Chapter 6: Delicate Negotiations and Tribute

Because Buffy had seen it before, she recognized it now. The moping (not brooding!), the withdrawal, the diminished energy and libido levels: how Spike handled grief. Or rather, didn’t handle it. Generally vampires weren’t vulnerable to loss or grief. Their self-sufficient natures protected them from any deep attachment taking hold. But in this, as in so much else, Spike was the exception. He didn’t come as a lone item: you had to get the set. From the first, it hadn’t been just Spike: it’d been Spike-and-Dru. Then Spike-and-Harmony. Then, with difficulty, Spike-and-Buffy. Plus Dawn. And after that, a whole liana-jungle of mostly unacknowledged connections had formed. Anya. Willow. Giles. The SITs--all twenty-eight of them. Michael.

No longer a tidy set: a collection.

Not particularly relationships he wanted: mostly they puzzled and annoyed him. They just happened to him. The soul had opened him up like the proverbial oyster and he couldn’t help but connect. He had no defenses against it. And he therefore had no defenses and no mechanism for dealing with pain when that was what rebounded through the open connection. The pain just happened too. So he shut down and hid.

Late Monday afternoon, finding Spike asleep, fully clothed and huddled up as tight as he could get (he normally was a starfish-style sprawler and slept naked) on what had been Kim’s bed at Casa Spike, Buffy got all melty and sad, looking at him. When she woke him, he never did come fully alert, not registering what she said, making disconnected replies when he said anything at all, and emphatically not wanting to be touched, flinching away or going still and rigid if she touched him anyway.

Buffy in turn had no mechanism for dealing with Spike when he’d gone unreachable in misery. Probably even worse at the touchy-feely aspects of things than he was. Since she didn’t know what to do, she made an uncomfortable smile and left him, and ended up consulting with Dawn on the front porch of Casa Summers.

“I’ve quit automatically categorizing vamps as animals,” Buffy explained, frowning, the two of them perched on the steps in the reddened light. “Some are, some aren’t. But when I was a kid, I saw this black-and-white mutt, mostly collie, lying at the side of the road. Hit by a car, I guess. It didn’t growl or snap or anything. Just looked at me, panting fast. I suppose it was in dreadful pain. But what struck me was that it didn’t understand. Didn’t know the why of the pain. Why it couldn’t do anything except lie there and pant. And….” She shrugged and spread her hands.

“Yeah. Not coping well,” Dawn agreed glumly.

“Not coping at all, as far as I can tell. I thought, if anything, I’d have to be hauling out the manacles to keep him from exploding at those two vamp nests. And it’s like…he’s not interested, he doesn’t care. And I know that’s not so. But….” Another helpless, puzzled shrug.

Eyes downcast, Dawn picked at her skirt--still in her school blouse-and-plaid--and commented, “It’s probably all ick to talk about, but, well, he hasn’t been feeding right for a long while now. Even before the SITs left. Pretty much from the closing of the Hellmouth, I think. Goes short or without as long as he possibly can, then a little. Never enough. Just as little as he can take and keep going. Sort of like when you hold your breath, you know? I don’ t know for sure: he’s gone all avoidy on me about it, tells me flat that it’s none of my business and he’s fine, yada yada. You know how he does.”

“Not really. I’ve left that end of things to him, figured after a hundred and twenty-some years, he knew how to take care of himself.” And, Buffy added inwardly, she’d figured it was better not to know.

“Only about seven months with the soul,” Dawn pointed out. “And I think that’s what it is: soul’s giving him hell about it. I was always afraid something like that would happen when I heard he’d gone all ensouled and everything…. Again with the ick, sorry, but we both know he feeds from you sometimes. And we have the same blood, the famous Summers blood….” Dawn tossed her head and grinned wincingly. “He’s had some of mine, but never direct, only in mugs and like that, and never outright asked me. Just something I did, something I do, when I think there’s need. Well, I’ve offered, and each time, he’s shut me up. It was like I’d offered to sleep with him, ‘scuse me, but it was, not that I ever did or anything. And not that I want to, or he wants to, or--”

“I get the idea,” Buffy assured her wildly blushing sister. An embarrassed, thoughtful pause. Then Buffy said, “I didn’t know you did that.”

Dawn hitched a shoulder. “No big. Not to me, anyway. But since that one time he snapped at me, he’s backed way off, even more than before. Pretty much figures beforehand what I’m gonna say and shuts me down cold, so I can’t even bring it up, can’t even ask. He’s not listening, you know?”

“Yeah. I do know how that goes. All Mr. Impervious, when he wants to be. But why, Dawn, when there’s the pig’s blood he could--”

“He hates that. He won’t touch it anymore.”

“Enough to starve himself?”

“Apparently. Looks like that, doesn’t it? He said he wouldn’t touch it, and now I expect he’s got his pride all in gear to stick to it.”

“Oh, the dreaded Spike pride. Then we’re all doomed…. I’ll have to think about this, Dawn. It looks as if he’s backed himself into a corner here and I don’t know what he’ll let me do to pry him out of it. I don’t even know what to try. Any ideas?”

“Well, when you’re…together, whatever, maybe you could….” Dawn suggested delicately.

Buffy shook her head. “Doesn’t work that way. And when he’s like this, doesn’t work at all. I can barely get, or keep him, in snuggling distance, let alone…well, together. Avoidy. Like you said.”

“Buffy--” Dawn began, then stopped, mouth drawn tight, fingers clenching in her skirt.

“Present. What?”

“Kind of super ick for me, but I promised. Buffy, Mike tastes me. Drinks from me sometimes,” Dawn said, all in a burst. “I let him, and it’s soooo intense, and sometimes I don’t want him to stop but he always has, it’s not just a vamp thing--”

“It’s completely a vamp thing and you know it. And…yeah, intense. I guess. Why is the little talk about the birds and the bees never enough?” Buffy implored the skies. “Why does it always have to be high weirdness and talking to my sister about the sensation of vamp bites? Why couldn’t it just be plain old ordinary sex?”

Dawn giggled. “We could, like, talk about sex if you really want to--”

“Stick to vamp bites. Something we have in common. OK, I’ve got as far as Mike bites you sometimes and you both get off on it, more or less. So what’s the problem, exactly? If there’s a legal age of consent for vamp bites, I’ve never heard about it. Unregulated territory here.”

“Spike’s worried that sometime, Mike won’t stop. All ‘in the moment’ and all.” Dawn tossed her head and waggled her hands around randomly. “Not mean to, just get carried away. And then leave me to get carried away. Literally. Vamps aren’t exactly cut out for moderation. And not really big on the self-control. That’s what they’re made to do: bite; feed. All kind of hard-wired and primal and everything.”

“Yeah. A major biting thing. I’ve noticed.”

“Yeah. So anyway, Spike pretty much read me the riot act about it, and flashed out at Mike--”

Buffy’s eyes widened as illumination struck. “So that’s what that was about!”

“Pretty much, yeah. And he made me promise to tell you about it, thought you could take care of what little hide he hadn’t already ripped off me. So I have. And maybe one more thing I should tell you. There’s been times, a couple, when I had Mike feed from me on purpose. So he could turn around and have Spike feed from him. Spike has fewer scruples about vamps…and sometimes it’s been necessary and there was no other way. Like after Angel hurt him so bad…. That’s how come I got marked in the first place.” Dawn turned her left arm, displaying the white, defined semicircle of a deep vamp bite about midway on her forearm--like an upside down C with the punctuation of the longer incisors, fangs, at each end. “It wasn’t so plain, of course, to begin with,” Dawn added casually.

Buffy rubbed her eyes, feeling discouraged. Here her kid sis had been running around for several weeks with a vamp claiming mark, and the Chosen One, famous for being able to spot a vamp at fifty paces and stake it in under ten seconds, had never noticed. Maybe because it wasn’t in the expected place. Buffy rubbed her nose. “Confession of major Duh here. I’m sorry. I should have seen. It’s not as if I don’t know what one looks like.” As illustration, she rubbed the left side of her neck first, then slapped the right side: giving Spike’s mark precedence. “Bad Buffy.”

“No big. Really. Why I’m telling you…I did that, Mike and I did that, Sunday night. Last night. Then I sent him after Spike. Wherever he’d taken Kim. Yay, vamp long-distance smell-tracking capability. And of course Spike cussed him out, wouldn’t hear of it, yada yada. Except then he did. Was distracted enough, desperate enough, something, he just clamped down and fed to the point that Mike was lightheaded and shaky for awhile. Until the wonderful effects of Summers blood perked him up again, enough that he could get Spike home. So I figure Spike’s pretty far back into that corner, Buffy. To the point that he’s scared what could happen if he did come out, all vamped up and demon-driven.” Dawn tilted her head in a rather Spike-like manner, considering. “Nice phrase,” she decided. “Alliteration and everything.”

“Yeah. Like you said. Nice phrase, bad image.”

“Deduct two points for gross,” Dawn ruled. “The thing is, the famous little dab isn’t gonna do it here. We’re talking quarts, just to pull even. Make up the deficit.” She wrinkled her nose. “‘The famous little dab.’ Of what? Mom used to say that.”

“Obviously something olden-time: pre-us. I never knew either.”

“And how weird is it that the monks made me know something like that?”

“The current theory is that it was lawyers. Not monks.”

“Oh, sure, and that explains it all. You mean it: lawyers?” Dawn’s expression soured in distaste.

“Don’t blame me. I don’ t make it, I just report it. So: what do you want me to do about Mike?”

Dawn considered. “Just know about it, I guess. Or you could try to go all Mom about it, threaten to ground me if he darkeneth ye door, yada yada.”

“And we both know how well that goes. Actually, though, Mom liked Spike. A lot better than Angel, anyway. Hello pot, greet kettle. Well, consider me put on alert and ready to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming for any necessary bulletins and news alerts. And if you decide you want him dusted, that’s a well-known service I can also provide.”

Dawn gazed at her soberly. “Not funny, Buffy. And sort of on the NOT side of helping.”

“I know. Scratch that. Doesn’t mean I won’t, but not a current desirable option. Believe me: I understand…. Do you love him, Dawn?”

“I knew you were gonna say that!”

“Sorry to be so predictable. But it matters. Matters quite a lot, actually.” Buffy clasped Dawn’s hands and held them on her own knees.

“Yeah. And the thing is, I don’t know. It’s too strange…and intense…and confusing. He likes to just stand and smell me: how weird is that? I don’t know if he even thinks I’m pretty. Just kind of a Dawn-shaped scratch n’ sniff. He’s thirty-three, and he’s six. Before he was turned, he was a merc: used to kill people for money. Now he kills them for appetizer, dinner, and dessert. Sometimes. All uber strange. Nobody’s brought up the ‘L’ word yet. Kind of playing it a day at a time.”

“Sounds like a plan. Provided you have your taser.”

Dawn pulled a hand away to pat her pocket. “On my person at all times. Never leave home without it.”

“Good. Satisfactory.” Buffy had no qualms about Dawn’s being able to use it. Buffy had reason to know that under pressure, Dawn could be nearly as split-second, cold-blooded ruthless as any vamp.

“And…Spike?” Dawn asked.

“Under heavy consideration here. High alert. He can be such an utter…chowderhead!”

“Yeah,” said Dawn, and sighed, smiling, because it was another of Joyce’s words.

**********

Dawn sat thinking awhile after Buffy went inside, then went hunting for Spike. She already knew he was noplace in Casa Summers: that was the first thing she’d checked out when she got home from school. Not in the first likely place, the finished yuppie basement of Casa Spike. Roving through the ground-floor rooms, she found him almost immediately. In the bed Kim and Amanda and at least one other SIT had shared when bed space was at a premium. Kim’s alone, since Amanda moved home and the rest left.

That accounted for Buffy’s woeful expression, then: he really did look pretty pitiful.

Must be Kim’s scent was still on the pillow, the way he was hanging onto it. Dawn wondered what Kim had looked like in game face. Probably like one of the Oriental battle helmets at Mom’s gallery: all round-faced and fierce. Designed to scare the shit out of the enemy. Kim would have liked that. She’d been a fine fighter: never backed off.

