SECTION THREE: ENGAGEMENTS

Chapter Nine: On Notice

After breakfast, Willow checked around the house, upstairs and down, and found no anomalous stranger who might be the Dawn, that Buffy had said was back. Willow was curious: the only artificial being she’d ever encountered was the BuffyBot, which could pass for human only if you squinted real hard and didn’t really listen to its chirpy pre-programmed nonsense. By all evidence, this Dawn was an entirely different fettle of kish who’d passed for years, unremarked and accepted. An artifact, a made thing, and yet person enough that an unsouled vampire could become deeply attached, if Willow had the chronology anything like right.

The only other time Willow had seen Spike that agitated was when Drusilla had dumped him and he’d tried to coerce a love spell from Willow to get his undead sweetie back. Big fiasco, of course. You think you have somebody all figured out, a feckless vamp with absolutely no magical affinity, incapable even of a love spell, your basic muscle-head who’d certainly never impressed you with anything resembling blinding intelligence, always trailing lovelorn after some woman or other he’d fixed his pathetic affections on for no discernable reason except that she didn’t want him, and then he goes and pulls off something like this, that Willow herself, a powerful witch, didn’t know how to undertake.

Inexplicable. Vaguely annoying. Intriguing.

Finding no Dawn anywhere around, Willow widened her search. She cut through the back yard and beyond the break in the hedge she found Spike’s contingent of SITs spread out in pairs, engaged in what looked like staking practice.

Sure enough, there was Spike on the shaded porch in conversation with a leggy mid-teen girl with long brown hair whom Willow was quite certain she’d never seen before.

Spike and the Dawn both looked up as Willow approached. Spike said neutrally, “Red,” and the Dawn said cheerily, “Hi, Willow.”

Willow made a smile as she sat on the grass. When she looked up, the Dawn’s expression had changed to wistful and a little pained.

“Sorry,” the Dawn said. “For a minute, I forgot that you forgot. But the upside is, maybe you’ll see how wretched forgetfulness spells really are, like the ones you put on Tara, and everybody.”

Willow couldn’t have been more astonished and indignant if the girl had punched her in the mouth.

“Now, Bit, that’s not nice,” Spike commented.

“Sure, like I’m gonna take Emily Post lessons from the not-so-evil semi-undead,” the girl shot back at him pertly.

“Well, you could consider when even a vamp tells you to mind your manners, chances are you been pretty egregious.”

“Egregious, that’s a fine word. Right up there with effulgent.” Clearly, that was some kind of inside joke, by Spike’s answering expression.

“Well, that could be, too. Anyway it’s not Red’s fault she doesn’t recollect you, an’ she was quite a lot of help in getting you home, so you be nice to her before she turns you slightly into a frog here.”

“She’d never do that,” retorted the Dawn smugly. “She has frog fear.”

Willow’s astonishment and indignation went wide like a huge balloon. What was this creature and how could she know such things about Willow when Willow knew next to nothing about her? Willow felt naked and defenseless, like that bad sort of dream where you were in front of a class or an audience and forgot all your lines, naked and everything and had to hope nobody would notice if you just kept talking. Yet underneath there remained the cool, impersonal curiosity that had wondered what Warren would look like without his skin. That never changed. That still scared her, yanked her back from the brink of actually touching, seizing hold of the currents of power she felt randomly twining and surging around her all the time: currents yearning for direction and guidance; yearning to be used.

That’s what other people didn’t know: that chaotic energy had an intrinsic yen to make sense, yearned for shape and purpose, had a hungry affinity for any strong intention in those attuned to it. As Willow was. Irrevocably. When you used it, it became magic. But as long as you didn’t, it remained only the eddy and flow of undifferentiated unclaimed energy sloshing around like the ocean out of sight of land.

Looking with other vision, Willow examined the Dawn’s aura. It was surprisingly unremarkable--exactly what you’d expect with a healthy girl that age: white-yellow and cheerful, filmy, pretty shapeless and not closely conforming to body contours. The edges were shaded to peach, to pink where her aura and the vampire’s overlapped and fuzzed into each other. Quite an ordinary aura for a girl comfortable with a close friend.

Instead, it was Spike’s aura that was strikingly abnormal.

Since the body was animated by supernatural forces and its merely Natural functions were scaled down and simple, about on the level of your basic garden slug, vampires didn’t generate much of a bioenergy field. The aura was characteristically dark-toned, uniform, and tight to the body contour. Brown-black at rest, shot through with white-yellow streaks in pain or psychological distress, red-black in sullen bloodthirst, and a deep maroon when that thirst had been satisfied. Change only within a narrow range and not much variation from head to foot.

When Spike had suffered a severe injury to his hands, some weeks ago, Willow had used his aura as a diagnostic. Allowing for the injury, it had been about what she would have expected. Since then, she’d had no reason to check it. She was surprised to find it flared wide, nearly across the whole of the porch, and comprised of almost as many flowing hues and shadings as a human’s, instead of the stable vamp monochrome that was typical even for him. The base color was slate blue, most intense around the torso, more transparent and thinner around the limbs, then heavily dark again at the hands, streaked there with small explosions of cerise and vermilion: he’d been killing recently and the energy and effect of that was still apparent in his hands. Deep maroon at the core: he’d fed well not long ago. His aura engulfed the Dawn’s almost completely like a protective bubble, but the overlay was neutral, merely bright: hers was the only color apparent. So the impression was benign, not one of overwhelming, devouring influence.

He’d been messing with quite a lot of aethereal energy, great whacking gobs of it. Had to be the residuum of the Dawn spellcasting. Since becoming able to discern such things, Willow had never seen such an energy-charged aura except on Rack, an active sorcerer; on a vamp it was just ridiculous, disproportionate, like a tuxedo on a pig or a Vibrant Crown on a Chihuahua.

Filing the strange aura for future thought, Willow brought her mind firmly back to the matter at hand, asking, “What exactly did you do to get her back?”

Spike looked aside, obviously deciding whether to answer or not. Finally, he asked bluntly, ‘Why?”

It wasn’t so much a hostile question as one that required a good reason.

Willow spread her hands and offered one of her most upbeat, harmless smiles. “Professional curiosity. Most vamps can’t manipulate magic at all without a heavy-duty talisman or a detailed, pre-formulated spell. And a sacrifice dedicated and shed as the power source. So I wondered what you used.”

Spike returned his attention to the chore he’d been performing: sharpening a stake. A rather peculiar occupation for a vampire, but Willow thought it better not to comment. He said, “Mostly, it was dickering. Not magic. Sort of hard to describe.”

“What did you use to power it?”

“Feelings, mostly. At least that’s all I knew of. Oh, and what remained from the blood spell. That’s all gone now.”

With the place of the conjuration identified, Willow was able to infer some of the mechanics. He’d used the crystals she’d set in the basement, that was obvious, and powered it with the residue of the blood magic. “How did you reconstruct her? How did you make the template, or whatever you used? How do you even make a template for a personality that was a construct to begin with?”

