delegated authority--to another Master on his own ground, among his own people--could be an acceptable compromise, not requiring a fight to publicly settle the dominance.

“Sooner you stayed,” Mike said wistfully, and likely there was some truth to that. Not a lot, but some.

“Can’t. You need me for something, you know where to find me. An’ ain’t real eager to run a Supplice d’Allégance on you, Michael. Don’t neither of us have the time for that. Just have to trust you to be true. Like you have to trust me. Hell of a thing.”

Mike nodded, acknowledging this terrible state of affairs, for vamps to have nothing more reliable than trust to keep them from each other’s throats. Blow that in a second, generally.

Glancing at the rafters, Spike added, “Sue, you come down, follow along. Keep clear of Ken. Ken, you come along, too. Michael,” Spike said, strolling toward the barricade wall of big, dead machines, “there’s a couple of people I need you to keep boarding, ‘cause I ain’t got a place for them yet. But I want the use of them. Answerable to me. Sue, here…an’ the new Dalton. Need ‘em for doing my stuff, not be thrown out on sweeps or other risky stuff. Long as they make their manners to you and don’t start trouble, you let ‘em be, all right?”

“Got no trouble with that,” Mike allowed. “Spike….”

“Later,” Spike directed, as they passed through the barricade.

Dalton, or Cyrus, was cranky today. For one thing, he was a brand-new fledge, and the blood ration was late today, and Kennedy was human, and though he knew he was forbidden to go after her, that barely registered. Second, if he couldn’t have Ken, he wanted Spike. But Mike was his sire, and Mike could beat him down and make him mind, and Spike sent Ken farther away, outside the glassed-in enclosure, and stood in the doorway himself while Mike enforced the necessary discipline. Spike noted that they both kept carefully clear of the computer, which normally Spike wouldn’t let any fledge get within falling distance of. But a Dalton without his materials was useless.

Curled on the floor, Cyrus rubbed his bleeding nose and licked the hand, reporting, “That is truly annoying. Does that continue any considerable time, Sire? Master? Bizarre, uncontrollable urges. It’s almost like being a teen-ager again. A time I loathed.”

Spike set a hip on the corner of the desk, looking down sympathetically. “Lasts till you can make it stop. Years, for some. But you look at Sue, here: turned just a few months ago, can control her demon pretty well if she keeps her mind on it. Michael, he’s your sire, he’ll teach you what he can, what you need.”

“I could find nothing online,” complained Cyrus, pushing to his feet, only a little wobbly after a beating that would likely have killed a human. “Only some ridiculous mysticism. Master, I have nothing to do. I don’t have access.”

“An’ you ain’t gonna have, neither. Ain’t gonna give you my log-in or passwords. But I’ll pull up enough for you to work on, offline, an’ have Red set up an e-mail account for you. When you get a piece roughed out, send it on to me, and then we’ll work on it together. Maybe there’s some way we can do that live, from different locations. Current piece is Russian…that’s the location, anyway. Some ice demons, six hundred years or so back. Cognate with Cyrillic, anyway--using that alphabet, close enough if you can make out the sounds of it in your head. How’s your spoken Cyrillic?” Talking, Spike had slid behind the desk, logged in, and was downloading the first document from his own personal directory in the Watcher Database. When the download commenced, he got his glasses out of the second desk drawer and put them on, so the screen resolved for him without squinting.

“Wretched,” confessed Cyrus, looking ashamed and worried, like he thought he might get dusted for not knowing every language extant and all its cognates. “All but non-existent. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it spoken.”

“Well, skip that first one, for now,” Spike said, considering the list of alternatives as the first download finished, “Go for the one titled ‘Concerning Urns’ that’ll be second down.” Spike clicked that entry, starting the download. “And lose the contempt for the mysticism real fast, because what you’ll mostly be translating is spells, and a good third to a half of ‘em work. So don’t say ‘em aloud. Never. You clear on that, Dalton? Or Cyrus, whatever--”

“But that’s magic!” Cyrus protested, in a scandalized tone suitable for referring to pornography.