Dawn pulled up a chair, very extremely quietly, to the side of the bed, sat down, and waited until her presence drew Spike up from someplace apparently very deep, because it took nearly five minutes.

When his eyes blinked open, she said, “Hey.”

He was another couple of minutes collecting himself, checking that he was presentable to teenaged girls, and roughing up his face with his hands to wipe the sleep away. “You in your Scout Finch phase?” he asked eventually, which was a pretty good line to come up with, out of sleep like that and everything. Definitely deserved extra points for that.

“I just felt like saying ‘hey.’ Shouldn’t over-analyze things like that.”

“Yeah. All right. Did you actually want something, or are you just being a pest?”

“Being a pest. Does Kim’s bed smell nice?”

His face froze.

“OK, sorry,” Dawn said softly, looking at her swinging feet. “What I meant was, does it help?”

“Rather not talk about it, Bit. ‘S complicated. Hard to keep all of it in mind.”

“There was a time,” Dawn said wistfully, “when I thought I could ask you anything.”

“Yeah.”

That bait hadn’t worked either. Maybe she should change the subject. “Is the locket still working?”

“Oh. Yeah. Guess so. Far as I can tell. No more dreams, since. But…do you think it was Lady Gates? This now, with Kim?”

Dawn bit her lip. That possibility hadn’t occurred to her. She found it rather alarming. “Can’t rule it out. A lot of coincidences and remarkable stupidity had to come together to make that happen. Not that people aren’t quite capable of being remarkably stupid on their own.”

“Could you find out?” Spike asked, very soberly, and Dawn looked at him very soberly in return.

“Is it worth my maybe being unmade?”

“No. Forget it, then.”

“If it is, I’ll do it. I’ll try,” Dawn insisted.

“No, just quit about it. No. Don’t do nothing like that, not even if I say. I don’t know the risks. Can’t figure out….” Spike left that hanging, which maybe was the problem, Dawn thought. Or at least an expression of it.

“You defaulted on your fight with Mike,” she commented.

“How-- Oh. Michael told you. Well, yeah. Who the hell cares.”

“You still mad at Mike? The last time that you almost killed him, when you made him submit, neither of you was mad. Vamp weirdness. I hate to think what might happen if you actually were mad when you were fighting.”

“Well. Only got to put him down, not dust him. Lad needs reminding, as long as he’s around you, he has to take me into account. I’ll hammer him to make sure he don’t forget. He’s gonna set it up again.” Spike didn’t appear to be looking forward to the prospect. Not scared. Just horribly tired.

“Why is it,” Dawn asked deliberately, “that you get to take me into account, and I’m not allowed to take you into account? Why can you worry about me, but if I worry about you, you go all freeze-face and dismissive?”

Spike looked more tired still. “Not up to you being provoking, Bit. You’re way too clever for me. Just a vamp here, not your debating club. You score yourself all the points you want.” He pushed off the bed and headed down the hall to the basement door.

Dawn didn’t recall his ever actually walking out on her before.

She wondered if she’d have to go to the extreme of hurting herself to make him attend. That had been her final resort when he’d had a wicked awful nightmare or just gone Looney Tunes in any of a variety of ways, that dreadful summer after Buffy’s second death with no hope or expectation then of any resurrection. She’d employed it whenever he was captured by the notion of greeting the morning, strolling out into the sun and then gone.

It wasn’t that bad yet, she judged, and the sun was down now. Night was normally a good time for him. Fewest restraints and restrictions. Her best strategy was to keep self-damage in reserve and stay with the provoking awhile longer.

She trailed along to the basement stairs and ventured down three steps.

His voice came from below, from the bed end: “Bit, you keep this up, gonna be hard to stay friends.”

“I’ll survive,” Dawn replied coolly, and sat on the step, chin resting in palm. “The problem, it seems to me, is the soul. Any way to get rid of it?”

Pulling on a fresh T-shirt, Spike came slowly to the foot of the stairs and stared up at her. “Goddam, Bit. You take the bleeding cake.”

“Thanks. But seriously. Is there? You were fine, before.”

“I wasn’t. I--” He started wandering away.

“Don’t forget, I was there.”

His voice came back, “Not for all of it, you weren’t. Not…. Bloody hell, Bit, can’t you just let me be?”

“Nope. That’s not in the contract. And here you thought it’d take sixty years for us to get sick of each other.” Dawn had a sudden thought. “If you don’t agree to come back to Casa Summers now and play nice, I’m taking off the locket. Count of ten. One. Two. Three.”

He came back into view, and he had his locket out, hand clasped around the chain. He said, “Four,” looking straight at her.

“She’ll probably fry me, cutting her off like that. Five.”

“Really? Six.”

“No, haven’t a clue. Seven.”

“Back off, Bit. I mean it. Eight.”

“Nine. I don’t back off.”

He let his hand drop. “All right. You win.” Then he leveled a finger at her. “If I do someone a mischief, it’s on your head.”

“I’ve had worse on my head. Come on.”

Slowly climbing the stairs, he grabbed her hand, pulled her up, and pushed her before him with a hand on the small of her back. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a wretched bully?”

“Often,” responded Dawn serenely, and squeezed his hand. She awarded herself high marks.

**********

Slowly meandering across the two back yards, Spike thought that it was like being stoned or mildly concussed. He was there, right enough, but everything else had only two distances--much too close and confusingly distant. They alternated those positions about every minute and a half. Except Bit, steadily alongside. Annoying as hell but absolutely there and wouldn’t let you forget it for a minute.

Maybe what he needed was a drink. That could serve as a reason why everything was off. Make sense then.

Wheeling about, he turned back to Casa Spike, expecting every second that Bit was gonna blow up at him, but she just kept watching him and following along. Never could predict the child or much figure what went on in her head.

In the kitchen he pulled the bottle of fairly good bourbon off the top shelf of a cabinet. Only half left. Well, it’d do. Uncapping it, he put some down, then leaned against the humming refrigerator with his eyes shut, waiting for the liquor to settle and grant at least an illusion of warmth. Generally he didn’t much notice temperature, and Dawn had no sweater or anything, so it was probably a normal night. But he felt cold. Deep at the core.

Kim, she’d been so cold, holding her for so long. But not really, that was foolishness. No colder than he was, than the crypt was or that sodding ugly little alcove….

He’d hoped, when she rose, there would be something capable of being talked to. Something still in her that could listen and connect. For a second or two, at the first, he thought he’d touched it. But no: just another ravenous fledge. He’d been disappointed like that before….

Not working. He applied more alcohol.

He asked, “How’s Rona?”

“Staying over with ‘Manda for a few days,” Dawn responded. “Trying to get it all sorted.”

“That Kennedy?”

“You should watch that, Spike. Anybody you don’t like, they get to be a ‘that.’ It’s a dead giveaway.”

“I lose obviousness points. What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see her all weekend. Maybe she’s gone.”

“Maybe…. And Buffy. Has she decided?”

“Decided what?”

“How she’s gonna live, gonna be now.”

“Is she planning something different?” Dawn sounded surprised and slightly alarmed.

“Might. She could now. Just wondered, is all.”

“You have the count,” Dawn said.

“Count.”

“The ten. If we’re not gonna have locket showdown, I think you’d better move.”

“Oh. Yeah. All right.” He rubbed at his eyes and blinked until they focused better, then pushed away from the refrigerator.

Some better, he decided, crossing the lawn again. The lunge-retreat of everything seemed to have eased into a vague middle distance. He didn’t have to notice. But he could. That big beat-up Dodge van, bad shade of maroon, that would be that Oz. Wolfboy. And another strange car at the curb, beige characterless Euro-heap, maybe a Volvo, that would be the Watcher. Rental place must have been all out of crappy red Mustangs. No sign of Harris’ truck, though. That was a mercy.

Near the sidewalk, reaching the brighter patch the street light cast, he looked back and was seeing a score or so of girls, all the young faces nervous and hopeful, and he heard his own voice saying, You’re mine. I’ll keep you from death. Just as if he could do what he promised them. Kim, run to me, child. Fast as you can.

The next thing he knew he was laying on his side in the grass pulled up all tight and breathing in great gulps as if he needed it and none of it made sense. Dawn was practically kneeling on top of him, hands patting and grabbing at him, saying words he couldn’t make out, only her shrill voice. He reached and checked that the locket was still there and it was, so all right, this was just him some way.

As he sat up, Bit curled around until her weight was across his legs and her arms around him at the shoulders, head tucked hard against his chest. The smell of spilled liquor told him he’d dropped the bottle. Damn. Getting control of the breathing, quieting it down, he patted vaguely at Bit’s back. “’M fine. Just came over strange there a second. Don’t you be scared. ‘M fine.”

As he worked getting to his feet there was an awkwardness, a dullness in the right side of his back that puzzled him. And also, under the spilled bourbon smell, a sharp edge of bloodsmell, not Dawn’s.

She was tugging at him, impatient, so he came along even though he wanted to look back again to see if the phantom children were still there. Didn’t want to leave them if they were. He’d promised. But Bit insisted, so he wandered up the walk and then up the stairs, leaning on the left-hand pillar and that was strange, he surely hadn’t downed enough to be so fumble-footed.

Inside the door Dawn finally released him to lean against the wall, coming over a bit strange again, and Bit yelling, “Buffy! Spike’s been shot!”

**********

They’d been in the middle of dinner when Dawn’s screech brought Buffy dashing into the hall to find Dawn hopping in anxiety and Spike starting to spill bonelessly down the wall, leaving a blood-smear behind on the wallpaper. Wounds of all sorts, Buffy knew how to handle. She grabbed Spike and eased him down, then grabbed some towels out of the closet under the stairs, laid them out, and shifted him onto them.

The small entry wound on his back was plain: a patch of blood about the size of her hand just south of his right shoulderblade. No exit wound. So the bullet was still inside. Yanking up the shirt confirmed what she’d thought: the wound was already smooth, healed.

“Will, can you get it out?”

“Think so. Yes.” When Buffy looked around, Willow was staring into the air with unfocused eyes. “Gonna hurt, though.”

Spike was already trying to get up, protesting at such a fuss being made over nothing. Buffy firmly pushed him down again.

“This rug doesn’t need any more blood on it. Stay put at least until Willow can--”

“Ow!”

The slug pushed back through the entry point and hung in the air: a little warped splash of metal. Willow bent and scooped it up.

“Small caliber,” commented Oz, behind her. “Twenty-two. Maybe for squirrel hunting.”

“Not magicked that I can tell,” Willow reported, handing the bullet off to Oz. She knelt down next to Spike: sitting up steadily enough while Buffy wiped off the blood with a wet dishtowel Dawn had brought. Willow said to him, “You know what I told you about your aura? How it’d gone all wide and strange, bright?”

“Bleeding hell,” Spike was grumbling, his back twitching under Buffy’s hands. The reopened wound had stopped bleeding and was already closing. Barely the diameter of a pencil. No need for even a Band-Aid. “That’s nothing respectable. Like somebody was to come after me with a fucking push-pin.”

“Spike. Your aura.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“It’s not, anymore. I can barely see it at all, and what I can make out is black.”

“So I’m dead, am I? Well, no news there.”

“I think it means you’re running on fumes,” Willow said firmly. “Normally a little pinprick like this, you’d barely notice. But you have no reserves. Healing takes extra, and extra is what you don’t have. You drop below minimum, the engine won’t turn over. Or something.”

Spike didn’t seem interested, trying to pull the T-shirt off over his head and swearing when the obvious stiffness of his right arm and side impeded that. Buffy helped ease it off and took it before he could drop it on the rug. She deposited it on the towel, then took the fresh one Dawn had collected from upstairs, from his colorful collection of black, black, and black. Buffy didn’t like Willow’s report about his aura, mainly because it sounded ominous and was waaay out of her field of expertise.

She was just helping him get the fresh shirt on when he quit swearing, went still, and keeled over--very much like an engine stalling.

“Ran out of adrenaline,” Willow guessed. “Or it could be shock. Vampires can get shock, right?”