Spike glanced at the girl, then back at his hands. “Don’t believe I care to discuss that, sorry. Maybe sometime Bit can say, if she feels like it.” His face lifted and changed subtly: not quite vamp-face, but not quite human, either. “An’ if you get into my head about this, or about anything without my say-so, I’ll be way beyond annoyed. You get some slack from me for the help, that’s appreciated. But it don’t extend to you getting into my head. Not saying you would, or mean to. Just telling you, so you’ll know.”

Well, Willow hadn’t really expected a vampire to talk sorcerous shop with her. It was entirely possible he just didn’t want to admit he had no clear idea how he’d done it, that he’d fluked out lucky.

And there was little point seeking information from the Dawn, the artifact: she’d probably be the last one to have any idea how she’d been made.

But the possibility of making a convincing simulacrum, a complete living person recreated somehow out of memory, was far too intriguing to be left alone. Willow thought she could interpret and translate from any account, however ill-informed and incoherent.

Offering the Dawn polite congratulations on her return, Willow took her leave, trying to think what leverage, pressure, she could bring to bear on Spike to make him tell.

**********

Watching Willow walk away, Dawn leaned confidingly against Spike’s tatted arm, that was hers. “She thinks you made me.”

“Don’t see that it matters. An’ I don’t think it’s specially wise to claim acquaintance with Lady Gates, to a witch. Don’t think it’s any of her proper business, actually, but you do what you please, Bit.”

“I think she wants Tara back.”

Spike set a finished stake aside and collected a fresh dowel, taking more time in choosing than was really needed. “Could be. You well might be right about that. Tara was a fine girl, an’ they certainly were close. Magic brought them together and then the magic pushed them apart…. Natural she’d miss her, specially now with Kennedy an’ all. Doesn’t begin to measure up. But I think if that could be done by magic, she’d have done it already. Not that I know a whole lot about it.”

“She thinks you do. Even an idiot can have the right answer sometimes.”

Spike smiled and didn’t say anything.

“Seriously,” Dawn said. “She thinks I’m a thing and you’re an idiot, and thinks you have something she really, really wants that you just told her you wouldn’t give her. That would make me nervous if I were you.”

“Don’t believe there’ll be time for her to get up to much mischief. Things are gonna head downhill pretty quick now. Don’t you worry, Bit. No harm coming from that direction and what comes, I’m making for myself, don’t need extra help.”

“You mean the patrol?”

“That, yeah. And some other stuff simmering about. Just glad we got you back all safe before anything more…develops.”

Dawn didn’t like it when Spike was evasive and cryptic. If whatever he had in mind was really chancy, it gave her no opportunity to talk him out of it. Which was probably why he wouldn’t tell her.

They traded a look: bland on his side, suspicious and full of misgivings on hers.

Vampires seemed so fragile to her. One small accident with a pointy stick and poof, they were gone, just like that. Dawn shook her head, frowning, and squeezed his arm so he’d know she wasn’t happy about this.

She said gloomily, “I worry about you sometimes.”

“Only sometimes? Then things must be far too quiet.”

“Idiot.”

“Thing,” he retorted.

“Monster.”

“Undersized harpy.”

She poked him in the shoulder but it didn’t make her feel any better.

**********

A little before midday, after Dawn had gone off, Spike called the children into the house. Not enough shade was left on the porch, and the house had a good-sized front room, space for everybody all together: one reason he’d chosen it. He settled on the floor, and the SITs ranged themselves around, choosing favored places. Over the past weeks, they’d come to feel at home here.

And almost every single one had chosen a taser, chosen the vamp patrol. At least partly because he’d been the one to propose it and ask for volunteers. He felt the responsibility of that.

“Now bear with me,” he said, paying lots of attention to the proper lighting of a cigarette, “because you know all my tricks now, and I don’t know how to say. So it won’t sound like much. But I made you all a promise, and after tomorrow, it can’t be like that anymore. I told each of you I’d keep you from death. An’ so far that’s been all right, we done that. Not just me: you all know that perfectly well. But that was what I said. What I promised. I taught you as best I know, an’ I never once told you anything but what’s true, as best I know. And you all done very fine, learned and done what you could with no shirking and no complaints. So now it’s yours to see to, because I can’t.

“When you’re dealing with other vamps, as you will be, don’t you go by me. I’m real old, and most you’ll run into are hardly past fledges--as young, in the vampire way, as you are in yours. So they’re mostly dumb an’ don’t think about what they’re doing before they do it, and sometimes not even then. You watch ‘em close and watch yourselves and each other. I call you children because that’s how I think of you, but when the Slayer was your age, she’d already been Slayer for a year. She didn’t get much chance to be a child, and you won’t neither. And the fact is, I can’t keep you from death. Only you can. So I give you back to yourselves, to do that.” He held up his spread left hand, like taking a wrong-handed oath. “From my hand, back to your own. To keep yourselves safe--”

Amanda unwound from her seat on the couch and came and took his upraised hand in both hers, which was all right, no great matter, but then she bent and kissed him on the forehead and that upset him, that was more than what was called for. But because Amanda had done it they all wanted to, of course, and turning his head and trying to wave them off made no difference, they were stubborn and it wasn’t what he’d intended at all.

He’d only meant to take proper leave of them and end the promise he could no longer keep. Instead, it felt like forgiveness for whatever he’d not done or done wrong and he’d surely not earned that, not from them. Not from anyone. And there was nothing he could do with a feeling like that, nowhere for it to go. Not at all what a vampire should feel toward such a delicious smelling bunch of children.

So he told them they were stupid bints and got away into the basement the first chance they gave him.

And the worst part of it was that he still had the other pack, nominally Buffy’s, to do it all again with because he’d made them the same promise too, all the SITs. Well, he wouldn’t, that’s all. Now he knew how they were apt to behave, he’d just have Buffy tell them. Totally fucking inappropriate. Tell her when he saw her tonight, make her take care of it because no way was he gonna go through a thing like that twice.

**********

As it happened, Buffy chickened out too and she didn’t think it was fair for Spike to ask her to make an announcement that sounded, to her, really close to, “Goodbye, good luck, now go out and get killed.”

Tonight’s patrol had been called off in favor of a practice. A SIT, Vi, perched on a ladder to approximate the height of a Turok-han, and the rest of the Potentials took turns to swipe and poke at her. Buffy told the leaders of Spike’s troop to pass along that unfortunate hail and farewell to the members of her troop and left it to them.

It had been a really rotten day. When she’d visited him after school, Giles made it clear that he considered any alliance with vampires to be doomed and the equivalent to selling your soul to the Devil. Cheap. The phrase “a shameful expediency” had been used. Then they’d gotten into the whole issue of Spike training the SITs again, something Giles had never approved of: on principle, he insisted, rather than any criticism of Spike personally or of how he’d actually handled it. “But you cannot and must not forget, Buffy, that he is a vampire! He simply cannot perceive the serious moral issues which accepting any vampire as an equal automatically raises. And I must assume, since you have again taken him as your lover, that neither can you.”

