Blood Rites
by Nan Dibble

 

Chapter 18: Splints and Patches

Buffy sat up abruptly in bed, roused not by motion but by the comfort and homeness that was Spike's body against hers gone rigid with his absence, exactly like being in bed with a day-old corpse. She turned and held him, shook him. "Spike, wake up! It's nothing, a dream. It's OK: wake up!"

Finally, he stirred and blinked at her: not altogether believing, not altogether back. His hand lifted to trail fingers down her cheek, wonderingly. "Buffy." Then his eyes shut and he was shuddering in the dream's aftermath. But it was OK now. He was awake, knew himself with her. He would come back on his own now. Buffy held him through the deep shuddering.

"What was it?" she asked eventually. "The Hellmouth again?"

"Dunno it's the Hellmouth," he responded, turning his face into her collarbone, tasting there. "Dunno. Only burning. Just...burning."

The force of her fingers sliding vicelike up and down the tendons of his neck would have been painful to anybody but him. But it was always him, and she better than anyone knew the power of true dreams--the ones that came strongly or often. Spike had them now, maybe had always had them, but she could deny that for him because she was outside and looked from a different place. "You won't. I've got you."

"So you have."

"It's OK," she insisted.

"If you say so." He didn't sound snarky or sarcastic--only vastly exhausted, too resigned to argue. He placed a kiss on the hinge of her jaw, then rolled away to sit on the bed's edge, absently fisting his eyes. "You go back to sleep, love. I'll muck about awhile."

As answer, she leaned forward, clasping him around the middle, her cheek against the flat of his shoulderblade, breathing warm against his skin the way she knew he liked. She loved the back of his neck, seeming always vulnerable to her, in need of her fingers' support and reassurance. Her right hand lifted and resumed stroking there, thumbing the last of the stiffness and working it away.

"You'd have done that," he said after awhile. "Gone to be the pax bond. On my word."

"You helped with the class. My thing. I want to help with yours. The Slayer is a weapon. But I'm yours. All the way back and all the way forward."

He turned and held her hard, arms tight and fingers digging in: a force of holding that would have hurt anybody else. She felt it as a seizure of claiming. Not the body but what was inside the body reaching out, trying to touch the like part of her that was singing I'd do anything, go anywhere, to keep this connection. You are the whole of my desire.

Because he'd begun breathing, he knew it, heard it, even though she never had the right words or never could say it right except by silence, by touches, by the white-hot ferocity of loving him from moment to moment.

He tasted at the mark, his tongue wet and cool--somewhere between wanting to bite down and wanting to heal it. Give her back to herself, whole and independent. So she bit his shoulder to say No, I don't want that, and felt him change against her. The thickened brow, the fanged mouth. The subtle shift of muscle and tendon all through him that was his demon, which she also loved and which loved her, all passionate, all urgency. When he needed to love her like that, she met him always with all her unacknowledged hungers, trying to force away all thought of befores and afters, to be wholly in the immediacy of the now, waiting with a separate suspense for the other orgasm of the bite. When it came, the fulfillment of his nature and her only chance to wholly surrender and satisfy her yearning for death, so she had no need to seek it elsewhere anymore, only with him, only this vital connection, she drifted a little while on the joyous rapture of it.

She supposed she'd slept, because she woke. Alone in the bed, warm under the blue duvet, all untidiness smoothed away, with early light through the safe windows. Full of well-being and bodily happiness...and starving. She pulled on pajamas and a robe, used the bathroom, then went quietly downstairs. Light from the den made her surmise, and she leaned past the doorway.

Spike was working at Willow's laptop, frowning through the glasses, hair all askew as though he'd been plowing his fingers through it, in his usual indoor costume of T-shirt and jeans. Completely intent and absorbed, she thought: like a student methodically, frantically studying for final exams. Behind him, the window was bright with morning but had no power to hurt. The whole house was safe for him now and he'd made it so.

He'd been moving away but all the while preparing to come back and be with her here. Not everything had failed. She should tell him so, make him know it.

"Morning, love," he said distractedly, keys clicking rapidly. "Just need to finish this last piece, then it can get sent. An' that's the mortgage, and another month's feed for the fledges. If there's any left in need of it. Michael, he trashed the computer up at the factory 'fore he left. So I'll have to impose on Red's good nature, to have the use of this one awhile longer."

"Dalton tell you?" Buffy inquired, leaning on the doorway.

He shook his head. "Sue. Called from Rona and Kennedy's place. Was patrolling with them when Michael started taking things apart. Laired up there, she did, when she caught wind of the bust-up and so stayed clear of the executions. Dalton, he's gone. Michael made him and unmade him. Likely for the best, considering. Likely should go up there later, see if any of the equipment's left. Got that class tonight. What'd Anya say: civic center now?"

"I think so. I'll double-check with her when it gets to be a civil hour."

He was being all factual, dispassionate. So maybe it didn't matter to him too much, the collapse of his regime. Buffy hung in the doorway a moment longer, watching Spike and considering, until her stomach growled audibly. She needed juice: lots and lots of juice. She pushed away and headed for the kitchen.

**********

Phone to his ear, talking and listening to Giles while pacing the downstairs hall, Spike absently rubbed his chest every now and again. The ache where the taser had hit him was just to the left of center. No mark, anymore, but a steady deep soreness. Right where a stake would go. Directly over the heart.

Appropriate.

Mike had been moderate, considering. Hadn't wanted a full-out dominance fight, only wanted to put him down as fast and economically as possible. Had clearly figured Spike was gonna flash out at him, sooner or later, and come prepared. Thought it all out beforehand, the wanker, all cool and deliberate like his true sire, Angelus.