Giles came in then, and Xander behind him, carrying a large styrofoam chest. Hallelujah, Buffy thought. Xander asked, “Buff, where do you want this?” as Giles demanded, “What on earth has been happening?”

“Front room,” said Buffy, pointing, “and sniper, apparently.”

“Good lord.”

“Not much firepower,” Oz commented, displaying the deformed bullet. “Twenty-two.”

“But why?” Giles asked.

Bent to deposit the cooler on the front room floor, Xander called, “Hey, do you think it’s possible he might have pissed somebody off?”

Spike had come to again, this time as lethargic and vague as Buffy had found him earlier. Oz went and shut the door: a belated prudence. Buffy hadn’t done it because she was used to thinking of Casa Summers as thoroughly protected. Yeah: against Bringers, uninvited vamps and other wildlife, a wide range of spells, and door-to-door salesmen. Not snipers with low-powered rifles.

Buffy directed, “Everybody, finish your supper before it gets cold. Colder. Dawn?”

“But I haven’t even started mine,” Dawn whined, but came and helped lift and steer Spike into the front room and install him in the big corner chair.

Once he was down, he seemed to steady. As Dawn scampered off to rescue her supper before everything was gone, Buffy knelt down by his knees and said lightly, “Hey.”

“Now you’re doin’ it!” Spike accused.

“I wasn’t aware that ‘hey’ was actionable.”

“You’re both daft. The pair of you.” Spike looked at her: frowning; concerned. “Bugger did more damage, scaring Bit and interrupting your meal, than he did to me. Fucking twenty-two. ‘M just…not all caught up to myself, is all. Nothing to fret yourself about.” Wincing slightly, he leaned forward to stroke her cheek.

DONT FRET, Buffy thought, remembering the capital letters drawn in blood on the dusty sarcophagus lid. You had to watch him every minute or he’d be off doing something insanely dangerous. Or insanely kind: like exempting everybody but himself from having to witness the ghastly spectacle of Kim rising…and then his mercifully staking her.

Buffy hadn’t asked. She didn’t need to. Some things, she just knew.

“Today, I realized something. And I think it’s something you should be told. That first night, Friday, at your crypt. All the time we were there, trying to figure out what had happened. Here I find you with a body, young girl, throat torn out. Obvious vamp kill. And it never once entered my mind that it might be you. Not for a second. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, you never for a second thought I might. And taking our history into account, I think that’s really something.” She gazed at him, loving him very much. Like an ache in her middle.

He turned his eyes away, likely thinking of a dozen dismissive or derisive things to say. Not saying any of them. Meeting her eyes again, he responded simply, “Yeah. Guess it is.”

She got up, hands braced on the chair arms, and leaned into him. They had a long, satisfactory kiss. He even tangled fingers into her hair and held her there. Not so much moping now. Whatever its intent, the sniper incident seemed to have cracked the shell of his mourning.

Straightening finally, Buffy said, “Gonna collect the troops now, reconvene here for coffee in a few minutes. You want some?”

“Ta, pet.” As she was leaving, he said, “Never mind me. I’ll just sit here in the dark.”

She slapped the wall light switch in passing. Definitely recovering.

**********

When the Scoobies started wandering in, some with plates of supper they were still finishing, Spike knew something was up by the way they either looked at him too hard or avoided looking at him at all. Either way, something was up.

After folding tables were broken out and Buffy deposited a mug of black coffee on the weapons chest and took a seat there herself, Giles stood up with hands in his pockets, confronting Spike’s suspicious gaze with a mild but resolute expression. “Spike, to give this the short shrift it deserves, you’ve been overruled. Regardless of your whims and your stubbornness.”

The Watcher picked off the top of the styrofoam chest. It was stacked nearly full of bagged blood.

Now everybody was looking at him. Expectantly. Some hopefully. Some bracing for explosion. And he couldn’t dredge up the energy for indignation. He just wanted to be someplace else. So he pushed out of the chair and walked out. Got himself down to the basement, back to the washtubs. He turned on the cold water and ducked his head under. A little stiff, bending, but that was fading. Nothing wrong with him a little rest wouldn’t fix. Fucking twenty-two. Pea-shooter.

He opened the dryer in the middle part of the room, knowing he’d always find a towel or two there: left behind for an extra cycle, when everything else was dry, and then forgotten. Toweling his face and then his hair, he leaned on the dryer, waiting, wondering who the delegate would be.

Feet on the stairs: three steps, then settling there.

“Bit, just go on.”

“Spike, we’ve done this. It’s old.”

“They may not see, but you should. It’s not a thing I can do. It’s a collar.”

“Maybe not.” She came the rest of the way down, all long legs and grace, and stood by him, facing him soberly, a sweet, pensive expression on her face. Tall enough now to look at him pretty much level, eye to eye.

“Listen,” she said. “Don’t think of it as a bribe or a collar. They can’t make it be that, even if they wanted to. Because you can walk away anytime. They’re committed; you’re not. You haven’t promised anything. And they’re not asking you to. You’re just being super-suspicious, super-stubborn, because you need it so bad. And so you figure there must be something wrong with it and you shouldn’t let yourself have it. Do you know what benenoia is?” When Spike only waited, she explained, “It’s the uncomfortable suspicion that people are banding together to do you good. Seldom fatal.” She made a quirky little smile. “You’re allowed good things sometimes. Really! Don’t think of it as a bribe, Spike: think of it as tribute.”

He barked a syllable of a laugh. Then the idea caught his attention and he had to consider it. Master vamps accepted tribute. It was their due. Expected. Even required. Very often in the form of blood: on the hoof, not in bags, but the container didn’t signify.

He’d accepted the SITs bargain because it was fair. Marked or not, they’d been under his protection and willing to provide him with blood in return. All fair, nothing to object to there.

And the Scoobies. Well, he protected them too. Had for a long time--years--without so much as a single thank-you nor bare recognition of his help. Of course, for years before that, he’d tried his best to kill and demoralize them, but that was before and didn’t count. They’d tried nearly as hard to off him, so that all should balance out. They were an extension of Buffy--her friends. Family, as good as. Not his, by any chalk, but surely hers. And for her sake, he protected them.

He could get his mind around that: tribute was fitting. Nothing shameful in it at all.

Watching him think it out, Bit was grinning and trying not to. She knew.

“Bit, you tell them what you said. Tribute is acceptable. But if Harris or anybody has some smart-mouth thing to say about it, I don’t want to hear because things might get unpleasant. Then fetch the box down here. Damned if I’m gonna have them all watching me. None of their damn business what I take or don’t.”

“Got it,” said Dawn briskly, and raced off up the stairs.

It was Buffy who brought the styrofoam chest, tucked under one arm. In her other hand she carried a full pitcher whose rich scent made his eyes heat and change, and a mug dangling by its handle from her little finger.

Placing pitcher and mug on top of the dryer, then setting the chest down, Buffy remarked, “I didn’t think you’d mind me. But if you want…?”

Spike paid no attention. Ignored the mug, too. Seized and lifted the pitcher, gone to full game face because his demon had barged through and wanted it so bad. Not warm, but not halfway to killed by the microwave, either: Buffy’d had the sense to leave it as it was. Strong. Rich. Fragrant. Only a small step from the source. None of the pleasures of the kill, of feeding at another’s expense, raw direct exchange of life for death; but he didn’t need that and the soul would have rebelled and ruined it all anyway.

This was fine. And good. And not nearly enough.

He finished the pitcher and Buffy helped refill it.

Finally, after two more pitchers, it was enough. He gazed regretfully at the bagged units left in the chest.

“There’ll be more in the morning,” Buffy said. “This was kind of the emergency expedited version. Giles filed the papers this morning. Later, there will be invoices. Accounting. The usual mess of bureaucratic paperwork, all in perfect order, none of which you’ll have to touch. That was the third thing I did, after I got home: called Xander to ferry Giles around in minimum time. Giles showed his authorization, scribbled up a purchase order, and basically wiped out a blood bank. Tribute is taken care of. Just one less thing to worry about.”

She leaned toward him. He immediately turned away and went to the concrete tub to wash his mouth with tapwater. However good blood tasted to him, it’d been made abundantly clear to him it was pretty nauseating to humans. Their loss. But he’d never present himself to Buffy tasting like something repulsive.

She’d followed him and was combing fingers through his drying hair, probably making it all stand up and look stupid. Felt really fine, though. He kept still and let her.

“I like it better not all flat and stiff and gelled up,” she remarked absently.

“Yeah: like it looking like a bleeding poodle.”

“I guess…. So, you gonna be all right with this?”

“Poodle hair?”

She smacked his head. Always with the hands, his girl. Wonderful, warm little hands….

Against her mouth, he said, “Come back to my place. Nobody to hear. Much better bed.”

“But Oz,” she replied indistinctly. “He’s been waiting to-- Mmmm. But we were gonna discuss--”

He grabbed her wrist and began towing her. Not at all in the mood for discussion.

At the head of the stairs, where an instant’s uncertainty about who should go first turned them against and into one another for more heated groping, Buffy protested, “But…they’re all there. They’ll all see!”

Breaking from her, Spike resourcefully hauled her to the kitchen door and out. There was another protracted question of precedence at the gap in the hedge, but no more protests.

**********

“So,” Spike said, the following morning, “what d’you want with me, then?”

The shaded side porch of Casa Spike was Spike’s usual morning place. Spike was semi-perched on the wooden porch rail, and Oz, rumpled and friendly, occupied a folding chair borrowed, months back, from Casa Summers.

“Need a vampire for a job,” said Oz, as Spike lit a fresh cigarette from the coal of the old one. “I was told you’d help.”

“Who exactly told you that?” Spike responded, all amiable. He suspected if he felt any better, he’d catch fire, because all that energy had to go somewhere. He turned, enjoying the play of sunlight on the grass, the hedges, and the trees, projecting the shadow of the neighboring house’s utterly useless California chimney as though it were the gnomon of a sun dial. He knew, pretty much to the minute, how long this porch would be safe.

“Well, you know,” said Oz uncomfortably.

“No, I don’t know,” (Spike employed full elocution and politely swallowed dogboy) “so why don’t you spit it out and tell me?”

“They don’t like being talked about. You know, right?” Oz persisted, puzzled but still hopeful there would be a meeting of minds or secret handshakes or something in the near future.

“Oh, you mean the moderately famous Powers That Be,” Spike said, as if he’d just caught on, enjoying Oz’s plain discomfort.

“You’ve had dealings. You should know better.”

“Right,” Spike responded in the flattest, least-impressed tone he could manage. “So this Power, or these Powers, that you get all itchy-looking when I mention, conveyed to you,” (point with cigarette) “that I was available for assignment.”

“Something like that.” Boy was all shut up now: wary, displeasured. Spike had hurt his furry feelings. Pity.

“And you come when they whistle, do you?” Spike decided to try genial. Gave Dogboy the pleasant smirk of the thoroughly shagged-out and self-satisfied alpha male.

Oz shot him a look. Definitely getting hostile here. Oz stood, all five-feet-maybe-six of him, went down the stairs, and tramped off without another word.

Studying the cigarette-end, Spike wondered who the delegate would be this time.

He’d decided he liked tribute. Very much.

He didn’t have to wait very long, about half an hour, before the delegate arrived: Willow. Spike made a disgusted face because he owed Willow a few and if he was extremely rude to her, she quite likely could make him regret it.

“Now, that’s not fair,” he complained as Willow took the chair where Oz had been. “Dogboy’s brought in the big guns.”

Willow gave him a bit of a wry grin. She pretty much knew his number: knew he stole cookies at every opportunity. Couldn’t put much past her. “It seems Oz was given the false impression that you were no longer a thorough bastard. I’ve put him straight about that. Sure, you can refuse. But don’t refuse just to prove you can. That’s petty.”

“I can do petty. Doesn’t bother me at all.”

“Did you even give him a chance to explain what it is?”

“Don’t care what it is. Not my concern.”

“Feed you and you get ugly, don’t you.”