And when Buffy had brought up the excuse of the soul, Giles had dismissed it on the grounds that Ethan Rayne’s soul had done nothing to hold him back from malign sorcery. Nor had Willow’s. “The soul, Buffy, is all well and good, and I respect Spike for the attempt. He has done something I never conceived any vampire would do of his own accord. Nevertheless, all anyone has seen from him is insanity and confusion: neither guilt nor anything resembling repentance. A soul is no guarantee of right action for any creature, let alone one naturally so inclined toward evil, violence, and cruelty as a vampire.”

And on and on. Wicked evil soulless demon monster vampire thing, blah, blah, blah. Buffy had ended the rant only by leaving, with the very minimal satisfaction of having virtuously solicited and listened to Giles’ opinion, negative and unhelpful as it was.

She’d had no better luck with Anya, as she explained to Spike, lurking moodily by the hedge, when he asked her about it. Turning together, they ambled along the hedge to the sidewalk while Buffy groused, “All I could do is get Anya to agree to hold it after the patrol, not before. She’s set it up with Willy. Demon-human solidarity, yea rah. Real big honkin’ clue there’s liquor involved. The whole thing is iffy enough without a whole bunch of the vamps, or even the SITs, bombed out of their minds from the get-go.”

“Sorry, pet. Anya gets hold of a thing, sometimes, there’s no stopping her.”

Stopping and starting by an undefined restless inertia, they continued slowly along the sidewalk toward the corner of Brown, where they might turn or not. No choice had to be made right away, just walking.

Buffy said, “And I talked to Giles. No joy there. No surprise, either, I guess. But at least I tried….”

“Rupert doesn’t put much trust in vamps, and we pretty much think alike about that. So I don’t fault him for it. But we’re all out of good choices here, an’ some of the bad ones are worse than others.”

Buffy mentioned, “He doesn’t think you’re sorry enough.” She glanced up and, no surprise, Spike’s face had gone stormy and sullen.

“He don’t know nothing about that. That’s my concern. He can think what he likes.”

Having reached the corner, they hung up under the street light there.

“And to top everything off,” Buffy said, still watching him, “I had another little visit from the First today. Just what I needed.”

“That a fact. Who was it doin’ this time.”

Buffy sighed, a little more choked and shaky than she’d meant. “My mom. Really creepy. All reasonable and concerned.”

“An’ what did it say, Slayer?” Spike prompted, like the set-up line of a joke.

Except the punchline wasn’t funny. Not even a little. “Oh, the usual, how we’re all gonna die, that kind of thing. And…that you’ve been killing again.”

“Ahuh. And are you gonna ask me, pet?”

From Slayer to pet in two sentences. That was almost a record. Buffy pushed at her hair wearily. “When something goes bad, just tell me, all right? I know what it’s doing. But I can’t have that on my mind. Can’t wonder about it. Either I trust you or I don’t. And I do. I have to.”

As she lifted, he bent and they were kissing with fierce intensity. It really had been a wretched day. And the turn onto Brown had been made so they probably both knew where they were headed now.

“That thing,” Spike said. “That you asked the other night, and I said no.” A quick glance to see if she understood. “Maybe I was wrong. If you still want.”

Yet another uncomfortable thing to decide. And yet he’d given in, when she’d been certain he wouldn’t. And it was about trust, after all, and therefore maybe a way to reaffirm and heal it, if healing was needed. Buffy leaned her head against Spike’s arm. “We’re both edgy and tired. Maybe it’s not a good time to try new things. If it’s gonna bother you, let it go. I don’t want to make things hard for you. Not exactly….”

She checked, and that unintended double entendre had won a small, tight smile.

He said, “I want it to be how you want. Whatever that is. Want to make you happy and glow all over, like you do. An’ see it in your eyes, that it’s me you’re with and no other, and glad of that. Don’t want to hold anything back. Want to put my mark on you and make you shout for me when you come, and set all the sorrow aside.”

She checked again, and his face was gentle and intense. Wide and unfathomable, his eyes drew her in as they always did and always had. It seemed to her that his gaze saw her all the way down, as far as she went, and she felt it like that. Heat gathered and a fluttering sensation began as though a bird were trapped deep inside.

She said, “I want you free and joyous and strong, coming to me. I want to be whatever you need me to be. I want you proud and content with yourself because your crazy pieces fit my crazy pieces just right. And know that there’s nobody else I would ever want to be with except you. I want you to explode so hard you feel like you’re coming all apart but you won’t because I’ll hold you safe forever. And I want--”

His mouth stopped her.

They went inside the house, and down.

*********

Their loving had all sorts of moods because it connected to so many things. Sometimes they played with the delays, making a huge production and argument over the removal of clothes, and who was allowed, and what stayed nonsensically, even inconveniently, on. Sometimes quite a lot of it was talk, skeptical, daring one another, sassy backtalk and pretended haughtiness, pushes and slaps and the occasional elbow going abruptly astray against something sensitive, provoking pretended startlement, injury, and retaliation, back and forth, tit for tat. And sometimes there were no words at all, nearly like one of their old battles: because they could, and they were both deeply into the body and that was best sometimes, punishing and sudden. Other times were silly and teasing, extreme tickling, and having to stop for the laughter. And some times were indescribably intense and a little slow, their eyes on one another most of the time, watching, conversing with touch and pressure and long repetitions that became nearly unendurable before they changed and shifted, always watching. Eyes shutting because it was so good you had to try to draw it in and hold it, keep it like held breath, became an event all by itself.

This was one of the intense, slow times. No play in it, clothes carelessly discarded without fuss, and then skin contact, amassing the first slow frictions until there was noplace that wasn’t alive and aching for harder pressure, more contact. He could make her crazy holding her just slightly off balance, never quite secure, always trying unconsciously to right herself. He’d told her once that was like music: dissonances, off tempos, and then the great major chord to declare. She tumbled and was tumbled back, suspended, shuddering, being readied for that declaration.

More than usual he required her attention, lifting her chin and waiting for her eyes to find focus, come out of their daze and greet him before he’d resume. Breathing deep in a heavy rhythm as he did when aroused as though that was somehow hardwired into him, the unnecessary breath, so she always knew and felt it in him, more persuasive and intimate than the more obvious signs because it was so peculiarly his own.

Another thing she felt in him was old, recognized and resisted for so long: his generosity. He gave her beautiful smiles when her breath began to hitch and he noted and displayed to her evidences of her arousal as though they were achievements to be proud of, as though she were doing something astonishing and splendid of her own brilliance. There was in him, at such times, no vanity at all and a giving so complete and self-forgetful it seemed to her a kind of innocence and infinitely precious. And in the moment when everything balanced, collided, and convulsed, shock upon shock roaring through her, he called her wonderful names and encouraged her and kept the shocks rolling beyond what she thought she could endure, and then gentled and petted her for as long as it took her to come back within her body from wherever the convulsions had flung her. Cool against her heat, making a cradle for her with his body, everything softly balanced now and at rest as long as she wished it to be.

