Chapter 3: Hit and Run

Because it was to be a “hit-and-run” patrol, dropping briefly into three neighborhoods where the highest count of vamps had been found the previous time, Buffy had the bright idea of using the SUV for more hit, less run. She was both pleased and vexed by her ingenuity. Pleased because, although beneficial for slimming, toning, endurance, and wind, a three mile jog just to reach the target area constituted at least 98% of the time as compared with the glittering seconds of slayage. The SUV cut the traveling time down to nearly nothing.

Conspicuously laden with swords, crossbows, battle axes, and so on, she found public transportation not really an option. It was still possible to be suspiciously odd, even in Sunnydale.

She’d never used a vehicle for routine slayage transport pre-First, but (a) she hadn’t carried, then, a mental map of the prime nest sites (from a vamp point of view) that would be claimed by some new pack as soon as they were left vacant by one she’d eliminated, allowing her to target patrols where she was pretty certain there’d be repeat business rather than just wander around at random on the chance of encountering nasties and (b) she’d been too young to drive. Now she wasn’t, and she’d thought of the new idea all by herself. Neat!

A quicker patrol with a good kill count meant more of the night left, with a clear conscience, for the other activities she had planned.

Her annoyance was because she hadn’t thought of it sooner. She’d felt a definite “Duh” moment when she realized she’d set aside the SUV key bundle to open the weapons chest at least four or five times, since too many SIT bodies to fit in anything short of a bus was no longer a factor, before the penny dropped and she’d stared at the keys as the obvious dawned on her.

She figured foregoing public bragging over her SUV epiphany meant she didn’t have to admit to the Duh, so it all pretty much evened out, insight-wise.

Reaching the first location, a neighborhood bounded on three sides by cemeteries--in Sunnydale, realtors called that “green space” and regarded it as a plus--the five of them (Amanda couldn’t make the patrol, pleading excessive homework) went directly from the SUV, conveniently parked, to the target nest site, a crumbling mausoleum.

No joy: empty.

Strolling back toward Buffy, Spike commented philosophically, “Everybody out to lunch, looks like.” He gave the surrounding headstones and monuments a quick, experienced once-over. “Check this one again some midnight, then, when the tossers are home.” He lifted his head, eyes shut, concentrating on what the air told him. “Been here, though: three or four, anyways. Haven’t laid claim to it--just squatting. Fledges, most likely. Probably get rousted by some of Manny’s pack. They’re consolidating.”

Buffy called briskly, “Everybody back on the bus,” and started away before Spike could present any further details of Sunnydale vamp politics she supposed were useful but didn’t want to hear.

Anytime he spoke of other vamps by name, it bothered her. For the charged seconds of an encounter, Buffy thought of her opponents as Blue Check Shirt Ugly or Ms. Ex-Trailer Trash or simply The Big One on the Left--minimal and nearly impersonal identifications that lasted only long enough for the dust to settle and another checkmark on her mental tally. Spike waded in with identical glee and precision whether he faced some anonymous fledge or “that Raymond, used to clerk at the SuperQuick,” or Albert, a sometime poker acquaintance.

Buffy didn’t want to know; Spike didn’t care.

En route to the second target, Spike leaned from the seat behind to close a hand on Buffy’s shoulder, pointing with the other: “Look, love.”

About a block away, a house was burning.

“We’re not the fire department.”

“No, pet, they been doin’ it that way, and explaining will take-- Stop, just stop, all right?” he directed harshly, and had pushed past Kim and was out the door and running before Buffy had more than touched the brake.

No choice, then. Buffy slammed the brake down, screeching the SUV to a halt in the general vicinity of the curb. The three SITs piled out, trailing Spike. By the time Buffy caught up, Spike and the SITs were engaged with at least six vamps in front of the burning house--the vamps whirling and dodging, the SITs in formation and methodical: Kim and Rona flanking defensively while the lead, Kennedy, engaged and dispatched. Kennedy’s opponent fell, undusted: she’d used her taser. The trio split, engaging singly. Off to the left, Spike was brawling unarmed with two vamps, Fatso and Ms. Forbes (a vague resemblance to Buffy’s kindergarten teacher).

The well-tended yard also had three drained corpses in nightclothes and a bleeding woman in pink babydolls crawling toward the burning house.

Fatso was trying to occupy Spike while Ms. Forbes came at him from behind. Spike dropped into a sweep kick that dumped Ms. Forbes. Buffy staked Fatso as he bent, intending to hammer clasped hands onto Spike’s neck but exploding into dust before the blow could connect.

Saying curtly, “Bint’s yours,” Spike took off toward the crawling woman, now nearly within reach of the flames.

Buffy and Ms. Forbes regarded one another--Buffy in a wide-legged stance, the game-faced, frizzy-haired vamp crouched, for a fatal second undecided between fight and flight, flicking a glance back at the street. They jerked into motion simultaneously, and Buffy’s stake was faster than the vamp’s lunge.

When Buffy whirled to check the fight’s progress, Kim had just dusted the sprawled vamp Kennedy had tasered, Kennedy and Rona had teamed up on the final vamp, and Spike was spinning around in place heedlessly close to the flames, yelling, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” and waving both arms in the air. The woman must have gotten past him.

As Rona staked the vamp, Buffy heard the first distant siren. The three SITs looked to Spike: barely holding himself in place. Wanting, in each twitch and aborted lean toward the front door where the woman must have disappeared, to take on the fire--beat it down. The opening puffed a lifting tongue of incandescence as though the house were panting. Then the large front window blew out--nowhere near Spike, but enough to make him force himself decisively away. As he came striding back toward Buffy, she saw three deep gouges slanted across his face from eyebrow to lip, blood dripping off his chin.

Passing, he bit out, “Child of some sort left inside. She went after it. Wouldn’t stop, so I belted her. Still wouldn’t stop, silly great cow.”

The siren was closer and another, wailing on a different tone, had joined it. Overtaking Spike, Buffy got the SUV open on the right, then clambered through to the driver’s side. As Kennedy yanked the door shut, everyone inside and accounted for, Buffy pulled away at a sedate 15 mph, barely touching the pedal and turning the next corner before she risked switching on the headlights.

In the back, Spike had pressed to his face a wet towel Kim had fixed up from the first-aid chest that usually lived in the basement (another good reason to take the SUV) and muttering words--harpy; Niobe; fucking troll--in furious blurts: still wound up about the woman.

Rona helpfully piped up, “Hag,” and Kim offered, “Moroness. Slutbag.”

Spike growled, “Shut your holes. I get to say that. You don’t.”

“Well, geez, sorry, Spike,” Kim rejoined. “Didn’t know I needed a license.”

“Now you do,” Spike snarled back. “So shut the hell up.”

The sound of anger crackling so close, in familiar voices, made Buffy frown and pull her shoulders tight, concentrating all the while on the road and checking the mirrors for any following lights. But she didn’t think of intervening any more than she’d thought beyond a second of seizing Spike and pitching him away from the much-too-close fire while he fretted on the edges and tried to make it come out and fight.

Some things, she left completely to him. Not Slayer concerns. That was one of the things that made it a partnership. Buffy had learned to delegate.

******

Within five minutes Spike had discarded the towel and was holding forth on this new tactic. “Hunting’s been harder. So some older nests, packs, been doin’ this. Scout out a house with its neighbors empty, torch it, drive the prey out.”

Buffy commented, “Vamp version of a cook-out.” Despite the flippancy, this new tactic troubled her and she was casting around in her mind for ways to counter it.

She stopped for a red light.

Kneeling in the front passenger seat to talk behind, Kennedy theorized, “Fledges wouldn’t have the patience.”

“Too much planning, collecting materials,” Rona commented. “Not just Grrr and bite. Spike, are fledges ‘fraid of fire?”

“Too fucking dumb. Good half of ‘em burn, their first sunrise. ‘Less they’re waited for, fetched in safe. Demon doesn’t know this world enough, right off, to fear fire.”

As the light turned green, Buffy turned her head to inquire, “Then what’s your excuse? Think closing the Hellmouth made you immune? Or did it just lower your insanely careless/reckless threshold? To maybe China?” The fact she hadn’t yanked him away didn’t mean she wasn’t gonna let him hear about it. She could smell the burnt hair: eau de singed vampire.

“That was light,” Spike responded after a moment. “This was fire. Entirely different thing, pet.”

“That’s still two burns in two days, Spike. I better not see a pattern here. Does the phrase ‘Playing with fire’ strike any kind of a chord?”

“’M fine. Entirely fine. Hundred percent. If you’re gonna go all nancified about every little scratch, I’m not the one who has a problem here.”

“Better not be,” Buffy responded. “I don’t have any spares.”

“You better not,” Spike riposted, and she could practically hear the eyebrow raise.

Then she felt him: leaning forward between the two front bucket seats, at her right shoulder. Not, this time, to point out a fire: seeing where they were, where Buffy had brought them.

Maybe a whole minute’s silence, while Buffy pulled up at the west margin of Restfield Cemetary.

“That’s fine, pet. You can just drop me here, then.”

Buffy doused the lights and turned off the key.

“Slayer,” he said. “We need to have a word.”

As Buffy opened her door, Spike told the SITs to stay put and climbed out the other side. He had a cigarette lit by the time he joined her on the sidewalk that ran parallel to the wall. Scuffing his boots. Moving slow. Braced. Glancing at her and then away. Trying to be non-confrontational.

The scratches were completely gone. Burnt hair smell remained.

“S’not where you said we were going,” Spike mentioned, all flat and diffident.

“Thought we’d surprise you,” Buffy responded, presenting a smile. Got no smile back. Only another quick glance.

“Not a good surprise, love. Can’t bring the children into this. Can’t even bring you into it.”

“I don’t consider myself ‘brought.’ My idea. I call the patrols. I name the targets.”

“So you do. Except this time. Not with me along, anyway. Don’t think you’ve entirely considered the implications. Ramifications.” Cigarette tilted in a corner of his mouth, he pushed hands spread-fingered through his hair. “Claimed this patch, I did. By now Michael will have been to at least sixteen bars and specially Willy’s complaining of how I done him, pitched him out, when he’d given me no cause. And that I formally claimed it doesn’t just apply to Mike, now. It means no vamp sets foot on it without I say so, or they answer to me. And now I got to enforce it. Not the children. And most specially not the Slayer. The Slayer enforcing a vamp claim, a vamp territory. You don’t want that, love. Then you’d be playing by vamp rules, and the next time some sire that fancies himself a master pours gas in a bottle, it might come through Bit’s window. Or Red’s. Or yours. Ours. It would be a declaration of war.”

“What’s this been, the past seven years: kickball?” Buffy demanded heatedly.

“Fledges got no rules. Don’t know nothing. But for all but idiots, there are rules of engagement. The First didn’t try to take out Potentials with a high-powered rifle. Didn’t jigger the brakes on your van. Didn’t set a great huge bomb by Casa Summers just past where Red’s protections hold. No poison gas. A matter of balance. There’s been rules, limits, even if you’ve never noticed.”

Carefully, dangerously, Buffy inquired, “Did you just call me an idiot?”

“Didn’t notice, pet. Have you earned it?” A direct look went with that, followed by a tight, unamused smirk. Then Spike made himself look away, disengage, and paced a few steps: not away and back, just side to side. He continued, “Slayers don’t go out armed with bloody automatic weapons or flamethrowers.”

“Missile launcher,” said Buffy. “The Judge.”

“Once. Not your regular arsenal. Don’t interrupt me, my dove, when I’m educating you. Basically, you versus vamps and what-all, it’s always been hand to hand with the occasional blunt instrument or blade and maybe the odd spell--same as all the Slayers before you. But against the Turok-han, and the Bringers, and the First, Michael and me, we came real close to breaking that balance. Big threat, bad odds, and I wasn’t about to get those children killed if a taser, or an incendiary grenade, would keep them from it and give ‘em a fighting chance. Never been a fight like that on a broad front between humans and vamps, with a Slayer leading it. Don’t want one now. First’s shut out, so we put the toys back in the boxes and forget we ever played with ‘em.