No fair chance to settle things, fight it out. Just put him down like a dog that'd got just a little too annoying--swift, almost casual. Like you'd swat a fly. Then trash the factory, spend the rage on that instead of face to face, hand to hand.

Holding the place that hurt, Spike was telling the Watcher, "You and Red, you cobble something together. Likely have a good couple hours' custody of the bloke. To try to turn him from this, or find a weak place, or just keep him locked down that long."

"But you have no power base," Giles' voice responded, sounding embarrassed. "Why would Digger agree to meet with you now?"

"Brag. Get off on it. Don't care why the hell he does, so long as he does. I'm still standing. He still has to deal with me. Setting it up, that's my lookout. Your job, and Red's, to make good use of the time."

"Tomorrow, you said."

"Yeah. Red says the best time for another full-out try at opening the Hellmouth will be Friday--midnight or noon. Conjunction of planetary influences, footie scores, the price of fish, I dunno why the hell then, just what she says. So the meeting has to be set back from that, and one spare day for maneuvering room. Tomorrow, that would be good. Daytime. That will put the swap of the pax bonds belowground and it's more controllable there. I'll give you precise times in a little. I'll catch Red after her--"

The phone gave a little twittering signal. Holding it away and glaring at it, Spike recalled this one had the deluxe package, caller ID and call waiting, on it. Raising it to his ear, he said, "I'll tell you when I know. Got another call coming in here. Talk to you later." Squinting, he located the tiny button that ended the current call and picked up the other. "What?"

"Spike," said Sue's voice. "We're by the tunnel door."

"Who's we?"

"Me, Rona, and Ken. Huey. Couple others."

"Put Rona on." Spike waited until Rona's voice said something, then cut in, asking, "You go to the dentist, like I told you?"

"What? You never told me to go to no dentist! What you going on about?"

That wasn't Rona scared or Rona sly: that was Rona reacting normally to a bizarre question. So likely it was OK--she wasn't under duress.

Rona was continuing, "Went up to that clinic, me and Ken, and they said--"

"All right," Spike interrupted, pacing, hand lifting to his forehead, trying hard to think it all out, if he should let them into the empty house. Sue didn't have an invite, far as he knew; Huey surely didn't. But Mike did, and it hadn't been revoked. And he wasn't altogether sure of Mike's intentions anymore. Might use the others as a stalking horse, be waiting on the other side....

Then he stopped thinking about it. There were just too many maybes for him to pursue them all. Made him feel everything was about to dissolve into impinging Cubist colored shapes and spaces devoid of meaning. "All right, go to the junction nearest Revello and Brown," he directed. "Meet you there."

A wary dash from shade to shade took him to the sewer lid at the corner and so down. He lit a cigarette and paced, hearing their approach along the reverberant tube long before they took the final bend and came into sight, three abreast. Sue, of course; and Huey a step or two behind, and Mary, that he hadn't expected, all of them in the colors; and behind them, the second rank was comprised of tall Rona, grim-faced Kennedy, and that little twerp Toby or Tony or whatever the idiot's name was--the one Spike had lessoned about messing up on sentry duty.

No sign or smell of Mike. So Spike guessed it was probably all right and no more than it seemed. Maybe.

The closer they got, the slower they came, the SITs embarrassed and uneasy and the vamps politely looking at his chest, or aside, so as not to present a challenge. All except Sue. Heedless of manners or subtlety, she came on into touching distance, already talking, something about fledges. She went on sudden pause when Spike said neutrally past her, to Huey, "Come about the bounty, have you?"

The lanky vamp's long, creased face was blank enough for poker. "Nah, not worth it. Anyway, Digger's adjusted that somewhat."

"Yeah? What's it now?"

"Two cents."

"That so."

"Yeah."

Spike didn't know what reaction Huey expected and found he didn't care. Too much work, trying to puzzle out things like that. No immediate threat, so Huey no longer registered: Spike switched attention to Sue. She went off pause, running on from where she'd left off.

With the SITs chiming in now and again, the gist seemed to be that they'd gotten a handle on the fledge factory. Came on a couple of vamps holding a human, a cow--multiple bite marks; weakened but not dead--in a corner of Elmhurst cemetery. Doing nothing. Just waiting. By a fresh grave. Waiting for a fledge to rise. The cow therefore brought to feed and thus subdue the ravenous fledge...and then be turned and buried for later collection, etcetera, repeat at will, and like that.

They'd backed off and gotten into a whispered argument, Sue and the SITs, whether to dust the whole crew, minders and new-risen fledge, and rescue the cow, or to check back with Spike and let him call it. But they couldn't get him on the phone.

"Yeah," Rona put in, "you're real bad about that, Spike."

"Otherwise occupied," Spike responded.

"Yeah," said Rona, much muted. "We heard about that too. Afterward."

Resuming her tale, Sue explained that by that time, the fledge had risen and the cow been consumed and interred, not just dumped, which had given them the assembly line concept of how the thing was run, all methodical and thrifty, not have to dig a new grave every time. They had the what but not the who, since Elmhurst was in District Seven, under a vamp named Winslow: not on Digger's ground at all. And Kennedy had been determined to find out if Winslow had contrived this all on his own or at somebody else's direction.

So they'd followed long enough to see the fledge delivered to one of the entry-points to Digger's warren.

"So they're for Digger," Sue concluded. "But we still couldn't get hold of you, and I wanted to take down the two resurrectionist vamps, torture them a little--you know, for information?--before we dusted them, but Ken said no, we should leave them alone, give no sign we'd caught on, and while we were arguing, we ran into Benny. Not Big Benny but Little Benny Blackhead from District Two by the water treatment plant, you know, who ate the twins last week? Anyway, word was out that Mike was on the move and not doing the sweep, everything open for the taking, and first we were scared that Mike had done you and we didn't know what to do and Ken said I could lair up at their place, and then this morning Huey called so we knew about the factory, so we all got together to see what you wanted us to do, and here we are!"