But he hadn’t changed. And he was still unsatisfied.

She touched him intimately and asked a half-frowning question with her eyes. His answer was to gently move from under her and pad across to the bureau. She knew then what he’d gone for and sat on the edge of the bed. Returning, he spilled into her lap the four silk scarves used for tying. So as not to disturb her he circled the bed and from that side stretched out flat on his back, arms extended toward the corners of the big bed, waiting.

Buffy picked at the scarves uneasily. This wasn’t how she’d visualized it. The tying and surrender had their place but she hadn’t thought of them in conjunction with his changing. It was too much like the manacles he’d subjected himself to in her basement. To control him when he couldn’t control himself. It wasn’t what she’d meant.

When she looked around at him, he was staring at her, already golden-eyed. Still waiting. She understood then that this was his condition. He required it of her to do as she’d asked. It meant something to him, and this was part of it. So perhaps it would be all right anyway. Under other circumstances it had been acceptable and good, a fulfillment of what they’d needed from each other at that time. Slowly she wrapped around his left wrist the confining hitch that would neither tighten nor give, then fastened the remainder of the scarf securely to the thick brass corner post he probably could yank out of the frame if he truly tried. Then she did the same to his left ankle. A sudden pang of tenderness and concern made her stop and kiss him hard, reaching wide herself to entangle their fingers, reassure them both that this was no harm, only a chosen limit.

He told her softly, “It’s all right, love. Get to it now before I perish entirely.”

He brought down the other wrist to where she could reach and bind it, and she finished securing him with no further intermissions. She looked around then, and the golden eyes had faded back to cobalt.

He said, “When it’s time. Come to me now.”

The way of bondage was to tease the dumb reflexes. Make him need and try to move when the bonds prevented it. It was, in its way, the complimentary state to her being kept off balance, fooling the muscles with the deep suspicion of falling. Pit the restrained body against itself, overload with sensation and thereby set the rest free.

He had no responsibilities in this. He had ceded control of his body. He lay quiet, his eyes shut now so that every touch would come from nowhere, unexpected, and no warning of a repeat or a change unless she chose to give that to him.

She started with simple kissing, close long contact, barely enough to make him breathe. Presently, reaching out high and low, she began an irregular series of touches, grazes, flick and gone almost before he could react. She knew where his sensitivities were and began setting them off, no pattern to it, nothing to anticipate so everything aware and waiting. Involuntary jerks in reaction now, drawing hard on the silk, muscles beginning to fire off and not fully relax before the next shock came.

She began giving him heat: the heat of her mouth and her hot breath and the occasional but steady press of her hot hands. Touching him less the more he reacted. Making the flesh yearn toward her, unable to reach, unable not to try: impulses at odds with one another, heightening sensation, in aching suspense.

When she thought the rhythm of his breathing was about right she descended on his mouth with a devouring kiss, preventing him from getting any air at all. He didn’t need it, but that was another reflexive motion frustrated, tied, fighting for release. The control he’d surrendered to her was itself erotic: the awareness of power, the immediacy of what she could make him do with her hands and her mouth and teeth, her drifting hair trailed across slowly or slapped sudden and hard. With her weight now, the whole of her body raking across him only slightly lubricated by her sweat. Therefore friction, that she now needed herself, aroused and wanting, knowing he smelled that and was dragged by that to try to hold her still but she wouldn’t be still, moving and touching everywhere except where he wanted her.

At the first touch to his center his reaction nearly flung her off the bed. His eyes were finally open and wide-golden with no sense in them, flickering, absent: the only focus internal. The full true face emerged: what he’d always withheld before. Now it was there because she’d called it forth, it had answered her, terrible and beautiful and strange, the fanged mouth open, desperate to pull in enough breath. The body also changed but more subtly, appreciable only by touch and by the quicker, more insistent responses.

He was close, and she wanted him inside her when his release hit. She found her balance, kneeling. Then she quickly took him in. Both of them arched and shuddered. Almost immediately the first of the convulsions hit her: straining together and yet straining away, deep rhythmic shudders tightening in ecstatic waves. A lurch and then his chest lifted. A freed hand tangled in her hair and yanked her forward to meet the wide rising jaws and the fangs that buried themselves in her neck.

Chapter Ten: Crisis of Conscience

“Dawn. Wake up. Dawn. Bit.”

It was the tone of voice that brought Dawn straight upright in bed, trying to smear the sleep out of her eyes.

“Dawn. You got to come now. Please. Can’t, didn’t know, it’s all gone wrong--”

The last time Dawn had heard that disjointed mutter it had been coming through the high school ventilation system.

Dawn went into emergency mode, rolling out of bed and finding the switch of the bedside lamp as part of the same motion.

The light wasn’t fast enough to catch him. Just a glimpse of his bare back disappearing into the hallway. Dawn jammed a foot into one of her sneaks and kicked to find the other one, then hopped, treading on flopping laces, to grab yesterday’s hoody sweatshirt off a chair. Scuffing the sneaks on while yanking the sweatshirt over her head, she dashed down the stairs, holding the handrail in case she tripped on the laces.

In jeans and nothing else, Spike walked lopsided figure eights in the downstairs hall. Before Dawn could reach him he was gone again: out through the kitchen and across the yard. Racing after, Dawn caught up past the hedge and grabbed at his wrist, but he yanked away from her, then stumbled and almost fell, down on one knee. She latched on again.

“Quit that,” she told him when he tried to pull away. “This is mine. Show me, Spike.”

Still talking to himself but on no breath, Spike staggered upright. Making no further attempt to dislodge her, he continued into the house, Dawn trotting alongside and trying to notice everything.

He was shaking, continuous vibration, moving in a series of lunges as though he was going faster in his mind than his body could manage and he kept having to wait for it to catch up. No smell of liquor, so he wasn’t drunk. By the basement door he came to a halt, swaying, saying something but again no breath, no audible words. But it was plain he wanted her to go down and didn’t intend to go with her.

“No, you have to show me. Go on, now.” As if she’d let him out of her sight in such a state. Not for a second. “What’s happened to Buffy, Spike?” Because that had to be it, or part of it. “Show me.”

He let her bully him down the stairs ahead of her. She automatically hit the switch, expecting a bare bulb. Instead it was muted track lighting. Carpeted floor, a wall of built-in cabinets, actual furniture. Way upscale compared to his crypt.