“This isn’t just one more boneyard you sweep whenever you please. If I’m alongside, it’s a claimed vamp territory. If we clear out the nests side by side, every master in town trying to carve some piece of real estate for his pack is gonna assume the only way he can get back to business as usual is over your dead body. So if you do this, I’m not with you. I back off.”

“Then back off,” said Buffy. “Do you expect me to stand by while you try to take out two whole nests on your own? Maybe ten, a dozen to one?”

“Wouldn’t be that bad,” Spike argued. “Not a pitched battle. Whittle ‘em down. Take out one or two whenever I get the chance. A little at a time. Make ‘em want to move, relocate. Find someplace else. Town’s wide open: lots of other places they could be. Raise the stakes just high enough to make it not worth their while to stay. Not enough to make ‘em desperate.”

“Magnificent Seven strategy.”

Spike paused in his pacing and looked around. “Near enough, yeah, though Kurosawa’s better. Hell of a fight, worth the subtitles. Just leave it with me, love. I’ll see to it.”

“And when you come the second time and it’s an ambush?” Buffy challenged.

“Just have to be cautious, is all.”

“Cognitive dissonance,” Buffy responded, adopting one of Willow’s phrases. “Does not compute, you and cautious. Who are you kidding? Because it’s not me!”

He pitched the last of the cigarette and faced her with folded arms, taking a stance. “All right, take it from the other side. If you do this alone, just you and the SITs, everything I’ve done for the last six months, since I got back, is wasted, gone. In terms of winning back what I lost in this town when the soldier boys shoved that chunk of fucking plastic in my head. Since I turned traitor, the way the cousins, vamps, look at it. Doing my own. Siding with you and the Scoobies and then the Potentials. Lately I’ve earned back some respect. I took a few minions, made ‘em submit, made ‘em come and go to my word. Was somewhat less fucking insane some of the time. Less of an embarrassment all ‘round. Proved I can fight my way through anybody or anything that comes against me and come out the other side. And all on my own--without running to the Slayer to bail me out, though we’re a widely known item. You show you don’t need me no more, just waltz into a claimed territory that’s mine and wipe out whatever you find, then you might as well stake me yourself because I won’t last a week. Won’t nobody respect me if you don’t. Don’t pay heed to anything I say. Don’t even bloody listen. I do this. Alone.”

Buffy blurted, “I’m not gonna play vamp politics and power games!”

His response was a long, expressionless look. “Love, if we’re together, you have no choice. Though I don’t claim it, you pay it no notice, and I’m long past enforcing it, I’m Master Bloody Vampire of Sunnydale. Successor to that git The Master, ol’ Fruit Bat himself. Because there’s nobody else, an’ nobody’s taken it from me. Cousins got long memories, love--those that survive. To the cousins, that’s who I am and what I am. And that’s not something you can afford to ignore.” Finally breaking his stare, he twisted his face and head away as though his neck hurt…or, she realized, like shaking off game face. Trying, she could see, not to lose his temper or force the issue beyond hope of agreement or compromise. That was never easy for him, she knew. Not his natural inclination. He was trying to be patient with her, this hundred-and-twenty-some year-old vampire, and she absolutely hated it.

“Do one thing,” Spike requested, occupying himself with the process of lighting another cigarette. “Wait till Giles gets back. He knows somewhat about vamps, how they behave, how they look at things. Not much, but some. Put this to Giles first. Do some other graveyard tonight. Let this alone for now.”

Frowning, Buffy thought for a moment. “Do you swear not to slip out some night and just go ahead as planned?”

His smile wouldn’t have fooled a five-year-old. “Know me too well, love. Sure, I’ll give you my word on that. Till after we’ve talked with Giles. Good enough?”

“Good enough,” Buffy decided grudgingly. Then she opened her arms.

Maybe it wasn’t the most graceful or coordinated hug today, but it was the one she had and she was keeping it. And nobody cracked any ribs.

Walking toward the driver’s side of the SUV, she remarked without turning, “Love fighting you. And hate fighting you. Makes my fillings all lock up.”

“Got something at stake, now.”

“New rule: no vamp quippage. Exclusively my deparment.”

“Whatever you say, Slayer.”

**********

Spike waited until Buffy’s breathing had slowed and her pulse dropped to a sleeping cadence. And a little beyond that because he liked to watch her sleep, all soft, relaxed, and peaceful. Warm, too, and smelling so fine. Didn’t get up first thing and wash the scent of their little shagfest off herself because she knew he liked it in the after time. Liked to smell her that way, and himself on her, their scents inextricably blended. Not always the quickest on the uptake, his girl, and pig-stubborn sometimes but kind and thoughtful about the un-her stuff she’d got her mind around. Best she could, she took him into account and accepted how he was even when it made no sense to her.

One of the uncountable things he loved her for.

After a few more minutes’ peaceful contemplation, he slid out of what he thought of as her “virgin bed”--really no room for two unless one pretty much on top of the other, and that had its nice aspects, too, but terrible for sleeping: have to see about relocating the monster brass bed from Casa Spike if he was to stay here long-term--and tugged the sheet and light blanket back up over her shoulder without touching or disturbing her.

He dressed quickly and pulled a wide-toothed comb through his hair until it felt as it should. Finishing with his boots, he scooped money and keys from a small bowl on the dresser. Cigarettes and lighter, all set. Then he paused, balefully regarding the cellphone assigned to him: on the dresser-top beside its charger. Already carrying too much junk around: since when did a vamp have to bother with keys, cash money? Well, be fair here, he admonished himself: Before I gave the motorbike away, that had a key. And since when is it a virtue to be skint? Get over yourself, you berk. He shrugged and collected the cellphone, set it to receive, and poked it in a pocket.

He didn’t have to account to anyone for his comings and goings. But of a certainty Buffy would wake sometime during the night and find herself alone. She’d suspect he’d broken his promise and was off clearing Restfield. And Spike hadn’t the least clue what the hell she might do then.

To head off that nightmare scenario, he located his notebook on the corner of the vanity, pulled out a page, and wrote, Gone to Willy’s. Back by dawn. No, I didn’t, and shame on you for even thinking it. Yes, taking the cell. Good vampire here. Now go back to sleep, you idiot. Love, S.

Whipped, he thought. You’re so bloody whipped.

Finding no tape, he propped the note against the vanity mirror, where he was certain she’d see it.

That was all right, then.

He halted a minute outside Dawn’s door, checking that her heartbeat was OK and everything as it should be, then silently down the stairs and outside. Stretching as he reached the street, enjoying the night and opening his senses as wide as he could in every direction as though starting a hunt. Well, might do that too if the opportunity popped up. Hadn’t altogether made up his mind about that for the long term, but short term, sure--wouldn’t say no to that. He was a goddam vampire after all, for crap sake, not some half-assed human wannabe ashamed of his fangs, like Angel, Boo bloody hoo, I’m an eeeeevil vampire. Spike expected his unapologetic vampirism to be taken into account by others, just as Buffy expected her friends to walk wide and respect that she was the Slayer. Shouldn’t be so hard to understand, should it?

Settling into his distance pace, he let himself blank into motion, letting the doing, the being, be all. Felt real good to let it all go. Of course, as much as he had on his mind, it all came creeping back.

Missed his motorbike. Running was fine, he could run all night and not tire, but wasn’t the speed to it, was it? If that arrangement worked out as Kennedy wanted, he’d come into some dosh. Maybe buy him a new bike, a real bike--not a piddling little Yamaha, though she’d run smooth enough and needed no more than suspension work. Big Harley--one of the few things the Yanks had done right. Red, maybe--screaming scarlet. Noisy as hell if you tuned it that way. Built-in sound system, play any media through tiny headphones. Long saddle, leather not vinyl, good room at pillion for Bit or Buffy or both if they squeezed tight. That’d be a treat.

He flashed to game face, thinking about it. The run clicked up a notch, and his senses reached further outward.

Far out, a building was burning. Spike’s eyes flicked to the spark and away. Not on Scooby duty at the moment. Therefore the fire was nothing to him, none of his concern.

Near Willy’s, he slowed and strolled the last couple hundred yards, noting the vehicles present in front. Particularly the Yamaha bike poised neatly on its kickstand like an obedient pony.

Spike made an entrance, a deliberate bounce to his step. He went straight to the bar without pausing to acknowledge known faces, pleased to hear the pitch and volume of conversations change, not attending enough to catch any of the words. Time was, he could silence a whole room just by looking around, but had no interest in that now anyway. He kept his attention close and perked up but all peaceable. Not hunting a fight, particularly.

He slapped down enough bills and pointed, saying, “Double. Neat.” Reaching for the indicated bottle of Jim Beam, the vamp bartender--Huey, one of Spike’s minions for awhile--commented, “Got courting Sh’narth wyrms coming through.”

“Yeah, done one, couple days back,” Spike responded, while Huey placed a glass and poured. “Pity about their being so big. Otherwise I’d be inclined to let ‘em alone, if they didn’t do such damage. Can’t have that.”

Changing topic, Huey remarked, “Still got decent odds.” He nodded in the direction of the chalk board high on the wall at the far end of the room. “But could be better. Lot of refusals bringing it down.”

Approaching with a tray of scummed-up glass beer mugs, Willy said, “Spike,” and Spike greeted him in turn--not cordial, not anything. Human Willy knew he had no friends here and generally knew to the millimeter how far he could push before a customer snapped back at him. He’d survived, running a demon bar in Sunnydale, longer than Spike had been in town. If you could sometimes smell fear off him, it was a side effect of sweating, a human thing, and only to be expected.

Willy and Spike were cooler toward each other than when Spike had been in Huey’s place, combination bartender and bouncer. More precisely, since Spike had been annoyed by Willy’s niggling rules and popped him a good one, and Willy had retaliated the next day by firing him.

Savoring the burn of his first big swallow, Spike responded to Huey’s last comment. “Got other things to see to. Odds against come down, all the better.”

Having set the tray on the bar, Willy was still there, hanging about. Spike gave him an inquiring look, very cool and aloof.

“Might be able to set something up for Saturday,” Willy said. “Got an offer.” Willy turned his head to indicate and, no surprise, there was Mike at a table near the window, all by his own lone self. Not letting on he knew Spike was there. Spike included him in the range of a casual scan, showing no reaction.

“Might. If I’m not busy. Let you know.” Spike took another swallow of his drink. “That reminds me. That Michael, he’s all pissed off. Might have made more of it than it was, blowing off about it. I got no interest in holding a territory, what with the Slayer an’ all. Just threw him out, warned him off: he’d got on my last nerve. But that’s not to be construed as a formal claim. Should anybody wonder, you might pass that along…. I’d be obliged.”

The three of them traded looks.

“Might be I’d know somebody interested,” Willy allowed, and Huey said the same thing with a glance without having to put words to it.

Spike added, “You know me, I like a fight well enough. But not everybody goin’ to the mattresses, so to say, over some dumb misunderstanding. Always feel like you been played when that happens. Nobody likes bein’ played.”

That Spike had mentioned the matter twice made his request emphatic--a demand for active rather than passive gossip mongering.

Willy nodded to show he’d gotten that. Huey--a lean, bony vamp with a creased face in his human aspect, hair long, dirty, and carelessly tied back with twine--only smiled, not needing to be human-obvious.

Finishing his drink, Spike told Willy, “I’ll let you know about the challenge fight.” Again, the repeat meant Spike would actually do it, not just say it and then blow it off. Nearly as good as a yes. That would let Willy get started spreading the word and adjusting the betting and the odds, considering Mike didn’t even have a place on the board yet, without committing Spike to anything. Better that way, from Spike’s point of view: never knew what might come up.

Setting the glass down, Spike went back outside and soon fell into an easy jog. Liquor wasn’t actually warm but felt so going down and awhile after. Next best thing to blood. Moving felt good.

There were four more bars to leave word at before he’d feel he’d defused the situation as much as he could. Might not need Giles to get into it after all, which would be better. He was already more beholden to the Watcher for past favors than he liked.