“All a matter of perspective, pet. Some people think I look quite nice. All poodled up, an’ all.” He pushed a hand through his hair, that he figured was still all curly, going every which way and probably looking ridiculous. Today, he didn’t care. Today was for impenetrable smug. He didn’t get days like this very often. He intended to enjoy this one for everything it was worth.

Willow thumped hands on her trousered knees. “All right, let’s ditch the attitude and just talk straight: one killer to another.”

That made him pay attention. “Got you on numbers, Red.”

“Got you on style. You want to turn this into a pissing contest, I can piss you right out in the cheery sunlight.”

“And live with it afterwards?”

“Well, no: you got me there. And let’s not mention the fight to the death, afterward, with Buffy. Take that as a given.”

Spike opened another chair and sat down facing her. “You get round one on points. No contest. But I think you know something of the issue here. No collar. No leash. Not gonna do that.”

“Agreed. You may be battling the biggest windmill ever seen, but you’re entitled. I grant you that. I’ll even help you. But you used to make this big deal of what you were for: getting between whoever and death. What are you for now, Spike?”

Spike looked at her for what seemed to him quite a long while. “Non serviam,” he said finally.

“Got that. Really. And yet, your Hellish Majesty, it doesn’t seem to bother you a whit to second Buffy.”

“True.” Spike took his time lighting a fresh cigarette. “I trust Buffy. No, that’s not entirely right either. She can do with me whatever she likes. Even throw me away. No complaint here. Not because I trust her, although I mostly do. Because she’s the Slayer. An’ the best fighter I’ve ever seen or expect to see. And, well.”

“And you love her so much you get a little crazy with it sometimes. I know about that,” said Willow, a little wistfully.

“I know you do. Not to interrupt, but what’s happened with our Kennedy?”

“Subtle segue there, Spike. You’re not nearly the air-head that you look.” Willow’s quick-humored face turned somber. “She’s gonna try to wait me out. Taking a place of her own, here in town. Gonna sign up for classes. Likely some I’m in. Camp on my doorstep and make an embarrassing spectacle of us both. Kid doesn’t know how to let go gracefully. Now she’s hissing and spitting at Oz, and poor guy, he doesn’t know what to make of it. I’ve known worse break-ups,” said Willow distantly, “but this one will do. Very non-fun. She may actually succeed in chasing me out of Sunnydale. Even the First couldn’t do that….”

“Not evil. Only young.”

“I worry: more and more, things Principal Snyder said are making sense to me…. Back to topic here. What do you figure to do with the rest of your unlife, or at least the chunk immediately ahead?”

“Dunno. Been waiting for the Slayer to call the mark, and then I could figure. But she’s not done that yet.”

“A-huh. OK. I can see that. First shoe hasn’t dropped.” She bent her head and raised her eyes, as though looking at him hard over imaginary glasses. “She being secretive, or you being shy?” She added a patently fake cough before the word “shy,” as punctuation.

“Not shy. Just don’t want to joggle her elbow. Haven’t been many times she’s been free to choose. Don’t want to spoil that for her.”

“And the Powers. You setting up against them, or what?”

“Non serviam. I’m not their servant. Slayer’s one thing, but I’m not putting up with this ‘champion’ crap for a second. It’s no honor to be used. The pay’s real bad and the reward uncertain, to say the least. The reward is you live through the one thing so they get to use you again. Got nothing in particular against the Powers. As pointless as hating Zeus or Hera, which they much resemble. Nothing special about the Powers, except that they got it: power. That doesn’t make me inclined to trust ‘em and certainly doesn’t incline me to want to go blind wherever they point me. Whether…whether Buffy came or not.”

“Kinda thought that might be one of the sticking points. Yeah. You’re getting pushed toward an independent destiny and you’re digging in your heels as hard as you can. I can see that,” Willow allowed. “Buffy know about this?” Another sharp over-the-no-glasses glance.

“Dunno. We’ve not talked of it. An’ you keep shut too, Red. This is her choice. When I know it, I’ll make mine. And nobody else gonna do it for me. Not the Powers. Not Oz. And not you.”

“Fair enough. I respect that. Leave it at this, then. You owe me a few favors, right?”

“That I do.”

“Then hear Oz out. Find out what this business of his is about, and no, I haven’t asked him. I just know Oz. It means going someplace--that much, I’ve gathered. He didn’t realize you and Buffy were joined at the hip. Till now, anyway….” Willow made a reflective and rather pointed smile. It faded and she gazed at him soberly again. “But have you thought Buffy might do better, making her choice, without you moping around the place, right in her face, all the time? Maybe you’d both be better for a break. But whether or not, consider whatever Oz says on its merits. The Powers steered him your way for help. That doesn’t mean the thing’s not worth doing. You listen and then you make the call. If you do that, we’re square.”

“You are definitely not square, Red. Not in any way, shape…or form.”

“I go for the quiet ones, Spike. You’re not my type at all. Significant absence of meek.”

“Well, happens I’m pretty taken, so it’s probably just as well. Tell Oz, real nice, to come back.” Spike glanced at the sky, the tighter angle of sun. “Have to adjourn to the conversation pit. Downstairs. But tell him I’ve had my fun for the day. I’ll behave.”

“Spike, everyone behaves: the question is well or badly.”

Spike made a grand gesture. “Always let the lady have the last word.”

Chapter 7: Distances

At first, Spike found lazing in the sun with the whole back seat and rear of the van to himself intensely enjoyable. It was bright; it was warm; it was forbidden, dangerous, and exciting.

He knocked knuckles against the nearest window. “What’d you say this was called again?” he asked Oz, who was driving at a poky, prudent rate: setting out about noon, it’d taken Oz nearly an hour to pass the You Are Now Leaving Beautiful Sunnydale sign that Spike could blow past, on a bike and strongly motivated, in ten minutes. And the pace hadn’t picked up appreciably since.

“Necro-tempered glass.”

“Right,” Spike said, as if memorizing the name might make him more certain that it worked. He looked around at the slightly tinted windows warily.

Because nice as it was, direct sunlight triggered century-strong survival reflexes. He’d settle down, all comfy and so remarkably warm, and start to doze, watching smeared, slanted vistas of pine trees passing, and as soon as his conscious mind slipped out of gear, instinct kicked in like a boot to the balls. He’d come stark awake convinced he had to get under cover now or he was toast. Once, he actually got a rear door partly open before sanity and Oz’s shout pulled him up short of the very immolation he was trying to escape.

The sunshine was a pleasure whose price was almost higher than he could afford.

And Oz’s unbending preference for nasal, twangy, whining country-western music was about to drive him totally mental.

“Can’t you find anything but that bloody awful caterwauling?”

“Mountains,” explained Oz succinctly.

Spike shifted sullenly: trying to find a comfortable position and afraid of doing so, for fear it would set off another drowse/panic reflex. No good answers. He was tired and cranky. Sleep all the way up, Buffy had suggested. Yeah, sure.

“How far is it now?”

“Ten miles closer than the last time you asked.”

“Thanks ever so,” Spike responded sourly.

This trip was a terrible idea and Spike became convinced he’d been an utter prat to agree to it.

Some unknown beastie or other munching Oregon tourists. A few days away and back. Bugger. After all, who’d be such a moron as to choose Oregon to go touristing in? Maybe they deserved to be eaten. Maybe they were the sole sustenance of some endangered demon species. Some kinds of demon had gone extinct: stood to reason others were threatened but was there any legislation protecting them? Anybody protesting the slaughter of the last Zantiphthe? Demons had a right to survive too, didn’t they? Everything judged by the standards of good-for-humans, bad-for-humans instead of healthy restrained warfare, predation and defense, cull out the morons and weaklings--on both sides. Not enough of that for Spike’s tastes. Against the natural balance of things. Insufficient biodiversity. That was what’d done for the fucking buffalo. Correction: bison. And that in turn put paid to the wolves and most of the cougars, foxes. Prairie dog population explosions. Dust bowl fiascos. Things out of control, out of balance, with music by that repetitive ponce Philip Glass. Humans just didn’t fucking belong at the top of the food chain!

He sat as far from the alluring sunlight as he could get, glowering, arms wrapped around himself protectively, trying to think of some way to keep himself awake.

At the sound of the lighter opening and then striking, Oz announced for maybe the twentieth time, “No smoking in the van.”

Spike bent his head to the flame. “Open your fucking window.”

“Then actual sunlight would come in,” Oz pointed out patiently.

“Oh. Right.” Spike shut the lighter and took a long drag on his cigarette. After all, what was Dogboy gonna do: leap over the front seat, leaving the van driverless, and take the fag away from him?

“Spike, my van, my rules. Put the cigarette out.”

“Look, chum--all I want is five minutes of peace inhaling smoke that’s not from the skin of yours truly. My being here is your idea, not mine. Least you can do--”

“Put. It. Out.”

“Fuck yourself.”

Dogboy was scowling in the rearview mirror. Of course he could see nothing but the empty seat. Not knowing what was going on behind him seemed to bother the boy. No use in looking, but the habit was apparently too strong.

Pursuing his perceived advantage, Spike said, “And if there’s nothing can get through these hills but that awful self-pitying tripe, stick in a tape, something. Or turn the bloody radio off. Sending me frantic, wanting to strangle the whining idiot. No wonder she left him.”

“Mountains,” Oz insisted, making no move to touch the radio.

“I’ll give you bloody mountains: the Himalayas. Mountains of the Moon. That’s mountains. These are hills.”

“Himalayas are mountains,” Oz conceded. “Ever been there?”

“Yeah. Couple of times.”

“Peaceful.”

“Fucking frigid. And empty. Could go a hundred miles vertical, up and down, and not find anybody to eat. Like here,” Spike reflected, looking out the side window again.

The van was momentarily traveling in shadow, in the small, hacked cleft between palisades of enormous evergreens so high that, even twisting his neck, cheek against the glass, he couldn’t see the tops. He could barely even see where their branches started. Just trunks: a ranked army of telephone poles. Nothing familiar, nothing man-made except the road itself. All that inimical wood waiting and wanting to skewer him. He shuddered, recollecting how much he hated untidy, untamed Nature. Gladly trade it all for a nice filthy slum, teeming with life nobody would miss.

The forest’s inhospitable sterility, from a vampire’s perspective, made Spike think about feeding. He wasn’t really hungry, but even with refrigeration, the bagged blood wouldn’t stay good long, lacking the usual chemical soup of preservatives and anti-coagulants. Best to use up as much as he could before it spoiled.

Dropping the last of the cigarette into an empty soda can, he flipped himself over the seat and started pawing through the confusion of boxes and gear in the back.

“What are you doing back there?” Oz demanded sharply.

Spike felt his eyes heat and change. “Looking for the cooler.”

“Don’t touch the instrument case. In fact, don’t touch anything. You are not gonna spill blood in the van. It would stink for months. Get out of the back, into the seat, fasten the seat belt like I told you twenty times already, and shut up!”

Spike popped him in the head with a single-serving can of chicken-with-stars soup. Several other little cans rolled out of the cardboard box, all handy to be pitched toward the front of the van in an indifferently inaccurate fusillade.

“OK,” said Oz, “that’s it.”

The van cut hard right, everything (including Spike) spilling helplessly in one direction, then the other, bounced around a bit, then tumbled forward as the van jerked to a halt.

Bruised and battered, Spike started pushing gear off him, working free of the pile. The right-hand rear door slid back. Hands gripped his ankle and yanked. He was pulled free and flung away, sliding on his shoulder and side on a thick, prickly mat of brown, dead pine needles with intense brightness all around and the smell of pine so strong, it was like being assaulted by a hundred million car deodorants. For a second he instinctively pulled in on himself in anticipation of the first agony of burning…that didn’t come. The trees were so high, thick, and dense that there was no direct sunshine at all. Cautiously, he uncurled, still unburning, and got to his feet.

