SECTION ONE: STIRRINGS

Chapter One: Grenades and Stakes

Drawing two cards gave Spike two pair, nines over fives. Interesting hand: not too big or too small, and the draw already past, so no more improvement: whatever you had, you had. Judiciously he raised a finger just enough to direct his minion, who’d accepted the name of Gonzo the Great, to stay with the hand until/unless Spike signaled otherwise.

Since the other players in the back room of Willy’s didn’t know Gonzo was Spike’s minion, Spike had a considerable advantage quite apart from the usual varieties of cheating they all practiced, except that Spike was better at them.

And if the game ended in a fight, that was no bad thing either. Just one of the small pleasures that kept life on the Hellmouth interesting and the reputation of Willy’s as a down-and-dirty dangerous demon bar intact.

Clem, who’d opened, bet a cautious suckling grey tiger-striped kitten. Clem obviously had a pair and was now worried it wasn’t high enough. As a guess, jacks, with maybe an ace as a kicker.

The Vrahall demon, whose name was apparently Hrish-huugh-att, raised a weaned butterscotch. Just to confuse things, Spike asked if that was the same as marmalade, a really appetizing color, or just plain yellow. After some argument, the consensus came down on yellow, which of course was ridiculous, it was the same color, only different words. So Spike raised by coat color of marmalade, getting a little edge without actually having to throw more into the pot.

Everybody else at the table of course was an idiot with the possible exception of a vamp named Mike (in sullen game face), whom Spike didn’t know, and Clem, of course, who wasn’t exactly dim but such a fucking warm-hearted wanker that there was no practical difference. So the fun, for Spike, was finding out how blatantly he could cheat without somebody catching him at it.

When Mike called, the bet was to Gonzo, who also called. That brought the bet back to Clem, who frowned and sorted his cards (moving two) in a really embarrassing manner. Bugger: the bat-eared skinbag had trip something, which let Spike out of it right there, unless he wanted to see if he could bluff Clem out. That possibility died with a thud when Clem raised to a bluepoint Burmese, weaned. Lovely little things, although you’d be picking fur out of your teeth for days.

Spike confessed that was too rich for his blood and folded. Mike called. Gonzo called. Clem showed trip threes. Mike had two pair, aces and nines. Gonzo spread out a full house, fours over Jacks. Spike stared at the hand, at the clueless minion, then back at the hand again.

Then he ostentatiously checked the wall clock, since no demon would be caught with such a nancified ornament as a wristwatch, and said, “That’s it for me. Gotta go on shift.”

As Spike pushed away from the table, Gonzo offered, “I’ll do the tally,” as well he might, since that would keep him at the table awhile longer. Figuring out who owed who what fractions of kittens sometimes took awhile.

“Sooner Clem did it, but it’s strangers’ choice,” Spike commented, glancing to vampire Mike and the Vrahall. Hrish-huugh-att pointed at Clem, and Mike muttered, “Fine with me. Whatever.” Spike nodded. “Clem, then. Gonzo, you s’pose you could help me unload today’s delivery?”

Looking unhappier by the minute but with no good way to dodge out of it, Gonzo trailed Spike into the store room.

Spike wheeled and shut the door, then rounded on Gonzo in game face. “You incredible idiot, you sat there holding a full house and you didn’t raise?”

Already backing off, not that it was going to do him any good, Gonzo protested, “You said, ‘Keep it going,’ boss. ‘Keep it going,’ you said, and I did that. Did just like you said. And what are you pissed about? We won the hand, didn’t we?”

Advancing as Gonzo retreated, Spike responded, “There is no ‘we’ here. There’s me and a moron minion without the brains of an unripe cantaloupe. Total waste of the space. That hand was worth a couple of Siamese, at least. And you let it stay at a goddamned bluepoint Burmese. Amazed you didn’t fold on four aces. Won the hand? Won the fucking hand?”

A commotion started up out in the bar. Spike ignored it.

Gonzo pointed at the wall, anxious to direct Spike’s attention someplace else. “Biter. They’re yelling Biter, boss.”

And so they were. Spike tipped his head, deciding where he most wanted to direct his seething anger: at Gonzo, or a Turok-han. “All right, get the kegs in the racks and the bottles in the cooler. And you better have it done before I get back.”

“Sure, boss!”

Spike shoved up the accordion door of the loading bay and jumped down to ground level. Cruising Turok-han, that the local demons called “Biters,” not having a clue about the history or proper nomenclature of Sunnyhell’s newest demon contingent, had become a nightly occurrence. As Spike’s job at Willy’s combined bartender and bouncer, it was his responsibility to see that none actually got inside or ate actual customers. Mostly he did it by luring the Turok-han off, since the snaggle-toothed Uber-vamps hated their mixed-blood distant descendents and were almost always willing to turn aside and pursue. Biters were bigger and stronger, but Spike was faster and knew Sunnydale’s alleys and roofs and interlaced sewer lines intimately. It wasn’t any problem to lure the Biter a few streets away, then ditch him with a quick leap to a roof or down a sewer.

Spike generally didn’t consider the Uber-vamps worth fighting. Taking out one or two, here and there, had no significant impact on their total numbers, and the chance of sustaining serious damage in such a fight was a near certainty.

Having just had a demonstration of winning that was worse than losing should rationally have made Spike even more cautious. It had the opposite effect. He was annoyed and wanted to kill something, and the Turok-han had presented itself at the opportune moment. Gonzo would still be available afterward, if Spike wanted to visit on him the just wrath of a Master Vampire whose plans had been royally fucked up by an idiot minion.

As he came around the corner of the building, he pulled from his back pocket the wooden-handled piano wire garrote he now always kept on him. Grey-skinned, ropy limbed, shark-mouthed and a bony seven or eight feet high, two Biters had a human backed up against a loudly protesting blue Ford Pinto in the front parking lot and were apparently bickering over who got first crack at the snack. Eating a human, solo, would keep an ordinary vamp going for several days; the Biters apparently needed one apiece, every night, and had begun to make a serious dent in Sunnydale’s remaining population.

What they were feeding on, down in the nearby Hellmouth, Spike neither knew nor cared. But every night, a couple of dozen Biters emerged from the basement entrances of the High School and scattered in various directions to forage. To hunt. Since Willy’s was only two blocks from Sunnydale High, some inevitably passed by, going or returning.

So far, none had actually invaded the demon bar. Willy, who was human, had promised Spike a bounty to make sure none ever did.

From maybe twenty paces away, Spike yelled, “Oi, grey and ugly. You’re trespassing. This is claimed territory. Get the hell out!”

One Biter looked around at him, which meant the other one started chowing down on the human, about as Spike had expected. The first one started clicking: not a demon language Spike knew, though near enough to Thresin that he could sometimes catch a word or two. Mostly cursing, no surprise there. Thres demons didn’t go in for polite chat, at least the ones he’d run into, so those were mostly the words he knew.

Feeble scum didn’t come out as much of an insult in English, but it probably was pretty scathing in Biter.

“You deaf as well as ugly? Go and hunt the hell someplace else!”

The first Biter came at him then: big bounding strides that closed the distance in notime flat. Spike had dodged, of course--in among the cars. When the Biter changed direction, Spike jumped up on the hood of a green Nissan, denting the metal heavily, the cheap way cars were made nowadays, then jumped to the roof of a red Mitsubishi coupe as the Biter took a swipe at where he’d been. Naturally those two car alarms went off, too, adding to the din.

His last jump had put him at a good angle to slip the garrote crosshanded over the Biter’s head, set his shoulders, and yank hard. The piano wire cut through the neck and spinal column, a neat beheading. The Biter dusted in an explosion of grey, noxious ash.

Spike turned, not quite quickly enough: having finished its meal, the other Biter had reached the Mitsubishi and took a huge clawed swipe across Spike’s legs. Spike went sideways. He hit the blacktop in a roll, but the Biter only needed to turn to reach him and he was hit again across the left shoulder, the claws digging in and holding him in place, pretty much immobilizing that arm. He grabbed the Biter’s forearm long enough to whip both boots up into a head kick that freed him from the claws and threw him and the Biter apart. Spike was on his feet, looking for the nearest place to get high and into good garroting position when he saw something like a black rubber ball come bouncing under the Biter’s feet and flung himself away in a full-out dive under the nearest vehicle, a Dodge 4x4. He rolled under the truck and out the other side, then tucked, arms over his head, as the incendiary grenade went off, turning the Biter into a pillar of flame that screeched and wobbled a second, then flared into a fireball as its fuel diffused into dust.

The Nissan caught, and there was a good chance the Mitsubishi would go too. Spike uncurled and put some distance between him and the burning vehicles, holding his injured shoulder.

The bar’s customers, of various demon races, were coming out to watch, now that the fight was over. But one vamp was standing in the open, still bent into the underhand throwing pose from pitching the grenade. Mike, from the poker game. He and Spike traded wary, carefully neutral glances as Spike passed by to begin his shift at the bar.

Spike liked it that the patrons cleared away and left him a path without his having to shove his way through. His reputation in Sunnydale had been lower than dirt for a long time. Chipped vampire, helpless against humans, who ran at the Slayer’s heels and slaughtered his own because he couldn’t go after his proper prey. It’d taken him several weeks at Willy’s, taking on all comers, to turn that around. The furniture and fixtures had suffered in the process, but the predictable fights had provided Willy’s with a thriving customer base, demon and human, wanting to watch and wager on the results.

As Spike took his place behind the bar, he noticed with satisfaction that Willy was on the stepstool wiping at the chalk board and then changing the odds to 3 to 1 (demon). Spike’s odds against humans were 30 to 1 and not apt to go any higher.

The chip had been neutralized.

Spike slopped some vodka on a bar rag and roughly wiped down the gashes, going to game face not because of pain but to stop the bleeding faster, then paid the injuries no further attention, staying even with current orders as the patrons started returning. Apparently the Mitsubishi had caught, and there were some odds being called on the likelihood of the next vehicle over joining the conflagration.

The job at Willy’s had initially been to settle a debt Spike owed for trashing the place. It continued because Spike found it convenient in a number of ways. His shift didn’t begin till midnight, so it didn’t interfere with the occasional kitten poker game or the nightly patrol he did with the Slayers-in-Training, the Potentials. It was only four days a week, which left three for other important nighttime activities, like shagging the Slayer whenever she passed him a certain look or started brushing against him on patrol.

Willy’s always had been a good place to fish for information, find out what was doing among Sunnydale’s large demon contingent drawn to the Hellmouth’s disruptive energies. Sunnydale had long been a popular vacation and tourist spot for demons of all sorts. The Vrahall demon had been wearing one of the souvenir T-shirts that read I visited the Hellmouth and it (picture of large red lips, fangs) me.

In addition to information, Spike’s job brought in cash: always in short supply when feeding, clothing, and housing about 30 people, most of them ravenous teenagers. And expenses had inevitably gone up now that they were maintaining two households, the Summers place on Revello and the new place where Spike and about half of the SITs were camped out, on Brown, the next street over.

The Slayer’s “student advisor” job at the High School brought in some. Not much, but at least even with her take-home from that disgusting pit, the Doublemeat Palace, so she’d been able to quit there, to Spike’s great relief. Demon girl, Anya, of course, had the Magic Box, but didn’t chip in on any sort of regular basis, as Spike understood things. Giles, the ex-Watcher, paid for his globe-hopping trips to collect newly-found Potentials out of his own savings, gone more often than present, so he didn’t chip in much beyond that. Harris donated some from his job in construction, and so did the witch, Willow, in the form of rent at Casa Summers. The frequent hospital bills were paid by installments with whatever was left over.

With the basics mostly taken care of, whatever Spike brought in went toward necessities like the cable bill, video rental, and outings to the mall. And the minions, of course.

Having heard a call for beer, Spike set the glass down and was a minute recognizing Mike, the incendiary grenade guy. It was the first time Spike had seen him out of game face. Mike looked at him long enough to either be a muted challenge, or else the bloke wanted something. Either way, Spike didn’t care, and turned away to catch the next order. It did nothing for the vamp’s likability that his human face vaguely reminded Spike of Riley Finn, one of the Slayer’s numerous exes, all of whom Spike hated when he bothered thinking about such things.

The clanks of successive sets of metal window shutters closing announced 4 a.m. Spike served the last round, then went to the storeroom. All the kegs and bottles had been put away, but Gonzo had decamped, no surprise. Spike glowered and tried to make a mental note to settle up with the idiot some other time, even though he knew he’d most likely forget. Too much going on to enforce proper discipline on the minions, of which he now had three: Gonzo, Huey, and Dewey. There’d been Louie, but a Biter had driven him off a kill and then had him for dessert about a week ago.

The Turok-han were becoming more and more of a problem. Spike hoped that whenever, as predicted, they came spilling out of the Hellmouth full force, he’d have the children, the SITs, something like ready to meet them. Outnumbered, as predicted, about a thousand to one. But you could only do what you could do.