As Dawn paused, looking, Spike went straight on to a substantial brass bed, left from the stairs, projecting from the wall. Its mattress was tilted because the right corner post had been pulled away from the crossbar. On it, Buffy was asleep on her side: knees slightly bent and feet apart, hands laid by her face, hair spread about. No clothes. Nothing gross showing. More like a layout in one of those magazines Dawn wasn’t supposed to know about. Nothing visibly amiss except the strange dance of approach and retreat Spike was doing on the far side of the bed. Reaching for the sheet rucked up at the foot, to cover her maybe, then jerking the hand back and spinning away, then back again, reaching, touching nothing.

Only a little hesitantly, Dawn touched, and Buffy’s shoulder was warm. She was breathing OK. Except for being asleep and naked of course, if that counted, nothing Dawn could see to have thrown Spike into incoherent panic.

So it had to be something she couldn’t see.

Dawn thought for a second of waking Buffy so there’d be both of them to deal with this, but changed her mind when she got her first good look at Spike’s face. His eyes were wide and shocky. From second to second they changed between stages of not-quite-blue and not-quite-gold, averaging a muddy dull green. When Dawn went around the foot of the bed to take his arm, he jerked, startled and uncomprehending. Dawn got between him and the bed, interrupting his view, and that let her back him into a heavy wood armchair against the wall. A push got him down in it. She set her hands on the chair arms, boxing him there.

“Spike, breathe. You can’t talk if you don’t breathe.”

For a moment, no reaction. Then, “Right. You stay with her then. I didn’t know. You tell her I didn’t know, didn’t mean. That’s all right then.”

He was up again, pushing heedlessly past. She chased him and got to the stairs first because he’d stopped to go through his pockets. What bills and small change he came up with, he pitched on the floor, just getting rid of it, muttering on no breath. When he was sure there was no more he came on to the stairs and again seemed startled to find Dawn there, blocking the way.

“Bit, got to go now. Can’t be here.”

“First you have to tell me what’s wrong.”

He looked around to the bed and started toward it, then spun back as though he’d smacked into a disinvite spell that wouldn’t let him past. Caught between conflicting impulses, he dropped to sitting on the floor, bent forward with his arms wrapped defensively over the back of his head. He was saying something. As Dawn cautiously left her position, she thought it was No repeated compulsively over and over.

She didn’t dare sit with him because he could move faster than she could and she was quite certain if he got past her and up the stairs, she’d never see him alive again. She compromised, going down on one knee, and took good hold of his wrist so she’d have some warning if he moved. His skin seemed cold, even for a vampire. Still shaking deep inside. Really shocky.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Spike. Breathe first.”

“Well, I fed off her, didn’t I? An’ it should have been all right, tried it out an’ everything, no harm, she’ll be fine and she even said. Can’t be here. You just look after her, she’ll be fine except.”

“Except what?”

“Didn’t know it would feel like this, did I? No idea whatever. Wrong, Bit. Wrong, wrong, bloody hell, she said an’ I come up at her, just as fine as the dream, all sorts of fine an’ she’d even said but she didn’t know, not really. An’ I didn’t know, didn’t know it’d be like this, not the least fucking clue--”

“Spike, do I need to call an ambulance. Transfusion. Like before.”

“--no harm, I thought, no bloody harm. Set my mark on her like Drac, like fucking Angelus, an’ I said and she didn’t tell me no, didn’t say I wasn’t to but she didn’t know. Hurts. Hurt her again. Can’t be here when she wakes, no, can’t do that.”

Despite Dawn’s attempt to be ready, vampire agility and swiftness still took her by surprise. He was up and already on the stairs before she could rise and turn. From the sweatshirt’s front pouch she took and armed the taser. A jump and a long lunge, reaching as high and as fast as she could, she hit the back of his right leg. His fall, collapsing back down, took her legs out from under her. She flopped forward, the edges of the steps sharp and painful. Spike ended up sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. At least it was carpet and not cement, and he looked more dazed than hurt. Not knowing how long one hit would keep him down, Dawn put the business end of the taser against his throat and hit him again. His eyes rolled up white and she was reasonably sure he’d be down at least long enough to get him secured some way.

Rummaging through bureau drawers, she found a cache of silk scarves right next to a collection of thongs and panties that certainly weren’t his, even if she hadn’t known he went without. What he went without certainly wasn’t that. Forcing her eyebrows down, she grabbed a handful of the scarves with the vague recollection that the tensile strength of silk compared fairly well to that of steel cable. Considering options, she dragged another of the armchairs, easier to move than he was, out from the wall and then lifted, pushed, tipped and slid him into it, and Girl Scout training was never wasted. She knew how to find north and she could do clove hitches with her eyes shut. Bent to tie his ankle to the chair leg, she saw a different-shaped glint among the spilled change: the bike’s ignition key. She pocketed it. And as a further just-in-case, she added a square knot on top of each hitch, then took a moment to consider the result. If the chair itself held, he was there until somebody released him.

If the chair held.

She carefully lifted his head to check his eyes. Still out, OK. Having laid the taser on the floor to do the tying, she stooped to retrieve it, setting the safety before slipping it back into the sweatshirt pouch.

He’d given it to her in the Magic Box. So like him to have put one aside for her, regardless of other plans, other purposes, to keep with her at all times in case things went bad. So strange to have this be her first use of it.

Well, this was conditionally OK, should hold awhile: long enough for her to get backup.

Since there was only the one floor, it didn’t take Dawn long to find the bedrooms. She poked her head into two before she located Amanda, the most level-headed of the Potentials, and woke her, not caring whether she disturbed the two other SITs sharing the bed. Amanda would see to whatever was needed.

“’Manda. It’s important.”

“What? Oh…. Dawn?”

“You don’t recall, but you and I were good friends once, all right? You had a cocker spaniel named Dirt and he got hit by a car when you were ten and the vet said they buried him but they really didn’t, he went into the furnace. I really know.”

Sitting up and pushing the covers aside, Amanda had an all-over shudder, waking up. “OK, I got that.”

“There’s been a thing in the basement. Nobody really hurt that I can tell, but Spike’s gone all weird about it. Get who you need and get on the basement door. Whatever happens, don’t let him past you. Especially not after sunrise.” Dawn showed the taser. “I took him down with this. How long does a hit last?”

“On a human, ten, fifteen minutes depending on body mass. On a vamp, maybe half that.”

“I hit him twice.”

Amanda gave her a slow, blinking look that reminded Dawn somehow of Tara. “All right. Good. That gives us time, then.” She got up and started getting dressed. Over her shoulder she asked, “Anything else?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m going back now.”

At the door, Amanda’s voice caught her: “He knew something was coming.”

“What?”

Reaching for a T-shirt, Amanda continued thoughtfully, “Last night he said goodbye to us, or as good as. Didn’t say why, but that’s what it was. And then at the Magic Box…well, you saw. Mostly he keeps us all in his head, no problem. But he’d lost us, forgot us half the time. Couldn’t manage anything beyond one-on-one. We wondered about that, after. I don’t remember ever seeing him so distracted.” Slight quirk of an un-smile. “Not that my memory is obviously apt to win any competitions.”