Looking up, Spike pointed out, “You’re here. You work it out. What d’you want to be called?”

The fledge put a thoughtful forefinger to his lips. “I gather that’s the sire’s prerogative, to say how his get is to be called. But…. I gather that Dalton is more a function than a person. Is my impression correct? Because no one other than you and my sire has designated me so.” Off Spike’s nod, the fledge continued, “If given the choice, then, I’d be ‘Cyrus, the Dalton,’ to honor my predecessor and preserve continuity.”

“Fine,” said Spike, who could possibly have cared less, but only with an effort. Starting the third download, he absently sent Sue to collect his bag and, when she brought it, flipped a plastic-wrapped cell phone and its boxed charger stand onto an open part of the desk. “This is yours. Keep track of it. Michael will give you my number. I have this one. Once we get rolling, we’ll likely talk or pass stuff back and forth at least once a day. This is the whole reason you’re here, so this is where all your attention goes.”

“I understand,” replied the Dalton formally, folding his hands in front of him and bowing his head in acknowledgement.

They left him unwrapping the charger, joining Kennedy waiting near the wall of machines. Going toward her, Spike was keenly aware of his mark on her and realized for likely the first time ever, his basic reaction to Kennedy was liking, not barely-controlled irritation. He felt proprietary toward her. She was property, accessible anytime he chose. He knew exactly where he stood in regard to her, and all that had been complex and difficult was rendered simple, comfortable, and direct.

That Kennedy would have no such changed feelings toward him was pretty much a given. But it was easier on his end, anyway, which counted for something.

He put his glasses in their case and slid the case into a pocket. “Kennedy, you don’t have to come up here anymore. Ain’t gonna be here myself, and ain’t gonna need…whatever it is, you been doin’ for me. I need you, I’ll yell. The rest of your time, it’s your own. Get you and Michael out of each other’s faces. But there’s a thing I’d like you to do. You and Sue and Rona and ‘Manda, if she’ll go for it. The three of you, if she can’t, some nights. Run your own patrols, those places you’re most likely to find fledges just rising. Stake ‘em or not, I don’t care. Main thing is to find out who turned ‘em. Since I took over as Master of Sunnydale, there’s been more fledges than adult vamps by something like a factor of four. Somebody’s making a real business of it. I want to know who. Appearance ain’t likely to do much good: at the time, humans are so locked into being scared and their first sight of game-face, they’re not taking in much. ‘Less they’re told, most vamps don’t know who sired ‘em. Location’s useful, though. Time of day, maybe. Were they come at from the left side, or the right? Was the vamp taller than them, or about the same? Did the vamp say anything? When you get started, you’ll think of other things. Sue, you’re point and lead. Kennedy, you plan out the patrols and take notes. Rona’s for third, or however the three of you decide to sort it.”

“I’m lead?” Sue asked, quivering and excited. “And I get to go out? Every night?”

“You all three of you know the drill. Should run well together. Soon as possible, Sue, you set your mark on the other two, but separate--one to look on and call ‘enough,’ case things start getting carried away. Then some other night, the other. It’ll keep ‘em safe from you, calm your demon down toward them. You’re let off all other patrolling and sweeps to do this, all three of you.”

“I don’t think we need ‘Manda for this,” Kennedy reflected. “Three’s a good number, and ‘Manda has her midterms coming up.”

Sue said, “Ken, you gonna have a problem about me at lead? Or me covering Spike’s mark?” Her voice ascended to a strangled squeak at the daring of it.

“Oh, I imagine we’ll work something out, if you’re past the acute bitey phase,” Kennedy drawled, and shifted the clipboard to hold out her hand. When Sue cautiously took Kennedy’s hand, the shorter, dark-haired girl drew her in and hugged her, murmuring, “Welcome home, Sue.”