In her rattled exuberance, Sue reminded Spike for a moment of Harmony. But Sue was a much cooler, shrewder article than Harm had ever been. The two SITs bore her mark and subtly deferred to her--most noticeable in acerbic Kennedy: all quiet and watchful, not saying much, which mostly wasn't her way. Sue had come up in the world, from pure random fledge at everybody's mercy. Her holding to the mission despite Mike's breakaway, and her mostly benign assertiveness, showed she had no intention of losing what she'd gained.

Huey commented to Spike, "If Winslow's doing it, chances are good they all are."

"Yeah," Spike agreed. And the fledges channeled to Digger, who had the experience and the space to supervise them. In under a month, a pocket army--stupid, reckless, and undisciplined but fierce and strong in their numbers, and Digger more than able to replace losses. Like the mass attack thrown at the theater.

"And you're telling me this why?" Spike inquired of Sue, letting the process of lighting a fresh cigarette show how bored he was with the whole topic.

Sue and both SITs looked taken aback. Then Kennedy pointed out curtly, "You said to find out. We did."

"Full stop. Well, that's just fine. Now you can go on about your business."

"What business?" Kennedy shot back. "What are you gonna do about it? About Mike? About the sweeps?"

Spike stuffed hands in his pockets, turning away, singing softly, "'For I'm to be Queen of the May, Mother, I'm to be Queen of the May!'"

Because there was damn-all he could do about it, and probably fuck that up too, and he didn't care where the hell they went or what the hell they did, they couldn't be on his side because he had no side to be on and he wanted very badly to kill something and present company wasn't necessarily excluded, which would be such a disappointment to them, considering the high expectations he'd pretty much required that they have of him.

Just too fucking much.

Behind him, Sue sang out, "I'm not going back to Digger!"

Didn't trust Mike to favor and protect her there, with his own status so iffy and uncertain: quite plain. Sue was looking out for Sue, and the other vamps almost certainly the same. Looking for advantage, protection. Not a gnat's worth of altruism or loyalty in the lot of them. Vamp normal. Right now, Spike despised vamps. Never wanted to see another one. Good thing vamps didn't reflect in mirrors or Casa Summers would be awash in mirror shards.

"'For I'm to be Queen of the May, Mother, I'm to be Queen of the May!'"

But he still had the fucking meeting to set up, and he'd lost his go-between. Fist on his chest to contain the hurt, Spike halted at the ladder. Then he made himself turn back.

Didn't matter who he picked to set it up. Any one of 'em would do.

**********

Dragging home from school, Dawn plunked down on the porch steps and dug her cell out of her backpack. Making a wincing face, she turned the cell on. It didn't ring. She slumped and rubbed her eyes. When she'd waited several minutes, she sighed and punched in the number. She got the automated message that the other cell was either out of range or turned off.

Praise Alexander Graham Bell, it seemed Mike had finally wound down enough to sleep.

It had been a lot like incoherent early-morning Spike-O-Grams, only worse. Mike must have called her over twenty times, generally right in the middle of classes, some of the calls less than a minute apart as some new blurt occurred to him. She'd mostly mollified the teachers by claiming an ongoing family emergency and been allowed to leave class and sit outside the door to listen to the current rant. Most of the time, they were both crying, which was good: gave credibility to her excuse. When a teacher wouldn't let her leave, required she turn the cell off, it would ring the second she hit the hall at class change and turned it on, and there would be Mike again, emoting all over her.

That was how he was, how he did--she'd learned that, over the past months. All cool and impassive, distant in person and in a crisis. But afterward, he'd come unglued and demand to share that with her as long as it took for him to settle again. Maybe because he was an Aurelian, she thought--they were all a heaping mess of emotions. It just came out differently in each of them. Spike was most likely to erupt into violence; Mike dissolved into a puddle of self-pitying goo. Angel, she gathered, brooded.

And Mike's hurt was real: Dawn couldn't distance herself from it. Appealed to, trusted, wanted so desperately, she couldn't disbelieve or deny him, even when it was a nuisance.

She'd thought at first that Mike had appointed her the custodian of his humanity--that that was the attraction, her appeal for him, other than the mark. But she'd come to suspect that the cool reserve was his humanity: if she'd met him before he was turned, that was all she would have seen, all he'd have let her know about. Maybe all he'd have known about himself. He'd been a mercenary, after all. She now thought it was being turned that had loosed all that in him, inhibitions destroyed; and for any vamp to admit such vulnerability to another was pretty much suicidal. Absolutely Not Done. After events brought them together, he'd turned to her in grief or confusion and found himself not rejected or ridiculed. Now he trusted her to extend her sympathy anytime he needed it--pretty much blind to her circumstances or how it affected her, with a pretty typical vamp blindness. But he made up for it with kindness and steadfastness the rest of the time, so she didn't grudge him his blowouts, any more than Buffy grudged Spike the occasional mayhem committed on furniture when things got to be too much and he exploded. Vamps were not real big on repression, and in opening up to a human, no face was lost. It was safe.

In a lot of ways, it was true: Mike was six. Not a fledge anymore, a Master, even, but coming into what probably would continue to be a stormy adolescence, in vampire terms.

Being a teenager herself, Dawn could generally imagine his side of things, even given the warp of vampire nature. She felt for him. She couldn't have shut him out even if she'd wanted to. When the calls came, she answered. And listened. And cried.