“It’s OK. I just got edited out. I’ll explain later, if you want. You noticed, and I didn’t. Deduct major points for that. All I saw was him vamp-faced nearly the whole time.”

“Yeah, there’s been more of that lately. Maybe we should talk. Compare notes. After, because we both should go.”

One of the other SITs, Kim, sat up all bedheaded and yawning, asking Amanda what was up. Dawn didn’t wait any longer to get back downstairs. Spike was still out, that situation stabilized for the moment, so Dawn went to see to Buffy.

Dawn now knew what was wrong: Spike had fed on her. Since she wasn’t dead, the only question was whether Buffy would wake up, or the Slayer.

Dawn still had the taser. She’d take the Slayer down too, if necessary, until the whole thing could be sorted out. She checked her watch: just past two. Plenty of time still before daybreak.

Adults could be such idiots. And vamps. And guys in general. Spike in particular. Not to mention Slayers. Much over sixteen-and-a-half, something kicked in and rendered them all insane. The best thing would be to tie them both down and make them talk. It was all so stupid.

Sniffing and rubbing impatiently at her eyes, Dawn shoved at her sister’s shoulder.

***********

From a long way off, Buffy felt somebody trying to make her wake up, which she very much didn’t want to do. She didn’t think she’d been dreaming, not exactly. Just in some pleasant post-coital drifting place, very soft and deep. But the pest wouldn’t let her drift, pinches even, and that was really annoying but it wasn’t Spike, and who could possibly be pinching her?

She had to wake to find out, waving and slapping vaguely. It came to her dimly that it was Dawn trying to shake her to alertness, very extremely dizzy sitting up and terribly thirsty. She licked her lips and announced muzzily, “Thirsty.” Dawn let her alone, maybe to go get something for her to drink, and sometime around then Buffy realized she had no clothes on and bumped around trying to find them. She hadn’t known the track lighting worked, Spike always just used candles, and that should make things easier to find but it didn’t, far too bright and glaring. A hangover, she thought, locating her top by color on the floor by the bureau. She bumped into a chair, and Spike was in it, tied down and unconscious, and that was seriously odd but first she needed to get some clothes on, anybody might come in and find her like this, highly embarrassing.

With a shirt and a pair of the spare underwear from the top drawer, Buffy felt a little more secure--specifically, less naked--noticing in buttoning the shirt that the collar felt harsh against the side of her neck, which didn’t exactly hurt: a slight dull ache, and tingling like the beginnings of sunburn. Oversensitized somehow. She was rubbing at it when Dawn came trotting back down the stairs with a glass full of the most wonderful cold delicious orange juice Buffy had ever tasted. She finished the glass in about four long gulps and handed it back, saying, “More.”

Dawn turned and called up the stairs, “Bring the whole thing,” staying by the chair, one hand holding the glass, the other one poked into the front pouch of her sweatshirt. Below the sweatshirt, only long bare legs and sneakers. No pants. Pants were important. Certainly customary.

Buffy spotted her jogging pants by a wall-mounted cabinet and found that really extraordinarily wonderful juice she wanted more of had made some of the dizziness back off. She could bend over to retrieve the jogging pants without having to hold onto anything this time. But standing on one foot to get them on was something she wasn’t ready to attempt yet. She leaned against the cabinet, holding the jogging pants dangling in one hand and rubbing at her neck with the other.

Dawn brought more juice. Buffy drank that more slowly because it was very cold and made her sinuses twinge. And that in turn started to drive back the fog like wind off the mountains.

Her neck felt strange. That brought up a very clear image of Spike coming up at her in vamp-face and biting her. All right, that connected. And she guessed that was why he hadn’t wanted to turn for her. Why hadn’t he just explained clearly that that was part of the package? She thought over what he’d said, the other night, and in retrospect it was clear that he’d known: that was what he’d meant about it all being one thing. So why hadn’t he just said so? And knowing, why had he changed his mind? And why had somebody tied him down to a chair like the worst of the bad old days?

Putting the empty glass on a small cabinet, Buffy wandered back to the chair and started undoing the top knot holding one of Spike’s wrists. Another hand closed around hers and stopped her. Frowning, Buffy looked up, wondering why Dawn was getting in the way.

“He freaked,” Dawn said bluntly. “Totally lost it. Until you tell him you’re not mad, assuming you’re not, I wouldn’t trust him anywhere near an open door in the daytime. Some way, you got to make this right with him, Buffy.”

Buffy’s head cleared still further, and her frown intensified. “I have to make it right with him? Explain that to me, please. I’m the one who got turned into a midnight snack.”

“All right, I’ll put it a different way. Which is more important to you: getting snacked on a little, because you’re certainly not dead here and it didn’t have to be that way, or Spike? The man is out of his fucking mind about this, Buffy, and I mean that literally. Out. Of. His. Fucking. Mind.”

Buffy wondered if Dawn had always been this much of a pain. Probably. Although Buffy lacked details, the feeling of wanting to crush her like a bug seemed very familiar.

Absently, she asked, “Did I used to wash out your mouth with soap a lot?”

“Never.” Suddenly Dawn’s face crumpled and she was crying, which Buffy found uncomfortably upsetting. “Nor Mom either. But Mom was gone before I needed to learn Spike-speak. I miss Mom. She never wanted to hurt him. Except for the axe, and that was like forever ago and she didn’t know him then.”

“Mom never knew him. Not really. And why do you think I want to hurt him?”

“You mean you don’t?” Dawn asked, suspicious and hopeful.

“Snacking is out. Biting of any sort is out of bounds, if it involves teeth. Fangs. Way out.”

Dawn smeared snot across her face with a fist and lifted her chin challengingly. “Did you ever tell him so? In so many words?”

The fact was that she hadn’t. Such things didn’t need to be actually said, it was ridiculous. But she hadn’t, that was true.

“He knew,” Buffy said flatly and with certainty. “But I’m willing to call it an accident. Maybe. Really bad communications. And nothing new about that.”

Spike could talk for five minutes before he’d cough up the noun, the thing he was actually talking about. And there was also the fact that she’d asked him to show her. Dumb maybe. Ignorant. But she had asked him. And he had insisted on the scarves.

And there was always the fact that she had this thing for vampires. A certain amount of potential biteyness inherent in that. A certain built-in Land Shark potential.

At least he hadn’t lost his soul and decided to kill everybody she cared about.

So far.

God, she hated it that things got so complicated!

Her sister, whom she didn’t know and who might not even be human anymore, was all wound up in dread that she’d stake her boyfriend, a vampire. What’s wrong with this picture? Buffy thought.

“OK, conditionally, an accident. So why’s he in the chair? What’s the matter with him?”

Dawn showed a wincing face and hands hesitantly flapping at shoulder level. “I tasered him a little. Twice. To keep him from leaving. Thus the chair, ditto. You got to talk to him, Buffy. He was waaay beyond upset. It was really hard getting anything out of him because he kept forgetting to breathe.”