There was the totally unknown power and reliability of the witch’s magic to be factored in, assorted prophecies that might apply or not, and the occasional rumored magical weapon to be located and secured. All impossible to calculate in terms of their effect in evening the odds. Nothing to be done but do the best he could with the parts that made sense. He tried not to think about the other parts any more than he could help.

Willy was locking the chain-link inner gate behind the last of the departing patrons. Spike didn’t bother asking him for the Biter bounty but took it, and his night’s wages, directly out of the till. It was simpler that way, and since Spike was continually handling cash, Willy didn’t have much option but to trust his part-time bartender/bouncer not to steal him blind. Spike mostly contented himself with nicking cigarettes and the odd bottle, which wasn’t much of a dent, considering.

“Night, Spike,” Willy called, heading out the back. “See to the padlock?”

“Right you are.”

The gashes had all stopped bleeding some time ago and the shoulder was only faintly lame. But he knew he’d catch hell if he showed up in slashed clothing. All sorts of needless fussing and explanations required by his birds, either set, depending on where he showed up for breakfast. So he changed into one of the spare sets of identical black jeans and T-shirts he kept in back, then let himself out the rear door.

He was shutting the padlock when he felt himself being watched.

That vamp Mike--a decent distance away, just standing there, not like he figured to jump Spike for the bounty money. Had some of his own coming too, but it wasn’t Spike’s business to tell him that.

“You want something?” Spike asked evenly.

“Talk to you a minute?”

“About what? Sun’s coming.”

Mike hitched a shoulder. “Not for awhile yet.” Then he held up a bottle which, by shape and color, wasn’t anything Willy carried. Been down to the store by the mall and then back. Odd.

Spike settled a hip on the edge of the loading bay and lit a cigarette. Thus invited, Mike took a seat in barely-reaching distance at the far side of the ledge and leaned to hand the bottle over. Hadn’t been opened.

Polite bastard. Not a fledge, either: put and shed game face at will. Knew when the sun was due without glancing at the stars.

Spike had enough of a drink, then returned the bottle and waited to find out what all this was in aid of.

“Payin’ my respects,” said Mike. “Master Vamp of Sunnydale. Order of Aurelius, I hear.”

He offered the bottle again, but Spike waved it off, still waiting.

“I was turned here,” Mike continued. “Passing through. About six years ago.”

“I don’t give a goddam about your fucking history, mate. You--“

Mike was impolite enough to interrupt. “I’m an Aurelian. But not one of yours.”

Spike stared at him a good long while. “And I should care because…?”

“Because I knew enough to get away and stay away while you were slaughtering all of your get, a couple of months back,” replied Mike bluntly. “I didn’t want to get caught in a mistake.”

Spike considered. There were several of his bloodline that might have turned this vamp. All of them had been in Sunnydale around that time, in and out. The Master himself, head of the bloodline, finally done in by the Slayer. Then his own immediate clan: Darla, Angelus, and Drusilla. They’d all been here around that time: Darla toadying to the Master, Angel drifting in, in the Slayer’s wake, then he and Dru together after Prague.

“Not that I really care, but whose get are you then?”

“Angelus. Pieced it together afterward. Turned me and left me.”

Spike felt his face tighten at the mention of his Sire’s name. “Possible, not proven. And if it’s some big family inheritance you’re after, you’re shit out of luck. First thing, there isn’t any, not that I know of. Second, without acknowledgement, you’re an ex-dinner that got interrupted, went sideways. Don’t expect Angel to care. Nor me neither.”

“I know that. I just want a fair hearing. Whatever you figure to do about the Turok-han, I want in.”

“Now, that’s interesting,” Spike said in a lazy, totally uninterested voice. He decided to accept the bottle when it was offered again. “Want to play some more with your grenades, do you?”

“Nobody’s doing anything. Can’t make a kill anymore without one of those fucking monsters taking it away from you and taking you, besides, if you don’t back off quick enough. Hunting territories are already all messed up, border raids and fights every night now. Whole place is coming unglued. Give ‘em time, they’re going to overrun the whole town. And nobody’s doing anything.”

Spike set the bottle on his knee. “Go someplace else, then. What’s holding you here?”

“I don’t run. OK, from you on your own ground, all right, I backed off. Not challenging you here. But I don’t run from a thing like that. I’m ex-merc. I been talking to the cousins, around town. Don’t have to go up against those fuckers with a piece of twine, not if there was a supply of bug-burners you could draw on.”

“What is it that you want, Michael?”

“I told you: I want in.”

Spike smiled at the sky. “You be in, then, if you want. Whatever the hell you think ‘in’ means.”

“If you don’t control the Hellmouth, you don’t control the town. Are you gonna let yourself be driven off the Hellmouth?”

“Well, I don’t hardly have it now, do I? No, you go play soldiers if that’s what you want.” He finished the cigarette and pitched it, then passed the bottle back.

Taking it, the other vampire looked up in game face, golden eyes shining. “I can’t. They won’t follow me. The cousins. I know I got no claim, but I’m an Aurelian all the same, the same as you. But they won’t follow me. They’d follow you.”

“Michael, have you ever been a minion?”

“No!”

“Have you ever tried getting much of anything done with minions?”

“No,” Mike admitted, less vehemently, letting his face relax into human contours.

“Then let me educate you, Michael. Trying to organize demons to do anything whatever has a lot in common with herding cats. Just take us two, now. I can’t trust you, and you better know you can’t trust me. The second I think it’s to my advantage to take your head off, I’ll do it. Or even if you do no more than seriously piss me off. And the second you figure you don’t need me to be this fine figurehead or whatever you got in mind, you’ll do me quick as blinking. Now multiply that by fifty. You seem like a bright enough lad: you do the math.”

Mike argued stubbornly, “I been a merc. Nearly ten years. It doesn’t have to be that way. I know the rules.”

“No, your demon is six years old, it was never a merc, it’s only a demon. Maybe you can set it aside a little easier than most because of how you were turned. But you’re not the person who was a merc, that person is dead, Michael. And all the demon wants is a good feed, and a good shag, and shelter from the sun, I got mine, Jack, and the hell with the cousins. Demons love chaos, Michael. They love to bust things up. And the more you try to set ‘em up like dominos, the harder they’ll knock those dominos down and you for afters. Anybody who believes otherwise is a fool. Now you go your ways, I got nothing against you. You came polite and--” Spike stopped, overtaken by a thought. “Any chance you could get your hands on two, three dozen tasers?”

Mike raised his head. He and Spike looked at each other a long moment.

“Might be. I’ll let you know.”

Conspicuously leaving the bottle behind, Mike slid off the edge of the dock and began walking away. Spike called after him, “You’re due $ 100 bounty for doing that Biter. You might want to ask Willy about that sometime.”

“You keep it. I’m not after your job.”

“Good to know that,” commented Spike peaceably. Well, that had been one of the possibilities that’d occurred to him. And he didn’t altogether discard it. Spike was inclined to believe Angelus had turned the boy: something about his bullheaded impatience, his refusal to consider alternatives, made a pretty good match for his Sire’s ways, subtracting about 200 years of experience in cold-blooded bullying. The lad was just starting out, after all. Orphaned, so to say: never been a minion or a childe or a sire.

He’d learn. Or else he’d die. It was nothing to Spike, either way.

Absently he collected the bottle in passing. No point wasting it.

**********

The house on Brown Street was a modest ranch with white aluminum siding and a brick-colored roof, in decent condition. Although a FOR SALE sign decorated the front lawn, in almost five weeks no one had come to show or to see the property. Sunnydale’s housing market had disappeared off the bottom of the graph and realtors had been among the first to leave town. It had taken Spike no more than an hour’s meandering to choose this one among five vacant on Revello and Brown. The back yards of the two properties abutted, so there was constant traffic back and forth. And the previous owners had abandoned the place in such haste that the utilities hadn’t been cut off. A definite advantage.

They had a pretty comfortable set-up, Spike and his pack of fourteen Slayers-in-Training. There were no stupid rules against smoking in the house, meals were served on a set schedule (cooked according to a written rotation), and most of the day was blocked out for different kinds of training and practice. Not much active supervision to be done. Place pretty much ran itself. Spike usually watched morning weapons practice from the shaded side porch, then called a couple or three pairs for drilling or instruction down in the basement until noontime. Then he had the basement to himself all afternoon, to sleep until sundown and then preparations for the night’s patrol, either on their own or in combination with the Slayer’s pack, after the children had all had their suppers.

When Spike arrived, still short of sunrise that Saturday morning, the children were already out in the yard doing their morning jerks, waving and calling to him as he passed. In the kitchen he found Amanda and Kim finishing slices of toast dripping with jam, and Willow yawning over a cup of herbal tea with a surprisingly pleasant smell.

Pouring a cup of pigs’ blood for himself, Spike greeted Willow and she sat abruptly straighter, blinking hard to wake herself up.

“I am so not a morning person!” Willow announced.

Spike added crumbled cereal and a good shot of hot sauce to the blood, then put the cup in the microwave and set it going. Putting Mike’s bottle of Scotch into the top of a cabinet, Spike responded, “Then why are you up?”

“Wanted to tell you…. Wanted to tell you…. Oh! I’ve done a dump and set a dampening field on the basement. Our basement. Maybe you could see, later, if the all-radioactive-dangerous-itchy-magic vibes are down to tolerable levels yet. Doesn’t feel like anything to me, but” (she shrugged expressively) “that’s me, you know?” Then she smiled brightly. “You get to be the canary in the coal mine!”

Collecting his mug from the microwave, Spike gave her a look expressive of all his enthusiasm for the prospect.

“There are crystals,” Willow mentioned, as though that should be considered a special inducement. “At the cardinal points and one in the middle, just in case.”

As Amanda and Kim, who’d stayed politely quiet while the grown-ups were talking, said, “Bye, Spike,” and “We’re gone, Spike,” before joining the group in the yard, Spike turned sunwise and tried to locate the fuming blowhole of residual blood magic that had been erupting in the Summers’ basement for the past five weeks: the reason Spike had been forced to vacate. “It’s better,” he admitted. “Can’t feel it from here anymore, at least. All right, I’ll look in before patrol. Red, anything desperate on the want list you know about?” When Willow shook her head wordlessly, Spike went on, “Gonna hang onto my pay a bit, see if something comes up. If it does, I’ll need it to hand. So take it into account, if there’s need, but I’m not throwin’ it into the pot just yet, all right?”

“All right.” Willow had become the de facto treasurer, in part because nobody quite trusted Anya to keep good account of which funds had come from where. Anya was a little bit too good with money for anybody, Spike included, to be comfortable entrusting her with theirs. As with a shark, what went in bore little resemblance to what came out.

Spike kept still about the Biter bounty, in part because that was “found” money and therefore not yet committed to anything. The other reason was that admitting it would have meant explaining why he’d taken on a pair of Turok-han single-handed, something that would definitely have put the Slayer’s back up, both because of the risk and because it’d taken her four separate tries to bring one down. Spike didn’t want her to feel she was in a competition about such a thing.

No need to make a problem when there wasn’t one.

“Rupert still here?” Spike asked idly.

“Yes, do you think he’s finally found them all? No new Potentials located in, what--six, seven weeks?”

“About that. He still stayin’ at that motel?”

“Ahuh, the last that he said.”

“Right. Well, dawdle over your tea as long as you please, pet. My time to watch the children try to murder each other with sharp objects.” Trading a smile with the witch, Spike went out onto the side porch and settled on the steps.

His presence was the signal for the two leaders, Kim and Amanda, to call the pack from their warm-up exercises and start weapons drill. It was hard to get good edge weapons these days, but Willow had found an internet source of hand-forged daggers and short swords, good replicas intended for the Society for Creative Anachronism and RenFaire crowds. Made for use, not just show. There were now nearly enough for everyone to have one.

Bloody antiques, but effective enough, he supposed. Not so much against vampires, but good for whittling down the larger non-humanoid demons that showed up from time to time. Good also against Harbingers, agents and minions of their ultimate opponent, the First Evil. Cut them up right nice. But Spike was increasingly taken by the effectiveness of tasers, which could take down anything on two legs and even some creatures with more than two, and which doubled the effectiveness of any other weapon by disabling the target almost immediately.

Like almost everything else about Slayers, choice of weapons was hobbled into near paralysis by tradition. Dead stop in the Middle Ages. Correction: dead stop with the Greek phalanx, because they had yet to adopt anything resembling effective armor. Figured Slayers were as disposable as so many test dummies, kill one and another pops right up someplace, so why bother protecting them? Stick a weapon in her hand and send her out to be slaughtered, was pretty much the drill.

Spike had never had any fondness for the Council of Watchers and had shed no tears over hearing that their headquarters, and nearly all senior members, had been blown into small particles. But once he’d really started thinking about permissible weaponry, and about sending his children into the field against Turok-han, Spike’s contempt for the council’s notions of acceptable risk had made him wish he’d blown the place up himself.