**********

Leaving the third bar and starting toward the fourth, Spike did an automatic assay of the night, all the complex signals, confirming he didn’t yet have to worry about getting back to Casa Summers before sunrise unless he let himself get distracted. After several large drinks he was coasting nicely now, everything loose and comfortable. Not actively hunting but aware, in the emptiness of the early-morning streets, of everything that moved. Humans in cars too much trouble, even though half the people didn’t bother locking their doors as they drove. He blinked and watched the occasional passing car placidly. Then his head came around sharp and he went to investigate what had caught his attention. Drunk passed out in an alley behind some boxes. Head cocked, Spike considered, but this was far too easy to be passed up.

He sat back on his heels by the man, analyzing the smells. Had eaten fairly well not long ago. No taint of illness. Relatively clean clothes. Hands and fingernails clean. Only maybe a day unshaven. “Well, mate, are you with us here?”

Nothing. Too easy.

Spike went to game face and leaned in.

The living blood hit the back of his throat like a hammerblow. He was rapt with the heat and the taste and the hot immediacy of it. After three brilliant gulps he shut himself off, shuddering because his demon wanted more, wanted it all, and fought being forced away. But he didn’t give it leave and held himself still until it withdrew and subsided. Then he licked the punctures shut, setting a hand against the wall as the additional alcohol hit his system.

Soul was about as appalled as the demon had been avid. Spike pointed out to it that not only had he not killed the bloke, he hadn’t even patted him down and stolen whatever money was on him. Hadn’t done the tosser even as much harm as the liquor would, eventually, and the soul should shut the hell up about it. Settle and leave off pushing the punishing wrench of nausea and unease that mostly followed his feeding now. Except with the Slayer. Soul got all blissed out on that too, didn’t even bother trying to make him feel bad about it anymore, for which Spike was intensely thankful. First and only sign he’d had that the soul was in the least reasonable and might be expected to come around, given time, to the plain fact that he was a vampire and not apt to change.

There was a shrill electronic noise, close, and it took him a minute to remember the bloody cellphone. Dragging it out of his pocket, he sat back against the wall next to the drunk and got the phone to his ear. “Yes, pet.”

“You pig,” said Buffy’s voice.

“Yes, pet.” He giggled.

“And you’re drunk!”

“Yes, pet.” He leaned against the drunk and giggled harder. “Was there maybe a point, love? Or did you just want to talk dirty for a bit.”

In the fuming silence from the other end, he was imagining her face coloring up, all hot and rosy like it did. He loved watching that.

“Get home, all right?” Her voice had finally softened, gentled.

“Be plenty of time for a nice, slow shag and then a shower before you have to leave.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. Go back to sleep now and I promise to wake you up real nice when I get in.”

“Yeah. Mmmm. ‘Night, then.”

“’Night, love.”

He carefully pushed tiny buttons to terminate the current call and put the phone back in receive mode, then returned it to his pocket. Concentrating to get a cigarette lit, he reflected that the cell didn’t actually take up that much space. Hardly more than the cigarette pack. Weighed next to nothing. Stupid little play-toy might not be as much nuisance as he’d thought, toting around. He might reconsider.

**********

He’d been hearing the bike for awhile now. Nowhere close. Just around someplace in the middle distance, clearer or fainter according to the angles and surfaces of the buildings between.

He’d made the final stop, at the Wander Bar, and decided against another drink although it wasn’t polite to go in and spend nothing and still expect Frodo Fourfingers to serve as an information drop and relay. Spike had left a five on the bar just for the sake of manners. Didn’t need anything else to drink tonight. All full up and content.

Although the Wander Bar wasn’t officially a demon-friendly establishment, if a patron thoughtlessly went a little bumpy in the forehead or their eye-color skewed toward yellow, nobody screeched or fainted or ran yammering to 911. Do it too often and you could get yourself banned, and fledges weren’t welcome for obvious reasons, but a mature vamp with halfway decent control and manners and bills to bring to the regularly scheduled poker game would have no problem. Unless he won, of course. Then he’d better watch his back.

Reaching the string of fast-food places and convenience stores that separated Sunnydale’s downtown from the residential areas, Spike stuck his hands in his pockets, wondering if he should have brought a taser. But no: he was gonna cut back on that, lest the cousins set about acquiring comparable armament, and that would be a right mess. No good getting used to that. Have to go back to what he knew. He stopped at the next realtor’s sign he saw, broke it, and had two serviceable stakes tucked handy inside his shirt when the noise of the bike came again and didn’t fade.

Mike throttled down, pacing him slow.

“Headed home?”

“Ahuh.”

“C’mon, then.”

Spike stood and thought a minute. Mike stopped the bike, waiting. No way Mike was gonna stake him from in front. Nor do much of anything, actually. Vulnerability was all the other way: to Mike, from behind. So no reason why not.

Spike mounted pillion. As the bike started rolling, still slow, Spike steadied himself with a hand on Mike’s back. Then his body caught up with the motion and he no longer needed the contact.

“There was no need to do me like that,” Mike said without turning.

Engine made some noise, but they were both vamps and could hear fine past that.

Finally Spike said, “You’re a knife at her throat, Michael. T’isn’t up to me, it’s hers to say, but I can’t look aside anymore, like it doesn’t matter. Like I don’t know.”

“Never done her no least harm!” Mike protested.

“What’s harm to you is not the same as what’s harm to her. You tell me you don’t have her in your mind when you’re feeding. You tell me you don’t have somewhat of hers you nicked for a posy. For the smell.”

“Ain’t hurt her,” insisted Mike stubbornly. “And she ain’t yours, Spike. Not that way. You got no cause and no right to warn me off, tell me No.”

“You got no least notion of what she is. Or what you want. Just that you do. This is fine, Michael. You let me down here.”

Mike stopped, and Spike stepped down. They faced each other.

Mike said, “I’ll go through you if I have to.”

“Might try,” Spike responded, all peaceable. Mike was a good lad and Spike wished no harm to him. “Till I’m sure your notion of safe, and hers, and mine all come together someplace close, you’ll have to. Don’t think that’s gonna happen, Michael. I’ve talked it out with her, some. She’s not lunch. She’s not yours for the eating no matter how sweet she smells. When you next see her, and I know you will, you listen to her. Listen hard. You take her or even try, you won’t have to worry anymore about the sunrise.”

Mike was silent awhile. Then he asked, “That thing Saturday. You gonna do it?”

“Considering it. Inclined to it. Don’t mind giving you your shot, if that would make you easier in your mind. But don’t make me go around cleaning up after you again. You’re warned off, and that stands. But there’s no use to you making trouble, saying I’ve laid claim to the whole of a prime site. That’s a nuisance, and could blow up past anything you figured or intended. Already had trouble on that account between me and the Slayer. You think I’m past the line, being protective of Dawn, you don’t want to see me if you get harm aimed at the Slayer. Whether you meant to or not. You be angry with me all you like. We’ll settle it. Leave the Slayer clear or you’ll push me where I don’t want to go, with you.”

“See you Saturday, then,” said Mike, and pulled away.

Chapter 4: Conversations

After supper, in the first twilight, Dawn went down the steps and out to the sidewalk, eyes front all the way. Spike and Buffy were in the front room pretending to watch the news but mainly snogging. Passing the arch, Dawn had caught his eye. So he knew, and he’d hear if she did one of the whole long list of things she’d almost rather die than do--like screech really really loud. She had her taser clenched tight in a pocket of her Hello, Kitty overalls. Nothing was gonna happen. Nothing bad, anyway. Michael wouldn’t do bad things to her unless he didn’t understand. That’s what she had to do: make him understand.

She paced nervously, one sneakered foot up on the curb and the other down in the street. Left as far as the street light, then back to the front walk of Casa Summers. She’d just come to the turning point at the light pole when Mike was beside her as suddenly as if he’d erupted out of the earth. She hadn’t seen him approach, hadn’t heard the motorcycle, hadn’t seen him coming at all. Standing maybe a foot away, big hands hanging, a wing of raggedly trimmed brown hair across his forehead, shadowed hazel eyes regarding her with vampire intensity, as though it was something she was doing, commanding every scrap of his attention.

A head taller and at least double her weight, Mike could produce a small inward eek from her anytime he did the sudden materialization thing. Not that she was in the least scared of him, of course. It was just the unexpectedness and his tendency to loom. That, combined with his fondness for wearing factory-seconds T-shirts displaying the Spice Girls, Yosemite Sam, or imprints like Yoder Cheese Puffs Corporate Games, 1993, Paducah, KY, would startle anybody.

“Hi, Dawn,” he said, whispery soft--a voice like a tentative pat. Careful; a little shy.

“Hi, Mike. Are you all settled now?”

Instead of answering, he bent his head toward her neck, touching nothing, and breathed her in. And it was as if she could feel him doing it--her own substance, essence, being drawn in and savored. Almost as strong as when he tasted her, on the mark. And nothing was taken she didn’t want to give because they were both so happy with it and how could you explain a thing like that? To anybody?

“Thought maybe he’d have made you chary of me.” The words were a quiet rumble just by her ear, and she could smell him too. She could only describe it, even to herself, as a clean vampire smell. None of the fluids other bodies exuded and none of the artificial scents people used to cover them up. His breath was sweet, untainted. To talk, he took the air in and gave it back unchanged. She thought, He smells like first snow. And like morning. Which was ridiculous because she’d never seen snow, much less smelled it, and he would never know morning. So she decided, He smells new.

Though the idea of him was dangerous, wild, alien, in his presence Dawn could feel none of that and dying seemed a distant thing of little consequence. Besides, it was difficult to get all spooked when tonight’s T-shirt proclaimed the virtues of breast-feeding with an appropriate logo.

“He’s worried that we haven’t put in the time to make sure we both know what the limits are,” she said dutifully, without much enthusiasm.

“Limits,” Mike echoed scornfully. “He’s let himself get all cautious, not straight ahead and flat-out. Too old for power games. Shouldn’t have started them, then. Thinks he can make a big noise and I’ll just back off, meek as can be. Might be I’ll tap him on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, now.’ Surprise him a little. Make him reconsider.”

“We need limits, Mike. When a human and a vamp…hang around together much, one of them mostly ends up dead. He doesn’t want--”

“But we’re neither of us human,” Mike pointed out. He’d straightened to look her again in the eyes. Now he lightly took both her hands, his thumbs rubbing the backs. “Wouldn’t like you half so well if you were. Humans don’t smell like you do. I knew, first off. Any vamp would. Maybe not know what name to put to it, but they’d know. Couldn’t help it, any more than you could see a flower and not know how lovely it was, all straight and bowing to the breeze, even if it was a kind you never seen before and had no name to go with.” He lifted her right hand to his mouth. Partly a kiss but also a tongue touch: tasting her. It made her shiver and want to turn her head away, but then again not.

He said, “Takes a vamp to appreciate you right. A thousand flavors, Dawn. A thousand kinds of wonderful and all wasted, or nearly, on some human. And Spike all jealous, that you’d let anybody have what he don’t want.” Mike regarded her earnestly. “He’s the Slayer’s. Ain’t known him any time he didn’t have her smell on him and proud of it, too. That she’d let him. Claim and care for what he is, despite what she is. Bear and show his mark. Just like you bear mine, and no hurt from it. Nothing that’s anybody’s business but yours and mine. Nothing he has any right to forbid or put limits on but what we choose.”

“Then what are the limits?” Dawn asked, desperately keeping herself to the point. She pulled her right hand away and poked it in her pocket: onto the taser she’d momentarily forgotten. “What would keep you from feeding on me until there’s not enough left to keep me alive? When you really want to do that and all you care about is how hungry you are and how good it tastes and feels?”

“Now, I ain’t done that yet. Now have I. And I’ve tasted you more than once. And never didn’t stop, never didn’t let go and leave you with all you need to be you. Now ain’t that so.”

“Yes, but--”

“Second you started being afraid, I’d know. Taste it. Smell it. Know it. Would taste different if you started being afraid, Dawn. And I understand that now, what it would mean: no Dawn, never no more. I can imagine how that would be, to have you gone. I understand never and forever. I remind myself how much I don’t want that when your blood is singing to me so sweet, like it does. I don’t forget.”