He was relieved, and miserable, about finally resolving the unbearable tension between him and Spike. Usually so politely spoken, he was profanely furious at Spike for even considering using her that way, putting her into obvious jeopardy, and furious at her for being fool enough to go along with it. He knew she, Spike, and Buffy were very angry with him for putting Spike down and thus ending the alliance but as he'd told her repeatedly (and tearfully), there was no other way to play it. Couldn't go along with risking her, couldn't stand still for a thing like that. So he'd done what was necessary. But he hated being back under Digger's thumb. Being, at base, a gentleman, Mike didn't offer details, which only prompted Dawn to imagine the worst of Spike's non-PC tales of the bad old days and the unsavory range of vamp domination games.

The bottom line was that Mike had consigned himself to a circle of vamp hell to prevent her having to go there. Dawn found it extremely hard to be angry with him under those circumstances.

So Mike had consigned himself to a circle of vamp hell to prevent her having to go there. Dawn found it extremely hard to be angry with him under those circumstances.

He had to be rescued. And Dawn had not the least idea how that could be accomplished. Have to have Spike help her figure that out.

Putting the phone away and heaving a great sigh, Dawn went inside and heard voices in the front room. Giles and Willow were talking, serious and animated, Giles on the couch and Willow cross-legged on the floor, open books and sheaves of notes strewn around them. Spike was sitting in but mostly silent in the big chair in the back corner, with the slightly glazed stare that meant he'd been doing pills to stay awake through the day, mechanically rubbing the place on his chest where Mike's taser had hit him.

As Dawn crossed the room, she realized they were discussing preparations for a meeting with Digger. Which was obviously still on. Which meant she was gonna have to go after all.

Feeling everything in her sink and go cold, Dawn turned on her heel, fled up to her room, and slammed her door behind her. As usual, she didn't think anybody noticed.

**********

The notice Anya had put up for the class's new venue had named the inconvenient hour of six-thirty--right in the middle of what generally was the supper hour at Casa Summers, though conveniently right after closing, if you were Anya. Which very few people were, Buffy thought sourly, changing into exercise gear in her bedroom. She'd picked up an electric green unitard and thought she looked pretty pert and bouncy in it because it showed absolutely every smooth curve and Spike was gonna trip over his tongue when he saw it. And she'd done her hair up in a sort of pony-tail fountain secured by so many pink and orange scrunchies it couldn't possibly fall out, she'd probably have to cut the scrunchies off afterward, which would result in a sexy cascade so that was all right too.

She might have been fired but she wasn't gonna be shabby, picking up with the class where she'd left off, sort of, because an open vampire attack, a couple of deaths, Spike in vampface, and some grievous bodily harm had intervened and that might produce awkwardness. Maybe nobody would be there, paying for what they'd once had for free. Maybe there'd be scads, all curious and wanting the answers Spike had vaguely promised them.

Either way, it was obviously Spike's job to sort and therefore nothing Buffy had to worry about.

At the head of the stairs, Buffy called at Dawn's shut door, "Supper's gonna be a little late, so don't stuff yourself on junk." Though she got no reply she figured Dawn was in there--the radio or CD player was warbling rhythmic female angst--so she added, "You can get your homework done in the meantime."

On that virtuous thought, Buffy bounced down the stairs and stopped by the hall table to collect her bag, car keys, and wallet.

Willow and Giles appeared to have finished their conference because they were gathering up the piles of notes and stacking the books.

"Are we all set for tomorrow, then?" Buffy asked.

Seeing her outfit, Giles raised a Spocklike eyebrow, saying, "I believe we're as prepared as we can be," and Willow went all frowny and worried-looking as though she thought that wasn't nearly prepared enough.

"Stay if you want," Buffy told Giles. "Supper's after the class, and I'm thinking we'll bring back pizza."

"No anchovies," Willow said at once.

"Will, when was the last time I got anchovies?"

"When Spike answered the door in game-face, practically gave the delivery boy a coronary, and we got the wrong order."

Buffy shrugged. She'd forgotten about that. "OK, no anchovies. Giles?"

"I think I'll forego the pleasure," Giles replied absently, sliding a stack of books under an arm. "I have some calls to make and a bit more research to do. Willow--"

As Giles proceeded to make reassuring noises at Willow, Buffy switched her attention to the chair by the weapons chest. Spike was sprawled out nearly full length, as though propped on an invisible diagonal plank: legs straight and ankles crossed, arms folded protectively over his chest, and head thrown back--not noticing her or anything. Plainly out of gas, stalled, and inert. Dropping onto one knee by the chair, Buffy poked and joggled him until he opened a dim eye.

"Saddle up, Tonto." She jabbed knuckles into his shoulder lightly as she rose. "Class."

"Oh. Yeah."

Leading the way to the front door, Buffy prodded, "Like the outfit?"

"Look fine, pet," Spike responded obediently, patting his pockets.

Disappointed, Buffy commented, "A new start. So I thought--"

Willow interrupted brightly, "Mistrust any enterprise that requires new clothes," looking mysteriously pleased with herself until Buffy shot her a blank look. "Henry David Thoreau," Willow explained.

As Buffy grumped, "That's a downer, Will," Spike muttered something that sounded like, "Distrust." Looking around at him, Buffy asked, "What?"

"Nothing. Got no fags. Have to stop, get some."

After a quick glance at Spike, Giles got a pursed, quizzical expression, inquiring, "Prepared for another siege in the Venusburg?"

Flicking a return glance, Spike twitched a scowl. "Shut up. Dunno what the hell you're talking about. Let's get going here." Passing Buffy, he snatched open the front door and banged out onto the porch.