“OK, I get the picture.” Buffy decided that if she held onto the back of the chair with one hand, she might attempt the jogging pants with the other. She searched for the label that would tell her which side was the back. “All right, Dawn, you rang the big bell and the cavalry is here now. Your presence is no longer required. Time for the grown-ups.”

“Triple no! Quadruple no! You’re not the cavalry, I am. And I’m here for the duration. Not budging here! And if you go all Slayer on me, I’ll…I’ll make you sorry!”

At last all pantsed and secure, Buffy folded her arms. “Dawn. Out.”

“No squared! No cubed and whatever is beyond cubed double tripled!”

“No French toast for you. But I certainly know you’re my sister. Same great vocabulary skills. Go upstairs, at least.”

“No. Really. Sorry, but I don’t trust either of you right now not to screw things all up. I’m staying. Just consider me your friendly neighborhood referee. With a taser.” And Dawn had the gall to display it, with very slight embarrassment, on the flat of her hand. And Buffy thought she’d really use it: after all, she’d used it on demigod of Hotness Spike. She wouldn’t scruple for bedraggled through-the-wringer permanent wrinkle Buffy.

Agreeing tacitly to the standoff, Dawn tucked hand and taser back into the sweatshirt pouch, and Buffy tried to determine how much longer Spike was apt to be out, before they could get this settled.

**********

Spike had been listening to them bicker for what seemed quite awhile. Dawn’s voice, and Buffy’s. So that was all right then. She was, anyway. Dismiss that, then. Maybe he could have moved. Hadn’t tried. Didn’t care.

Most of it had played out about as he’d expected. What he hadn’t expected was how it hurt. Nothing as distinct as a headache. Nothing that seemed to have any limit or a foreseeable end. Just absolute wrenching wretchedness so that continuing one more minute seemed a complete and utter waste of time. Fetch Dawn to see to her and then get out, go anywhere, set a fire, something. Not even wait for the sunrise, what was the point of that? Just go. Be done.

Had to be the soul.

Mostly he’d been indifferent to it. It had been the thing apparently required of him, so he’d done it, stuck it out, gotten the damn thing. A very few times, maybe twice, he’d taken some small obscure pride in it because it seemed to mean something to the Scoobys. Even Giles. Even Buffy occasionally seemed impressed and didn’t beat him up nearly as often as before. Accepted him as the official acknowledged boyfriend cum enforcer, which he’d never thought she would. Do Angel one in the eye, whenever he chanced to find out. Seemed a good idea at the time.

Hadn’t liked the craziness much, everything all stirred up and unsettled, the two souls, human and demon, having it out back and forth, but he’d thought they’d pretty much finished that, settled the boundaries, declared a truce or some such, some months back. Figured the soul was nothing much he had to take into account anymore, like the dysfunctional chip.

Well, he’d been wrong. And if this was the way it was going to be, he just wanted it ended. He was so fucking sick of being wrong, and yet he’d had no idea doing something perfectly sensible could make him feel wrong not just to others, which he was used to, but to himself. That was a whole different thing. Then you had noplace at all to stand and noplace to retreat to.

He’d had his turn at playing by the human rules, being mostly polite and patient with everybody no matter what kind of idiots they were. So what, if none of it was actually real or made any sense. He could learn the rules and do that, at least for awhile. Do the required tricks, what everybody seemed to want and accept from him. When that got old, it wasn’t much to let go, do another thing. He’d shed skins before and always traveled light. Nothing he had that he couldn’t do without. Except for Buffy. And except for Dawn. So he’d stayed with the tricks longer than he could actually bear.

But seeing the end of that coming, he’d planned out how it should go, a way Buffy could shed herself of him and be pretty much reconciled, figure she was right and get on with it with no great regrets. He’d told Giles: he’d lose it on his own terms before he’d let Angel take it all away. Hadn’t quite figured out Dawn yet, how to see to her, but he’d thought a way would come to him, only could do so many things at a time.

But if he couldn’t even be a proper vampire anymore, if the tricks and the rules and now the awful gut-wrenching misery when he broke them was all there was, then that was it, there was nothing left worth staying for.

A hundred, a thousand times worse than the chip.

No wonder so few vampires got souls. Far fewer than humans who drank poison on purpose. Vampires had more sense. Himself excepted, of course.

**********

After about half an hour, Buffy knocked on Spike’s forehead. “I know you’re in there. No point hiding, Spike. And no need. If I was gonna dust you, I would have done it already.”

His eyes opened. More than anything, he looked bored. As if he wasn’t really paying attention. A look that said Yeah, what is it now? and didn’t really care about the answer.

Buffy went on, “Just to get it said: no more biting. Ever. All right?”

“Sure. Get me loose of this now.”

“I’m willing to call it an accident, it was a little more than, than either of us expected,” Buffy said, uncomfortably aware of Dawn behind her, “and things got a little out of hand. But nobody’s dead, and I guess it was a bad idea. Very bad idea, but I didn’t know. And now I do.”

“Good you got that settled. Get this off me.”

Buffy was reminded of the first stage of the trip down to L.A. He’d made noises like he was actually there but he really wasn’t. A whole different scenario playing out for him than anything she’d known or could have known.

Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to take off the restraints just yet. Until she was sure he was really here and not off someplace inside his head.

Dawn had picked up on it too because she came and knelt at the side of the chair. She pushed her hand under Spike’s and clasped it but she might as well have been holding the chair arm. His fingers didn’t move and he didn’t look at her.

Dawn said to him, “I bet it’s the soul. Isn’t it.” Then he looked at her. Just a flick of a glance. Dawn said, “I thought so. What’s it doing now?”

“Doesn’t matter. Get this off me.”

“So you can do what?” Dawn said, about as sympathetic as a pointed stick.

“Doesn’t matter. Just do it.”

When nobody moved to untie him, the chair creaked. With steady, almost invisible force, no straining or yanking, he was pushing his arms outward. One of the chair arms cracked off the back and then off where it connected to the seat. That arm, of his, completely free although still attached to the wood. Dawn showed him the taser: practically under his nose. And they stared at each other.

With that free arm, he could have broken her in pieces or simply whacked her into a wall. Maybe Buffy could have stopped him but probably not, probably not until after. And they all knew that. And then they all knew that he didn’t because he couldn’t and Dawn’s taser therefore was the power here.

Dawn said steadily, “Don’t make me do you again. What do you need, to talk to me, Spike?”

He began picking out the knot in the scarf binding his right wrist. Then he slid that scarf off and dropped it. It took him a little longer to undo the scarf from his left wrist, which let the broken chair arm fall.

He said, “You do me if you want. Doesn’t matter. Don’t care.”

“What’s the soul doing, Spike.”