The two SITs went off with arms clasped around each other, so it looked to Spike as though that might work out all right. “They’re gonna have some sort of Scooby thing,” Spike said to Mike, at his back, “tonight, after dinner. Sit in, if you want. Eight or so. Or I’ll relay back to you anything I figure you’d want to know. Whatever you say.”

Mike laid a big hand on his shoulder and turned him, so they were facing each other, Mike looking sober and a bit wary. “No way you’re gonna just walk away from all this.”

“Watch me,” said Spike flatly, lighting up now that the human was gone. Looking around at the big dark space and the lit cube, he went on, “Hate this place, near as much as Harris does. Hate being here. Hate doing this. Having to think it all out, every second--not just do. Schooled myself to it awhile, but it’s itch and misery and drought to me an’ always has been. Never meant to keep it. Just to get things settled an’ regular, so you wouldn’t have more to contend with than you could handle. Always meant it for you, Michael.”

“That was the watch,” Mike guessed, pulling it from a pocket and considering it.

“That…and other things. And already, things have changed between us. Always have been changing between us, from the first. Ain’t gonna walk off on you now. Give you whatever space you want, an’ you’ll need it. But don’t want what you got. Not even a little. Slayer, she’s what I want and what I mostly have, as much as I ever will. Come down to it, she’s why I made this--to give her the space she needs. And a living place, not a devastation…or a battlefield. Thought I could see it farther along, tried to, but….” Spike shrugged. “Peace you made with her, working together on things, each respecting the other, that’s a fine thing. So maybe it was just as well I made such a mess of it all, so you had to go past me to keep it all from coming apart right there. Dunno. S’how it was, anyway.” Spike dropped the butt and stepped on it. “You’re welcome at Casa Summers anytime. Come through the pipes, call, and somebody will let you in.” Pointing, Spike added, “And you hurt Bit, I’ll still tear your head off, quicker than looking.”

“Could try,” Mike responded, with a slow, spreading grin. “But there’ll be no need. You taught me right: no Dawn, never no more, that ain’t an option here.”

Spike had his own ideas about that, but wasn’t gonna voice them to Mike. “Got to get going now: she’s waiting for me to collect her.”

Glancing at the bag as Spike picked it up, Mike surmised, “Mall parking lot? I’ll come with. And she can pick who to ride pillion with.”

Spike’s expectation of Dawn happily holding on, arms around his middle and warm cheek against his back, began to fade. He let it go. Her choice. Always had been. And he and Bit, they were another thing and always had been, too. Not as though she still bore his mark, after all, and well that was done, it would have been a nightmare and Buffy would never have stood for it. Made him faintly sick, even imagining it.

“Then let’s get gone,” he said, heading for the outer door.

“She always hates it if I make her late for dinner,” Mike agreed, rolling into step alongside.

**********

Dawn found it an interesting meeting, not least because everybody was there: all the original Scoobies except Oz and Cordelia, if you counted Cordelia, which apparently nobody did. Oz was missed, though, as he had been at Giles’ going-away party.

Anya was all proud of having talked the Chamber of Commerce into funding a Downtown Watch, which funding would go direct to Spike, Inc., on condition that the streets were patrolled from sunset to sunrise, every single night. Most of the downtown merchants, having seen a conspicuous upturn in evening business since the sweeps began, had agreed to pitch in under the impression they were subsidizing a street gang, which in a way, they would be. That the street gang weren’t human and hunted in their free time, the same as other vamps, were facts Anya hadn’t considered it necessary to burden the Chamber with.

Since no overhead and no wages were required, the weekly take would have been quite substantial, but of course it was protection money in all but name, which incensed Buffy and horrified Giles and Xander, and Spike and Mike had to try to explain to Anya that (1) trying to stop downtown hunting completely would provoke a general riot; (2) there weren’t enough vamps in the colors to cover even most of the downtown 10/7 or so; (3) Spike wouldn’t authorize it and Mike wouldn’t do it because it left no open time for the important vamp activities of drinking, fornicating, and brawling; and (4) all in all, it was far too much like actual work to go down well with the troops. They’d be angry and bored, and angry, bored vamps tended to do things not on the Chamber’s list of approved activities.