After trading perplexed looks with Willow and Giles, Buffy strode after him, collecting a white fiber-fill vest from a hall peg. Fastening the vest snaps and stepping off the porch, she turned right, toward the graveled parking area, before realizing Spike was headed straight, toward the twilight street and his bike. Not an absolute parting of the ways, but a definite divergence. "Spike? SUV." She pointed.

Spike broke pace as though he'd stumbled over something, wheeling half around. He hesitated, then shook his head and kept going, saying something unintelligible about fags and fucking opera.

He clearly figured to take his bike and expected her to climb on behind, to zip off with all kinds of style. She'd planned to take the SUV because the stack of tumbling pads was in it.

There was a moment's stalemate until she offered to stop at a convenience store. Spike capitulated, dumping himself sulkily into the passenger side as Buffy started up.

"Xander helped disassemble stuff," she explained, backing into the street, then looking both ways. "The big stuff that could be salvaged is in his truck. I played lookout and bodyguard, and I took the pads.... The place is really trashed, Spike. Most of the windows have broken panes, and there's lots of water in the back. A cracked pipe, Xander thought. The office has been pulled apart--like somebody played 'She loves me, she loves me not' with the wall panels." She glanced to see how bad he minded. He was staring straight ahead, drumming fingers on his knee. "On the up side," she offered, "it's all bright and airy now."

"Yeah," Spike responded unhelpfully--obviously stewing about something completely else.

Buffy was used to his moods and his irritability, his fidgets and sudden explosions. They didn't bother her particularly. But she didn't like the sense that he was a thousand miles away inside his own head, thinking things he'd given her no clue about. Distant. Shutting her out.

She asked, "He still playing with the Stone? Rayne?"

His head jerked, startled, and he noticed her. "Something like. But no. No fun playing with himself when most vamps are still asleep, hardly notice. Just demons, and hardly worth it, just for that. Expect it will start up presently. No. Not that. Only the usual."

"And what's the usual?"

Spike was silent a minute. "Expect he didn't fight much, letting me loose, 'cause he wasn't ready yet anyhow. Time wasn't right, and he hadn't practiced...controlling things. Time's coming up now. So he's...leaning on me a bit more. In my head. Sort of. There," he said, pointing at the garishly lit convenience store. "Pull over."

By the time he'd gone inside and returned, opening a pack of cigarettes and lighting up, his mood had changed: he was looking around, assessing the dusk more alertly and with less strained gloom.

As he settled back beside her and yanked the door shut, Buffy asked, "Why's this meeting with Digger so important?" as she reversed and pulled out of the parking lot.

"Always got to keep good track of the opposition."

"Specifically, Spike," Buffy pursued patiently. "Worth risking Dawn for."

"No risk. Or not much. Michael, he's there now: he'll look after her, what time she's there."

Buffy ran a yellow light, then jammed on the brakes. Fortunately, not much traffic was moving, and the truck behind her was some distance back and had good brakes. Also a horn, that she ignored. "You set that up!" she accused. "Last night!"

"Never 100% certain how people are gonna jump, pet," Spike responded, which sounded like a denial but really wasn't, she thought. "But I expect he'll be more use to me in Digger's hole, for a bit, than up to the factory. His call. But Michael, he's a pretty predictable lad. Doesn't surprise me too often. So I figured, yeah, that's a likely way it could go. Cost the computer set-up an' a few of the crew, but may be worth it. Have to see." His hand, holding the cigarette, briefly fisted against his chest, then moved back to the open window.

The truck pulled past with shouting. Buffy eased the SUV over to an open stretch of curb. Shoving the shift into PARK, Buffy stated belligerently, "Spike, I'm not stupid."

He quirked a smile. "You're like me, sweet: brain's not your best part, and you think with your fists."

Buffy shook her head hard. "Not that. You think you can get away with things because I don't know enough to ask, or what to ask. Because I don't know what the fricking Venusburg is, or whatever it was that Giles was being ultra-subtle about. But I see you, all closed up in dreams of burning, and I know it isn't right. I'm part of this, and it's Dawn, and it's you, and I want to know what's coming, that you see and I don't."

"Gonna be late for the class, pet," he evaded calmly.

Fuming, Buffy shoved the vehicle into D and pulled out, belatedly checking the mirror. She didn't like it that he looked so drawn and exhausted and she couldn't tell if it was the toll of past trials or in expectation of what was coming. She didn't like his being there but unreachable, opaque, closed to her. She didn't like it that he'd collected only a single pack of cigarettes, not a carton.

After the class, they were gonna have a major talk.

She was not gonna let herself get shut out!

**********

By planning ahead, Buffy bounced out and beat Spike to the hatch. She put her back against it, smiling wide with extra perkiness. "No, you go ahead, I've got this."

"Pet, I can--"

"No, you just go ahead. Take attendance or something. I'll be right there. Really!" She kept her rear pressed against the hatch lock until Spike turned uncertainly and wandered off toward the floodlit façade of the Sunnydale Community Center.

No way was she gonna go in there first, face all those...faces. Assuming there were faces.... Anyway, it was clearly Spike's job to brave the unknown and get everything all squared away before she got there. What he was doing now, right? Advance guard against the universe. She got to lag behind, do the baggage, for a change.

The pads didn't weigh much, but they were stiff and bulky, nearly as large as mattresses: she couldn't fit more than one, folded, under her arm, and it kept trying to unfold, like an ineptly made one-slice sandwich. However, the pads had neat little straps on the sides, she discovered, and she could grab the straps of four together with the pads sort of concertina'd under her elbows, and carry eight, both hands, that way.