The van was halted on a rutted dirt track partly obscured by drifts of pine needles and hidden by alignments of the wide-spaced pillars of pine boles a few dozen yards before and behind. Oz was kneeling in the back, pushing things around, plainly checking that whatever he was particularly choice of--probably the case that held his guitar and what-not--hadn’t been damaged by all the bouncing around. Spike had the momentary thought of pitching him out, then driving away, but that was no good: Oz had the keys, and it would take more time to hotwire the van than Oz would give him unless he completely immobilized the little pissant. Which Oz would resist vigorously, and that wasn’t to be lightly discounted. Anybody who could pitch him twenty feet had to be taken seriously.

With nothing better to do, then, Spike leaned against the nearest trunk and lit a cigarette.

Emerging from the van, Oz stabbed out a finger. “You don’t do that!”

“Not in your rotten van anymore, am I?”

“That doesn’t matter.” Oz swept a furious hand around in an all-encompassing gesture. “Fire hazard. That should mean something even to you!”

“Oh, so sorry. Don’t care. I’ve managed to avoid turnin’ myself to ash for a few years now sans assistance from any Smoky Bear Junior. Go fuck yourself, Fido.”

Oz began methodically cracking his knuckles, muttering, “Willow said you could control yourself. Said you’d behave.”

“Am behaving. Still alive, aren’t you--Twerp? Despite almost constant provocation, I might add.”

“OK,” Oz told himself, “meditation not the answer here. Not gonna solve anything.” He looked up, and there was something different, something strange, in his eyes. They’d gone yellow, Spike realized. Not like a vamp’s eyes. And they took up more of his face. “You been asking for it. Now you’re gonna get it. Best of three falls. Winner pisses on the loser.”

Oh, please: interspecies dominance games. Spike rolled his head back against the trunk. Then, on second thought, he proceeded to extinguish the coal of the cigarette with extreme care, making sure no sparks fell, and closed the remainder in his palm to make certain it was dead and cold. Just because the boy was an idiot didn’t mean he was wrong.

Dogboy had disappeared back into the rear of the van, wrestling around in there. What leaped out was covered in brick-colored fur and stood, on all fours, about hip high. Rather conspicuously male. Well, couldn’t keep the pants on, could he? Must be a major inconvenience, having to drop trou to change or get all tangled up. Meanwhile, with a gargling snarl, the werewolf had taken one long bound and launched itself straight at his face. Spike lifted both arms and closed his hands around the bole of the tree. With a bounce and a pull, he flipped, locked his ankles, and was securely head-down, like a squirrel, in time to watch Oz collide, jaws gaping, with the tree and bounce off to stand wide-legged, ruff bristled, glaring and snarling up at him.

Hands were, well, handy. Spike inchwormed half a body-length further up the trunk. Blood rushing to his head not a particular problem.

“Might want to rethink that strategy, Rex.”

Spike had never had much contact with shapechangers. So interpreting their smells wasn’t in his lexicon. He assumed the modulation in the overall canid odor would translate as highly pissed-off werewolf. Oz had stopped making noises and was now regarding him steadily. Then Oz looked off toward the van, and back.

Not going anywhere, that look said, until this is settled.

The clothes were in the van. The ignition key was pretty certainly in the clothes. But Oz wasn’t gonna let him get at it without some kind of tussle. And only Oz knew where they’d been going. Even if Spike got the van shut, locked, and started, he’d have no option but to back along this track until he hit the highway, turn south, and so home to beautiful sniper-inhabited Sunnydale: among the reasons Buffy had cited for finding Oz’s request a good pretext for Spike’s getting out of Dodge for a few days while she investigated who’d decided to take pot-shots at him with an itty bitty rifle.

He imagined punching the cellphone’s buttons (the cellphone stuck with his minimal gear, still in the van) and explaining to her, “Well, pet, I’ve been treed upside-down in a fucking forest by this scruffy red werewolf you wanted me to make nice with, old chum and all, Original Scooby, that’s prepared to sit there until bloody doomsday waiting for me to come down and fight him to establish who’s alpha male here. You and Willow will be brassed off if I kill him. So what exactly would you suggest I do in this situation?”

Imagining her silence and suddenly missing her acutely, Spike shut the imaginary connection. And naturally now, with the blood in the fucking van, he was hungry. He knew Oz’s blood was marginally edible: just the sort of thing you knew. He wondered what it would taste like. About on a par with rat, probably.

No point, he decided, putting this off.

Without bothering to change aspect, he kicked away from the tree and dove. The werewolf rose to meet him.

Not much of a contest. Although their weight was about equal, Spike had knees, elbows, feet, and fists to strike with. All Oz had was ferocity and jaws that seemed the size of a Buick, snapping a scant inch from your nose, and gleaming white fangs at least the equal of Spike’s own. Claws were blunt, not up to much of anything except maybe eviscerating you if you were stupid enough to let him get a high hold and then kick. Spike wasn’t that stupid, although he couldn’t prevent Oz inflicting a slash or two. Then Oz changed tactics: instead of leaping high, trying to bowl Spike over or get at his face or throat, seize onto an arm to gain leverage to pull him down, Oz came at him straight ahead and crotch high. Stepping quickly aside, Spike seized him by the scruff and tail-root and held him suspended at arm’s length. Oz fought and bucked and snapped but couldn’t twist head and neck around far enough to find anything to bite. Spike held him like that until he subsided to frustrated growling.

“Now look,” Spike said. “I’m something like a man. And you’re something like an animal. How the hell did you expect this to play out, you moron? Now give over.”

Suddenly he wasn’t grasping fur but a smooth neck and there was no tail. Dropping naked, Oz twisted and ran far enough to catch up a substantial storm-downed branch and brandish it. Wood: oooh--dangerous. Spike backed off and looked around until he found a branch of his own. He strolled back, breaking off side twigs until he had something a nice length and fairly evenly balanced. He twirled it, walking it between successive pairs of fingers, then flipped it to his right hand and did the same. Scowling stubbornly, Oz changed grip, holding his crooked stick quarterstaff-style. They engaged, sticks spinning, striking, rebounding. But a couple of years of RenFaire play couldn’t begin to contest effectively with over a century of swordsmanship and kendo combat. Not to mention impeccable pool and billiards sharking. Spike thumped the boy a couple of times on each knee, enough to start him moving stiff and lame, then saw a good contact coming and brought the thick end of his stick down full-strength against Oz’s branch at a crooked place, where it would be weak. Oz’s branch shattered. He was left holding a stub.

Spike brought his staff up and around, quick, making Oz back and lean, then repeated from the opposite side until he’d backed Oz up against the bole of a tree thicker around than Oz was. Spike set the point of the stick against Oz’s breastbone with just enough pressure to keep him there.

“Now, you wouldn’t dust all pretty, but I could bust you up--”

Oz shifted again, just a second’s shimmer and changed, and the wolf lunged at him under the reach of the extended stick. Losing patience, Spike let him come and thumped him hard on the head with the butt end as they made contact. Having closed jaws around Spike’s leg, Oz hung on, even after Spike thumped him again. Persistent, stubborn little bugger. Not particularly wanting to stave his skull in--he would have heard from Willow, at considerable length, about that--Spike dropped the stick and closed fingers around the wolf’s windpipe in a strangling grip. He held on until the wolf, and then the man, and then the wolf again ran out of air and sagged, unconscious. Still biting down as hard as he could, though the bite radius of course changed. So two bites for the price of one. Wonderful. Retrieving the stick, Spike levered the jaw open, then limped back to the van and went through the tumbled junk until he located a first-aid kit. Checking on Oz--manform again but not moving--Spike stripped off the ruined jeans and applied gauze pads and then an anchoring wrap of gauze to the wound in his upper left thigh. He’d actually lost meat, dammit. Finding his carryall, he put on his single change of jeans, downed three bags of blood that hadn’t quite gone off, then had bourbon for a chaser while attending to the surface gashes on both arms.

Oz was stirring. Reaching long, Spike grabbed Oz’s discarded pants, extracted the ignition key, wadded them up and pitched them in Oz’s general direction. He considered having another drink but capped the bottle: not bright if he was gonna be driving through unfamiliar territory, considering the sun was nearly gone. He stuck the bottle back in his carryall. Sitting on the edge of the seat, legs dangling outside, he pulled his boots back on and lit a cigarette.

Oz had moved a little--flopped over on his back, belly exposed--but hadn’t collected his pants.

“I figure that makes three,” Spike remarked. “So if you’re through with this foolishness, get dressed and we’ll get going.”

“It’s not through. You have to finish it.”

Spike thought, alarmed, for a second before remembering the forfeit Oz had named. Winner pissing on the loser. “Oh, please: that’s prehistoric.”

“Not finished till you do.”

“Then it won’t be fucking finished, all right? There’s things I like doing dog-style but that’s not one of ‘em. Put on your fucking trousers, Fido, and get in the van. Passenger side.”

At least he hadn’t been bitten on his accelerator leg. And this time, he’d find something decent on the radio.

**********

A couple of rings. Then: “Hello?” Dawn’s voice. Must have put in the wrong number, the one to the fixed phone. Spike lifted a hand and rubbed his forehead absently.

“Madam, could I interest you in a set of encyclopedias, barely used--”

“Spike!”

“--because the previous owner was an ignorant, illiterate git?”

“Spike, where are you?”

As if he could show her, Spike went to the small platform’s nearest railing and leaned against it, shifting weight from his left leg, aching from the long climb. He looked out and down in the bright silver moonlight to the green-black rosettes that were the crowns of hundred-foot pines. “Top of the world, Bit. Fire spotting station. Can see everything. ‘F you were to go into the front yard, bet I could see you.”

Dawn giggled. “How are you getting along with Oz?” she asked knowingly.

“Oh, much better. Much better after I took over the driving and we started going past ten miles an hour.”

“Then how’s Oz: in much pain?”

“He’ll survive. You keeping your promise? Keeping clear of Michael till I get back to make sure neither of you gets careless?”

“Yes,” Dawn complained, her voice sour and annoyed.

“You put out with me?” From such a distance, with only her voice to go by, it was hard to know or take the good things for granted.

“No. Or only sometimes. No, we’re good, Spike. Normal, anyway.”

“That’s fine, then. Bit, hate to say it, but I didn’t climb all the way up here to make certain you’re extant. Hunt Buffy up for me, there’s a pet.”

Sounds of bounding retreat and then, distantly, Dawn’s voice hollering Buffy’s name. Then Dawn came thumping back, fumbling, breathing into the phone. “She says she’ll call you back on her cell. But Spike? Are you eating all right? Oz starting to look like breakfast?”

“’M fine, Bit. Finished off what I brought, so I’m good for some days now. You can tell Willow Oz is safe as houses. Not in the least appealing. Going now.”

“Yeah, bye. Miss you!” A screech right in his ear: “All right, all right, I’m hanging up now!”

Closing the connection, Spike held the little cellphone at arm’s length, wincing at the assault on his hearing. In under a minute, it beeped. Spike returned it to his ear.

“Hullo, love.”

Buffy’s voice: “Not so sure this was a great idea. Lonesome here.”

Spike sighed. Everything else had gone away. “Yeah. Here too.”

“Was the special glass fun?”

“For a while. Novelty. Warm. Then it got to be a bit of a bore. Not used to sleeping in the sunshine.”

“Spooked?”

“Yeah, some.”

“You get any rest at all?”

“Not to speak of. After this, maybe. No signal, down below. Had to get high to catch the right breeze, get a call through.”

“Miss you more in the night time. Nobody’s frigid feet…. Where are you, then? Up a tree?”

“Was, earlier. Getting things sorted with Dogboy. No permanent damage, all fine now. Not a chatty chap, is he?”

“Ah, the famous Oz significant silences, interrupted now and then by a single word. Where are you? Make me see.”

“Steel tripod, sort of, with rungs along one strut and then across struts at the narrow part, toward the top. Long climb. Hate to do it every day, like Oz says the regular fire spotters do…. Nobody here now, though: cutbacks, not a priority area, something like that. Anyway. Pine platform built around the top, raw wood, some warped and weathered. Railing around the outside. Stink of pine something fierce, like sticking your head over a bucket of cleaner. Can see for miles and miles around, seems like to the end of forever…. Moonlight, coming stronger. All alive, everywhere. Air sharpish--you’d be cold, I expect, if you were here…. What are you gonna do, love? After this?”