If that Mike, now, could come up with a source of affordable tasers, Spike would get them even if it meant he had to arm-wrestle Rupert Giles under a table to do it. Ex-Watcher though he was, Rupert had barely been dragged, kicking and protesting and wiping his wanker glasses, into the computer age. As bad as the rest of them. The idea of arming Potentials with tasers would about send him right round the bend. Should be on the receiving end a few times, as Spike had: then see how he felt about it.

And all the while he’d been considering this, his hands had taken up their usual occupation: turning foot-long dowel sticks into stakes with a large, sharp knife. He studied the one he was working on quizzically: when all else fails, stab it with a pointy stick. The cheapest ammunition. Cheap, almost, as the generations of Slayers who’d wielded them.

His Slayer, now--she wasn’t expendable. Nor the SITs, his pack. Or hers, come to that. Their purpose was to fight; Spike’s purpose was to keep them all alive. While rendering as many of the opposition as messily, thoroughly dead as possible, of course.

That incendiary grenade, that had made quite a pretty show. He wondered what they cost by the dozen, or the gross.

Since it wasn’t a schoolday, the usual activity brought the usual company: Dawn, the Slayer’s kid sister, plunking down on the steps and collecting a dowel from the basket, producing her own large, sharp knife to whittle the point.

“Mornin’, Bit.”

“Hi, Spike. What’s the news from the Hellmouth?”

“Just more of the usual. What cheer from Casa Summers?”

“Xander’s free next Thursday, if you still want to get your bike back.” She tilted her head and repeated bike back, enjoying the sound of the words.

“’M still thinking about that,” Spike responded, and Dawn made a cheerful lips-zipping gesture, meaning that she’d let Spike bring the matter up with Harris himself without coaching from the sidelines. Spike gave her a look, so she zipped her lips again. “You just can’t wait to ride pillion,” Spike charged.

“I already have the helmet,” she countered. “And never mind me: think Slayer hanging onto your middle, little terrified screams in your ear, leaning into the turns--“

“Mind what you’re doing, Bit,” Spike interrupted mildly. “Don’t get all daydreamy with a knife in your hands, cut yourself, certain sure.”

“Not my fingers in danger,” Dawn declared airily, and Spike had to laugh.

“And that could be, too. I’ll think about it.”

“Why do I have no trouble believing that?” From there to Slayer was no jump at all, and Dawn exclaimed, “Oh, I’m so uber-glad you made it up and got back together again!”

Spike finished one stake, laid it aside, and collected another dowel. “Fairly pleased about it myself, if you must know.”

“Blackmaily material for absolute centuries!” Dawn exulted, waving her knife about in a fairly horrifying manner. Like an orchestra conductor. Then she stopped and gave him a sly, water-testing sideways look that put him on his guard much more than the knife had. “Spike, can I ask you something?’

“Depends on the something, pet.”

“And you won’t kill me or get mad or anything.”

“Now how can I promise a thing like that when you haven’t yet asked me, love? Might need you drawn and quartered, now--“

“Don’t be stupid, Spike. I truly want to know.” When Spike just kept on looking at her, she burst out, “Why doesn’t Buffy love you the way I do?”

Spike laughed and relaxed, again attending to the stake. “I expect that has a lot to do with you’re sixteen and a half, and she’s…what, now: twenty-one? Different things get important with a few more years, love. You’ll find out.”

Dawn shook her head. “No, I know all about that, sex and all--”

“Oh, you do, do you? And how--”

“Please, don’t be dumb. All right, I don’t know. Ms. Ex-green Ball of Mystical Energy here, all produced by squick-free magic, no birds, no bees. That’s not the point. What I mean is what I do know. Anytime you get hurt, it’s like I can’t breathe, it’s not even that I’m scared you’re gonna actually die or anything, I know you came through everything else, you’ll come through this, but it doesn’t matter, I’m all twisted up inside. And Buffy’s calmly checking off how long you’ll be out and how to cover for you and who’s gonna take the patrol or should she cancel it. I see that, Spike. I know that. But I don’t understand how she can be like that. Ever. But specially when you’re hurt.”

“Well, she’s the Slayer, pet. That’s what she’s for. That’s what comes first. Now if I’d taken a fancy to a…painter, say. Or a musician. Or even a writer, maybe. Then that would be what came first.”

“People come first, Spike,” said Dawn, very seriously. So Spike felt he had to take it very seriously too.

“No, they don’t, pet. It’s priorities. Now look here.” He set out four dowels, side by side, and set another set of four underneath that. “Now, that top row, that’s the Slayer’s priorities. And the first one is always the mission. That’s why she’s the Slayer at all: that’s what she’s for. An’ that next one, that’s her-for-the-mission: what she’s got to be, and do, as the Slayer. That’s second. And third, maybe that’s me. And that’s a fine place to be. An’ that last one, that’s her-for-herself. She comes last in her own priorities. Which is why you and I nag her to eat, and get enough sleep, and care for herself and all, because she forgets without us reminding. Because that’s last priority, for her. Everything else goes before that.”

“And what’s the second line?”

“Why, that’s me, pet. And my first thing, that’s the Slayer. Her-for-the-mission. To watch her back and do what’s needful to keep her safe. And you know that’s what I’m for, don’t you.”

“Heard you say so. Not sure I agree with it.”

“Well, you don’t have to, pet. These are my priorities, not yours. You got yourself a whole different set, because you look at everything from your own angle. Then second, for me, is Buffy herself. Everything that’s not Slayer. Third is the mission, because she mostly takes care of that, I just go along as best I can. And last here, that’s me-for-myself. Or no: that’s you, Bit. Have to get another stick, to be me.”

As he did so, Dawn sulked, “I thought you were gonna leave me out.”

“No, you didn’t. Now I got more sticks than she does, an’ that’s not right.” He set out a fifth stick for Buffy’s line as well. “Can’t say how she sorts those last two, you’d have to ask her. But I figure the fourth one’s you, and that last one, that’s her-for-herself. Don’t never not take you into account, Bit. Neither her nor me.”

Dawn took four sticks and thumped them down, side by side, on the porch. Then she considered and put two back. She pointed to one of the two that remained. “That’s you.” She pointed to the other. “That’s Buffy.” Then she looked up at him--somewhere between appeal and challenge.

“Where’s you, love?”

Dawn just stared at him. Wide unfathomable eyes the color of sky.

Spike picked up all the sticks and returned them to the basket. “Might be sometime,” he said softly, “you’ll come to love somebody who’s a part of something. Then you’ll know third is a fine place to be. Can’t always expect to be first, every time, Bit. Doesn’t work that way, except maybe for children. Wouldn’t know about that, myself…. It’s fine. Truly. It’s enough. Someday, maybe you’ll find that out for yourself. Till then, you have to take my word. Or not.”

“Not,” she said. “Maybe. I don’t think it’s just priorities.”

“What do you make of it then, pet?”

Dawn looked unhappy. Then she zipped her lips. And since she refused to explain, Spike let it go and they talked of other things.

Chapter Two: Dreams and Portents

Waking in his fine new brass bed, Spike just laid there, feeling utterly flattened. After awhile he rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, murmuring, “Ah, Dru, what’ve you done to me, pet?”

Intense, convincing prophetic dreams had been Drusilla’s curse/gift. Mostly hers had come to her awake, but no matter--Spike had no doubt about the resemblance and very little about the source.

He didn’t know whether to attribute his new susceptibility to such dreams to his recently reacquired soul or to the fact that for several months after winning it, he’d been as bug-shagging crazy as Dru had ever been, though he’d mostly got over that now.

More likely it derived from something older, deeper, and darker: his first dream of that kind had brought him the devastating revelation that he was in love with the Slayer. And that was so long ago he couldn’t properly remember.

But the dream itself--that, he remembered just fine.

And the soul could be no explanation for that, unless cause and effect had taken to playing leapfrog.

There’d been others, since, each telling him something he most sincerely didn’t want to know. And so far as he knew, every one of them true.

He finally sat up and shoved his hands through his hair a few times, trying to get himself collected. Time for patrol soon: he should get moving.

He sometimes wondered precisely what got passed along in the blood from sire to childe, in the turning. Something was: he knew that much. The older the sire, the more stable the childe, in terms of retaining the previous personality and not being so completely overwhelmed by the invasion of the demon. The more given in the initial feed, the quicker the rising. Those things were certain.

But he’d begun to suspect it was more than that--that the demon that was passed was in some way the same demon; that there was actual inheritance through the blood. To some extent, all the vampires of the Aurelian line were more like one another, for better and for worse, than they were like vamps of other kindreds. Same bad tempers. Same contrariness, even though it took different forms among the four of them. The family resemblances of a family of monsters. But it was even more specific than that: it seemed to him he’d been able to detect traces of Angelus in his get, Michael.

And this dream business was something particular and unique to Drusilla, Spike’s own sire.

In the matter of siring, the Aurelians, as usual, buggered it up with complications, contradictions. Dru had done the actual turning and was therefore Spike’s sire. Head of the clan was Darla, who’d turned Angelus, who’d turned Dru. But if Angelus was the one you answered to, that beat you down and forced your obedience…. If Angelus flayed the flesh off your spine enough times if you didn’t address him as Sire and get his boots blacked quick enough, Angelus was your true Sire and Drusilla, who’d turned you, only some unholy amalgam of sister, mother, bride.

Aurelians had a constitutional incapability of leaving anything simple and straightforward. Him in love with the Slayer: just another instance. He was as bent as the rest. Relationships all skewed and confusing.

But about Dru. Whose blood had actually turned him.

Crazy she certainly was; but she also was a legitimate seeress: fey, second-sight, whatever you cared to call it. Might take years to figure out some nonsense she’d babbled out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. But the confirmation was there, firm and heavy as fate, if you chose to look for it, admit to it, recognize it when it came. It’d taken 120-some years since his turning for Dru’s casual comment about “burning baby fish swimming all around your head” to be grimly enacted by the Initiative implanting the microchip in his brain, but sooner or later the echo was there if you were prepared to see it and didn’t need the interpretation to be anything like literal to make a fit.

And who could remember such claptrap anyway, when it didn’t connect to anything, mean anything when she said it?

Well, apparently he could. Because he did.

Angelus’ hard tutelage and his own inclination had combined to beat out of him the vapid, imaginative inclinations of that idiot wanker William, that he’d been before. For better than a century Spike had prided himself on being the compleat pragmatist and hedonist, living entirely in the moment and in the body. No looking back, or much forward, or away from what was. No silly-buggers vaporings. Very few memorable dreams.

And now, these…hauntings.

Very odd.

Maybe it was loving the Slayer, true willingness to transform himself into whatever was needed to become what she might love in return, that had cracked through the protective cynicism to the wet, soppy, soft-headed poet buried shallow underneath. Or maybe it was just the fact of such a profound surrender rather than the content of it or the intent. Simply being that open to whatever change might come upon him.

Less open than Dru to the mysteries of powers, portents. But open.

He didn’t know. Didn’t understand.

And introspection was worse than useless because nobody else knew or cared. No vampire he’d ever run into had the least interest in such things. And for all the Council of Wankers’ endless tomes and scribblings on vampire lore, their entire interest stretched only to the quickest, most effective ways to kill as many of them as possible. No aid there, of a certainty.

Nobody he could talk to about it, or really wanted to, such disquieting images as those he’d wakened from, clear to him now as actual memory.

No point, no use.

He got himself dressed, had some blood as the children were finishing their dinners, and then they all went out together, through the yard and then the back yard of Casa Summers on the next block. Spike thought he could feel, smell rain in the air, and said as much to Willow when he met her in the hall, waiting to monitor his experiment at impersonating a canary.

“Can still feel it,” he added, nodding at the shut basement door. “Nowhere near as bad as it was, but no trouble knowin’ something sorcerous got done down there. No, none whatever. No.”

The residue of the blood spell was so strong that he didn’t even feel the Slayer coming up behind him and jerked a little when her hand landed on his shoulder.

“Jumpy,” Buffy observed.

“Some. I guess,” Spike admitted. “H’lo, love.”

Buffy asked Willow, “Do we need to know more than that?” kindly trying to get him out of any nearer approach.

“It’s all right,” Spike said at once. “Distance of maybe fifteen feet, how much difference can that make? Just ‘cause you don’t feel it don’t mean it’s not there. Have to know--“ And then he stopped short, having to force himself to recall the name that belonged in what was suddenly a hole in his mind. “--know that it’s not gonna do any harm to…Dawn.”

Hole all filled up, with her name and all his names for her, just as it should be, and what an odd thing to find all that missing, having to be dredged up by an effort of will.

Adding, “I’ll just do this now, then we can get gone,” Spike stepped away from Buffy’s steadying hand, opened the basement door, and went down.

Descending the stairs, he went to game face, telling himself that it was to sharpen his sight and all his senses, take advantage of the greater acuity the demon provided. But the demon didn’t like it any better than he did, and sight was only a distraction.