“But we got to get real about this, Mike! I don’t know how to be afraid of you. I forget. I don’t know forever, I only know now. I don’t know how to be apart from how it feels when you touch the mark and open it, and we’re connected that way, to stand off inside my head and be scared, or say that’s enough or too much. If you’re depending on me to keep myself alive, I can’t do that, Mike. It’s so intense. And when it starts, I don’t think anymore of how it could end.”

Mike put his arms around her and tucked her close. She was just the right size for that. They fit together just exactly right: each of his arms clasped all the way around to her opposite shoulder, a full embrace. “Hush, now. If you’re tryin’ to scare me, you done a fine job of it, sweetheart. If we’re both waiting for you to warn me off, that’s no good. And so sweet I almost don’t care. Truly don’t ever want to have you be afraid of me. Sometimes, that’s good…in a human. But don’t need that from you. It’s beyond fine, just as it is. Don’t need nothing else. And I know what to do about that.”

“What?”

“Won’t never come to you except when I’ve fed. Won’t need you for that. Only want you. So don’t look for me no more at the last of the light. Might be, I’ll come and wait for you awhile after that from now on.”

A part of Dawn rejoiced at the solution. And a part of her sagged, heavy with guilt. “I’d feel awful, knowing somebody else had died to keep me safe. So you’d have to promise to stop for them too. Leave them enough to stay alive, after. Like Spike does now.”

A long silence. Then Mike kissed her forehead and was silent some more. Finally he said, “Don’t know if I can promise that, Dawn. Master vamp can do a lot of things a fledge can’t. Got his beast under good control. Or demon, like he says. I’m not a fledge no more, but my demon’s still strong and doesn’t always listen…and lots of times, whatever it wants is what I want. I’m not apart from it. Over time, a vamp gets more…economical, seems like: doesn’t need as much, doesn’t get as much from the kill. Kind of…detached. Can take it or leave it. Choose. I expect that’s a good way to be, but I ain’t but six. I don’t feel that. It’s different, the last of it…. When the body knows it’s the last and gets stronger for a second or two and then accepts and goes all quiet…. Submitting. Demon, it wants that. Won’t quit until it’s had that. When I’d have to stop if I meant to turn the food. Never done that. Would feel…incomplete. Not old enough for that yet…. But maybe it’s time I learned. It’ll be sometime, so maybe I could make it be now. Learn to want that and be content no matter what the demon wants. Dawn, I’ll try. If that’s what you need from me, I promise to try. Do my best to get older on purpose, not just with time. Right at the first, won’t always be able to do it like that. On account of it’s hard, right then, to want anything different from the demon.”

“Then you’ll know,” Dawn said. “And not touch the mark except when you’ve stopped and left the food alive.”

“That’s fair. I can promise that. And I do. Not mad at you, setting conditions and limits. Spike, he says I don’t know what’s safe for you, and I expect he’s right. Trouble is, you don’t know that any better than I do, seems like. Bein’ safe is not the whole thing, here. You ain’t scared enough, and I can’t really be scared for you. That’s not what I’m feeling when we’re together…. Spike, he has the soul to get after him, warn him off. And the Slayer to flatten him if it doesn’t. I ain’t got that and sure don’t want it, as much nuisance as it seems to be for him. And you’re not the Slayer. If you were, you wouldn’t be you, and we’d have to be fighting all the time to settle the dominance and that’s not something I want. Not always looking out to fight or, or anything--”

His abrupt verbal stumble gave her the word he’d tripped over: fuck.

“You can say it,” Dawn told him with a small grin. “It’s Spike’s favorite word.”

“Yeah, then, take it as read. Spike has a foul mouth on him. I don’t talk like that in front of a lady. Anyway, I’m not looking to do that with everybody that chances to cross my path. I’d say I’m pretty easy-going, compared to most of the vamps I’ve met. So what he does, they do--him and the Slayer--to get along is not gonna work for us. Have to find out some different way….”

Dawn told him proudly, “You’re of the blood and the Order of Aurelius. They control their demons.”

“They do? Spike never taught me that. Whole lot there hasn’t been time yet for him to teach me. Seen a lot of fledges couldn’t shed game face. Nothing there but the demon, and it dumb as a box of rocks…. Wasn’t like that for me. Not ever, not even at the first, when I came to myself, all confused, not knowing nothing of what I was or why everything was different, all so different…. I expect it’s true, if he says so. Because he’s of that blood himself, so he’d know. Sorry to be on the outs with him. Wish I could learn more. But not for awhile--not until I’ve made him back off and let us alone.”

His eyes had shaded toward amber, that always made Dawn think of a lion’s eyes. His game face was like that too: not deformed or ugly but fierce, severe, intense. Like the final form of everything he was made manifest. Trueface, some vamps called it, whereas humans preferred to see only the human aspect and regard that as normal.

Dawn knew Mike was both. Had both within him and showed whichever circumstances and his own impulses called forth. Not an either/or but a continuum. A matter of degree. Aurelian vamps were like that--not easily divisible into human and demon except by an unrelenting effort of will, as Angel had done. Not Spike, though. He integrated his monster and refused either to be defined by it or deny it. Over time, Michael would too. Dawn believed that.

“Could go to Angel, maybe,” Mike remarked, the yellow fading in his eyes as his mouth pulled into a wry smile. “My sire. To learn more, not just keep blundering ahead any old how…. But I expect I’d have to get all submitted again before he’d take me on, and once is enough for that. Sort of like curing a headache by getting a lobotomy, taking a Mixmaster to your brain. Price is a bit steep.”

“Mixmaster?”

Mike smiled broadly, happily. “Say now: I’m old enough, some of the things I know, you don’t. That tickles me. Imagine, after a hundred years.”

“Mixmaster?”

“Oh, a kind of a blender. Eggbeater, as near as makes no never mind. So for awhile, I’ll get by on what you can teach me,” Mike proposed. “You game for that?”

“Can I assign homework and stuff?”

“Depends on the homework. But yeah, sure. Try it, anyways. Sometime. But not now. Left the bike down the way. Come on: want to show you something.”

Doing the little accustomed dance step whereby she took the inside and Mike the road side of the pavement, likely so she wouldn’t get splashed by buggies, Dawn warned, “Have to be home by ten or I’ll get grounded. It’s a school night.”

“Well, I dunno if I can judge time quite that precise--”

“I thought of that,” Dawn blurted, “and I got something for you.” They stopped while she dug it out of her other pocket and presented it: a gold-cased stem-winder pocket watch. While Mike turned and admired it in his hand, then held it to his ear, Dawn warned, “Three things. You have to remember to wind it every night, last thing before you go to sleep. And Willow put a spell on it so that as long as it’s running, it will keep good time. But for the spell to work, you have to keep it on you 24/7--even while you’re sleeping. And the third thing is, you can’t get dust into the works. So don’t open the back.”

“Now, that’s real fine. Can’t remember when anybody gave me a present as fine as that. Did you listen to it? Got a real nice sound, working away in there, marking out the time.” Mike cupped it to her ear to let her hear the tiny plinks as the delicate wheels turned at their different speeds in perfect balance and precision.

Dawn knew what it looked like inside: she’d watched while Willow worked on it, preparing and then inserting the shaped, be-spelled wafer into the back of the case. Which Mike wasn’t to be allowed to open. Or to read the words there, engraved in three concentric arcs of curly letters: To William, upon his 12th birthday. Be industrious in righteousness. From Papa.

Spike had donated it without comment. And neither Dawn nor Willow had asked about it, although Willow had given him a look.

It would have been hard to get a guy to wear a dinky little locket. A watch was much better, as long as there was room to insert the charm. And it wasn’t entirely lies, what she’d told Mike: you did have to remember to wind it.

“Plenty of time,” Mike decided, sliding the watch away in a front jeans pocket, then catching up her hand again and drawing her along toward where he’d left the motorbike. “There’s been gryphons passing through. Guess that’s not what they’re called, but that’s what they look like, pictures I saw one time in Iran, carved into walls there. Real old, I was told. Gryphons. All goldy, and banners, like, down the back, around the head, red as fire on the ends--splendid, they are. Going down to the sea, to be together there, male and female. You never seen such a thing.”

Trotting to keep pace, Dawn asked, “Like dragons?”

“Very like. Pretty much. Seen one the patrol killed, Spike mostly, before…. Well, before. So I went and scouted around, found this little cove where a pair of ‘em are laired up, and I knew right then I had to show you.”

That last, he said over his shoulder as he mounted the bike. Dawn settled behind and held on tight, trying to imagine the wondrous creatures he described. She had no trouble believing that some monsters were beautiful.

**********

Friday morning, Spike reluctantly sought out Willow after Buffy had left for work and Dawn for school. He found her in the kitchen, dawdling over the last of her breakfast. Waking up, for Willow, was an unpleasant chore that generally took a couple of hours. Night owl, by inclination.

He didn’t have fixing a cup of blood to putter around with anymore so he stole one of her slices of marmalade-slathered toast and bit off the corner. She wasn’t awake enough to do more than glare briefly and pull a face that yielded to a yawn.

“There’s something,” Spike began, “has to be decided. Dawn, she thinks I should tell you about it, ask what you think. Before that meeting, tonight. Even though what you decide may well depend on what goes on there. Give you time to mull it over, like.”

Willow stood up from her chair to drop more bread in the toaster. Depressing the lever, she prompted, “Noun, Spike.”

“Getting to that. It’s about Kennedy, mostly. Seems like you been expecting her to go on home. Same as the rest of the Potentials. Is that because you figure she wants to go, or ought to go, or because you want her to?”

Willow dropped back into her chair, both eyebrows high and surprised and her eyes more alert and not altogether friendly. “How is this your business?”

“I’ll explain, if there’s need. First, though, I need to know what your take really is about her leaving.”

Willow put off saying anything more until the toast had popped and she’d applied marmalade with precise strokes of the knife. Slicing the piece diagonally, she gave the plate a little push toward him. He took half with a nod of thanks.

“The Potentials,” Willow said, “didn’t come for our benefit. To be fighters, although that’s how it ended up. Mostly because of you. They came so we could do our best to protect them. Because Bringers were methodically slaughtering them and their Watchers. It was for their benefit, not ours. Now that the First has been forced away, there are no more Bringers. No more threat to the Potentials. The reason for their being here is gone. They don’t need our protection anymore. They can go back to their own lives, just as if none of this had happened.”

“Can. But what if they don’t want to?”

Willow twitched a little grin at him. “Ken’s been whining to you too, huh?”

“Something like. But I figure it’s your call. Don’t much care, myself, if she likes it or not. She’s used to getting her own way. She’s a brat, and proud of it. And except that sometimes it annoys the hell out of me, I don’t really fault her for that. What she wants, she goes after, makes no apologies to anybody for it. In her place, I’d do the same. An’ have done.”

“Brat,” Willow accused, still smiling.

“I expect. Not the worst I been called by a long chalk. Like they say, ‘Takes one to know one.’”

Willow left the high chair to lean out the doorway--checking the hall and the stairs. Then she came back and resumed her seat, poking at her tea with a spoon. Spike, who’d been leaning on the kitchen island, took a seat opposite. Willow said quietly, “When I needed somebody, when I was scared or depressed, she was there. All chirpy and confident. Cheering me up. Encouraging me. Courting me. Makes you feel kind of special, you know?”

Spike wet a finger to dab up toast crumbs. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Yeah,” Willow said gently. “But the thing is…. The thing is, she’s not Tara. She’s nothing at all like Tara. Ken’s like this puppy, all bouncing around, wanting to go for walkies every ten minutes. Tara, she was quiet. Peaceful. You know.”

“Fine lady, Tara. I’d never say different.”

“And you had your eye on her too, and you better not claim otherwise!”

“Don’t twinkle at me, Red. Makes me nervous. Whatever gave you that idea--because one time I punched her in the nose, gave myself a fucking headache?”