He hadn’t intended to say that. He breathed anxiously, waiting for her response.

“You’re breathing. I can hear you.”

“I suppose. Never mind, didn’t mean to bring that up. Just got past me, came out. Don’t you take any notice. When you got it settled in your mind, you’ll--”

“You’re scared,” she realized. “What are you scared of, Spike?”

Because of the distance, the cold clean air, he couldn’t keep his silence that had become automatic in her presence. “That you’ll have no need of me anymore. Not say so, just start pulling away, ducking away because that’s how you do. All the words still there but nothing behind them anymore. All closed off. Can’t reach you, touch you anymore. You go away, inside. When--”

He finally clamped down on the babble. The chill air stung his eyes. He couldn’t bear the silence.

She said, “I am so horribly, wretchedly bad at this. Dammit. Can’t see you. Can’t know what you’re thinking when I can’t see your eyes, when you’re not here. Why couldn’t you bring this up the thousand times you could have, when you were here? Why does it have to be now?”

“Dunno, love. Just is. Didn’t mean to. Tried this once not to be dumb, not keep nagging at you like I do. Know you hate that. Pull back and go all closed anytime I keep pushing at you. Trying to do better, let you be. Messed that up too now. Not doing it right, seems like I can never do it right, be what I should, be any different than I am. Which is not enough. Not right for you. No matter, let it be. Sorry if I upset you. Never meant. You take care now.”

Spike turned off the phone. After a long while, he opened his hand and let it fall.

**********

As the sky was just beginning to lighten, Oz stepped down from the van, pushing hands through his wildly upstanding hair and yawning, then sniffing at the smells coming off the small and extravagantly safe campfire Spike had made at the eastmost margin of the clearing, where there’d be long shadows well into the morning. Ground scraped clean down to the dirt with the sharp edge of a rock for six feet around, fire contained within a circle of stacked stones (none of the kind that would fracture or burst from the heat), two narrow plates of sandstone across the top to serve as the cooking surface for the bacon with the coffeepot back to one side, just staying warm. Spike was on about his eighth cup of coffee, but he’d made fresh and there was plenty left.

“Didn’t know this came with the service,” Oz remarked appreciatively.

Spike nodded, setting the frying pan across the sandstone plates to heat. He wouldn’t pour the slurried-up eggs into it until Oz was ready. Otherwise, they’d be cold.

While Oz disappeared around the van, presumably to take a piss, Spike turned the bacon strips with whittled chopsticks and removed to the side the ones he judged done. Then he poured coffee into the waiting mug.

No great achievement: except for the campfire, everything needed had been in either the small refrigerator that ran off the van’s extra battery or one of the boxes beside it. That Spike viewed camping out as strictly a desperation measure didn’t mean he didn’t know how. There’d been quite a lot of desperation in a century and a quarter, every now and again. He knew how to take care of himself. And he’d always been partial to human food.

As Oz approached and bent to pick up the mug, Spike judged him still a bit stiff about the knees. He’d heard werewolves were nearly as indestructible as vamps, with the usual few exceptions, and had pretty much the same accelerated healing. But he had no idea of how quick that was in practice. He was still keeping the bite wrapped, but mostly to protect the healing patch from chafing. It took longer when actual meat was missing.

Inquiring with a look and a tilt of his head if Oz was ready for anything beyond coffee, Spike added some bacon drippings and then poured the eggs into the pan. After about a minute he whisked them up with the flattened ends of the chopsticks. Better if you mixed in a little milk first, but all he’d found was cans of evap and that would have turned the eggs as heavy as lead so he’d made do with water. The tumbled eggs came off the pan nicely with barely any sticking: that was the bacon grease. He reversed the chopsticks to pick up the bacon strips, neat and deft, three at a time, arranging them to the side of the plate, then set it on the cleared ground where Oz could reach it.

“Aren’t you gonna have any?”

Spike pushed the chopsticks into the gap. What with the bacon grease, they flamed up immediately. He absently licked his fingers clean, then added coffee to his half empty mug and drank some. “Smell, flavor is all I need. Or can use. Got that.”

When Spike slid his cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket and lit up, Oz made no comment whatsoever. The meticulously cleared ring around the campfire had made its point. As Spike had meant it to.

Finishing the last of the eggs, Oz commented, “You know your way around a set of chopsticks. Tibet?”

“China. Handy all-purpose tool, once you get the trick of it. Good weapon, at need, too. Through the ear, or the eye. Or with vamps, just under the third rib….” Spike shook his head, saying, “Never mind. Push the button, that’s the speech that comes out. Like a bloody museum exhibit. I forget I’m not talking to the children anymore.”

“Children?”

Spike shrugged. “Potential Slayers. They were with us for awhile. All gone home now, or mostly….” Glancing at the brightening sky, Spike went on, “Thought if we made an early start, we could take a look at that last site and be back before noon. Expect I’ll have to go to ground then awhile, with the sun directly overhead.”

“Your turn in the van, if you want.”

“Sooner someplace dark. Fine thing, those windows, but I don’t want to get used to it. Forget, maybe, what I can’t afford to forget.”

“Yeah. All right…. I’m told there’s a cabin goes with the fire station. Likely a trail between there and the tower. I’ll hunt it out.”

“That would be good. You set?”

Rising, Oz eyed the campfire dubiously until Spike doused it thoroughly with a gallon jug of water. When not even steam remained, Spike gave Oz an inquiring, eyebrow-lifted glance asking if all was in good order and up to standard. Oz smiled and turned away, carrying the pan, plate, and utensils back to the van so as not to attract inquisitive wildlife. Spike followed along with the coffee pot, still nearly full. No use wasting it, and it didn’t yet meet the standing-spoon test for too strong.

Over his shoulder, Oz asked, “Any problem if I go shifted?”

Spike shook his head. Didn’t matter to him, and he could understand Oz choosing the other aspect for the keener senses. Probably would cut way down on the conversation, too, which at the moment Spike found preferable, although he’d made a mental note to quiz Oz about working for the Powers, in as much detail as Oz was willing to give. Later, then.

The red wolf jumped down from the van carrying a medium drawstring bag in his jaws. When Spike held out a hand, Oz cocked his head, clearly not having expected the offer. “No trouble,” Spike said. “Must be a nuisance, having to drag clothes around. As the one with the hands at the moment, easier if I see to it.”

The wolf deposited the bag at Spike’s feet, and Spike hitched the drawstring cord to one of his belt loops. Then they set out, the wolf at a steady lope. No remaining sign of lameness. Maybe only the human aspect had to suffer that. Spike matched the pace easily, keeping a bit of his attention on the sun’s progress and noting every clearing where the sun might break through behind him before he reached the other side.

He thought his sun tolerance was greater than it had been: he’d frequently risked short dashes without even a blanket for cover and suffered no worse than surface burns. Maybe that was one of the tolerances vamps could develop over time. He didn’t know any vamps older than himself, that he might ask. Except Dru, a total nutter; and except Angel. There’d be ice skating in hell before Spike went to that source to enlighten his ignorance….

That made him think about Michael, so impatient to understand the powers and limits of his current estate. Basically a good lad. For a vamp. Probably hadn’t killed much above five hundred people, to keep himself fed, these past six years since he’d been turned. Only about ten busses’ worth. As compared to Spike, whose cumulative toll would have been hard-pressed to fit into your basic sports arena….

Damn soul starting in on him already. Like a downhill slope, canting his thoughts in certain directions, making it a labor to keep going straight across, resist the drift. Now if he just could get Red to contrive an amulet against that, matters on the inside of his head would be much improved. Not a whole lot of use keeping intrusion out when he had this huge intrusion already firmly entrenched within.

He’d been moving pretty much on automatic, keeping pace with the wolf, following along. Oz tugging lightly at the bag made Spike realize that they’d stopped. Noplace in particular, that he could tell. Trees all looked the same. Same overwhelming smell of pine. He untied the cord, and Oz trotted off with the bag to change, with what Spike considered absurd modesty, given that they’d been stick fighting, and Oz naked, the afternoon before. Well, Oz wasn’t a vamp, wasn’t a demon in a dead body. That tended to distance you somewhat. In a secure, established lair, vamps didn’t bother much about clothes the one way or the other. Didn’t need ‘em for warmth. Just habit. And the convenience of pockets. And that was basically it. Apparently, twentysomething werewolves were shyer than that. Probably wouldn’t fuck anything that moved, with or without a pulse, either. Different fettle of kish altogether. One of Red’s phrases, that’d stuck with him….

Tucking in his shirt, Oz reappeared from among the trees, scuffing through the drifts of pine debris. He laid the empty bag on the ground, then pointed off to the left. “Cabin’s there. Show you that first.”

Following, Spike found a clearing he checked thoroughly before entering, the frame for a fake Swiss chalet with one side of its roof caved in. As he went nearer, he saw a dirt track dead-ending in a twee rusticated carport with carved gingerbread along the edges. Foul object. Private road, then. Somebody’s forest weekend hideaway. Secretary shagging and that sort of thing, most likely. Checking quickly again for sun high enough to slant its rays down into this open space, he changed aspect. With a run, a leap, a bounce, a grab, and a swing, he was up on the sound part of the roof, inspecting the damage.

Not blown outward. Nor cleanly broken, as it would have been by an artillery shell or the like. (Brief image of Buffy with the rocket-launcher on her shoulder, almost instantly shut away. Wasn’t thinking about that today. Staying straight on and away from the bottom of the hill.) Beams cracked, some dangling. A pile of roofing, twee pine slab shakes (not very authentic) down below. Dropping down, Spike could smell the death. Not raw and recent, but there. A very thorough death: he could separate some components that told him people had been pulled rather thoroughly and messily apart. He prowled through the rooms, finding them decorated in early affluence, until he thought he had the shape of it pretty well. Four people dead by his count, though all tidied up now. Nary a chalked outline--not even a yellow tape remaining to ward sightseers away from an ongoing investigation, if there’d been one--if whatever passed for local authority hadn’t fallen victim to the Sunnydale Syndrome and put the damage down to a wayward meteor or rampaging white supremacy militias and their squads of rabid albino weasels, instead of whatever large thing had crashed through the roof, basically opened it up like a cracker box and then eaten the contents.

He went back outside through the front door, leaving it shut but indifferently unlocked, and rejoined Oz, standing by the carport.

“Another one here,” Oz said, pointing.

Spike studied the ground, and took in a long breath and held it. Then he shook his head. “Too weathered. Take your word for it, though. That makes five.”

“Yeah. Family. Mom, pop, two kids and the friend of one of the kids. That’s the right tally, according to the obits.”

“How long ago?”

Oz tipped his head back, calculating. “Eleven days. Counting today. This is the freshest one. There are two more, radius of about twenty miles. And a couple of backpackers missing. Might be related or not.”

“Time since the first one was noticed?”

“A month. About. I got word two weeks ago.” Oz sounded faintly defensive, as though he thought, or thought Spike might think, he should have been able to prevent this.

“Yeah. All right. What’s the bag for, at the moment?”

“Start of the trackline I found.”

Spike was just as glad to get back under the cover of the trees. When Oz lifted the bag, Spike could make out the track, just barely: the resilient pine needles didn’t hold a mark well. But this was at the edge of a drift, and weight had pressed the litter into the ground. He judged the track as about eighteen inches across for the pad and then clawmarks beyond: two or three in advance of it and another one or two behind. Headed away from the chalet.

“Next one.”

Oz trotted maybe ten feet. Print was deflected to the left and blurred: except for Oz pointing it out, Spike wouldn’t have recognized it. “Next one.”

The next print was deflected to the right. So that was the stride measurement. Hip height would be something in excess of seven feet, and a stride length of about twenty.

“Show me the track.”

Oz ranged ahead, pointing out the tracks as he went. Spike noted, at a place where the track turned aside and went around, the approximate distance between the tree trunks that had been enough to deflect it. He adjusted the height and width estimates accordingly. Not a lumbering Triceratops sort of beastie. Trim little three ton package, short stubby legs, and a lot more slim body than the stride length would otherwise suggest. Likely a tail in there someplace: long and whippy. And therefore a neck to match.