While Anya sulked at her under-appreciated commercial coup, Giles diplomatically suggested that the matter be tabled for now and reviewed at a later date.

Then, with diffident and unhappy resolution, Giles dropped his bombshell: no more tribute blood. Apparently some Council operative in France had heard about Spike’s claiming the title of Master of Sunnydale on the international demon grapevine. From that to the red-on-black recruiting website was no huge leap. And it had all unraveled from there, almost instantaneously. Nobody ever claimed Council intelligence (in the sense of spying) was bad--after all, they’d been locating and identifying Slayers for centuries--or that the Council was stupid. But few had ever had reason to claim the Council was altruistic or generous, either. A portion of the Council had seized Giles’ absence to ram through a nullification of the grant to the notorious (and evidently active) vampire, William the Bloody.

Spike went ballistic. Worse than when the tribute blood had been offered in the first place. In graphic terms he listed all the reasons he hated the Council, itemized starting a century past, with their willful misinformation about vampires, and continuing through to the present, with their barbarous, niggardly, authoritarian, treacherous, obtuse treatment of the one treasure of which they were the inadequate custodians: the Slayer. On his feet, at the top of his voice, spinning and slicing the air with bladed hands, punching it with furious fists.

Not even Buffy could get in a word edgewise.

“Hate the fuckers! Worst thing about the First, it wasn’t thorough enough by half. Slaughter a few dozen Potentials, blow up the bloody ugly Georgian architecture, but leave as many of those gits standing as they offed. Try to accomplish something, set something up that could last, God damned fucking vipers cut the ground right out from under you first chance they get! Miserable penny-pinching pissants!”

Still blazing, Spike flung himself away down the hall. The back door in the kitchen slammed thunderously as final punctuation.

Willow offered shakily, “I think Spike’s kinda upset.”

Standing by the couch, Giles took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I anticipated he…. But he had to be told. No alternative. He was fair: didn’t assume I was responsible or condoned such…. He’ll manage. He always has. A setback, true, but not…not utter disaster.”

“So,” said Xander, leaning against the wall, holding a can of beer. “What do you guys think of the new front window?”

Mike’s phone buzzed. He rose to get it out of his pocket and stood with it held to his ear, thoughtfully frowning, and was in Buffy’s way when she started to go after Spike. So Dawn bolted in pursuit and slammed the door behind her too, scanning the dark yard from the porch. No Spike. Then she smelled cigarette smoke and slowly followed it diagonally across the grass until she was standing under the big corner maple.

She heard Spike’s voice murmuring quietly and looked up until she located him: about halfway up in the tree, seated astride a branch, back against the main trunk. The coal of his cigarette disappeared, and there was a tiny beep as he shut off the phone.

Dawn performed a slow clap. The next thing she knew, she’d been grabbed under the armpits, lifted, and plopped side-saddle across the branch, with Spike perched next to her, farther out the branch, holding her until she found her balance.

“What gave me away?” he asked, cheerful and companionable.

“No, it was a very convincing rant,” Dawn assured him. “Reduced Giles to incomplete sentences, even. Just the small problem that you already knew. Had to.”

Spike chuckled. “Rona called, little while ago. Just after we’d got back. I’d left my new number on their machine. Hospital wouldn’t fill her standing order or whatever the hell they call it because the last invoice had been refused. All worked up about it, didn’t know what she should do. Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em all, the bastards.”

“Then why the tirade?”