“You were kind to her. Nobody could help wanting to be kind to her. I messed it up--” (Willow shrugged.) “--but that’s me, you know? Can’t resist messing up any good thing, to prove to myself it’s still me, Willow Rosenberg, the gigantic insensitive klutz.”

“Anytime you want me to punch you in the nose, set you straight, you just ask and I’ll oblige. Save you the trouble of beating up on yourself. No charge.”

Willow looked up, and Spike found they were easy with one another in a way they hadn’t been before. Bit was right, he thought. It was right to come to Willow direct about this, not try to go around her.

“You’re what,” Willow reflected, “about a gazillion years older than Buffy?”

Spike hitched a shoulder. “Something short of that. Half a gazillion, maybe.”

“But you think about the same. React pretty much the same. It shows. There’s a…harmony in the two of you, together. Even when you’re bickering. Even outright fighting, and I know you still do that.”

“Have to keep the girl in her place,” Spike explained, as if he meant it.

“And what’s her place?” Willow challenged skeptically.

“Generally on top. Though that varies.”

He got a blush out of the witch with that one.

“Not gonna touch that on a dare,” she declared primly, and Spike chuckled. “Me,” said Willow, “I’m not kind. Kinda ruthless, actually. Goes with being a control freak, which I am…. And Ken, she wants to control me. Like she’s always controlled everything else in her life. On strange ground, under threat, she needed more than ever to feel in control. So she picked me. And maybe that was what I needed then. Somebody to boss me around, take the responsibility for what we did. Take the initiative, pardon the word. Maybe in time she’ll have bounced around, been bounced around, enough to temper her arrogance a little. Like mine has been. Absolutely chock full of humility here. Something I’m really proud of.”

They traded a grin at her arrogant humility. She poked at her tea some more.

“Lost the noun here myself,” she commented. “I’m only a couple of years older than Ken. But it feels like a gazillion. She makes me feel old, Spike, and worn out, and tired. I give in because so many things don’t feel worth expending all that energy to argue about. She can nag, and push, and encourage. But she can’t slap me down when I need to be set back on my heels, stopped before I go completely overboard with something. Which has been known to happen. And…there’s no magic,” Willow added, very softly and sadly.

“Guess that would be important. To a witch,” Spike allowed, bidding goodbye in his mind to the imagined Harley. “All right, I think I got enough of an idea to know how to play this now.”

“Play what?”

“Doesn’t matter, ‘cause it’s not gonna happen. Some details to be worked out, but that’s nothing to do with you and none of your concern. And the next time you think up something pushy and private you want to know about from me, don’t bother because I still won’t tell you.”

Willow’s gamine face lifted, watching him slide off the high chair to standing. “Oh, I don’t know about that. We wiccas have our ways.”

“An’ so do vamps, so you watch out.”

“Michael,” she said, still watching him. “What’s going on there?”

Spike put both hands flat on the island’s countertop, leaning straight-armed, head bent. “Hell if I know. Bit’s promised to talk to Buffy about it. Maybe Buffy will know how to sort it. All I know is judiciously applied force, and half the time, that’s the wrong thing…. Gonna have a try at making him back off some, ease the pressure off Bit. Who’s mostly levelheaded, but she’s wafting out this ‘come hither,’ and Michael, he’s…. Well, it’s hard to say what they’re doing. Tisn’t sex, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Sex, that’s easier to understand,” Willow agreed. “The grown-ups have all the appropriate ‘Eeks’ and ‘Quit that’s’ pre-loaded and ready. But somehow I didn’t think our little Ms. underage OOOh, My Eyes! would be one to rush into that sort of thing…. I don’t imagine puberty hits quite the same way for vamps or for dimensional keys…. That’s still part of her, isn’t it.”

“Yeah. After a fashion.”

“And the watch, and the lockets. What are you trying to keep out, Spike?”

“Whatever wants to come in,” Spike responded grimly. “A precaution. Don’t like having my head messed with. Believe I’ve told you that, a time or two.”

“And Dawn? And Michael?”

“A precaution.”

Willow took up her cup, remarking, “If I had better information, maybe I could be better help.”

“If this don’t work, trust me: you’ll hear about it. A whole lot more than you’ll want. But let it be, for now. See if this is enough.”

“Just one thing. It’s not still the First, singing you little interdimensional ditties?”

“Hell, no. That’s done. Bit’s blood spell put paid to that.”

“But something,” Willow persisted.

“What d’you mean? I like lockets,” Spike responded, patting his chest. “Always wanted to have a locket. Dote on the fucking things. Thinking of accessorizing with safety pins. You got a problem with that, Red?”

“Go to hell,” said Willow amiably.

“Many thanks, I’m on my way.”

**********

Buffy greeted Giles with a long hug and a longer smile-and-stare, then took his hand and led him through to the kitchen and set about fixing him some tea. In a ceramic teapot. No teabags, even. With a tea infuser shaped like a fat acorn that dangled into the pot. She pointed each of these appurtenances out to him proudly.

Giles assured her he was suitably impressed. “I wasn’t aware it was possible to buy a tea infuser in Sunnydale,” he remarked, settling a hip on one of the high chairs by the island.

“It isn’t. We’ve discovered the glories of buying stuff on the internet. Spike knew what it was called and what it should look like, and Willow located it. Three days later, it was in the mailbox. All for you!”

“Well, I hope it wasn’t too much trouble. I won’t be staying long this time, Buffy.”

“Oh, I figured,” Buffy said much more lightly than she felt. The water in the saucepan was bubbling, so she carefully poured it into the teapot. Trying to remember all the parts of the ritual, she popped on the lid and then finished with the little jacket, or whatever it was called: yellow, with small white daisies. “You’ll have all Watchery things to do now. Have you gotten yourself reinstated yet?”

Giles fiddled with his tie. “Well, no need to go into all of that in any detail now. Until the others arrive. But in point of fact, that’s in progress. The census of surviving watchers is nearly complete. Enough so for some pro tem appointments to be made. I’ve been offered the position of Chief of the Research Division, inasmuch as I’ve logged more field duty than anyone else in at least a century. My Slayer has survived.” He beamed, and Buffy resisted the impulse to say something aw-shucks-ish. It hadn’t been easy, and they both knew it. “Strictly on a temporary basis,” Giles went on, “until the new council can be elected. Then they will, of course, make their own appointments. But at that point, I may have some small say in the matter. With proper preparation.”

“Twisting a few arms, hinting at a few closeted skeletons,” Buffy elaborated, waggling a hand, eyes lifted to the ceiling.

“A bit of that, yes. Which has to be done on site and in person. So after matters here have been all sorted satisfactorily--”

“Hullo, Rupert,” Spike interjected, passing through from the back porch to the hallway. “Like the cozy? Tried to find one that said ‘Mum’ on it for you, but the place was all out of ‘em.”

“Yes, very nice….” said Giles faintly to Spike’s departing back. Then he gazed at the teapot as though it’d startled him with an off-color remark. “Well, Spike seems…frighteningly normal, under the circumstances. For someone who by rights should have been burnt to a crisp. How have things been going?”

“How long does it have to sit in there?” Buffy poked the jacket-thing, the cozy.

“A bit longer. Don’t be so American.”

Buffy eloquently stuck out her tongue, then responded to Giles’ question, frowning slightly. “Holding pattern, mostly, I guess. Picking up pieces here and there. Going with the habit, habits are our friends. Spike’s bored silly, of course, and blew up at his pal Mike a couple days back, got drunk, killed a dragon--”

“A dragon?”

“Sh’narth Wyrm,” Buffy admitted, shrugging, “it said in the book, so that’s what I wrote in the patrol log. But where’s the drama in killing a worm? Now, if you say dragon, it’s like you said shark, you know?”

“Buffy, there have been no authenticated dragon sightings since the thirteenth century. Your records will be far less useful if you knowingly fabricate.”

“I said I wrote in the log what Spike said it was. And what was in the book,” Buffy added quickly.

“Ah. So Spike is consenting to contribute. Admit his experience extends beyond footie on the telly. Perhaps, with due persuasion, he’ll admit to his education, as well.”

“His…education?”

“Buffy, the man reads Attic Greek and is fluent in a number of demon languages we lack adequate dictionaries-- What?”

Buffy beamed. “You said man.”

“Well, I probably did, but vampire does not slide easily into a conversation. Keeping to the point.”

Buffy set her elbows on the island and set her chin on the lifted prop of her folded hands. “And just what is the point, Giles? Let me tell you: you’re gonna try to recruit Spike. As a Watcher.”

“Not exactly recruit, as such, no. But I haven’t forgotten your Boogey Man Credo. All the ridiculous, inaccurate, preposterous so-called information that’s accumulated concerning vampires. For centuries. There’s a rare opportunity, this once in many lifetimes, to go through that rubbish and fix it! And a certain William London--he’s never divulged his original surname, but he certainly has resided in London, and it will do--would be a splendid resource. As a consultant. Papers, a passport, could all be arranged.”

“You’re not gonna get him, Giles. Not if it means taking him away.”

“Most of it could be done remotely. By e-mail. Willow has already become involved in the archiving effort, to a degree. Some of the rarer volumes, however, haven’t yet been--what’s the word?--input? scanned? Processed, in any case. They’re too fragile to entrust to transport. There would occasionally be times--”

“Not gonna happen. Unless you get them teleported--”

“Unthinkable. Some of these volumes are magical in their own right, and subjecting them to--”

Passing through in the other direction, an unlit cigarette already in hand, Spike admonished, “Now, now, children, play nice,” and was gone again onto the porch.

Buffy and Giles blinked at each other for a moment. Then Buffy poked at the daisy-spotted cozy, asking, “D’you think it’s ready yet?”

“Oh, I suppose.” Removing the cozy, Giles poured out a cup and managed to erase his vexed frown. “Might there be sugar? Milk?”

Buffy provided the sugar bowl and yanked the milk jug out of the refrigerator, setting both within easy reach. Giles fussed with his tea.

Buffy said, “And that’s not gonna work unless you can talk him into glasses. Or contacts.” At Giles’ inquiring glance, Buffy explained, “Farsighted. According to Dawn. Lots of teeny print is apt to be a whole lot less than appealing. Maybe once he could have been all super student, for all I know. Now, he really likes to kill things. It’s gonna be a hard sell, Giles.”

“I am not deterred. Certain…inducements will be presented…. Is that Anya?”

“’Fraid so,” Buffy admitted, having identified the same rapid-fire, irritating voice from the front hallway that had caught Giles’ attention. “Be prepared for rough water: Xander has a new girlfriend.”

Giles sipped tea. “Oh really? Has Spike passed on her?”

“Not yet. And I don’t think Anya knows. So we’ll see if we can get through the meeting without dropping that bomb. I’m all in favor of mayhem, but keep it outdoors, that’s what I always say.”

As Giles picked up his teacup and saucer, and Buffy finished pouring milk into a small pitcher, Spike leaned in at the back door, asking, “That Anya? An’ she doesn’t know? That’ll be interesting, if any of us survive. And forget about it, Watcher: not gonna read your bleeding books for you. Got better things to do with my unlife. And no fucking glasses, neither.”

“We shall see,” Giles responded with ominous composure, carrying his balanced saucer, following Buffy into the hall.

Willow was setting up a tray-table for Giles to put his teacup on. When the legs were locked, Buffy set the sugar and small milk pitcher there. Spike deposited the teapot, cozy again in place.

He’d done that all by himself, without being told or asked. Just saw it needed doing and did it. No fuss, no bother: like putting away groceries. Buffy was really pleased with him.

She backed up against the door arch, and Spike joined her there, sliding his arm around behind her, hand on her hip. She threaded her fingers through his, to make a fist together. His hand didn’t open easily until he noticed what she was doing and let her: more wound up and intent than he looked.

Before she could say anything, he asked, “Nervous, pet?”

“Well, Xander. And Anya.”

“Yeah, could be bloody,” he responded appreciatively.

“It isn’t funny,” she scolded.

“As you say.”

Buffy whispered, “Spike, what’s Attic Greek?”

“Opposite of basement Greek, pet,” Spike responded absently. “Of no use or interest to anybody.” His head snapped around. “And on that cue of no interest, here’s Floppy Boy himself.”