At the foot of the stairs, he shut his eyes and let himself be buffeted by the fierce currents of ambient magic. Willow, she’d said she’d set crystals in place to power a dampening field: continue bleeding the magic off, beyond whatever wholesale dissipation she’d done. The cardinal points, she’d said, and one for good measure in the middle.

He could make out that focus now: the one the other crystals fed into. Pretty much like a drain, the force shallower there and indefinably more directed. Moving to it was moving to a center. The surrounding motion had a pattern, was no longer just random swirls of force.

And quite without his intention, the dream overtook him again, clearer than memory. Reenacted in all its colors and feelings.

He saw/was himself crouched on a low hill under an orange sky like there were vast fires roundabout but none where he was. Heavy smell of smoke from things natural and unnatural burning. He hurt, he’d taken damage, but that didn’t matter because no opposition remained, everywhere he looked he saw only vampires like himself, all in game face, jubilant as he was. All connected. He knew if he so much as looked in some direction, he could send a troop there, obedient to his will, an accustomed extension of his arm, his sight. And that was because their attention was all on him, focused, full of the exultant joy of wholesale destruction that was the demons’ birthright and expression. It was wonderful. They’d won. He turned to the Slayer, that he felt beside him, and she was glorious, bright as a flame, so full of energy and life that he did the only thing appropriate: sank fangs into her throat and drank her down. And it felt perfectly fine and splendid every second he was doing it. Everyone felt how wonderful it was.

As before, the dream claimed him completely. And then spat him out, shaken and horrified, standing in the middle of a dark basement with pipes overhead and the vague smell of laundry. And the fading intoxication of Slayer blood in his mouth.

He couldn’t get back up the stairs fast enough.

**********

It was a joint patrol, all the SITs, Spike’s troop and Buffy’s. Sweep the major cemeteries, then converge on the High School perched on top of the Hellmouth itself. If all went well until then, take down any roaming Turok-han they found there. Dust them all.

The packs were sent ahead in alternate arcs. The front of each arc scouted and, if given opportunity, engaged. Then the rest of the arc swept up and overwhelmed whatever was left. Were they to meet something big, both packs would come together on it like a clap of hands.

Easily loping at Spike’s right, Dawn pronounced critically, “You’re off.”

“I know it, Bit. No help for it. Just you keep close, that’s all.”

“How close?” she retorted--almost a complaint.

“This close.” He seized her hand and refused her attempts to shake off his grip.

A shrill whistle: the lead of his pack had found something.

When, with Dawn still in protesting tow, Spike reached the SITs, he found that the pack had hit a nest, apparently based in a vacant house adjoining the cemetery. The SITs were engaged by pairs among the tombstones, around and under the street lights, swirling across the street, pursuing into the front yard. Buffy’s troop was coming in from the left, heading directly for the house itself. Halted on the opposite sidewalk, Spike watched Buffy kick the door in. She and her SITs disappeared inside.

Spike scanned the remaining vamps struggling in the open: completely disorganized, easily isolated, surrounded, and then dispatched by his children in pairs and fours, just as he’d taught them. The vampires. The cousins, he thought, as Amanda dusted the last one, a woman, and she was gone. His children, Amanda, were looking to him for orders--a wave to send them into the house or a lifted hand to hold them in place, and with them still, their faces turned to him, Spike lost all sense of the flow. Some vital connection unhitched, and he had no idea what to tell the children or even why they were waiting.

Matrix moment, came the thought. Glitch in the program. Now they start coming out of the walls….

His place was guarding Buffy’s back, her children didn’t know to do that because that was his place, so why was he still here instead of inside?

Ignoring the standing SITs, Spike flipped the haft of the small axe up into his left hand as he crossed the street, moving faster. He was nearly to the front steps when Chloe came out, and Buffy right behind her, grimacing and waving away the dust as he’d seen her do a thousand times, and then the rest of her pack emerging by twos and threes.

Buffy noticed him, frowned slightly, and said, “What is it?”

Spike shook his head, embarrassed to be caught staring at her like a lummox. He was turning away, tipping the axe onto his shoulder, when Buffy caught his elbow and wheeled him about to face her again. He tilted his head in inquiry.

Buffy studied him a moment longer, then lifted her arms, waving all the SITs in. “That was beyond excellent,” she told them. “It went exactly the way it’s supposed to. Absolutely nothing went wrong. I think it would be tempting fate to take on anything else tonight. Besides, I heard somebody say something about rain. I declare the patrol over. Everybody, get home and tell Willow I authorize ice cream money for everybody.”

Surprised smiles were succeeded by grins as Buffy made her announcement. Buffy was generally pretty miserly with her praise, and for her to call off a patrol halfway through was unheard of. By the time she authorized ice-cream, half the SITs were hopping with excitement. Almost exactly half: his own lot were waiting for his word, Amanda and Kim standing to the fore and trying not to look too hopeful.

Actually Spike was pretty pleased with them himself. And truth be told, he’d lost all enthusiasm for the patrol. He told them, “Well, what are you still standin’ here for? You heard the Slayer.”

Everybody broke into broad grins, there were squeaks and small yells, and hopping became universal. Amanda called the mark, and the SITs went dashing off together, whooping and laughing and calling to one another.

Buffy watched them out of sight, smiling. Then she turned and lifted up on her toes and kissed him for quite a long time. Spike’s reaction was much like the SITs’ had been--happy incredulous surprise gradually replaced by wholehearted enthusiasm.

Long after she should have run out of breath, she dropped back onto her heels and laid her cheek against his chest. “Suddenly,” she remarked softly, “I didn’t feel like sharing.”

“Well, that was nice,” Spike responded, glad of the chance to slide fingers through her hair. “For a beginning.”

“Thought we could use a little alone time. You look hungry. Do you feel hungry?”

Something in him did not like that question. And wouldn’t have answered it for any price. Shaking the feeling away, he turned with her and began walking slowly, shoulders a bit closed in, and she stuck her arm through his, the way she did.

He began, “Wish I had that old motorbike back,” and then stopped because that sounded strange to him. Stumbling all over himself in his head now. “Love, I’m off beyond all reckoning, and I dunno why.”

“The basement,” she suggested.

“Yeah. Maybe. Can’t properly catch hold….” His right hand enacted it: closing over something, losing it. “Anyways, that bike, it’s down in L.A. Left it there when I…left.”

“I see,” said Buffy gravely. “Severe case of vocabulary deprivation.”

“Or something. Bugger! Maybe we should take a turn by some hardware store. Pick me up a new set of chains, something--”

“Don’t joke about that.”

“Oh, you figure I’m joking, do you? Not goin’ back down in that basement, try to recycle that other set, I’ll tell you that. Witch may have given the all clear on it, but that’s one nasty swamp of confusion an’ I’m not goin’ back there anytime soon.”

“How’s the bed?” Buffy inquired, all wide-eyed and cheerful.

Spike goggled at her. “Bed.”

“Brass, heavy as sin, spindles for, you know, tying things to. Four corners, big round posts. For maybe tying things to. That the furniture scavenging patrol found on Friday. And Xander collected with his truck. And then the box spring and the mattress, and everybody broke nails putting together for a surprise, and you were all lonesome in by yourself all afternoon. That bed.”

“Knew there was something I loved you for, Slayer--it’s your subtlety.”

Buffy made a pout. “Well, hinting wasn’t getting it done. And you still haven’t answered the question.”

They’d stopped. Spike bent his forehead against hers. “Which question was that now, pet.”

“The one I’ll be completely mortified to have to ask you in so many words, Spike-of-my-life. The one whose answer better be yes, or I’m gonna have you examined by experts.”

“Oh, that question. Answer’s yes, of course. But….”

“I am not in the mood for but. With one ‘T.’”

Spike sighed. “But I think it’s haunted. Or something.”

“Haunted.”

“Or something. Yeah.”

She pushed him out to arm’s length. Or pushed herself. Same thing, in the end. “So let’s see if I have this straight. My basement has a giant magical whirlpool nobody can detect but you--”

“Yeah. Suck you down, quick as that.”

“--and your basement has now been graced with a haunted bed, and you just noticed it.”

“Well, there’s my old place,” Spike suggested. “Crypt. Kind of busted up, but then it always was, more or less. And it’s quiet, anyways.”

Buffy folded her arms, never a good sign. “Are you suggesting that I’m loud?”

Spike hung his head, smiling small. “Well, yeah. Sometimes. Been known to happen.”

Buffy commandeered his arm, both her arms locked strong around it, and started marching determinedly across the street. “That’s it: expert consulting time.”

“What in hell?”

“Gonna see Giles.”

“The hell we are.” He stopped, set himself. So she yanked him. He protested, “No.”

“Yes.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No.”

“Well, you better be, because if you think I’m gonna--”

**********

“Haunted,” said the Watcher, polishing his glasses.

“Or something. Yeah.” Spike shrugged, settling lower in the creaky scoop chair, boots on the crappy little coffee table, looking distractedly around at the mean little motel room, mini-efficiency, whatever. Buffy had blessedly left on an emergency liquor run, since Rupert had nothing to hand, or Spike wouldn’t have still been there, no chance. But she’d be brassed off if she came back and found him gone, after she’d made such a thing of getting them there in the first place. Spike turned the small axe over and over between his hands.

“‘Tisn’t as if it’s just me,” he argued sullenly. “All right, I’m off, I admit to it. Never claimed otherwise, did I? But she is, too. Call a patrol off in the middle, or just started, is closer to it. Come over all broody, sodding bloody ‘alone time.’ What kind of a thing is that, tell me?”

Having finished with his glasses, Rupert put them back on and perched himself sideways on the desk chair. “Let’s just stay with the ‘haunted’ part, shall we?”

“Look, Rupert, let’s just chalk it up to ‘Oh, Spike’s all bloody crazy again, let’s chain him up to something,’ as per usual, and leave it at that, all right? ‘Tisn’t as if it hasn’t happened before. Got Dru’s fucking dreams in my head, don’t I? And what’s that all about? Just figure I’m crazy and be done with it.”

“But you claim it’s affecting Buffy, as well.”

“Well, yeah. Call the patrol off, send the SITs off for fucking ice cream, what would you think? Drag me off to talk to you, what’s she expect, does she think you hung out a shingle as a wanker ‘relationship counselor’ or suchlike? You can’t be loving this either, all the poncy feelings crap.”

“Back to the haunted part,” Rupert suggested calmly, looking at Spike down his nose, the way he did, goddamned librarian nancy Watcher.

“Well, ‘tisn’t the bed. It’s me. I just said that other. For something to say.” Spike tipped his head back and rubbed his eyes. “Bed’s fine. This has been goin’ on awhile. Long while, actually. Bloody years, actually. Oh, sod it, Rupert, there’s no fucking point to this.”

Couldn’t budge the man off his damn poncy reserve with a goddam wrecking ball. Made Spike want to hit him, and he could, chip all disabled, and Rupert knew it, too, and therefore ought to ease off on the provoking, but oh no, no clue whatever, just carry on as per usual.

Spike thumped the hand axe into the coffee table and left it there, so he wouldn’t fucking behead the Watcher by mistake making a gesture or something.

Giles said, “What’s been going on awhile?” When Spike only glowered at him, Giles added, “I detect the absence of a noun here.”

“Like I fucking care.”

“Yes. Quite. Except that you do, it’s perfectly obvious if even Buffy has noticed it--”

Spike leveled a finger at him. “Gonna tell her you said that.”

The Watcher folded his hands. “Spike, why don’t you set aside the bloody histrionics and simply tell me what this is all about?”

“Well, I dunno, do I? Just…that something is off. Big time. Major off. And it’s coming from lots of directions. Lots of ways. Hellmouth, maybe. I dunno. Say, did I tell you I ran into one of Angelus’ get? Chap named Michael, Mike. Last night at Willy’s.”

“Spike, we haven’t had anything resembling a conversation in, minimally, three months. At which point you were hearing voices and seeing things on a regular basis, and apparently eating people again, and siring vampires. Oh, and being tied or chained to handy bits of furniture and fed with a cup and a straw. So I would hardly call any words exchanged between us ‘conversation’ in the normal meaning of the term. And I’ve barely seen you since you and Buffy became…reacquainted.”

“Oh, ‘reacquainted,’ that’s a fine word. Fucking ‘reacquainted.’”

“So, no: somehow the subject of a vampire named Mike has not come up in all the conversations we’ve not had since that point. I’ll tell you now, all this avoidance is beginning to concern me. And if Buffy asks my advice, I intend to give it to her.”

“Fine. You do that. Told her to go pick up a new set of chains, didn’t I?”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. Ask her. She’ll tell you.”

“Well then, I might as well wait and ask her, as you say, since you’re obviously not going to volunteer anything pertinent.”

“Like I fucking know what’s pertinent!”

“Spike.” The Watcher being patient if it bloody well killed him, which it still might. “I know that you’re sensitive to…influences. Patterns, at times, before they’ve fully formed. Off before the gun has fired, so to speak.”