“And then,” Oz remarked, “it just stops,” doing so himself, lifting both hands in a gesture of frustrated mystification. “Can’t tell anymore but the scent went dead here, too. Like it just up and vanished. I thought teleportation, but then why walk all that way first? Why break the roof if it could teep itself inside? Didn’t add up no matter which way I stacked it.”

Spike sat on his heels by the last track, idly poking at the matted pine needles. “So tell me: why’d you want a vamp to come look at this? You seen more of it than I could make out, on my own.”

Oz was shaking his head. “Didn’t ask for a vamp. Asked my contact for an expert on unusual wildlife. And she came up with you.”

“That a fact,” Spike remarked in a flattened voice. “This contact: she a Watcher?”

“Nope. A pretty good clairvoyant. Not an all-around witch like Will. Might have some Watcher contacts, for all I know. Never asked. She points me, I go.”

“That how it works…. How do the Powers come into it, then?”

“Why?” Oz was frowning, but not seriously yet.

“Curious, is all.” Spike didn’t say any more, just waited, looking steadily up at the boy.

Oz started to hunker down too. Both knees popped and he changed his mind, grimacing. “Couple years back, the group had a gig at a jam festival near Anaheim. Really: jam. Knott’s Berry Farm? Tourist attraction near Disneyland. Put on shows, had events. Not too bad. Not too many juicers, and too square to attract the pothead, hashish, and curious pills crowd. Some people actually listening to the music. Anyway, a lady came up to me after the first set. She knew things. Lots of things. Freaked me out, pretty much, actually. Handed me something. Said if I wanted to help people, I’d keep it. And said she’d be in touch. That night I had a semi-weird dream in which she explained about the Powers and said they’d told her I was a likely prospect, stuff like that.” Oz laughed uneasily, kicking at the pine straw. “A few weeks after that, she sent me on my first assignment. Fake haunting, that one was. Somebody trying to force tenants to vacate a building. Bit the ghost in the ass, kind of made a developer look really stupid. Kind of fun, and I was between gigs anyway. Not really demanding. Not even one a month, just what she thinks I can help with. I figure she has others, for other kinds of problems. No conflict so far with any gig I’ve signed on for, and I like helping.” Oz shrugged. “I get expenses and a little extra. Special stuff when that’s needed. Like the glass. Appointment was all made and everything, four hours later the job was done and I could turn around and head for Sunnydale.”

Spike didn’t particularly like knowing the glass had been installed specifically on his account. He’d just figured it had some advantage to Oz, or to other vamps he’d worked with before. “This lady. Your contact. She got a name?”

Oz considered him a long minute, deciding. “Marjorie. Wexler. Uses the professional name ‘Sunshine Mystical Services.’”

That forced a laugh from Spike, and after a second Oz laughed too, realizing the name wasn’t all that great an omen to a vamp.

“Obliged to you. Now come on, and I’ll show you something.” Spike led on the way the tracks were headed. He didn’t have to go far. Maybe a dozen feet or so before the trees ended in a clear-cut patch completely open to the sky and shimmering with sunlight and clouds of insects. Oz looked at the clearing, then around at Spike again.

It was bright enough to make Spike’s demon very uneasy. Letting game face go dimmed things down a little, gave him some distance. He explained, “Your beastie trudged cheerfully along because it was full of the residents of Ugly Swiss Fantasy #27 and because open space there was a little too tight. Came along here,” (Spike pointed along the line of the track, far to near, with a finger, then lifted his hand and soared it upward.) “--and opened its wings and flew away.”

Oz frowned dubiously, then tried to smooth his face out to neutral. “No confirmed dragon sightings since the thirteenth century.”

“Tisn’t a dragon. Nor even a Sh’narth Wyrm. But it’s here because the Sh’narth are. Tagging along for the honeymoon, so to speak. Sort of a Sh’narth cousin: a Taskin. Adolescent. Grown, they’re too big to fly and not interested anyway. Here’s how it goes. Junior Taskin catches the scent of a courting pair of Sh’narth. Real attracted. If he hurries, and he can hurry pretty brisk compared to a Sh’narth, he’ll catch ‘em before they sniff out a dimensional rift and go sit on it until it buckles. Hitchhikes along with them, more or less, and wherever they end up, he ends up. Then he practically stands on his lumpy head, aerial displays, the whole works, trying to get a female Sh’narth to dump her current date and mate with him. Tisn’t likely, but it’s been known to happen. Every now and again, you’ll run into a Sh’narth with vestigial wings. So some of the boys get lucky, it would seem. This one’s all disappointed. Lost his mission in life. So he’s living off the land, what he finds good to eat. Maybe hoping in his dim little brain another Sh’narth pair will come through and make life interesting again. How far to the coast, from here?”

“Fifteen, twenty miles.”

“About a day’s march, for a Sh’narth. Must be a rift in this general area. Our boy’s still hopeful, hanging about the area he knows best. Where he came through. Area that’s got Sh’narth sign. Find Sh’narth sign and backtrack, you have the rift. Taskin will be laired up as near to it as he can find a good place.”

“What kind of places do Taskin like?”

“Caves. They like caves. Especially caves with water nearby.”

Oz showed a slow, big grin. He had the same sort of mouth as Willow, Spike noticed: Willow could do a big grin like that, though it’d been some while since Spike had seen her produce one. Nodding, Oz said, “That’s good. That’s really good.”

“Don’t figure you tagged your Taskin just because you know what name to hang on it.” Spike straightened, inspecting the sky. “Maybe you could show me where that fire-spotter’s cabin is.”

“Sure thing. Aim for the watch tower, then backtrack from there. Sure to be a trail.”

Apparently Oz didn’t feel it necessary to shift for the return trip. Meant more talking, probably. Shouldn’t complain: he’d provided good and useful information on his contact and how he perceived his relationship with the Powers. Good thing to know, that. A beginning anyway. And Spike figured by the time this cabin was located, he might finally be tired enough, wound down enough, to sleep.

**********

Spike woke, roused and gripped by one of those Get out of here: now! impulses you didn’t question. He rolled off the pile of blankets and was out the door all in one motion, with no idea what had alarmed him or even where he was or why, trying to scan everything around him with sleep-dazed eyes that didn’t want to take anything in and a mind that refused to process it. Coffee, he thought. I need coffee.

Despite not knowing where he was, some internal steerage was working because he set out through the trees directly for where the van was parked. Except it wasn’t: the clearing was empty. The treetops still blazed in sun but everything below was twilight against deeper dark past the first arc of sentinel trunks opposite. Unknown birds he couldn’t see were singing soft, tentative evening songs in counterpoint with crickets. Doing a steady, stupefied blink, Spike wandered into the open, and the van was still gone, and although the obvious conclusion would have been that Oz had dumped and deserted him, that didn’t even occur to him. Couldn’t get past the emptiness, the absence of the van: raw uninterpreted sense data.

He shut his eyes, waiting to catch up with himself, and even drowsed so, standing, until alerted by far-off engine noise. He didn’t yet know the characteristics of the van engine well enough to identify it positively. The sound seemed to have too much range and confusing harmonics--as though a Porsche were racing in one of the lower gears with a garbage truck. Before he’d made any sense of that, the cause lurched into view, picking a path through the obstacle course of trunks, bouncing crookedly over projecting roots and rocks. The van. And the second and larger vehicle behind it was Buffy’s SUV.

What seemed like the next moment, the two vehicles had come into the clearing and halted alongside one another. The engines cut off. Buffy, Oz, and a taller, slender girl--Dawn, of course: what was Dawn doing here?--convened in front, and Oz pointed in Spike’s direction. Buffy wheeled and started coming at a fast march, arms swinging, head bent: she was mad.

I’m for it now, Spike realized hazily, not at all alarmed, because Buffy had found him, was coming for him. The sense of rescue was overwhelming.

From her first stride, Buffy had her mouth going: “Now you shut up, you don’t say anything because I’ve been rehearsing this nearly seven hours on the road and I hate driving, I really hate driving, and it’s all your fault Dawn missed school, and I’m missing a parent-teacher conference, all because you’re an idiot.” Arriving before him, without hesitation she belted him in the left temple and knocked him down. Spike didn’t get the whole sequence, just the start and then the end, where he was flat on his back and looking up at her, standing there with fists planted on her hips, all wonderful and fierce and pissed-off, ranting on, “Can’t I leave you alone one single hour without your convincing yourself of something utterly crazy and going off like a rocket? Straight into the dirt? Up the whole freaking night, Spike, first trying to call you and then call the number Oz left, waking up some total freaking stranger and trying to explain how I have to locate my insane idiot vampire boyfriend who’s freaking out in some forest in goddam Oregon, for God’s sake, and do you have the least idea how that made me feel, Spike? And then she couldn’t get through either, well she could and left voicemail, she said, but still nothing, hours and hours of nothing, and the sun was out, and, and another thing: How is it you could last through six weeks of torture and never once, you said, in the least doubt I’d come for you, but you can’t get through one single freaking day away from home and not believe I’m gonna dump you, leave you? How could you do that to me, Spike?”

She stood there, all clenched up in rage and hurt, face twisted up and breathing hard, tears pouring down her cheeks, so beautiful there were no words for it. Though it probably wasn’t the best idea, Spike got up and held her almost hard enough to break bones because he couldn’t not. It wasn’t an answer, nothing solved or changed, but that didn’t matter because she was here and had come for him. Yet again. And there were no words for that either: so large and shining that he couldn’t begin to encompass it. His sense of rescue was no different and no less. It held him mute and shaking and hanging onto her very hard because he couldn’t think past this, the immediacy of her. Not in her presence. All of his senses locked in absolutely.

And when she pushed a hand free to move fabric aside, to bare the mark, there was no choice, no hesitation, any more than when she’d hit him. All part of the one thing, the continuum of what they were to one another. Changing aspect, he sank into her and was of her with no separation and no more thought.

**********

Sitting by the fire with Spike leaning on an elbow possessively across her lap, Buffy was still theoretically mad as hell at him. In more practical terms, picking at gooey toasted cheese and bits of semi-burned chicken--part of the tapestry Oz had assembled to be supper for three (picking up food being one of the undoubtedly countless things she’d forgotten in her snatch-the-keys-and-go frenzy)--Buffy felt she had a lot in common with the toasted cheese if it’d been shagged into the forest floor repeatedly. All crazy haste and carelessness in that too. Although the mark tingled with energy, her mouth, ribs, and regions south were sore, and Spike had bruises blooming too, some of them visible. Not even counting the bandage he’d had wound around the top of his leg. He’d lost that, someplace along the line. His T-shirt was also on backwards and inside-out, not that anybody cared.

Feeling Dawn’s fingers on her back, Buffy said sharply, “What?”

“You have pine needles all stuck in your sweater.” All priss-faced and solemn, Dawn displayed those she’d plucked. When Buffy said nothing, Dawn took it as permission to continue the removal of incriminating evidence. Of course she’d made a total nuisance of herself, insisting on coming along, but since arriving she’d muted way down, not saying much of anything. Buffy wondered vaguely if Dawn might be coming down with something.

Everybody was quiet. Oz attended to the fire and the cooking, lifting a shrewd glance at one or another of them from time to time, his usual taciturnity comfortably in place, and that was just Oz, after all. Spike, inertly relaxed, seemed nearly asleep. He hadn’t reached for a cigarette since she’d arrived. And Dawn lavished, unneeded and unwanted, on Buffy the care Spike didn’t need and wouldn’t accept: filling and passing her plate, opening the pop-top of a fresh soda for her, fussing around the periphery.

If Dawn could be trusted as a barometer, all was still very not well in Spike-land. Not that Buffy had really believed any different. Tonight, or two days hence, depending on how you chose to figure, Kim would be dead a week. Four days since he’d been shot. Buffy hadn’t asked him what had become of his cellphone. Really upset, he tended to throw things. From a hundred plus feet up, she figured she had to consider the cell a write-off.