Elbowing open the front door, clutching snacks, Xander waved fingers. “Hi, everybody.”

**********

It was plain to Spike: the Watcher had been gotten to. And Buffy not as offish about the initial hints as Spike thought she should have been. Willow…he didn’t think so. She protected herself from influences pretty well as a routine thing. Maybe she’d taken a clue and manufactured one of those charms for herself when he’d come asking for one each for himself and Bit. Canny bird, Willow.

Anya…he’d have to watch and see. She’d dealt with the Powers enough to be highly uneasy at the prospect of doing so ever again, he knew that. Vengeance demon, after all, even if not at the moment. And past a thousand years old. Knew a lot, played the angles, always sharp-eyed after her own interest. Was his friend, and all, but he didn’t know how she’d jump.

And Harris he considered a pure utter fool. Couldn’t imagine the Powers bothering about such a brainless yob one way or the other.

Wouldn’t have imagined them taking any notice of a vamp, neither, except for Angel. Set himself up for that, Angel had: put on the collar and leash as meek as you please, seemed like. Champion, and all. Fucking spineless git.

And then there’d been the dreams. Clearer, more specific as they went on. Visions, almost. Mostly, it seemed, Angel had somebody else for that. He just took care of the wetwork, like Michael would have said. Strong-arm bashing about. Somebody else took care of the brain stuff. Not that Angel wasn’t a planner. But a bit of casual asking around had gathered Spike the information that it basically took a demon to stand up to the visions. Filthy incapacitating headaches, otherwise. Had come close to killing that Cordielia, whom Spike vaguely remembered as a high-nosed bitch and a Scooby, sort of, upon a time. With Angel now. Got herself made part demon, the tale went, to endure the brain burn. Idly, Spike wondered what part.

Not going about it that way with him, it seemed. He’d lived years with the chip, knew all about brain-blasting headaches that could put you down for days at a time. Guessed Lady Gates figured he could manage it all right, all on his own, if the pressure was cast as dreams. Sort of a compliment, he supposed, but one he’d sooner do without, thanks. Didn’t like waking up, all of a sudden, with a compulsive image in his head, one sort or another. Couldn’t think straight until he’d puzzled it out, made some kind of sense of it.

Like the amulet.

Like the Hellmouth.

All well and good--once. But that was done now. And it wasn’t something he figured to put up with as a regular thing. Buffy, she could point him at something and he’d take it down. That was part of their arrangement. Whatever he took out, she didn’t have to. Besides, he mostly liked doing it.

Buffy. Nobody or nothing else entitled to use him like a weapon to their hand.

Let Buffy be a Champion. Or maybe she already was. Slayer, and all. And it was more the circumstances, these days, that presented as a Mission to her, rather than anything the fucking Council of Watchers pointed her at. CoW didn’t count for much, before, with her and counted for nothing now. It was hers to choose. She’d damn well earned that right, all she’d been through, died twice even. And whatever she chose, Spike would second her. No matter what it was. Assuming she had a use for him. Assuming she wouldn’t be talked or pressured into giving him away.

Wouldn’t put up with that. Not for a second.

Watcher had been nattering on about all the plans for putting the council back together, in which Spike had no least interest whatever. So when Rupert paused to pour himself some more tea, Spike figured it was a good time to put in, “So when are they gonna start paying the Slayer?”

Dead and utter silence, everybody staring at him, sitting off in the big corner chair that let him watch everybody at once.

“Well,” said Rupert uncomfortably, “right now, there’s considerable damage to be made good. Infrastructure to be--”

“Hell with your infrastructure, Rupert. Lady there is no child. Her mum is dead and her dad’s a rotter who’s seven years behind on the child support an’ didn’t even show up for Joyce’s funeral. Or Buffy’s, come to that. She works all day and then fixes dinner for her sis and after that goes on patrol, and then the next day the same. She needs dosh, money, to live. Have you never noticed? So when’s that gonna become somebody’s priority, besides all the neat new computer setups, the new council building with its same old rotten paneled walls all eaten up with woodworm?”

Rupert took off his glasses. “Spike, when were you ever in council headquarters?”

“Been to a lot of places you lot don’t know nothing about. I hear you blathering on about furniture, and I want to know when do you get to the real stuff? The things that keep a Slayer alive, give her choices, not just burdens and duties?”

“Spike--” Buffy said, lifting a hand, like she wanted him to shut up.

Too bad what she wanted. He was talking about what she needed.

Rupert put his glasses back on and met Spike’s eyes directly. “I first requested a stipend for Buffy on her eighteenth birthday. I have applied each year since, and sometimes more than once. Since Buffy rejected the council’s stipulations--their control, not to put too fine a point on it--the matter has become even more problematical and difficult. And since I was dismissed, I’ve had to rely on intermediaries. And I believe you know at least something of what this last year has been. The council, such as it is, has had to absorb the cost of a great…many funerals.” The Watcher stopped and took a breath. “I believe it’s the matter of precedent that’s the chief sticking point. Not the money itself. The council has traditionally viewed the Slayer as a volunteer with a holy--”

Spike shot back, “The council has viewed the Slayer as a child, and a tool, and their chattel. And if you’re gonna try to remake the council, that’s the first thing that has to change.”

“Well. I didn’t mean to bring this up until later, but the council has at least noticed you, Spike. At my urging, I may add. Beginning tomorrow, or the first day I can get the papers filed, Sunnydale has a new institution. A very modest one. It’s a two-room research facility at the corner of Wilkins and Main. Second floor. Webster Hematological Research, Inc. Its mandate is to investigate some aspects of the transmission of blood-borne pathogens. It has two employees: one Holden Webster, whose death has never been reported or recorded, and yourself. To this facility, each morning and evening, will be delivered by arrangement units of freshly-drawn whole human blood, unrefrigerated and without additives. These units will then be conveyed, by whoever is currently impersonating our Mr. Webster, to whatever place you designate. At council expense. A small stipend goes with it. Xander, I thought perhaps you might be Mr. Webster until more something more formal can be arranged.”

An even more rousing silence greeted that announcement. Hand at mouth, Xander just gaped.

Narrow-eyed and thoroughly surprised, Spike leaned back in the chair. “And in return for this, I do what?”

“Nothing, Spike. Nothing at all. You’ve already done it. You are a remarkable creature: the only vampire known in council records to have voluntarily acquired a soul. The only vampire known to have closed a Hellmouth--an undertaking almost certainly suicidal. And one which you nevertheless miraculously survived. You are owed a considerable debt, of which this is only the least token. To honorably free you from…the shackles of predation. A payment in kind, even: life for life. Blood for blood.”

Spike was up out of the chair and shouting. “Are you insane? Have you gone totally around the fucking bend? Pay me off for the soul? Not hardly! Didn’t do it for the fucking watchers! Pay me off for closing the Hellmouth? I opened the damn seal, that’s all. And so I saw it got shut. That was mine to see to, an’ I did it. And not for the Watchers! Not for anybody here save one. Two. My own fucking choice. Mine! And somebody--”

First carefully setting the table aside, Rupert rose too. “Spike, you are a bloody bastard first, last, and always. Now shut the hell up and say ‘Thank you,’ you incredible lout!”

“--figures if you do this, pay off a damn vampire in blood, your council has these few old books they can’t make out, this date they can’t confirm, this spell they want checked out against five accounts that all disagree with each other, no problem because you got this obliging tame vamp on retainer or some such, they can have trot off and fix it for them?”

“Well, it was expected that certain courtesies--”

“The hell with courtesies, Watcher. Scrap the fucking clinic, the meager stipend, the little delivery van or ambulance sneaking out of some hospital at dawn. Give her the dosh.” Spike’s arm stabbed out at Buffy. “Don’t want it, never asked for it, and won’t take it. You are out of your bleeding librarian Watcher skull even to imagine such a thing! Much less imagine I’d sign on for it, when you won’t pay your Slayer a single sodding quid. She’s died for you. Twice! Keep your goddam collar and leash because I won’t have ‘em! Never!”

Without noticing, Spike had gone to game face and advanced enough to make the Watcher retreat as far as he could without falling back onto the couch. Then Buffy was between, her hands on Spike’s shoulders, her frowning face an obstruction he leaned aside to see past, leveling a pointing finger at the Watcher, declaring, “And another thing: nobody but a fatuous git would believe the council to be benevolent toward yours truly, much less--”

“You should take it,” Anya put in, pert and brisk. “So far, it commits you to nothing and makes it much less likely Buffy will have to stake you. In the event you inadvertently kill your dinner.”

Swinging around, Spike snapped at her, “Oh, now you’re in it too, are you? What’s in it for you, then?”

Shedding potato chip crumbs, Harris was up, objecting, “You don’t talk to her like that, Deadboy.”

“I talk however I bloody well please! Or is that up for auction now? ‘F you think so much of the bint, what are you stepping out on her for?”

Anya grabbed Xander’s arm. “What does he mean, Xander? He said ‘stepping out.’ Does that mean you’re getting orgasms from somebody else? The fact that we’re currently unengaged doesn’t mean--”

Buffy said, “Oh, boy. That’s done it. Thanks a lot, Spike.” She gave him a shove.

Pivoting, Spike saw not a single friendly or sympathetic face. Everybody was shouting at everybody else except Giles, who was protecting the teapot. Anya had used her leverage to drag Xander down crookedly, on one knee and leaning on her lap, an arm upraised to fend off her attempts to smack him about the head. Buffy was trying to drag them apart, ignoring Spike completely.

And Spike was still in a towering fury with no acceptable target anywhere within reach. “All right, then!” he declared to nobody in particular. “You lot sort it out amongst you, then, and let me know what keeper I’ve been assigned to.”

Barging into the hall, he snatched open the front door, intending to fling a final line over his shoulder, barely noticing the small redheaded man standing outside with a hand raised to knock.

“Hi,” said the man, carefully lowering the fist as Spike swung and glared at him. “If it’s a bad time--”

Spike slammed past, giving the guy a shoulder in the process. No satisfying impact: the guy had faded back and avoided most of it.

“--I could come back….”

From inside, Willow’s voice exclaimed, “Oz!”

Chapter 5: Vigil

Greeted enthusiastically by everyone, settled in the big chair Spike had left so emphatically vacant, and provided with cookies and hastily made coffee, Oz blinked at them all happily.

“OK,” Buffy decreed, “meeting is officially adjourned, to be reconvened at a later date. So, Oz: you know all the obvious questions--spill.”

Oz held up a finger, giving notice that he was still occupied with chewing.

He looked fine, Buffy thought. A little more obvious muscle on him, visible in his shoulders and arms. Face heavier, too: less pixie, more wolf. Jaw more pronounced, more projecting, russet eyebrows thicker. Same short rough-cut duck-fluff dark auburn hair that seemed to call out to be combed flat with fingers. (Buffy shot a glance at Willow, but after the initial hopping group hug, Willow had resettled herself in the wood occasional chair, all smiling, cool, and attentive in the presence of the boyfriend-left-behind.) It was easier than it used to be to see, not a small man, but a very large and substantial werewolf in its human aspect.

“Music is fine,” Oz reported finally. “Did some club gigs in Seattle, Tacoma but then the band split. Guys wanted to do a demo. I didn’t. Getting into mandolin now.” His fingers demonstrated quick banjo-like plucking. “Whole new set of calluses.” His spread hands lifted to display the thick, toughened pad on each of his fingers. “Been mostly doing RenFaires, folk art festivals, Miss Fall Fruit celebrations, Antique Extravaganzas. Open air, healthy. Less smoke.” He threw a flashing glance at the front door. “Spike seemed fairly hot there. Think he’ll be back soon?”

Buffy caught something non-casual in his tone. “Why?”

“Well, it’s actually him I came to see. Looked first at his crypt, but there was a whole crowd of vamps there. They seemed pretty occupied and not too sociable. Spike not in attendance. I came on to Scooby Central. But he was on his way out.”