Having locked up the SUV with the remote thingy, she got the eight pads to the wide front step, laid them aside to open the door, then pitched them inside in bunches. Somehow, inside, they seemed fatter: she could manage four straps in her right hand but only three in her left. Shrugging, she punted the lone pad skidding ahead of her down a long, lighted hall with doors at intervals on both sides. By each door, a glassed frame contained a curly computer-lettered ad for the evening's scheduled activities. Advanced Macramé was in progress, 6:00-7:00. Beginning Beadwork was empty, didn't start until 7. Nearly at the end of the hall, the ad frame of the door to the left read "Safety Through Fitness, 6:30-7:30." She pushed the door in just enough to confirm yup, this had to be it, Spike's voice and quite a lot of intent young faces, everybody seated on the shiny wooden floor. She leaned the pads haphazardly against the wall and started repeating the process of put-and-take to get them inside.

As she pushed and wrestled the first few in, Andy hustled up to take over the job, which freed her to stand inside and look things over.

Even allowing for no bleachers, the room was much smaller than the gym--about 20 x 40 x 30, as a guess. The long back wall to her left was mirrored, maybe for dance or aerobic classes, and she was a bit startled to realize the dark wall to her right was all windows--so people passing outside could see all the fun things happening inside, obviously. The walls were rough-pitted cinderblock. A wide strip was painted red above the windows and mirrors, all the way around; a narrower strip of cobalt blue ran below. Except for the boundary strips, the scant remainder was white. The room was as brilliantly lit as the inside of a running microwave.

Spike was sitting crosslegged with his back to the windows; the class of about twenty-some were spread around in small clusters, facing him. Buffy found the faces vaguely familiar. Not really listening, she gathered Spike was trying to give a reason there wasn't gonna be any more of the smell, saying the first field trial was over and the results were being evaluated and similar nonsense he didn't seem very interested in or confident about himself. Meanwhile a notebook, likely a sign-in sheet, was circulating from one group to another with nudges and reaches.

"--so don't nobody depend on it," Spike was advising, shoving a hand through his hair so it stood up in crooked tufts. "You take all care, bein' out after dark. 'Cause there's nasties out there, some of you know that now, an' they're not gonna be put off by how you smell. You--"

Somebody raised an arm high. When Spike rambled on without noticing, the girl stood up, demanding, "What was that, at the theater? You said you'd explain!"

Spike shifted uncomfortably, reaching for a pocket and making himself stop. "So I did, Laura. You all look there--in the mirror." As they turned and looked, then turned back, having seen nothing but themselves, Spike waved them around again. "Keep looking. Don't quit till you've seen what you're missing."

It took a full minute before the first one noticed, nudged someone sitting close, and then a tidal stir in the whole room. And when they swiveled back around, variously frowning and puzzled, to report their uncanny realization, there was Spike in game-face.

"Yeah," he said, lighting a cigarette, golden eyes frowned half-shut against the smoke. "I'm one of 'em. That some of you didn't quite see plain, there in the theater with the film still running and all. That ate George and hurt more than a few of you, some still in hospital but most not, I'm glad to see. So there it is, what nobody wants to see or admit, what's invisible-like in the mirrors of your daylight world. But we're there, and sometimes we come in amongst you, mostly in the dark. Look again: there's more than me you ain't seeing. Two of you see each other, you move aside. You don't see your neighbor, you find somebody you do see, and confirm it, then you both move aside. Sheep and goats here."

As Spike smoked, waited, and looked on, the class nervously sorted itself in a series of doubtful discoveries, herding in pairs to Spike's right as he'd gestured them to do. Four at the back remained--plainly there, but empty space in the mirrors, as Spike was. Sue, Buffy recognized. The other female vamp had been to one of the classes--Bea, Buffy thought her name was. Digger's. Then there was a crease-faced, rail thin male vamp Buffy recalled having seen at the factory. He and Sue were wearing the colors. The last male vamp, in jeans and a blue T-shirt, was sitting on his heels with his head bent, fiddling with something. When he lifted his face, all bland and self-contained, it was Mike and what he was playing with was a stake, rolling it between his palms. Probably still had his taser, too.

Buffy jerked forward but halted just as fast when Spike commented, "S'all right, pet. He's our designated spy for tonight, just wants to look on to what we do here, then report back. He's paid up, he's entitled to be here. Might be up for a bit of a demonstration later. We'll see if he wants the fun and games or has something else in mind...." Regarding the class, Spike went on, "So you see, what you see isn't necessarily what you see. Or isn't all there is to see. Sue, you can settle, we're all friends here now."

With a grimace of relief, Sue let her features flow into the vampire mask, producing a strangled, girly shriek from the huddle on the right. The grim-looking skinny vamp, Bea, and Mike stayed in human face.

The point was made: the monsters could look just like anybody, and did, most of the time.

Buffy noticed a number of people doubtfully checking her out in the mirror. The attention made her feel itchy.

"Last I knew or counted," Spike continued, "there were twenty-six kinds of demon living in Sunnydale and I dunno how many other kinds passing through. Lump in the ghouls, shape-changers, marrow-suckers, and other miscellaneous in there too. Most make at least small mischief." He gave them the unnerving experience of a full, fanged vampire grin. That slowly faded and he just stared at them until they started to twitch and shift uneasily. "Most do more. And then there's vamps: like me and that lot there. For which the humans roundabout are the blue-plate special and the dish du jour. 'Cousins,' we call each other. You, we call 'food.' You're in a war zone, children, and you never even knew it, though maybe some suspected something was off. And what you saw in the theater, that was just one of the skirmishes--not even about you. Vamps, we're bad news no matter how you meet us. Coming or going. And going, that's where your teacher, Miss Elizabeth, comes in." He swung around to look at her, his face relaxing into human as he turned, and everybody looking at her, and Buffy understood he really, really wanted to hand it off to her now. Wanted to quit being the chief exhibit of the freaky, scary monster and fade into the unremarkable background.