“Right. Goin’ off half-cocked, you mean. Story of my bleeding unlife, that is, you got that right. Be a desperate bad choice to head up General Motors. Or organize your basic slumber party. Much less try to organize the cousins into anything resembling a fighting force.”

Giles’ eyes nailed him to the spot. “Cousins.”

“Colonial vampire slang, Rupert. Indicating other vampires. Different bloodlines. Or no known bloodline at all. Politer way of saying ‘bastards.’ Inclusive of about nine tenths of the vampire race. You might want to make a note of it.” Hearing the door, Spike looked around, and it was Buffy with a bottle. “Oh, ministering bloody angels, pet, what took you so long. Rupert’s about to send me clear round the bend, Mr. Echo, repeating about every third word. ‘M way too old for Mr. Rogers at this point. Not the desired demographic. Never mind that, gimme.”

While Buffy was reaching for one of the water tumblers all done up nifty in their little sanitary paper skirts on the desk, Spike swiped the bottle out of her hand and uncapped it without even bothering to look at the label. Put down as much as he thought he could take at one go, then waited for it to hit. At least take some of the frantic edge off. Off still being the operative word here. God, if he had to go back into those chains, he’d fucking curl up and die. Couldn’t get much worse than that. Well, it could. And it had. But not lately, and he wasn’t braced for something like that again. Didn’t know how to brace, just went all off and hadn’t a sodding clue what’d set it off. Same word again. Fucking vocabulary deficiency.

Giles was disrobing one of the tumblers in his prissy way and laying the paper aside, all neat and tidy. Then he leaned to swipe the bottle back from Spike, who let him have it, and poured himself a measure after making a great show of cleaning off the neck where Spike had drunk from it.

“The current topic,” Giles informed Buffy, who was taking a slow seat on the edge of the bed, “appears to be rallying the local vampires against the First, with Spike as Commander-in-Chief.” Buffy’s eyes got large, looking across at Spike.

“In nobody’s bad dream, pet. No sodding chance whatever. ‘Tisn’t as though I don’t know that.”

Giles finished his sip. “Who has suggested it, or is this merely one of your daft schemes being wisely discarded? Before the fact, for a change?”

“Well, that Mike. That was what I was telling you. But I didn’t need him to tell me. See it all quite plain on my own, thanks ever so, and have done for awhile.” Spike hunched forward, elbows on knees, shoulders tight: like any second he might come out of the chair and fight something. Looking from Buffy to Giles with frowning, half-sullen seriousness, he let out pent-up words in an unconsidered burst: “I don’t think either of you properly appreciates how desperate it’s got for the local vamps here. The cousins. Being driven off their territories, the grande melee of all against fucking all…. And where they gonna go? L.A., and try to poach off some established territory there? Get their fucking heads cut off soon as somebody catches ‘em at it? Take to the woods and eat, what, bats? Gophers? Goddam moose? All the ones got someplace else to be, or think they do, or hope they might, they’re already long gone. Before I came back, even, all souled up and Bedlam-certified. Down in the school basement, trying to make anything, something, fit together and make sense, an’ all the voices. All the masks. And then after, on the wheel, over and over, watch the seal open, watch ‘em rise, watch ‘em come…. Telling me how a Turok-han’s worth ten of us miserable worthless corrupted part-demon mutts, pure blood gonna wipe us all out, once an’ for all, Grand Evil Master Plan Racial Cleansing thing. And you think the cousins don’t know it? Think they’re all of a twitter with demon solidarity forever, go ahead and eat our food supply, we don’t mind, we share, and wipe us out in the bargain because it’s all for the greater Evil? Not hardly. They’d fight, if they knew a bloody thing about it. If there was somebody could make ‘em quit squabbling over the last scraps, wasting it all on that, against each other. Somebody to point ‘em at a target and tell ‘em what to do once they got there, except make bad faces at it. Make ‘em fucking mind. Make ‘em learn which end of the pointy stick to hang onto, anything beyond the splendid Stone Age purity of fists and fangs, that’s all they know or care about. But not me. No. I’d just get ‘em wasted wholesale. Big fiasco. My skills do not lie in that direction. Might as well call the thing by its name and be done with it. But it’s a pure shame to have it go to waste and send the children in instead. They’ll be fucking cut to pieces, Rupert, first time they try anything beyond skirmishing, sniping around the edges, clip a few Bringers, a few sodding vamp nests, like tonight and then ice cream afterwards, for a treat. For their victory. They’re all gonna fucking die, Rupert, and there’s no way of getting them ready for that any better than they are. Fine children, Rupert, and what am I to say to them?”

“Yes. Well.” Deciding that occasioned further spectacles-cleaning, Giles passed the bottle over to free his hands for the task. “That’s…quite something. I can see how you’d find that a disconcerting matter to have on your mind.”

Spike interrupted drinking and swallowed to retort, “Hell with my mind, Rupert. ‘S’not the issue here.”

While Spike put the level of the bottle down, Giles conceded, “No, I believe that it’s not. Your concerns are quite sane enough. Probably even realistic. Buffy. Have you two discussed this?”

Buffy spread her hands. “This is word one.”

“Yes,” said Giles. “Yes, I see. And the dreams you spoke of, Spike. Is it safe to assume they relate to this?”

A little better, Spike thought. Some blurred around the edges now. He didn’t have to see it all so plain. Everything not stumbling into everything else, inside his head. He had some of his own patience back now. Some of his calm.

“No, because it’s not gonna happen like that.” Before Giles could echo “like that?” like a bloody parrot, as he was clearly going to, Spike specified, “Like in the dream. Can’t change sides now. No going back. I know that. Don’t want to anyhow.”

Spike regarded Buffy: sitting so quiet all this while, frown-faced and concerned but not interrupting with smart-mouth remarks, trying to see her way through and understand instead of stomping on whatever she didn’t like, to scry meanings from whatever pieces the stomping made, like tea leaves. So nice and so worried, like she’d never do such a thing as chain him up to a chair or pitch him through a wall. Hardly like herself at all. He loved her very hard, that minute.

“C’mere, love.” Spike reached and dragged the other chair closer, for Buffy to sit beside him. “’S’not your fault it’s taken me this long to come up against the blind wall you been flat against awhile now. Long odds always been something I more liked than not. Dunno why it should seem different now, why that’s put me all off.”

Almost shyly, Buffy came from her seat on the bed, leaving a few wrinkles in the antiseptic nasty puke-green bedspread, oh no, that wouldn’t do, Rupert’s room all untidy with the glasses naked and the bed wildly disarranged like a goddam orgy had taken place, four lines in the bedspread and that was wrong. Four lines was wrong.

Five, there should be. Four and one for….

Tucking up in the chair, Buffy clasped his free hand, and Spike looked frowning from the lines to her two hands clasped around his, then back to the bed, trying to come up with the sense of it, so close, just barely out of reach, couldn’t quite close his hand on it….

“Dawn.”

Buffy said blankly, “What?” and Rupert started assuring him plenty of time still remained before sunrise, like he didn’t know that, no clue, no sense, no penny drop except for him.

He said, realized, “Dawn’s gone.”

And they both still just gaped at him, no clue whatever. Buffy said, puzzled, “Who’s Dawn?”

Spike flung the bottle against the furthest wall.

Chapter Three: The Dance of Sea and Shore

Buffy said, “But I don’t have a sister. Never had a sister. I’d know, wouldn’t I?”

Knowing every word out of his mouth put him closer to being classed as a certified looney, and all that went with it, Spike insisted, “You did. Not at first, only for a couple years in the middle and now gone again, but you did, pet. Rupert, get me a pen, something--”

Still wearing his pursy skeptical humoring-dangerous-loonies face, Giles handed over a click-top ballpoint. While he still had hold of the name, and that so slippery it was like trying to pinch quicksilver, Spike wrote it on the back of his left hand: DAWN. So long as that didn’t vanish, he still had it as a reminder.

“Dawn Elizabeth Marie Summers. Roundabout fourteen years old, first I saw her. Actually saw her. ‘Cause the second I saw her, she’d already been filled into things that’d happened before, long as I been in Sunnydale. Things Dru had said about her, when Dru never once laid eyes on her. Things she’d said to me….” And he had to strain for it again, he was losing hold of it, something trying to pull it away. “--Dawn, when it seemed plausible she’d’ve been there, except she wasn’t. An’ me nodding like a git, like all the rest of you lot, at the instant sister. School records changed. Your mom, Buffy, accepting her just like that, just like she’d been there always. Can’t have been an easy thing to convince Joyce she’d had and raised a second child. Family photos all with Dawn in ‘em at age five, age ten, one on a pony. Everything all complete, the thorough bastards. Expect they’re all changed back again now.”

Catching Giles’ eye, Spike snarled, “An’ don’t you think I know how this sounds? Do you figure I’m doin’ it for fun here? I know it’s all been took back from you now, but just give me a fair hearing, all right? ‘Cause I never been more serious about a thing in my life, unlife, at least hear me out. It’s--”

An almost unfelt hitch in his mind and it was gone again, blanked out, and he had no idea what he was so off and upset about. And then he saw the name on his hand and clenched that fist, willing himself not to be buggered with. “Dawn was made to be a key, could unlock dimensions. Some monks made her, I was told. If you were crazy enough, seems like, you could still see what she was made from: some kind of green sparkly energy. Guess I never was crazy enough or at the right time: never saw it, myself. Don’t remember seeing, anyway, or maybe that’s been took….” Spike shook his head, couldn’t afford to get distracted. “One thing about vamps: we’re hard to magic. It doesn’t stick proper, or long, or sometimes at all. So a point came when I knew something I recollected about her wasn’t real, was a lie put into my head, when nobody else had twigged. Knew Buffy’d never had any little sis. Wouldn’t buy that lie anymore, for all she was standin’ right there in front of me.”

Spike momentarily had enough of the pieces that he was granted a moment’s visual image: tall child with coltish adolescent limbs, lovely mouth pursed as often as not or a splendid smile; slender fingers, fall of long brown hair, straight and shiny, and enormous bright eyes alertly watching everything. He couldn’t name the color of the eyes before the glimpse went dark. And it was desperately hard to keep losing her like this, over and over, same hole opening and swallowing up whatever he was trying to keep hold of, patient and inexorable as sucking quicksand or an advancing tide, and presently he’d lose all of it entirely and forget there’d ever been anything to lose.

He’d had his mind fucked with by experts. You’d think he’d have worked up more resistance to it, be able to stand aside from it and see it happening, not get dragged down by the undertow. Except, that was what the dreams did to him now. From his inheritance from Dru or whatever it was, and he’d got sidetracked again, it didn’t relent or quit pulling for a single fucking second, something with his hand, and the letters were still there but for a moment didn’t cohere into a name. Only a word: DAWN.

Gravely, neutrally, Giles said, “I have no memory of such a girl.”

Spike looked at Buffy, who was still somehow refraining from asking if he really felt all right and wouldn’t he sooner have a nice lie down, a nice shag, and everything better in the morning. After some pacing, she’d settled back on the bed. She was trying to listen to him, sweetheart that she was, when he didn’t know half the time what he was saying or by what progression he’d come to whatever his current point might have been before the quicksand ate it.

At least they weren’t laughing at him, and he hadn’t lost his temper nor his wits. Not altogether.

“Don’t care if you believe it or not,” Spike told them--fierce, stubborn, and desperate. “It’s enough if you believe that I believe it. Even if that makes you figure I’m the biggest bull-looney yet hatched. The point’s not to persuade you. The point is for you to help me get her back. Just pretend for a second here. If this ever happened, that monks took some ancient energy and made it into a girl-shaped dimensional key, with everything that went with it, all the trimmings, what monks would that have been? We’re not talking Brother Andrew here, or Brother Warren. What was done was large, and complicated, and so goddam thorough it’s hard to get my mind around even now. What--”

“A change,” Giles interrupted raptly, “in the nature of reality, albeit on a fairly localized basis, to the least, smallest detail. All accomplished by non-material means.”

“Yeah. Right. Think about how such a thing could be done, and who could have done it, roundabout two years back, and maybe the quicksand don’t extend as far or as strong that way as if you kept trying to come at the thing direct.”

“An interesting puzzle,” said Giles, plainly going into full Watcher mode. “The pen, please, Spike.” Accepting the pen without glancing either at it or at Spike, Giles pulled a sheet of stationery from the desk drawer and began jotting quick notes. “Two years ago, you say,” he remarked without looking around.

“Best I know, yeah. And spilling backwards from there.”

“Records will clearly be of no use, then,” said Giles. “They all will have been altered. Birth certificate, immunization records: that sort of documentation.”

“With all they did, doesn’t seem likely they skipped any.”

“Americans are the most documented creatures on the planet,” Giles commented, still writing. “To have any concept of the number and variety of items that would require falsification, our hypothetical monks would either have to be Americans themselves or have excellent contacts with appropriate knowledge of the educational system, the ways of storing actuarial information, medical records, census data…. I believe we can therefore eliminate any actual known religious body, any of the recognized denominations. This is too secular. Not the grand sweep but the niggling detail.