She still loved the back of his neck: slender and vulnerable-looking, just below where the hair ended. Mindful of audience, she contented herself with petting him there, fingertips and knuckles alternately. In response he bent his head further, giving her better access.

He grumbled to Oz, “Thought no signal could get through here.”

“True.”

“Then how did they get ahold of you, figure how to find us?” The motion of Spike’s head, back and then to the side, indicated Buffy and Dawn.

“Mar-- My contact can stick some extra mojo on. She always gets through.”

“You objecting to the company, Spike?” Dawn inquired, just short of teasing, delicately nibbling at the end of a hot dog.

“You been watching Tom Jones, Bit?”

“The singer?”

“The movie.”

Coloring, Dawn hastily set the hot dog on her paper plate and began carving it into scrupulously even segments with plastic utensils.

Buffy didn’t know the reference but caught the implication. She gave him sharp knuckles in the top vertebrae. “Don’t be mean. You owe her an apology too.” Of a slightly different sort, perhaps, but Buffy meant it all the same.

“Sorry, Bit,” said Spike obediently. “Didn’t mean to worry you. Or anybody.”

“Well, you did,” Buffy snipped, and then realized how much she sounded to herself like Anya. That had to go. “Oz, why don’t you tell Dawn about this dragon, or whatever we have on our hands here. Spike, move: I want you to show me the watch tower.”

Spike slumped theatrically. “No tree you’d like to look at, instead?”

“Move.” She gave his back a shove.

“I’d like to hear about the dragon,” Dawn pimped on cue, contriving to look fascinated.

Oz showed a small private smile that said nobody was kidding anybody here but he didn’t mind, and started talking. He could, when he wanted to. And especially when it was just family.

Spike hauled to his feet and they wandered off. Back among the trees, he went to game face, maybe because he was tired and maybe to see better. He didn’t seem sure of the way, slowing and looking around from time to time.

“I’ve been thinking,” Buffy began.

“Never a good sign.”

“Shut up. I was thinking about what you asked, about what’s next, and Dawn and I talked it over too, on the way up. Not that there was a lot to do, and only this really awful music on the radio-- What?”

He’d chuckled. “Not saying anything. Not interrupting. Really want to know. And pretty much scared silly of knowing. You go on. I’ll stay shut.”

“I admit it: I’ve been putting it off. Put off thinking about it. Deciding. Kind of confronting the Great Unknown here, all right? And you are too. I understand that. Understand you tried your best to keep out of it, not try to influence me or force things. And I think I know, now, how hard that was for you. And why it came out how it did, when we were apart. Because we were apart. It was still dumb and thoughtless, and I still owe you a few more lumps for that, but I understand, all the same.”

Very deliberately, Spike released her hand and sat down on the ground.

“What now?” Buffy demanded.

“Not stirring a step till you dump all the understanding preliminary crap and just spit it out, love. Killing me here.” He lit a cigarette. The flame reflected in the gold of his eyes and then was gone.

“All right. Sorry. I have trouble that way. You know.” Buffy sat down next to him and took a deep breath. “Item one: I don’t want college. One of us who knows Basement Greek is enough.”

“Oh, you caught me on that one, did you?” Earnestly, almost anxiously, he went on, “You could, though. Some way, we’d come up with the dosh. You’re a bright little thing, for all you mangle the language.”

“But it’s not my best thing, or what I want. Stick with the agenda. No college.”

“Right: no college. Got it. Next item.”

“I don’t want to move. There’s a chance now. Everything unstable, upset, nobody in charge.”

“Power vacuum. Yeah.”

“OK, power vacuum. There’s a chance to win, not just each battle, but the war. Without the Hellmouth powering things, there’s a chance to settle, stabilize, the situation in Sunnydale once and for all. So wherever the next Big Bad pops up, it won’t be there because it would find nothing to work with. Fix things so the number that actually graduate from good ol’ Sunnydale High compares favorably to the mortality rate. Make things be normal. And get to dictate what normal is. Make it happen. There’s a chance now.”

“You sure about that, pet? ‘Cause that would be hard and nasty. And neither one of us has ever been much of a planner.”

Buffy shook her head emphatically. “Doesn’t matter. I know from no more dead kids. Don’t have to be a master strategist to know what’s unacceptable. And I want it. I want it bad. You used to complain to the SITs that we were always two steps slow and two dollars short. Always fighting reactively. Trying to put out one fire while two more were being set. It’s true. But it doesn’t have to be true. We could sell fire extinguishers. Don’t let ‘em get started in the first place. Take away the fuel. Insert here the metaphor of your choice. We could do it, Spike. And I don’t think anybody else could. Only us.”

That us was what he’d been waiting for. What he’d needed. And what she’d therefore concocted for him since that dreadful phone call. His relief was immediate and unmistakable: a huge sigh and no more conscientious protests. He leaned his forehead against hers, his dread of being outgrown, unneeded, finally reassured.

Buffy had considered returning to college. Even vaguely assumed it. She’d gone a couple of semesters--the era of Riley Finn and the Initiative that had changed her life and Spike’s so drastically and set them on their present course, though neither could have suspected it at the time. It had been a hopeful beginning, and she’d resented it when her mom’s death and Slayer concerns had forced her to drop out. But so much was different now; and that would have been a different life--one that relegated Spike to the periphery. He was the Slayer’s consort, not Buffy’s; and he knew it. To try to resume the unremarkable life of Buffy Summers would inevitably mean losing Spike. And he’d known that too and feared it, rightly and profoundly. Amazing that he’d forced himself to keep silence as long as he had.

His blurted question had made Buffy finally know and face and make the choice whose implications she’d been ducking. Made her affirm her vocation as Slayer more decisively and clearly than ever before. She knew she’d never look back.

To lighten things and make the moment pass, she remarked, “You have Dawn pretty well trained, you know. Whatever bandwagon has us on it, she’s ready to jump onto, regardless.”

“Be lost without Bit. She knows that…. Sorry if I forced things.”

“You lie through your pointy teeth, barbarian. And I don’t think you forced things so much as things forced you. I’ve heard the silence, felt you pulling back behind it. Just didn’t know that was why. Because you know what? What you said about me, how I pull back and go all closed off, make the right noises and don’t admit to what I’m feeling? That’s true. I do. But you know what else? You do it, too. Maybe it’s catching or something. And I don’t know how to break through it. Any better than you do, I guess. Just pull back and worry and feel hurt. Like you write a note in blood, Don’t Fret, and think that’s gonna reassure me. Insane vampire person!”

“I expect. Don’t know how to do. Guess, and guess wrong. Dunno how to do better.”

Buffy sighed. “I know. Me neither. But so long as we’re still in there pitching, so long as being apart is utterly unacceptable, I have to believe we can learn. Bloody and messy and stupid sometimes, but we’ll learn.”

“Dunno if I can. Hammered on the left and then hammered on the right, to the point that everything I do seems wrong. Sure, I’m an arrogant git. But…just so fucking tired of being wrong.”

“Next item, and be prepared to howl bloody murder. Because I know you’re not gonna like it.”

“Dead of the suspense already. Spit it out, for pity’s sake.”

“I want you certified, accredited, and paid as my Watcher. That’s what we are. That’s what we do. I want it formally acknowledged. You’re a rare commodity with the Council at the moment: they’re courting you, which is more than they ever did for me. Slayers are cheap, we both know that. A vampire Watcher would be unique. A historic first. They’re paying you goddam tribute, even if they don’t know yet to call it that. We have to use whatever torque that gives us, and bluff the rest. Before they revert to the ‘evil soulless thing’ party line again, which we both know they will eventually. Giles won't be here much longer and a Slayer needs backup. Somebody to train with, call her on it when she gets lazy or careless or overconfident. Somebody who can tell me how to kill the demon of the week, that I never saw before. Somebody with a vested interest in me staying alive. That's you. You bend a little their way--read their rotten books--and Giles thinks he could make them bend a little toward us. I woke him up, too, in the middle of the night. Maybe he wasn’t even wearing his glasses, which would be a first. Then when they revert, you’ll be all tweed and seniority, with a goddam track record; and the wrath will fall elsewhere.” Buffy waited. “What’s the matter? I haven’t heard a howl yet.”

Spike picked up pinches of pine needles and pitched them fretfully away. “Dunno if I can. Tweed collar and all. And been a whole lot of years since even Basement Greek. Dunno if I could even do what they want, what they expect.”

“Giles thinks you can.”

“Giles doesn’t know what the sodding hell--!” Spike stubbed out the coal of the cigarette. That took some time. And instead of pitching the butt, he inserted it back in the pack. “If that’s what you want, I’ll try.”

“Good. That’s settled.”

They both burst out laughing at what a gigantic, hopeful lie that was.

Buffy leaned and kissed his cheek glancingly. Then he turned and made a much more serious business of it. Coming up for air, Buffy looked him straight in his yellow eyes. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Once is fine. Even twice is fine. But if you ever pull a stunt like this again, I’ll figure you’re yelling ‘frog’ to see how high I’ll hop. Don’t ever play around with the emergency codes just to see if they work. I won’t be played, Spike.”

His nose and mouth nuzzled in behind her ear, above the mark. Tongue tasting there. “Wasn’t playing. Only scared.”

“Then you got to get yourself un-scared, all on your own. Because I can’t make you believe, or trust me, or trust yourself. That has to be you.”

A silence and stillness. Then: “All right. That’s fair. But you don’t know how it is. Tried to tell Michael once. It’s how vamps are: immediate. Everything close is real intense. But we pay for that. We lose the distance. Can’t see it. Can’t feel it. Don’t know it. Past a certain distance, ‘snot real. Away from you, I have to imagine. And it’s not the same. And not enough. Have to feel you there, all the time, every minute, to believe. To know. No good at distances at all, and that’s not gonna change. Can’t change. How I am because of what I am. No changing that.”

“All right. I’ll try to remember and allow for that. Spike is hot for ‘clingy.’ Any more little nuggets like that?”

“Not at the moment. Bulletins when they occur.”

“Then let’s do that tower.”

“Fuck. No option?”

“No. When we get to the top, I’ll tell you why.”

“Goddam bloody hell. On your feet, then, and don’t whine and decide halfway up that you want to be carried, like the goddam Statue of Liberty tour.”

Buffy thought he’d just crossed a circuit with a Dru-memory, but declined to say so. They both had to be tactful about exes.

He hadn’t been exaggerating: it was a long climb and got colder the higher they got. Unexpectedly Buffy found herself assailed by memories of Glory’s tower and forced them away as best she could, head stubbornly bent and trying to attend only to the chore at hand--the next rung, the next handhold. Keep it all intense and close, the way a vamp would, and shrug off whatever other garbage tried to distract her. Be “in the moment.”

The moment eventually brought her to a solid roof over her head. Climbing below her, Spike directed her in finding the bolt that held the trapdoor in place, and they climbed onto the platform. Her calves ached. It was going to be a wretched business getting down, and maybe worse for Spike, with that nearly-healed bite mark he didn’t intend to discuss. But it was worth it, she insisted to herself, looking away and far off over the rail.

It was a dizzying height. The moon, just past the full, had already begun its decline. A clear white light illuminated threads and eddies of clouds moving in far below. Some trees, they concealed. Others poked their heads through in fringed, feathery rosettes. Buffy reached in a pocket and brought out a zip-close bag she pressed into Spike’s hand. As he looked at it and then at her, she was almost distracted by what the light did to the planes of his face, his shoulders, his strong arms.

She explained softly, “It’s Kim. Mike showed me where. Maybe I brushed up a lot of other stuff too, but that’s everything. Everything there was. When you told me last night what it looked like, where you were, I thought….”

“Yeah. Well.” He frowned at the little packet of dust. Presently he said, “Don’t believe vamps know anything after we go. Don’t believe they get the chance to sit on the little clouds and watch. But what was gone from Kim, maybe it’s someplace. And I’d like to think I’d done right by her. And…and might be, this would have pleased her. Better than what was, anyway. Good of you to have thought of this, love. For a vamp.”

“Don’t fret,” said Buffy. “Let her go.”

So he did.

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