"You're doing just fine," Buffy assured him.

"Pet, I could get things set up--"

"No, you do this kind of thing so much better than I do," Buffy responded desperately.

"But you had that notion...about an escort service an' all? Time to tell 'em why you began this."

"Spike, it's not time," Buffy protested. "Exercises--" She did a half-hearted jumping jack that sagged and stopped.

"Love, it's what they're here for, to know the why of it. An' that's you. I'll just--" He waved the cigarette, using that as an excuse to unfold and back a couple of steps toward the door, almost tripping over the stack of pads. Then he turned and escaped, leaving Buffy in the mirrored work-out room with about twenty frightened kids and four vampires.

Deserter. Coward. He knew how much she hated standing up in public, in front of strangers! She was so gonna get him for this!

Buffy shifted and took a stance in her beetle-green unitard. Lead foot for direction and rear foot tensed and solid for balance and pushing off, hips slightly turned to keep the knees nice and springy and support a shoulder-thrust, everything ready and poised. Facing the class but keeping the vamps in view as well, knowing that they couldn't reach her in a single leap and that she could therefore take down at least two immediately and buy time to improvise a weapon to deal with the others, assuming all four came at her at once. Unless Mike used the taser.... Mike met her eyes with his usual placid expression, showing nothing of his intentions. Buffy glared, hoping that would be enough to hold him in place.

Head high, she said, "I'm Buffy," and swallowed hard around the boulder in her throat. "The Vampire Slayer."

**********

Looking in through the long window at Buffy lecturing a new set of potentials--potential whats still to be determined--Spike paced and smoked and tried his hardest not to be nuts.

He couldn't afford it. Wasn't time yet.

He understood now. When the foreground blurred and shimmered and all the meaning dropped out and everything disconnected, the relationship of the overlooked background skeins shone with occult, sidewise significance. That was when sometimes, you could see: discern the patterns that underlaid the obvious or the now piece of them anyway and the stretch back to where they'd come from and where maybe they'd tangle and cross further on, in what had not yet come to be.

His best explanation to himself was that he'd finally come into his full inheritance from Dru, bless her, that he'd missed when with her, having to be all sane and present and reasonable to take care of her all those years. Only being forcibly and unwillingly cast loose of sanity had made him begin to see--the dreams, first, and now the not-quite-connections and patterns hidden behind and within the everyday.

Hadn't wanted it and didn't like it, but he'd use it if he could. But it wasn't time yet to put himself at the mercy of the pattern, throw himself helplessly into the weft of what was coming, that he could feel and see but not articulate, any more than Dru ever could: babbling prescient nonsense, naming all the stars the same. Any more than he could have described the potential coming-together click and impact of seeing and executing a complex collision on a pool table, sink the six ball in the corner pocket and move the rest into a useful configuration for the next shot. It just was, and you saw it, and you did it, and it became. Natural-like.

Nuts, but natural-like, all the same.

He was still hanging on. He saw the normal, sane things and could put names to them, mostly. Grass, not the normal kind in the lush childhood parks of home he hadn't realized he even remembered but minute thickets of the mutant stuff they planted here because it was drought-resistant and needed less mowing. Bermuda, was it? Zoysia?

Trees roundabout, a few November, needle-dropping sparse California pines and stinky ginkgoes along the street and those damn mutant Bradford pears that fruited little hard pellets but no matter since the birds still liked them, not to mention the vertical pineapples that were palms, no branches or shade to speak of but native here and not difficult to climb.

No elms anymore, though. Pity about that.

And cement and cinderblock and vast swaths of glass, unthinkable in his youth, the cramped, enclosed panes of the Crystal Palace (that his mum had taken him to, a babe in arms, after it was moved to Sydenham and formally reopened there by Queen Victoria herself) notwithstanding, and plasterboard--drywall, they called it--and he was not being nuts, he was just naming things, insects swarming the street lights and peeping nighthawks swooping the crossways, hunting them, and they all had names and discrete identities and he knew that, really knew that if he concentrated and stayed the hell out of the dreams that tried to flow into everything like a slow wash of syrup, all golden and sticky, and he didn't like that at all because that was the beginning of the burning, that happened when he was all caught up in the pattern, locked into it and all burning and it was terrible and frightened him worse than almost anything.

But that wasn't bonkers, it was just sensible to avoid that as long as he could. Until it would mean something and maybe what it should, that he could feel tingling off in the not-yet.

Reminded, he got the pill vial out of his pocket and dry swallowed two. Should have thought of it before, but he'd been out of cigarettes and then the Slayer wanting to go a different way than he'd seen and that'd distracted him. Do it now, anyway, and presently he'd have the good of it, the stoned clarity that was nothing at all like sleep.

A nice-smelling girl with tight, bright purple skin swooped past on a bicycle, up to the bike rack on the fan-shaped cement apron by the front door. Dismounting, the girl hastily pushed the front wheel of her bike between the vertical rails, then mistrustfully threaded a cable through and locked it. And of course her skin wasn't purple, that was her costume, that showed her tits completely and most of the rest of what she had. Her skin was just skin-colored, except for the sodium lights that tinted everything with yellow.

"Is it over?" she called to him worriedly. "Did I miss it? My stupid brother was late and mom wouldn't dish up supper and then I couldn't find my shoe--"

Candy, her name was. He knew that. A few yards away, she reeked of the smell, that'd been just wishful thinking on his part. A community that wasn't wholly vamp or wholly human but something between, mediated by imposed, magically enhanced significance. Lilies--a smell of formality and funerals. Enough, almost, to mute the smell of live blood, that was their true connection. No use, anymore, pretending otherwise.