Till after we’ve talked with Giles. Spike’s remark popped into Buffy’s head, and she was suddenly sure that in keeping with only the letter and not the spirit of their compromise, furious Spike was making a bee-line for Restfield Cemetery in search of some unrestrained mayhem. Alone, as he’d wanted. With a twenty minute lead.

Begging Oz’s pardon with a glance, Buffy leaned past to grab the handset of the standard phone on the weapons chest and punched in numbers. No joy: as usual, Spike either had his cell turned off or, more likely, hadn’t taken it with him.

She dumped the whole phone on the floor and grabbed the keys to the SUV to clear and lift the lid of the chest. She started to grab a stake out of the bag, then changed her mind and took the whole bag.

Everybody jumped as the lid crashed shut.

“I’m sorry,” Buffy said to Oz. “I gotta go. Everybody, take care of Oz and Giles, all right?”

She headed for the door.

Oz offered alertly, “Want company?” and Giles asked, “Buffy, what’s wrong?”

Buffy just shook her head and kept going. No time to sort things out, explain, or plan. Twenty minute lead: it could be over already.

At best, Buffy was an erratic driver but not normally a reckless one. Tonight, she ran yellow lights, red lights, and stop signs, and bullied the sparse traffic she met out of her way with the SUV’s careening bulk and blaring horn. She saw three pedestrians jogging across the street ahead of her. Three tall girls, arguing and gesturing. Buffy slammed on the brakes and looked down into the startled faces of Amanda, Rona, and Kennedy.

“Get in.”

They did, in haste. Finding the bag of stakes, Kennedy started distributing them as the SUV jerked back into motion and Amanda started explaining anxiously, “We didn’t want to bother you, I’m sure we’ll find her all right.”

With difficulty, Buffy changed mental gears. “Find who.”

“Kim,” said Kennedy.

“It’s all my fault,” wailed Rona, in back, and burst into sobs.

“Amanda. Report. Make it fast,” directed Buffy grimly.

“’Manda doesn’t know it all,” said Kennedy, leaning forward between the seats. “Spike came and told me that something I’d hoped for hadn’t worked out. I went and told Kim and Rona, and Rona took off in a flaming snit.”

“My fault!”

“Shut up, Rona,” Kennedy snapped. “When she wasn’t back by supper time, we got worried went looking for her. There was going to be a Scooby council meeting, so we didn’t want to bother Spike about it. Or you, of course. Then I got the bright idea to call ‘Manda, to cover more ground. I named the mark, and Kim went on ahead, to meet at the mark in ten minutes. Come to find out, Rona had just gotten there. To Amanda’s, I mean. She’d been hanging at the mall all day, and ‘Manda lives by there. I told them to stay put and went to the mark to tell Kim. She wasn’t there. I waited half an hour. Still no Kim. So I went back to the pay phone and called ‘Manda again, they came, and we’ve all been looking.”

“Where was the mark?” Buffy demanded.

“Corner of Mulberry and Lucas, at the bus stop.”

Buffy shut her eyes for a second, then opened them in time to swerve and miss a wandering Golden Retriever. Mulberry Avenue, that she was driving down, bounded the south side of Restfield Cemetery. And cruising vamps just loved to find people waiting at bus stops.

Usually Buffy would have used one of the many trees with overhanging branches to get over the cemetery wall. But Oz’s report of seeing a bunch of vampires in the vicinity of Spike’s old crypt made her reluctant to leave behind whatever advantage the SUV’s tank-like weight, power, and headlights might grant. Pulling up to the next gate, she broke the chain with a tire iron. Amanda pulled the gate open, then shut it when the SUV was through and climbed back in.

Buffy slowed the vehicle to a crawl, scanning the familiar cemetery-scape for motion. She didn’t know where the two new vamp nests were located, but the most likely places were to the north, where most of the big mausoleums were.

The road was forced into a curve by the girth of an enormous oak. As the headlights swung around, illuminating the various headstones, monuments, and stands of assorted bushes and widely spaced trees, the light stopped on a low grassy mound above which was visible a wall topped with a two-tiered molding: the back of Spike’s crypt, the rear of which was built into the earth.

Buffy stopped and set the hand brake, checking the area. She couldn’t lock the SUV without turning off the engine. Nothing moving. She turned the key but left the headlights on. They all slipped out, Buffy retaining the tire iron. She signaled the SUV to lock itself and made sure the keys were securely stowed, then led off. The three SITs moved into practiced formation to either side and behind her, and Buffy couldn’t help but contrast that experienced discipline with their haphazard attempt to locate Rona.

Why they’d picked the vicinity of a known dangerous graveyard to look for her was an obvious question. For later. Now they moved silently, circling the mound, spread at the right distance to notice any threat within striking distance but not far enough to be easily separated, cut off.

Still nothing. They’d come far enough that Buffy could see that the crypt had been broken into: the heavy oak door had been broken from its top hinge and hung crooked, its weight straining the lower hinge. The interior was pitch black. When she advanced to the first of the three downward steps, Buffy made out a slightly lighter spot: the back of Spike’s head. He was sitting on the floor at the foot of the sarcophagus.

“Spike?”

No reaction.

The last time Buffy had been here, there’d been a candle set on the sarcophagus. She went down the steps and moved her hand slowly over the flat, chest-high surface. Locating the candle, she grasped it before it fell over, then realized she had no matches or lighter. She was about to ask Spike for his when the smell, already subliminally noticed, hit her: blood. Fresh. Lots of it. She passed the candle blindly backward, hoping one of the SITs would have a way to light it, and dropped onto her knees behind Spike, grabbing him in a tight hug.

“Are you OK?”

No answer, and she started patting at his chest to find any wet patches. Then he said hoarsely, “Fine,” in about the least fine tone she could imagine.

A point of candle light bloomed and steadied from behind. Buffy found she was looking over Spike’s shoulder at Kim’s corpse. The girl’s throat had been torn out. There was blood all over her chest and shoulders. The crypt floor near her head was black with it.

Rona screeched and somebody, probably Amanda, scuffed outside and began to heave noisily.

“I’ll see to her,” Spike said in that same emotionless voice.

“We have to take her home,” Buffy said, starting to rise.

“No!” Spinning around, Spike knocked her off balance and backward. He was poised on fingertips, staring at her with fierce, deranged blue eyes. Guarding the corpse. “I’ll have to see to her.”

Buffy clapped a hand to her lips, realizing he thought Kim might have been turned.

“Can’t you tell?” she asked shakily.

His eyes finally drifted away, and he turned back and settled as he’d been before. “No.”

“How long?”

“A day. Two. Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On who turned her. She’s just dead now. Can’t tell nothing from that.”

Kim’s head was nearly severed from her body. Not much would be needed to finish it and end the possibility now. But as Buffy started to get up, Spike said, quietly this time, “No. Let the child be. I’ll stay with her. If she rises… I’ll stay with her. You get the children home. Or wherever they’re to go. You see to that, Buffy. I’ll see to this.”

If there was one thing Buffy was certain of, it was that she wasn’t going to leave him alone with a corpse stinking of blood in a wide-open crypt in a cemetery where at least a dozen vampires laired. Standing, Buffy got out the key bundle and exchanged it for the pillar candle Kennedy was holding. She told the girl, “Take Amanda home. Then you and Rona go back to Casa Summers. Tell them what’s happened. See that Rona gets to sleep. Willow can do that. Then tell Willow I need her here in the morning for a heavy-duty protection spell. Can you do that?”

Big-eyed and swallowing convulsively, Kennedy nodded and got sobbing Rona turned around and out the broken door.

Buffy paid no more attention but went immediately back to Spike, settling behind him, her back against the sarcophagus. She placed the candle arm’s reach away, on the floor. She tried out, in her mind, various things she might do or say and ended up discarding them all. She just waited. Until her back began to ache and her butt was numb from the cold stone. When Spike could break out of the rigidity of his grieving, he’d notice that she was there. Of course, he knew now on some level. But in his mind, he was alone with the dead SIT, and Buffy didn’t try to intrude on that. She’d ceded responsibility for the SITs to him. She understood that they were his still. All of them. In death as in life.

After several hours, he said abruptly, quietly, “If she’s turned, this is my fault.”

“Why, Spike?”

“She bore my mark. Any vamp might have come across her, eaten her, by chance. But she…. She was caught and brought here. Killed here. Turned, maybe. With my mark set on her, saying she was mine and under my protection.”

“Oh, God: the territorial claim,” Buffy realized.

“Yeah. Figure so. Poor little cow walked right into it. So they used her to play me. The insult direct. Answering move, opening gambit. Fool’s chess…. If she’s been turned, and because she was mine…. Have to do ‘em all, Buffy. Nothing else for it. Three of ‘em still here when I came. Thought-- Thought I’d collect a weapon or two I still have put away here. An’ they were here, playing with her. She was already gone, though.”

No need to ask what’d happened to the three vamps. It was quite likely Buffy was sitting on their dust. And she’d arrived all ready to tear into Spike about the utter stupidity of taking on the Restfield vamps on his own. She probably would never do that now, even though he richly deserved it. This had intervened, rendering all lesser matters petty and irrelevant.

“Oh,” he said, in a tone of recollecting something. Fumbling in a pocket, he came up with the cellphone and punched in a number. After a moment, he said, “Spike. I default.” He listened, then said, “Can’t help that. Dock my odds. Take me off the fucking board, for all I care. Willy, I don’t give a damn.” He shut the phone and tried to put it away but instead dropped it. She could hear him pulling in deep breaths. She reached out then, stiffly uncurling, and pulled him unresisting back against her. Buffy held him tight against the shaking.

She thought about repeating to him Kennedy’s account of how Kim had come to be here: how it’d been Rona who’d bolted and Kim part of the small and badly organized search team. But there was still the question of why Rona had bolted in the first place and the fact that the other SITs hadn’t brought the matter to her or to Spike but instead tried to handle it themselves. Too much still undetermined. And even if it were to be all untangled and explained, detective style, it would still leave Spike where he was: confronting the death of a girl for which he felt responsible.

When the candle had burned nearly to its base, she told him quietly, “They’re all civilians now. Most have gone home. And they were alive to go home because you brought them through and didn’t lose a single one. Not one, Spike. Whatever started this, they got into it by themselves and handled it in the stupidest way possible. Kids like Kim die in Sunnydale every day. From being stupid. Or careless. Or just unlucky. You got them through to the jumping-off point. Not one was killed by Bringers or by Turok-han. They weren’t your responsibility anymore. If they’d had the sense to come to us, or to Willow, this could have been avoided. But they didn’t. They were dumb. We protected them the very best we could. You’re not responsible for this.”

She waited for his response. The shaking had passed, or he’d controlled it. After awhile he said, “That was that Oz: Willow’s mutt, from before. The werewolf. Got him placed now. What’d he want?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, they’ll take care of it until we can go back.” Through the open door, the sky was lightening. “Spike.” She nudged him, rocked him a little. “We’ll have to move. The sun’s coming.” When Spike didn’t respond, Buffy said, “The door’s broken. The sun will come in. We could take her down to your basement.”

“Bed’s gone.”

“At least it’s dark there. The two of us could take her down easy. We can’t stay here. C’mon, Spike. I’ll hand her down to you.”

He said, “There are no children like Kim.”

Only later, passing the stiffening body to his upraised arms and the crypt’s lower level, did Buffy realize his comment was in belated answer to her try at consolation. So she guessed it hadn’t worked. She hadn’t really expected it to.

**********

It was very simple: if she rose tonight, it was Michael. If she didn’t, it was not. The second night, if she rose, any mature vamp might have turned her, and she might be able to say which. If she didn’t rise the third night--and it might take as long as that--she was merely dead, perhaps by intent, perhaps by mischance. The others could have her then, to do whatever they considered seemly.

Waiting occupied the whole of Spike’s attention except for what was focused rigidly on the blood.

It had dried. On her, and above. What little remained within her was as dead as she was, spoiled. No life left in it. If she’d been turned, whatever blood her sire had forced on her was working undetectably to transform the whole, open the way to the demon that would inhabit this flesh. Nothing left that even remotely could constitute food anymore.