“In fact, I’m more inclined to think our monks are in fact not monks at all, but lawyers. With a longer reach than most. And a clearer knowledge of the nature of reality and the practical side of metaphysics than most lawyers presumably possess. A near infinite capability of attending to the smallest detail. And access to almost limitless magic.” Turning, Giles stuck an earpiece of his dangling glasses in his mouth like a lollipop, looking Watcherishly pleased: half Cambridge don and half a thug happy at the contents of your wallet. Or like a wicked Christmas elf. “Purely as an intellectual exercise, it occurs to me that since it could have been done, it very likely was done. And two things argue powerfully in your favor, Spike. One, you’re the last person I would conceive of, to invent such a complex and absurd hoax to no immediate purpose. Second, you’re among the world’s most miserably unconvincing liars. So I don’t believe you concocted this, and I don’t believe your concern is anything other than sincere. Which of course doesn’t rule out your being a dupe or a looney; but I’m willing to defer judgment on that for the moment.”

Forlorn, bereft, Spike could find no reply because he no longer had any notion what Giles was talking about. In trying to follow Giles’ thought around the periphery, he’d lost the center.

Reading Spike’s face, Giles picked up the sheet and held it at a longsighted distance. “Dawn Elizabeth Marie Summers.”

“Yeah,” said Spike, on no breath, barely aloud. “Yeah, that’s right…. Good to know I’m stupid enough to serve.”

Giles resumed his glasses so he could look at Spike over the top of them. “No need to get testy. The continuing clean-up effort is itself persuasive evidence. Were it not, you wouldn’t be having the problems keeping to your story that you evidently are. Furthermore, given the location and other factors, I propose quite an acceptable candidate for our spurious monks: a law firm called Wolfram and Hart.”

Spike shook his head. “Never heard of ‘em.”

“No reason you should. But they might have done such a thing on their own behalf, or on that of a still-unknown client. They possess the resources and the means. Metaphysical Mafia, as near as makes no difference. They’re headquartered in Los Angeles.”

“Angel. You mean, ask Angel to sort it out.”

“Quite.”

On identical impulse they both looked at Buffy to find that she’d opted out of the troubling, nonsensical speculations by falling asleep, head pillowed on a folded arm. She looked about twelve.

Of Buffy’s exes, Angel was without question the one Spike hated most. That, in addition to all the other saw-edged issues between him and his Sire, made the call a no-brainer.

“No,” Spike said flatly. “Not unless there’s no other way.”

“Very well. Since I gather our interest in the matter is practical rather than theoretical, whether Wolfram and Hart be agent or principal, their motives in doing such a thing are moot. Our only concern is to undo--or more correctly, to redo--what was done to produce” (a glance at the paper) “Dawn in the first place. Presumably she has reverted to her native state,” (another glance) “a mass of ‘green, sparkling energy.’ Logically, then, the next step would be to consult--”

“Willow. Yeah. What time’s it got to be,” Spike inquired dully.

Giles consulted a watch. “Just gone eleven.”

Spike rubbed his eyes. He felt a headache building, maybe one of chiplike proportions. He was due at Willy’s in an hour. Wouldn’t be free to talk to the witch until past four. He didn’t believe he could hold onto his focus that long. Even setting it aside to sort out the best choice made him feel it slipping, getting away from him again.

“She was made from Buffy,” Spike mentioned. “Out of Buffy. To be a sister to her. So Buffy would want to protect her. Keep her safe, because she was family. I forget why.”

“What: as in cloning?”

“No. Don’t think so. Dunno. Maybe, partly. On the pattern of Buffy, some way. Who she is. The part that’s not Slayer. Except…brave, Dawn is. Fierce as a Turk. Just like Buffy is. Hangs onto a thing like grim death till she’s done with it. Got….” He lost the thought and made a vague gesture. “I dunno.”

Giles dutifully noted that information down, then said, “I tell you what, Spike: I’ll give you a lift to Willy’s, then take Buffy home and consult with Willow, as best I can. Explain at least the theoretical bases, and my conclusions. Then I’ll bring her to Willy’s, and you can discuss it with her.”

So long as it was a plan, and he didn’t have to make it, Spike would have gone along with nearly anything. He forced himself out of the chair and went to wake Buffy. He rubbed her back, shook her a little. “C’mon, love. Time to go home.”

Sitting bolt upright, Buffy declared, “Giraffe pajamas.”

“What’s that, pet?”

“Dawn has giraffe pj’s. And she likes French toast.”

“That’s a good thing to know. When we get her back, maybe you can make her some.”

Buffy blinked at him blearily. “Who?”

**********

By the time Giles showed up at Willy’s with a yawning, somnambulistic Willow with severe bedhead and mismatched socks, Spike was no longer expecting them and had done what he could to self-medicate the headache with cheap alcohol.

When Willow made him a little waggling-fingers wave, Spike just looked at her. In game face, because that also helped keep the pain tolerable. Or at least let him not care much about it, which worked out about the same.

“Hullo, Red. Rupert. What d’you want?”

As the two of them traded a Significant Look, a Ceynar demon down the way raised an appendage for a refill, so Spike left them to see to the demon, who was drinking something complicated comprised of crème de menthe, ammonia, bile, and butterscotch flavoring over crushed ice. Then he swung back to take care of them.

“Coffee,” Willow decided. “Espresso, if you got it. Large.”

Spike shook his head. “Can send out for it, though, if you want.” While he was looking around to locate Huey, the minion he had seconding him tonight, Willow leaned across the bar and started doing something to his shirt with something that stank of mothballs. He jerked out of reach, startled and mistrustful.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Willow admonished. “Doesn’t hurt. See? We both have one.”

She held it up, pinched between two fingers, to let him see: a small twist of greenery, herbs, tied with thread to a safety pin. Both she and Giles had a similar tiny boutonniere pinned on.

“What is it?” Spike asked warily.

“Nothing that’s gonna hurt. Mostly rosemary, forget-me-not stems wrapped widdershins, rubbed with camphor to clear the head, other stuff you don’t care about at all and just take it, Spike. Stick it in your pocket if you don’t want to wear it.”

The second Spike touched the sprig, the headache clamped down like the vise in the old commercials, but he didn’t connect that to the sprig and therefore continued the motion and slowly slid it into a pocket of his jeans, waiting to be able to see straight and think straight again. When that didn’t happen right away, he poured himself a shot from the nearest bottle he found in reach and downed it. Horrible: apple schnapps.

While he was distracted by that, Willow chirped, “What’s that on your hand?”

Squinting hard and letting go several times, trying to clear his sight, Spike responded, “Dunno, must’ve got something on it, what’s--” Then he saw it: the letters. The word. The name. “Bloody hell.”

“Thought Police being a little overzealous?” Willow inquired sympathetically. “Wanting to get the last scraps all tidied up, get the job done and go home? Brought in the big guns on you, it looks like. Because you’re the only one who still remembers. Except for the little flash of giraffe pj’s that Buffy had, that Giles told me about. Only confirmation we got, but it’s not as if we need any more at this point, we’re all together on the same train here even if most of us are riding blind, and now about that espresso--”

Spike located Huey, and the Espresso Pump order got specified although Giles objected to the $ 20 tab. Spike explained about the delivery charge. Giles grumbled but paid up. Tightwad. Spike let them into the back room, empty tonight, then left them there and started looking for somebody to cover for him behind the bar, turning down two offered fights on the grounds of headache, which counted as a pass and hurt his odds but not as bad as a loss would so what the hell. And he checked the time and figured what he’d do to Huey if he wasn’t back within the required fifteen minutes, meanwhile stoically reading through Giles’ chicken scratchings on the sheet of motel stationery, reclaiming as much of what he’d remembered as he could, and Willow’s memory charm to prevent it all slipping away again.

With each phrase read, the headache receded a little, like the fight between the tide and the dry ground, up and down a beach.

And he thought, We’re trying here, Bit, recovering his name for her that wasn’t on the sheet or anything he’d had so far: it just came to him when he’d made it a place to be and could hold it. A sudden easing: a clarity. Like a breath of better air.

About the time Huey returned, Willy got back from a late date and was willing to take over the bar as long as Spike either made up the time or docked himself for it, which was reasonable. Spike remembered to commend Huey on his promptness and sent him on another errand, then took the cardboard carry-tray of cups with his own glass into the back room and set it on the kitten poker table. Willow and Giles each took an espresso, which left four. Willow explained that two were for him, and he declined. So Giles was annoyed and commented that, in that case, Spike might have said something beforehand.

“Didn’t ask me, did you?” Spike responded, lifting out the glass of Jim Beam he’d set in the tray, more palatable than apple schnapps. “Next time, ask first. You can save ‘em for later, I s’pose.”

“The whipped cream goes all flat and blah,” Willow remarked sadly, dipping a tall plastic spoon. “They don’t keep well. Which brings me cleverly to my theory.”

Spike turned a chair and sat, arms folded across the back. He set the sheet of stationery on the table where it wouldn’t be endangered by coffee spills.

“Well, at least get rid of that,” Giles requested peevishly, with a sharp gesture Spike couldn’t interpret.

“What?”

Willow made a plainer gesture across her forehead, explaining sotto voce, “You’re all bumpy. I think it makes him nervous.”

“Hell with that. Demon bar: I can look however I please. An’ it helps with the headache.”

Giles protested, “Spike, I cannot have an intelligent conversation with you looking like that.”

“Then don’t. It’s Red who’s got the theory, innit?” Spike asked Willow, “He always this cranky, this time of night?”

“Likely. Past his bedtime. And past mine too. So let’s get to it.”

“Fine,” said Giles sourly. “Just fine.” He poked his spoon into whipped cream and sulked.

“My theory,” Willow said, “is that this Dawn was never meant to last. She was made to put certain powers out of reach of anybody who might otherwise have been able to access them. That would have been Glory. Which is not how I remember it but we’re not gonna worry about that now. There was a fixed window of date and time, astrological conditions, blah, blah, blah, for Glory to open the dimensional portal. After that, she was basically screwed and stuck and out of luck, and no more need for Dawn, who would have just gone poof, and everybody forget again, everything back the way it was before. But it didn’t quite work out like that because--”

“Buffy jumped,” said Spike, not giving a damn if the Watcher didn’t like his expression. “I messed up, and Bit got cut, and Buffy went in her place.”

“Again, not exactly the scenario I have, but it makes sense. And this is wonderful practice in entertaining two mutually contradictory and semi-impossible ideas before breakfast. Props to Lewis Carroll. Yea rah. So the dimensional portal gets opened, which means somebody switched on the Dawn, but then it gets shut again without Glory crossage or major dimensional suckage, crisis averted, which should mean that the Dawn poofed. Started with one Summers, ended with one Summers, the math works OK but it seems nobody at Dawn-Builders, Inc. notices that the wrong Summers got left behind in our reality. Alive, that is.” Willow briskly dabbled with her spoon to stir in the last of the melting whipped cream, then drank the result. “And with the Dawn still here, she continues to anchor the vast matrix of fake facts and fake memories put in place to support her because she’s kinda the lock code. Slight oops.” She patted with a napkin to eliminate a whipped cream moustache. “And then I probably contributed to the confusion by raising Buffy from the dead, against her will and without her consent, all duly noted, members of the jury.”

Willow’s eyebrows had lifted while delivering those last remarks, but the eyes underneath were cold and expressionless as glass.

Despite focusing tight on her words, the ideas, Spike still noticed the sly upslide of resentment and hostility, so shallow under the chirpiness. Masks tended to come off past midnight--no news to him.

Having finished one espresso, Willow pried the lid off another and transferred straw and spoon meticulously without drips.

“So time went by,” Willow continued, “as it tends to do, with Dawn and Buffy both confusingly extant in the same dimension at the same time, both un-Naturally, which likely was very perplexing to Dawn-Builders, Inc. or Whatever: explanations lost into committee and red tape and CYA memos and the discrepancy pretty much forgotten. All well and good. Until our hypothetical Dawn, or rather your hypothetical Dawn,” Willow corrected with a nod to Spike, “decides to stir up major mojo, blood magic, in our basement. At least I know it’s not my magic. I wouldn’t have done it that way. Or as Giles would be quick to tell me, ideally, I wouldn’t have done it at all…. I assume that on Friday evening, when I set up to dissipate the residual energy, I knew perfectly well who that magical signature belonged to but have since suffered brain-wipe and, well, there you are.”

“Willow,” said Giles, full Watcher restraint back in place, maybe from the coffee, “might we get on with it.”

“Definitely. Getting right on, and with-it-ness chugging right along, aye, aye.” Of Spike, Willow asked, “Dawn, right?”

“Yeah. Healing spell, it was. Never should have done it. Stupid bint.” Recollecting that made Spike feel awful, since the spell had been done for him. All naïve good intentions and him not in a position at the time to know or stop it.