But he was fine. Had Slayer blood still whirling in him. He'd be fine for awhile longer. Didn't really want to eat her much. Could still choose and be social to her.

He waved at the long brilliant window. "Still goin' on, you ain't missed it all."

"Is there something bad out here?" Candy demanded anxiously. "That you're here, not there, and all nearly-wingy--?" She flung her arms wide, demonstrating something or other, the girl was definitely odd and it wouldn't be civil to take too much notice of such.

"Only me. You get on inside."

"Aren't you coming?"

Spike demonstrated the coal of the cigarette, and she seemed to understand that, whirling and racing inside to sprint to the light. After a minute, he saw her enter the workout room, all apologies and gestures and bouncing on her toes like Bit did sometimes.

But Bit would be all right, he was reasonably sure of that, with Mike in place now even smelling like he did and both of them, Digger and Mike, making sure Spike knew it, too: little enclosed space like that, no way not to know it, but Mike was a vamp, tough and thick-skinned when it came to such things, he'd be all right and would keep it from Bit, him instead of her, and Mike would be content with that once he understood, Spike was certain. Or nearly certain. Anyway it'd been Mike's call and he'd just have to endure it now, wouldn't he? He'd be all right. Eventually. Probably. Unless Spike had to put him down first, a really bad prospect but one way it could go, once the syrup settled in, locking them all in sickly-sweet amber. Of course, Mike might do him, instead, after Bit showed up: that was another likely scenario, not much to choose between them. Still too far off to make that call.

Spike pressed a fist to his chest, where the hurt was.

Inside, behind the window, like one of the new barless zoos, the children were actually doing exercises now. Warming up. Might get a few throws in before the time ran out that they were scheduled for and had paid for. Tidy sum, actually. Almost enough for a new computer away afterward, that he couldn't see yet, past the burning. No point making any long-term commitments until that was past. Had the current batch of translation (another stupid spell) done and sent in good order, and that would see Casa Summers through the next month right there. Everything had been parked safe in the virtual place that was his own corner of the Watchers' invisible and intangible online library, so nothing vital had been lost with the factory computer. Except nearly all his bookmarks, and he could reconstruct them, given time.

Mike was by the window now, looking out at him with his usual no-expression that Spike currently interpreted as baleful, a straight-on stare. Not an "I'm so pissed I can't wait to dust you" stare, which would have been a problem; more a sulky resentful "Look what you made me do, you rotten bastard!" stare, and he could deal with that.

But not with the smell, that had his demon all alert and wanting more of it, wanting to roll around in it like a dog in carrion. Bait, likely. An undertow of temptation. Spike didn't have a lot of practice resisting temptation and wasn't sure the soul was a strong enough mooring to keep him from it if he didn't put distance and a few walls between.

Vamps were immune to physical addiction. If you didn't dust, all damage regenerated. The same dose was always the same, always enough, which was lucky, considering nearly all vamps had a taste for one thing or another and figured too much of a good thing was just fine. Was that way himself and had never had reason to think otherwise. But something in your head, that was different and hard to ignore. And in the back of his head, always, there was the niggling itch of his connection to Rayne and all that went with that and how wretchedly good it had felt and still felt and would feel again, the minute he turned loose and let it take him. Not a voice or even a pressure, just the awareness that he didn't have to feel so awful, be so exhausted just holding himself in place, be anything beyond the demon and what it wanted. Didn't have to keep trying so hard to be sane and responsible, bring all the names to mind, be the unfitting one in a human world that made less and less sense to him the longer he tried to live in it except for Buffy, of course. And Bit. And sometimes Red or the Watcher, they had their moments of stark clarity to him, bronze and goddam fucking Venusburg, throwing into myth things he felt but didn't think about.

Dru, she'd adored opera, loved the glitter and extravagant emotion of the singing and the music, brass railings and plush seats and private boxes whose beautifully gowned and fancy-dressed occupants you could eat, all unnoticed, during the performance and prop just so, to have the best view of all the portrayed passion howling its collective wigged head off from the stage, so of course he'd had to take her, four continents. Naturally, she specially liked Wagner, they'd done the whole overwrought Ring cycle in Bayreuth in the twenties, the whole Willkommen bei den Bayreuther Festspielen: just moved from box to box and champagne and chocolates in the intervals, living in it and on it like honey, one of those full-immersion type things that seemed as though they could go on forever while they lasted. Damn near fucking was forever, more than a week of it, Woodstock for the lumpenproletariat and postwar half-starved hausfraus with their mended white silk gloves and the fine Damen with their long white arms, the taste of their blood had really been entirely something else.

Buffy had never shown any interest in such. Shuddering, pitching the last of the cigarette, Spike hoped she never did. Altogether too much like being crazy and he had quite enough of that already, thanks ever so.

Angelus, he'd liked opera, too. Might still do, for all Spike knew.

Knew nothing and cared less.

Deciding, he returned to the van, leaning against a nearby bad-smelling tree (ginkgo, most like) because the van alarm would yelp violation if he rested against the side of the van and he really didn't need that now. She'd get him for it, Buffy would, for abandoning the class, making her tote all the pads back when it was over. But he wasn't going back in there, with the sexual undertow of the smell and all the hopeful faces expecting him to do something and the glowering face insisting he already had.

They didn't understand. Best that way, likely. Best, anyway, that he could contrive.

Feeling the pills kick in, all the lights gone glittering and stark, Spike lit another cigarette of his dwindling supply and settled himself to wait.