But the smell of it was still present--to him, if not to the others who came and went. And it was their blood he was chiefly aware of. That lived and moved in them, on the level above. If he’d been attending to voices, he could have named them. Willow, he supposed, since Buffy had summoned her, and later reported that she’d put a protection on the crypt no vamp could pass until a certain word was said, He didn’t remember the word. There’d been one or two others up above, as well. Dawn, he thought. And something inhuman, whose blood he nevertheless could have fed on. That Oz, he supposed.

Buffy was kind and strict: she allowed nobody else to come down and went above when others were present. Was away, sometimes, because she had to be: to eat, rest, shower, do human things. Then came back, and down, and was with him again, mostly silent, patient with what must seem to her his inattention. He wasn’t sure whether her absence or her presence was worse. When she was away, he felt desperate, frantic, adrift, certain she’d made the choice and severed herself to some different life. And when she returned and was present, it was impossible he’d ever reveal to her how he perceived her then: what she meant, what he wanted from her.

It was almost three days since he’d fed from the drunk in the alley, and that hardly more than a snack. His demon was in deep need--restless and intent, demanding to hunt. He ignored it, controlled it. Blessedly she hadn’t realized, hadn’t offered. If he stayed very still and didn’t look at her, she wouldn’t notice. And he wouldn’t see a blur unfocused except for the shining heat of her exposed skin and the visible beat of her pulse.

He’d done without before. Even into the extreme of starvation, of which he was in no danger yet, merely by willing himself still. It would take at least a couple of weeks to reach the point where his control of his demon might slip and it might get past him and take whatever it found and could get at. This would be long settled then. He’d manage.

Unless Michael had taken her as defiance, if she rose, Kim was dead because Spike had set his mark on her. To feed from her. By her consent. After that, the SITs had spilled their blood into cups for him. It died a little, being away from the source, but still good and sweet and strong. Barely diminished. So the only one marked was Kim.

Not acceptable.

Fasting while he kept vigil seemed an appropriate penance. Not sufficient, but fitting. The soul approved. It would help him keep clear in his mind what he’d set himself to, and why.

After a time and because the crypt was now protected, Buffy went away: to rest, to be able to watch with him through the night. Although all his dread of her choosing otherwise and never returning flared up again, it was still easier when she was gone. Day was his time to sleep, and he let himself be overtaken by it, a dreamless blank. Nothing would happen before nightfall, and he doubted anything would happen then.

Buffy could be present on the first night. Nothing would happen and she therefore wouldn’t try to interfere.

Spike’s demon woke him quite sharply when Buffy dropped down from the upper level rather than bother with the broken-rung ladder. Spike remembered and kept it all contained and still.

Only the Old Blood would rise the first night. All the same, Spike moved to a new place with a wall at his back and took Kim’s body into his arms, across his lap. Rigor was passing off. Little pressure was needed to fold her close, in something like a human posture. Buffy brought him water in a dish, and a cloth, and he cleaned Kim’s face and the edges of the gaping, ragged wound. Buffy helped unbutton and cut away the child’s stained blouse that contained a woman’s contours: large, heavy breasts, a belly rounder than current fashions dictated. She’d have been a beauty much sought after, many places he’d known. But she’d never know that; and if she rose, the change would shed her of that padding soon enough. Spike had never seen a fat vampire although some, like Angel and like Mike, were surely big enough…. Not fat, though. Buffy helped him wipe and rinse all the crusted blood away. Then they dressed Kim’s corpse in a clean blouse Buffy had brought from Casa Spike: carefully buttoned and smoothed, without folds.

Coming back from disposing of the spoiled water, down the tunnel where Spike had tapped into the city system and put in two faucets, one high enough for showering, the ruddy shimmer of heat and life that was Buffy handed something toward him: a mug filled with water for him.

He considered a moment and decided that was allowed. When he handed the mug back empty, she returned it refilled, or maybe it was another one, and he drank that too but placed it on the floor to mean that was enough.

She set a hand on his shoulder. It felt hot enough to burn. He flinched enough that her hand lifted, and he was sorry to have shown such an obvious reaction. But she didn’t seem annoyed, asking him in a quiet, steady voice how he was holding up.

Starting to answer, he had to clear his throat because no voice was there. Then he remembered to breathe. “Well enough.” He shut his eyes, to not see her. Not the way he was seeing her.

“I didn’t know you were so attached to her,” Buffy’s voice commented carefully: a question.

“There were a lot of children. Kim, I knew. Too many hostages.”

“What?”

Spike only shook his head. He didn’t want to tell her about the Powers, lumber her with that. His to see to. As this was.

Dylan Thomas knew: After the first death, there is no other.

There was only the one death, the one victim. All others were merely repetition.

Patiently, Spike kept vigil for all his dead.

**********

The afternoon of the second day, when Buffy had gone away to sleep, Spike laid Kim’s body gently aside and checked the tunnel passage. As he’d thought, it was open to him: Willow had never been to the lower level of the crypt and hadn’t realized another entrance was there. It wasn’t blocked by her spell.

Probably, if he’d really tried, he could have called up the password he’d been told. But he didn’t need to.

He lifted Kim’s body, then hesitated, frowning. He should leave a note, so Buffy wouldn’t worry and imagine horrible things. But there was no way to do that. A pace toward the tunnel opening, and then he thought of the cellphone. But it wasn’t in his pocket. Must have forgotten it somewhere.

He stood swaying, undecided. Then he again put Kim down and climbed to the upper level. Bright sunlight was blazing in the broken doorway, splashed halfway across the crypt. But the head of the sarcophagus was still safe. Wiping the smooth stone clean with his arm, he allowed the demon to show forth to let fangs tear the side of a finger and drew uneven letters with the blood: DONT FRET.

That should do.

That was all right, then.

He took Kim away through the tunnels, a mile or more: westward, away from the houses, where he knew there was an alcove were tools were kept. The sewer line was an offshoot, led nowhere of interest, and was lit by grates during the day. Going as slowly as he was, the light was gone before he reached the final stretch. Noplace he judged they were likely to be disturbed. At least the best place he’d been able to think of.

He let Kim down, broke into the alcove with a couple of solid kicks, and took her inside. A quiet, private place and a hell of a lot better than clawing your way out of a coffin, however shallowly buried. He settled more or less as he had been, cradling Kim, and resumed his wait.

After an uncounted time, he was aware of a pair of eyes at the far side of the tunnel. Yellow. Because he hadn’t bothered to shift aspect, he could discern the outline. Tall, broad, unmoving. He shut his eyes and turned his head tiredly. Night one was past: not the Line of Aurelius. Not Michael.

“You stood me up,” Michael said in no particular tone of voice. “Defaulted.”

A distance of maybe twenty feet was no barrier to conversation between a pair of vampires.

“Sue me.”

“That means I win.”

“Congratulations. Fuck off.”

“Dawn said it was Kim.”

Bit talks too much, Spike thought, leaning his head back against the tiles. “Surprised you didn’t fetch her along.”

Silence. Apparently unworthy of comment. Then Mike said, “Spike, sometimes you’re a total asshole.”

“Only sometimes? Must be losing my touch. Go away, Michael. Tisn’t none of your concern, an’ talking to you isn’t worth breathing for.”

Mike ambled closer until he was standing just outside the alcove. Looking down. Studying Kim. Good they’d cleaned her up then. She would have been mortified to have Mike see her the way she’d been.

Mike asked abruptly, “You fed?”

“Hell with you, Michael.”

“You fed, you idiot?”

Spike clenched and almost moved. Then he remembered Kim and stilled. Mike didn’t speak or stir for long enough that Spike forgot about him, slowly stroking Kim’s hair.

“I’ll take her away,” Mike said. “Someplace. You’d never see her again. Stay a week or so, to get her settled. Maybe find somebody to look after her so she wouldn’t be all on her own, not knowing nothing nor how to do.”

It slowly sank in that Mike was talking about Kim, not Dawn. Spike thought of about twenty reasons, explanations, then simply said, “No.”

“It was the Restfield pack, wasn’t it. One of ‘em. So it was my fault, shooting off my mouth about you claiming that ground. Wasn’t sure if that was what you meant, just me banned or everybody. Took the worst interpretation. Because I was mad. Also stupid. Never knew Sunnydale when it had stable territories, under the Master that was. Didn’t know what kind of a flap a claim could stir up. Let me take her, Spike.”

“Go away, Michael. This is mine to see to.”

“You ain’t fed. Bet I could beat you for her.”

Spike slowly raised his head. “You piss off or I will tear your fucking throat out.”

Kim stirred. At once, Spike attended only to her, held her close and strong as the change came upon her, the ghastly neck wound filming over and then suddenly whole, healed without a mark. All the skin smoother, denser, so pale as to seem nearly luminescent. No sudden breath, no cry to this birth. Only the features of her round face shifting from within to the aspect she’d display perhaps forever.

The newly risen demon opened golden eyes.

“Kim, love. Don’t be afraid, I got you. How are you, treasure?”

“Spike. It was so strange…. I was looking for Rona. Is she all right? Is she…here?” Kim began looking around her. In case Rona was nearby.

“She’s fine. I sent her home. Just us. How do you feel, pet?”

Kim stretched languorously. “I feel…fine! Strong!” She sounded surprised. “Why are you holding me? Was I hurt?”

“Some, but you’re better now. Have to make sure everything works right before you get up. Might be a bit dizzy. Just lie still now till I’m sure. A vamp got at you, took a bite out of you. Do you remember?”

“I want something,” announced Kim, frowning. Game face made that a savage expression. “What is it, that I want? Who’s that?” She twisted to see, faster than Spike could hold her still with one hand. “Mike. Hi!” She smiled--a mouthful of fangs. “You smell good. Much better than Spike. Why is that? Come closer. Let me smell.”

Mike raised his eyes to Spike’s and backed a step. He began rolling up a sleeve to bare his forearm.

Spike said, “It’s important, pet, to know which vamp…hurt you. If you can remember. You seen lots of vamps. All sorts. You’re not a girl to get all terrified in a fight and not notice the details for the log. What did the vamp look like?”

“Let me up,” Kim said, starting to struggle. “I’m hungry. I need…something. I want--”

Spike’s free hand brought the stake down. Kim looked briefly surprised before she collapsed into dust. Spike leaned slowly forward into the space her form had vacated. Folding his arms across his knees, he bent his forehead against them.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when Michael shook his shoulder roughly and roused him. When he lifted his head, drifty and disoriented, Michael had opened his own arm and presented it, bleeding, right in front of Spike’s nose. Spike’s demon had no scruples and no reservations. It wanted and took, in great gulps, worrying at the flesh to make the blood come faster, pulling hard. There was nothing else but the thirst and its slaking. Just as if he were only a fledge, consumed by appetite.

It wasn’t until the worst of the bloodthirst was eased, and Spike pulled violently away, that he truly tasted the blended blood and caught the strong undertone of Summers. Without which Mike’s blood could not be food to him. Which, when he’d been thinking, he’d known would be there, and refused.

“It wasn’t for me anyway,” Mike said, licking up the last of the blood, closing the wound.

Spike just stared dazedly at a wall as Dawn’s second-hand blood worked through him, easing exhaustion, replenishing his strength, clearing his mind. Doing nothing whatever about the sorrow or the weight of the soul’s revulsion.

“You fit to get back on your own?” Mike asked, buttoning a cuff.

“In a while.”

“C’mon. Bike’s not far.” Mike hauled him out of the alcove, stood him up. The tunnel blurred and swooped before Spike’s eyes. The focus, the concentration he’d maintained for Kim’s sake seemed to have gone with her. He had no firm conviction of what he should do, and wandered along because Mike kept pushing at him. Mike kept talking: “I’ll stand you to a rematch in a week. I’m on the board now, at Willy’s. At the bottom, at lousy odds, but I figure to better that. C’mon, move yourself. Not much farther, and I’ll let you drive. Should be steady enough to hold the handlebars.”

“Is Bit all right?”

“Was when I left her. Can’t answer for now. You’d best get home and ask her yourself.”

That seemed to make sense.

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