“Right, then. Stupid bint Dawn does the spell and wackiness ensues, to the tune of point 8 on the Richter scale or about 20 megaton, depending on which analogy you prefer. That kind of semi-controlled ginormous Natural magic does have the effect of calling attention to itself. Bumps and eeks and swingy meter dials all across the magical-aetheric bandwidth. I think one of two things happened. ONE, Dawn calls attention to herself and gets recalled to the Big Time, resolving the dilemma of the Curious Adventure of the Two Summerses. Or TWO, weeks of exposure to the magical basement flux, that I just damped down yesterday, you’re all very welcome, finally trigger the Dawn’s self-destruct, or as it might scientifically be termed, her poof function. As in, earlier this evening. So whether she in effect burned out all her circuits, a la the Buffybot, and went poof, or Something came and folded her into teeny tiny origami until she vanished into her own navel, poof, the result’s the same: reversion to previous state, shiny sparky ball of green energy thing, and no more pitter patter of tiny Dawn feet at Casa Summers. And the matrix goes, and everybody forgets, the brain wipers do their thing, and all’s well except for stubborn Spike pinning down the last corner. End of theory.”

Spike reached and removed Willow’s half empty espresso cup from under her spoon and pushed his half full glass of Jim Beam into its place. Thought she needed settling down. Willow looked surprised and put-out. Spike just stared at her yellow-eyed, having had about all the hearty, heartless perkiness he felt like taking.

“Overcaffeinated?” Willow asked of nobody in particular, wondering what she was guilty of.

Spike reminded himself that the witch had come out at two in the morning to help him, and maybe he owed her some courtesy. Or something. “How d’you think you’d feel if I started talkin’ about Tara going poof.”

Willow’s face fell. “Oh. But, I mean, you weren’t, like, with this Dawn--were you?” The end of that was a strangled squeak.

“Please,” Giles groaned, face propped on his hand.

“You’re not makin’ things better, Red. Leave it that Dawn is mine. And I want her back. Tell me how I can go about doing that.”

Willow shrugged. “Don’t have the foggiest. Sorry. One theory, that’s all I got.”

Spike did not pull her face off. Thought about it. Didn’t do it. Might need her later.

“Think about it some more, then. When you’re rested. I’ll come by tomorrow and maybe you’ll have thought of something by then.” Spike rose and reversed the chair. As an afterthought, he added, “Obliged for the charm.”

**********

Now that he knew, Dawn’s absence was enormous to him. When his shift was over, he wandered on back to Casa Spike and did the usual things but all was transformed by the not-Dawnness of it. Glanced at the bushel of dowels without the heart to touch it, on the porch. Reached down
the tribute bottle Mike had given him and got outside as much of it as he could and still move, without Dawn to steer him or make him mind. Children, they knew he was off, likely no missing it, but no use trying to explain to them so he just kept still, shut off, silent in all the not-Dawnness everywhere around.

Got out some money and sent Vi off to the market for a couple bottles of vinegar, he’d made his mind up about that, all the pieces in place and just the doing remaining, so he didn’t have to think about it to take a towel and make a sort of compress for around his left arm, hand to shoulder, and pour vinegar on it every hour or so. Begged a thin neck chain from Amanda and fastened the memory charm to it so he couldn’t lose it from a pocket getting his cigarettes out or some such. Taking out a cigarette, looking at it, putting it back like he’d been doing since she’d been gone, even before he knew, didn’t know how it connected but it seemed to and he obedient to it and unquestioning. Just not the thing to do somehow.

Tried to tell the children gathered all around him on the grass and the porch the story of him and Dru and Angelus and the Judge, the Slayer and the marvelous rocket launcher in the mall, everything busted up so grand, everybody diving for the floor and Angelus so furious to get his hair mussed and nobody even laughing at that part, not even a smile. Must have lost his touch altogether.

So he told them instead the tale of the young princess made all out of lightnings and lightning-bugs who came to visit at this terrible little village at the very edge of the kingdom, not even a proper castle, only hovels with rats and not enough porridge, right at the edge beyond which all the maps had Heere Ther Bee Monsters written in red ink with lots of exclamation points, and how she went walking in the woods one evening, wasn’t supposed to but nobody could tell her different, she’d just flip her hair and roll her eyes, like she did, and how in the long shadows just before full night she came upon a monster and it was all fierce and growly with these enormous teeth, like, and she wasn’t the least afraid, she never was, but touched it on the head and her magic was such that it went all peaceable to her, and loved her, and went everyplace with her and kept all the other monsters away, and was her own personal monster all her days and his. He supposed that shouldn’t be a sad story but it was, but anyway the children seemed to like it better than that other, so that was all right.

And the stink of the vinegar wasn’t so bad once you got used to it because he’d learned from when Angelus got himself done in Marseilles, all four of them drunk for a month, wonderful times, and that was how you had to do it, otherwise the marks wouldn’t take or last. The appointment the minion had made for him was ten o’clock, so he asked Amanda please to remind him so he wouldn’t miss the time when the shadows fell right for him to reach the sewer lid and down.

Amanda and Kim pestered to come along, but they didn’t know how to do that properly and stayed when he told them to. He’d known the sewers and the tunnels and the caves now for years and years, hardly needed more than smell to steer him. He supposed he could have required the bloke to come to him at Willy’s, do it there, but it all had to be done right, respectful like, and that meant he had to do it humble and pay for it and all, which was more than Angelus had done, ate the chap afterward and took the money back and more besides, but that had been different. Different times. Different times. Spike didn’t want there to be any least part of it that would shame him afterward, what with the soul being the mischancy, particular thing it was: you never knew what it might take exception to.

He’d written it down on a paper, all the words correct from memory, what was to be nailed into his arm in green ink, very small nails, barely stung and wouldn’t have mattered if it was worse because this was the right thing to do now and he’d made up his mind to it anyway.

It was drawn first in pen to match the paper, spiraling around his left hand and arm from knuckles to shoulder, all the letters and words spaced out proper to reach until he was satisfied because after all it was going to be there forever and therefore had to be done the first and only time right or it would be wrong forever and that wouldn’t have done. All plain script, nothing curly or pseudo-Tolkien-fucking-Elvish with umlauts and descenders, not if it was to last and he live with it that way for always.

And then the green ink and the tiny nails poking it in, that was the final part he could sleep through, having set it up all proper to begin with. And when he woke to late afternoon sun out past the front window, still plenty of time to hit the Magic Box before closing, it was there, and right, just the way he’d seen it in his mind, green words against the hard chalk white of his arm; and a couple more days of vinegar would keep it from healing away to nothing, the way everything else did on a vampire. Make it last, never lose it again, not never.

Anyway tats were proper for a vampire or Angelus wouldn’t have had himself done though in a shy place, back of his shoulder, not proud and showing plain on an arm.

The words that took up the back of his hand were: So Dawn. The name there, not to be washed off, worn off, or ever again forgotten. And the unfitting capital to make him know it was more than a word--a name--if ever he started to lose it again.

The verses spiraled up, the whole length of his arm:

So Dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Chapter Four: Nothing Gold Can Stay

Spike went into the Magic Box through the training annex, easing quietly into the store in case there might be customers and Anya busy with them. Would have put her in a real foul mood to be interrupted with customers, who might then not buy anything and all his fault.

And sure enough there were customers, couple of children, boy and a girl, seventeen, maybe, trying to decide about candles but mostly scared about doing what they looked to be thinking about, shy side glances and desperate rictus smiles with panicked eyes, because they were scared mostly and hopeful a little, and Spike let them be because he knew how that felt, well enough.

Though he hadn’t made the slightest bit of noise, standing quiet by the shut door and only watching, Anya knew right off he was there, swinging around and coming quick back toward him, all frowning and concerned so he couldn’t look at her and keep his mind clear for what he had to talk to her about.

Anya fussed back and forth and around, halfway to grabbing at him and then yanking her hands back like he was red hot and she daren’t touch him, which was about the truth, Anya understood about such things, which was why it’d gone the way it had between them that one time. If there was one thing Anya understood, it was sorrow. She could sniff it out from miles away and had, in her Vengeance demon days.

He turned away to the wall. “Just let me be, Anya. Let me be awhile, go tend to your customers.”

“Oh, piffle. Candles. Who cares about them? Three dollars, tops. What on earth’s the matter? I’ve been picking it up all day, figured it was none of my concern, being human now, more or less, but I had no idea it was you!” When Spike only shook his head and wouldn’t answer her, Anya shooed at him and told him to go on in back. “Like I said, three dollars, tops. I’ll make them buy something and then get rid of them and close up, it’s practically 4:30 anyway, and how much business is that to lose? Go ahead, I’ll be right back.”

Spike took a heavy, sprawled seat on the back bench, the training room very familiar to him from sessions with the Slayer and lately some of the SITs, for workouts that needed both more space and better padding for the falls and rolls than was available anyplace else. By the time Anya came bustling back he had himself a bit more in hand and figured he was fit to talk.

Sitting tight against him, Anya asked at once, “Who’s died? Not Buffy, I would have heard about that, I’d have had Xander in here instead of you wanting to weep on my shoulder, not that I’d let him. But of course you can if you want to, I didn’t mean you couldn’t, and why do you smell like sauerkraut? That’s an odd choice for perfume, though if someone likes it I have no objection, it’s certainly distinctive. And what have you done to your arm? Let me see!”

Spike held the arm out, and Anya found it a little awkward to read her way around but got there in the end, she always did.

“Well, isn’t that nice! Robert Frost, isn’t it? What’s the occasion, besides being drunk?”

“Dawn. She’s gone.”

“That’s why it starts out that way, with the capital D. Of course. Should I know Dawn?”

“You might, if you put your mind to it. Since you’re a demon. Or were,” Spike amended, respecting her fiction. “Buffy’s little sis, about so high.” He marked a line at the bridge of his nose. “Just starting at the High School. In and out of here nearly every afternoon, some small shoplifting a few times--”

“Yes, of course! And she was paying me back in labor and I had to watch her near the jewelry, just in case.” Anya frowned perplexedly. “That was so hard to remember!”

“They got somebody doin’ that, it seems.”

“That explains it, then. Did she die of something contagious? Not as if you’re any problem, but I should know in case Xander wants to make up again. That would be the first time this week but it’s only Monday and a girl can’t be too careful, humans are so unsanitary, always catching things.” After that burst Anya waited, poised and attentive, for his answer.

“Didn’t die, exactly. At least I don’t think so. Just…vanished.”

“Dissolved into constituent elements. You don’t see much of that anymore. Probably her keyness in some fashion. How terrible for you! She was so attached to you! Could hardly drive her away with a stick, or is that inappropriate humor? It’s so hard to tell with vampires, they sometimes have such an odd sense of what’s amusing. Probably from being technically dead. Gives a different perspective, I’d imagine. Since most humor depends on incongruities and primal fears, if you’re already dead, even technically, there’s the big one gone already, and what you consider incongruous undergoes drastic changes.”

“No, that’s fine. None of the rest remember, except Buffy, a little. There for a second, when she was still half asleep. So your jokes are no worse than Willow thinking I’d been fucking the child. Didn’t like that much.”

“Did she? Really? Oh, that’s too gross. You weren’t, were you? That’s certainly not the impression I ever got.”

“No. Just loved her, is all.”

“Not the same thing, I understand perfectly. Though it’s so hard to get humans to make that distinction. Though I’m of course human now, and I make that distinction perfectly well. So what did you do to her? Willow, I mean.”

“Nothing to speak of. She wasn’t to know. They’ve all forgot. Red kept calling her ‘the Dawn,’ like she was some sort of a ‘bot.”

“You should have done something to her,” Anya advised seriously. “I’m sure it would have made you feel much better.”

“Yeah, maybe. For the two seconds before she set me afire.”

Anya went into gales of laughter and Spike found himself inclined to smile in spite of everything. He should have known Anya would cheer him up. The rest, they didn’t appreciate her. Particularly Harris. Took another demon to appreciate her properly and they both knew it but didn’t say anything about it much anymore, except for that one time and there’d been good reasons for that, and those reasons weren’t so anymore, so they were just good friends no matter what Harris thought.

When she was through laughing, Anya put on her worried/concerned face again, that set the lines between her eyebrows and her mouth all pursed up tight. “The soul. Does that make it worse?”

“Dunno why not, it ruins everything else.”

Anya thought that was hilarious too. Maybe it was. He didn’t trust himself to judge at the moment.

“Anya. I want to get her back: Dawn. Got no wishes coming that I know of and they come back to bite you in the ass anyway so that’s not a thing I’d do. Anything you can think of that would let me do that?”

Anya frowned, her eyes darting uncomfortably around. “I’m a terrible hostess, I haven’t offered you anything to drink! I know: I used to have a bottle of peach schnapps--”

Spike caught her wrist before she’d quite dashed off to fetch it. Pulled up short, Anya spun around and the lines were back between her eyes. She and Spike looked at each other for a minute or so. Talking without saying anything. Communicating all the same. Sympathy and discomfort and appeal and connection and a painful understanding that nothing was being said because there was nothing to say. Spike let her wrist go.