“Don’t need ‘em anymore, the great galumphing gits.” Angry, Dawn had noticed, Spike sometimes ran to promiscuous alliteration. “Would only have added it to the fledges’ ration anyway. Not gonna give ‘em the satisfaction, though, knowing how it’s actually fallen out. Knowing I’m off the dead stuff altogether, an’ Buffy, she’s all right with it. Goddam honorarium, pat on the fucking head for being a nice harmless bloody lapdog of a vamp, grateful for their charity. Knew it wouldn’t last. Never depended on it. Bloody back-stabbing parsimonious wankers.”

Spike was truly angry and stirred-up, Dawn decided, although not to the extent he’d pretended. He added moodily, “Nothing they do toward me, now or that before, signifies anyway. It’s how they treat Buffy, or try to, that drives me spare. And what she’s got rightly coming, I pry out of ‘em with the translation. Now I got that Dalton, get that caught up in a week or so. Can put in the time on it now, if Red will let me use her laptop, nights when she don’t need it. Till the kitty’s built up, get the mortgage paid off an’ all that, and what Harris has been doing, get the house right again….”

“If you’re through with your theatrical snit, shouldn’t we go back inside?”

“Presently…. Bit, told you might be I’d have to throw you into something, risk you like I’d risk myself for a good enough reason. You still game for that?”

Dawn felt her breath catch, and every bit of courage she had seemed to drain out through her dangling toes. “Yeah, I guess. What are you throwing me into?”

“Gonna have Michael set up a meeting with Digger. Need to exchange pax bonds for that. Gonna require that Digger put up Rayne. And I’ll put up you. Like before.”

Swinging her feet, Dawn picked nervously at her sweater, recollecting the old frog-faced vamp and the huge stash of indiscriminately chosen candy he’d figured was appropriate for keeping a young girl quiet, not bursting into hysterics at capture and captivity.

“Rayne knows what I am,” she said quietly. “He knows about the Lady. Knows about the Keyness. More than I do, probably. And my…other qualification. Last night…he was in my head. Checking around about this and that. It was me they came after.”

“I know. But you an’ me, we’re the only ones that do. Like to keep it that way.”

Dawn nodded slowly, seeing it. “Mike, he’ll have a fit. You haven’t told him yet.”

“Not sure how he’ll jump, when I tell him that part,” Spike confirmed soberly. “Not a good time to be at odds with Michael--still too much unsettled there. Need to get it squared away with you, first. So you can help get Michael to go along with it. Let on it’s just the same as before and you’re not worried about it. Even if you are.”

“Buffy?”

“Believe I can manage Buffy. So long as you can stay steady about it. But it’ll take the both of us to finesse Michael, the way things are.”

“Is it? Is it the same as before?”

Spike took time lighting a cigarette, then made an annoyed noise and pitched it away, down on the grass. “Don’t expect it will fall out that way, no.”

“Gonna tell me why?”

“Can see the shot. Where the balls need to be. Matter of balance, angle, force, reaction. How they hit, how they’ll bounce.”

“In other words,” Dawn deduced, “no.”

“That Rayne, he’s got too much access for me to spell it out much, even for myself. Just feel it, see it shaping and coming together. Thing is, he looks but he don’t see. ‘Cause he don’t know the proper value to put on things. Doesn’t know what it means, that I’d risk you and you’d agree to be risked, just on my word. Doesn’t know what it means, that Rupert would set everything down to come back…before that Rayne had dragged me off to a place I couldn’t come back from. Doesn’t know what it means that the Lady will delegate what she wants done, keep to the limits she’s set herself.”

“Doesn’t know,” Dawn cut in, remembering Giles’ warning, “what it means to have the Triune Goddess fully arrayed against him. So the precautions he’ll take are the wrong precautions. His staff is too long and he’s digging in the wrong place. But will he accept being surrendered as a hostage to the meeting? A pax bond? Could Digger make him? Because Rayne doesn’t know vamp ways.”

“A chance to see Rupert again, and gloat, and preen, and Rupert can’t do a damn thing about it? He’d fight for the chance.”

“I’ll do it,” Dawn decided. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ll do it.”

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