“Anya, there’s got to be something.”

“Spike, you’re not nearly drunk enough for me to discuss this with you. Let me get you something--”

Spike just tipped his head and kept looking at her. She made a huge, frustrated frown and dumped herself back on the bench, then smacked her fists hard down on her knees. “If she actually were dead, there are of course lots of things that could be done. Ghost, zombification, something elaborate with blood sacrifice like Buffy got, not that it wasn’t very tasteful, the demon bikers weren’t Willow’s fault after all, although it certainly was an awkward coincidence and the Magic Box wasn’t even touched, which of course is the important thing. I still have awful dreams about those bikers. I dream they’re getting into the good crystals. Impossible to mend once they’re broken, the harmonics are all wrong. But you don’t care about any of that, I’m sorry.” Anya patted his hand absently and quite hard. “But I don’t think you understand the problem. Maybe if I explained. It’s as though you’d thrown a bucket of water into the ocean. Not you personally: anyone. But you, you personally, now want exactly the same water back that was in the bucket to begin with. Do you see, or should I try a different analogy with seagulls or wire clothes hangers?”

Spike was concentrating because if you could get through the excess verbiage, generally Anya did make sense. And she was, after all, over a thousand years old. Seen a lot, over that time. Not much she didn’t know about--more, generally, than you actually wanted to hear, but everybody had some quirk or another. It wasn’t like being around the children, who mostly made him feel older than dirt. A vampire’s span hardly ever could begin to compare to that of a Vengeance demon, one of the longest-lived of the mixed demon races. Probably because they took such satisfaction in their work.

“I got the bucket,” he said. “Got the water in the bucket, that’s Dawn herself. So what’s the ocean, then?”

“Why, the Powers That Be. I thought everybody knew that. What are you going to make a dimensional key from except what formed the dimensions themselves in the first place? Dimensionality is one of the Powers That Be. A fraction of that Power was sequestered--would that be the right word, ‘sequestered’? Maybe ‘separated,’ except that doesn’t carry the idea of ‘hidden.’ All right, I’ll try secreted, only that sounds glandular.”

“‘Sequestered’ will do fine, pet. The rest, we can take as given.”

“All right, if you’re sure,” Anya responded dubiously. “Anyway, a fraction was sequestered, put down here and hidden because after all, this is such a nothing backwater--”

“Sunnydale?”

“This whole planet and most of this reality, though it has its nice points here and there. But you have to look for them, they’re at best an acquired taste, so what better place to hide something, since nobody would bother to look? Except Glory, and who’s she? Minor Hellgod with the fashion sense of Mae West. Or…or Anita Ekberg, that’s another one. And who’s the new one? I have it just on the tip of my mind, married that rich old guy and then orgasmed him to death. Oh, you have to know what I mean!” She thumped Spike hard several times on the tatted arm, which did sting a bit and he removed it carefully, so as not to offend her.

“What, Anna Nicole?”

“Yes! I’m ashamed to have a name even close to hers, and I’ve had it longer so it’s entirely the fault of her parents.”

“Imagine you’re right about that. Now how would a chap make contact with the Powers That Be, or that one in particular? To hear him tell it, Peaches does it every day and twice on Tuesdays, so how hard can it be?”

Anya shook her head vehemently, making her hair all fluff out in a way that was more pretty than not. “You don’t want to do that, Spike. You really don’t.”

“Now, Anya--”

“You heard me say that vampires have a peculiar sense of humor? Try the Powers if you want the truly bizarre. There was a story going around Arashmahar once about an entire solar system that was crisped for a punchline by one of the Powers. And that they’re still laughing about it, as they get the point. One by one. Every thousand years or so. Sometimes, apparently, it takes awhile.

“It’s one thing when they contact you, which would account for Angel’s situation. It’s quite another to contact them uninvited. Totally utterly different. And fatal is the best that could happen. Trust me: you do NOT want to bring yourself to their notice. Will you please trust me about this? You’re a mere child, and I’m trying to warn you away from a very hot iron. As in ironing.” She mimed it. “Or even a hot poker, everybody’s seen those. I am giving you very good, very important advice here. And you’re not going to take it, are you.”

“Never have before,” said Spike, feeling a kind of calm, almost lazy, resignation. “So it’s best to continue how you started out.”

“Well, there’s that, and I’m sure it’s important, but I just can’t feel it at the moment. I know: I’ll tell Buffy,” Anya announced triumphantly. “And she won’t let you!”

“Now, Anya. Coming between an honest vampire and his Slayer, that could be disruptive, now couldn’t it. And I always thought you tried not to do that, break couples up an’ all. Because of the whole vengeance thing. Now isn’t that so.”

“Yes. Drat! Drat fudge shit. Excuse me, but I’m very vexed. All right, but you have to promise to tell Buffy yourself, then, before you do anything rash.”

Spike thought about it. Thought about how often Buffy had told him before she did anything rash. Which would be zero. In fact, he was generally the last to find out and had to do the clean-up. Well, maybe one: Glory’s tower, he’d known about that beforehand. So that would make once. But these were special circumstances, and Dawn after all was her sister, even if made up out of dimensional stuff and even though Buffy couldn’t precisely remember her at the moment. Family was important, regardless. So maybe Anya was right. Maybe he should. “All right. I promise.”

Anya leaped up, dashed a few paces, then spun around. “You do know how to use a focusing crystal, don’t you?”

Spike nodded slowly several times.

“I’ve got one put by, I didn’t expect there to be any commercial demand for it, most people have more sense. A collector’s item. It came in by mistake with a shipment of ordinary scrying crystals, but it’s rare and therefore worth a great deal of money if I were ever to find the right buyer. And we’d have to make arrangements for how you were going to pay me for it. But…if you get crisped, you’re not going to pay me, and Buffy certainly wouldn’t hold herself responsible for your debts, it’s not as if you were legally married, after all. Or are you? No, you couldn’t be because although Buffy and I aren’t particularly close at the moment since she tried to kill me, I can’t imagine not being invited to your wedding, assuming you’d had one, which of course I’m now certain that you didn’t. Since I wasn’t invited. Didn’t even help with the planning. So that’s my price. In the unlikely event that you survive this, when you and Buffy decide to do the decent thing, since she’s human or practically and that’s what humans do, get married, that is--all the magazines say so, to say nothing of the thousands of Harlequin romances--I get to make all the arrangements. All of them. Every one. No exceptions.”

“Now, I’d have to ask Buffy about that. But supposing she has no objections and hasn’t made other plans herself, then yes, I’ll promise you that.”

Anya beamed and then finished running off to get the crystal.

Spike had been sure he could depend on Anya to come up with something.

**********

Spike had promised in all good faith, and had meant to do what he’d promised: talk to Buffy before doing anything toward contacting the Powers That Be…one of which was apparently (partly) Dawn. So it was completely involuntary and unintentional on his part that when he left the Magic Box by the back door, considering the faceted softball-sized crystal in his hand and holding it because it was too large for any pocket, he was blindsided by an angle of light and realized where he was. It was that alley. From what he thought of as “the Never dream.” The light falling just so, and the walls where the walls were, and the places where the shadows slanted down all corresponding, dark and bright, everything he saw all corresponding in every least detail. It seemed to get larger and larger before him as though it was moving toward him although he wasn’t moving at all, gone completely blank with astonishment and recognition and terror that this should be the place after all, the very one.

The one thought that came to him was that it had been Dawn all along and he hadn’t known. Only that it was coming and he was like not to survive it and that had been all right because he’d thought he’d have a chance first to put himself between, take the death himself and make it leave his girls be, but there’d been no chance and he hadn’t even known she was gone for such a time, hours, and it’d been Dawn all along.

And just as he got that far in understanding it, it was just as though it was all beginning afresh, the first instant of recognition and shock, deeper and higher and bigger and moving in faster, and then again, and again, and again. It felt like getting hit, it felt like getting destroyed, hammered and beaten smaller and smaller until finally there was no space at all left to be in. And then it stopped. Or he did, he had no way of distinguishing.

And nothing at all happened for what seemed like a very long time.

Something set in amber, the thought came. And stayed awhile. Long or short, no way of telling. Anyway gone eventually.

Trapped inside his skull. Didn’t know if that was a thought or not. Just something there, some way, that he was aware of. And after a time no longer aware of it or it was gone, no difference.

He’d been moderately drunk but wasn’t now. Not a bit. This was what real meant. No question of it, not an instant, supposing he’d know the difference between an instant and anything else.

Then after the longest while of all, the least touch of sensation. His left arm. Couldn’t name it any particular sensation except it got stronger, awareness strengthening into pain and then past that, way past that, a very long time of that. And then suddenly gone. No kind of sensation at all.

You have no claim on us.

Neither sound nor thought, just something that was present and he was aware of it. It was there a very long time, and he aware of it, and that’s all there was.

I do. He’d done that. He didn’t know how or what it was, but he knew it was his and he’d done it.

No claim.

If I have no claim, why bother to tell me so?

That was even better. That was a place he could stand and know himself apart from all the everything else. It was an attitude, and it was his. It was defiance and argument and it wasn’t nothing because it was still there, hadn’t been answered or refuted or simply made not to be.

Something forming: so now there was sight and some least sense of near and far. Medium distance because it could have been farther, but not much. Something filmy and gauzy and like a skull. And suddenly, instantly, all complete. Dawn’s face, if she was dead. And then under and around the face, the rest of her, thrown in almost contemptuously to complete her, head to toe, be done with it.

He made no comment, but he’d seen masks before and wasn’t impressed, and maybe that was a comment in spite of him.

The eyes opened and the mouth moved like inferior animatronics. The bad illusion of life without any actual life and so as fake as it could possibly be. Not-Dawn said, “You don’t want this.”

And apparently the Whatever was fair: if not-Dawn could form actual words, then he was allowed to as well. Otherwise, wasn’t much point to it, actually.

“No: because it’s not her.”

So the not-Dawn was made exactly like her: each least thing he questioned or found fault with changed until he didn’t, until he could see nothing except what was exactly like Dawn. And he hoped for a second it might actually be--

He thought, This is what will probably get me killed. And he figured Whatever knew he was thinking that but no help for it, it was important to him to know it.

So whatever passed for saying, he said, “I’m a vampire. I can’t smell her or hear her or touch her. She has no weight, no actual substance. She has no heartbeat or breath or blood. Nothing at all of what a girl should have inside her. I can’t feel her breath. She doesn’t look at me as Dawn looks at me. This is not who she is. This is not Dawn.”

If he’d hoped to dicker his way to further and closer approximations, he was disappointed: the whole everything was gone and there was nothing again. Nothing at all. He began to suspect the Whatever was beginning to get peeved.

He often had that effect.

Spike, you should go home.

It didn’t sound at all, much less sound right. All the same, he knew beyond question: Dawn. Herself. Not angry with him. Only sad.

A very large feeling seized him. As large as her absence had been. There was nothing else he could be aware of; and that continued.

I know. I know why you did this.

With that soft comment came the least fingertip touch to the back of his left hand, which was there because she’d touched it. And stayed.

The feeling didn’t change or diminish. But something, not his choice, moved it a little away, so there was a little away. Words were possible again.

“Wanted to do it right for you. Wanted that real hard.”

I know. But you’re bothering the rest of Us.

“Am I bothering you?”

No. Yes. I’m here because you’re bothering Us. We want to you stop. They will stop you if you don’t stop yourself.

“You stop me then, if you want to.”

No. I don’t want to. They do. The rest of Us. I am only part. Very small. Almost nothing.

There was no way he could respond to that. Only the feeling: off to the side and very large. As she was to him.

Some of what you think of as mine isn’t. It was taken, to be me. To make me. From Buffy-for-herself.

Truly Dawn. It was truly her. “Yes, Bit.”

Because I trust, she does not. She doesn’t cry when you hurt because I cry. Buffy-for-herself fears all because I fear none. You’re not first because that was given to me for mine. It was for Buffy, to claim her with, so she would protect me. But I claimed you with it too because you were there and it wasn’t planned, for it to be so. You weren’t part of what was planned for, but you were there all the same. After the tower. You know how it was then. All these things that were taken have been returned. They should not be taken again, Spike. They are hers. I love you but I’m no one. Almost nothing. And when you go I will be nothing again. Scattered. And that’s as it should be. And should have been. But she was gone, there was no way to return what I’d been given, and I would not go and leave you so. With nothing at all. I didn’t know that was why I stayed, but I know now. She should be whole. And you should be whole. And not divided. You’re not mine to keep. Once, but not now. May I take something from you? For a keepsake?

“Whatever you say, Bit.”

I have taken it, and I don’t think it’s a thing you’ll miss. I wouldn’t do that.

Nothing possible. Only the feeling.

Do you want to forget?

“No, Bit.”

The touch to his hand, to her name there. Stronger. Then you won’t. Goodbye, Spike.

And he was sitting on a crate in an alley in a certain slant of light. And he didn’t know what to do with his hands.






Nothing Gold Can Stay


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

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