They were, Buffy thought, going after each other like a couple of vampires. No softness, no give. Absolutely relentless. Suddenly Buffy couldn’t listen to that anymore. She leaned past Dawn, leaned past the taser, put her arms around his back and gathered him in. For awhile she was holding him. Then indefinably that changed and he was being held, too. A different way his weight rested, maybe. Something she simply felt and knew. After a longer while, he started breathing and bent his head against her shoulder, and his spread hands settled on the small of her back.

“Can’t do this no more.”

Dawn prompted, “Do what, Spike?”

“None of this. All the sense run out of it. Doesn’t none of it make sense.”

And Buffy understood that perfectly. She knew exactly how that felt. The time after her resurrection, when he’d been all she could hang onto and all she could afford to hit. When he’d been absolutely the only thing that made any sense at all.

From that realization she told him softly, “We’re the sense. It’s noplace if it isn’t here. Do we still make sense to you.” That he didn’t answer didn’t necessarily mean no. She understood that too. She thought, and said, “Way out on the far edge of nothing, where it’s all dark except for the fires.”

That was what she’d come into, after clawing her way out of her grave. That was what it had looked like: the streets, empty except for the nightmare bikers. When she’d been certain this was hell.

He murmured, “I can’t be but what I am. And that’s a vampire. Never gonna be nothing different from that. And if that’s wrong, I’m wrong, and there’s no mending it. Don’t know how to do, anymore. None of it. Dunno how to be that wrong.”

Buffy took that thought and turned it: was it possible for there to be a right way to be a vampire? And if there wasn’t, if just being meant being wrong, how the hell could anybody live like that?

She thought, You came back wrong. Yeah, she knew a whole catalogue about how it felt to believe you were fundamentally wrong.

She told him, “I see part of it. Give us time and we’ll see the rest of it. You can’t be wrong because you’re the one I want. And I wouldn’t want you the same, or as much, if you weren’t a vampire. I know that. So that much makes sense to me. There has to be a good way for you to be. And still be a vampire. What you are. Keep on a little longer and we’ll find it. I promise.”

“All right.”

He didn’t believe her. But that was good enough for now. That was enough, she thought, to keep him out of the daylight.

She asked, “You gonna help with the patrol tonight?”

Long silence. “Yeah. That comes next. Figured to do that.”

Nothing if not persistent, Dawn asked, “What’s the soul doing, Spike?”

“Dunno. Hurts. I think…it hates me.”

Chapter Eleven: Working Conditions

Ending the hall watch developed into a conference and then into a proposition. Then a deputation had to run back to Casa Summers to summon and work out any disagreements, pretty much like the Senate and the House except that the numbers were about even between the two troops. Not too bad for half past three in the morning, in Dawn’s opinion.

Bouncing two steps down the basement stairs, Dawn called, “Everybody decent?”

Simultaneously Buffy’s and Spike’s voices replied respectively, Yes and No, and both of them sounded irascible, which Dawn interpreted as matters being about as she’d left them. She nodded an all-clear back to everybody in the hall and then trotted the rest of the way.

At the bottom she tried for a pleasantly neutral, noncommittal expression, but it was hard because they were going to totally freak, both of them, and she couldn’t wait to see their faces when they heard it. Meanwhile the SITs, all twenty-seven of them, were coming down behind her.

The far end of the basement was fitted out with that suburban necessity, a conversation pit, probably as compensation for having no hot tub. Two big curved couches and a smaller one, all in shades of sage with blue piping, set into a lowered circle about eight feet across. Dawn had noticed it earlier. So she’d named it as the mark, and all the SITs went there and found places to sit on the couches or the carpeted edges except for Amanda, who stayed by Dawn, as was appropriate for the chosen spokesman. Spokesperson. Speaker of the Law. Whatever.

Peering cautiously into the bed end of the basement and finding Buffy and Spike both standing there reasonably clothed, whatever they might have been doing before Dawn called, Amanda said, “We want to talk to you.”

Buffy responded a little skeptically, “All right,” and started toward the designated gathering place.

Not budging, Spike said flatly, “What about?”

“Come and find out,” Amanda replied, which was exactly right because you shouldn’t reward him when he was being tiresome. Dawn entirely approved.

It pleased her to see that SITs had learned to manage him a hell of a lot better than Buffy ever had. Different baggage, probably. And a lot less of it.

Not hopping or bouncing, maintaining a dignified expression, Dawn circled the pit and found a cabinet to perch on because she figured to be just audience. The SITs had to make the running on this because it was their idea. She’d just been the resource person.

The assembled SITs, in their colorful variety of long sleep shirts, baby dolls, and pj’s, and lots and lots of long bare legs, suggested a parliament of Playboy bunnies in one of Xander’s more X-rated dreams, except that none wore makeup and had tense, cranky wee hours expressions that presumably didn’t figure in that sort of dream.

The smallest sofa had been left vacant for the Honored Leaders. Beginning to look nervous, Buffy had known enough to sit in the appointed place. Pulling on one of his black T-shirts in transit, looking wary and mean, Spike naturally sat on the floor in front of the loveseat, even though there was plenty of space for him next to Buffy and it would have been so much cuter that way. But would he do that? Oh, no, Mr. Bill, he had to be freakin’ independent and mistrust anything that was so obviously a set up.

Well, he’d find out.

Settling on the carpeted rim of the pit opposite the loveseat, Amanda folded her hands on her knees and opened the proceedings.

“Slayer, you’ve taken us in and taken responsibility for us, and we appreciate that. But you don’t own us. And some things, we have to decide for ourselves now.” Following that startling opening, which left Buffy looking rather alarmed, Amanda said to Spike, “You call us children. I hope you know we’re not. We’re the best fighters you could make of us in the time we’ve had, and some of us are gonna die, and we all know that. So let’s cut the ‘children’ crap, all right?”

Crap, from Amanda, constituted serious swearing.

Not unlike a sullen dog crouched at Buffy’s feet, Spike didn’t comment, waiting to hear the noun.

So Amanda went on in the same blunt fashion, which was how you had to talk to Spike for him to pay any attention, “When you said goodbye to us last night, where did you think you were going?”

“’Manda, I don’t see that’s any of your fucking business.” When Buffy kicked his back, Spike looked around at her. “Well, ’s’not.”

Buffy told him, “I’d like to hear the answer to that, too.”

Thus suitably ganged up on, Spike took a minute to view first Buffy, then Amanda, with about equal suspicion, then said, “Figured to stay for the patrol, if that’s what you mean. Wasn’t gonna duck out on that.”

“Actually,” said Amanda, “we’d already figured that. No, that’s not what I’m asking you. Things have been done a certain way here for a while now. Two troops. Casa Summers and Casa Spike. And nobody objected because it mostly seemed to be working OK that way, except that the Casa Summers troop mostly got handed the boring, sucky patrols and we got the good exciting ones.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Buffy started to protest.

“Excuse me, Slayer, but our business is with Spike. If you want to say something when I’m done, you can have a turn then.”

“What is this all about?” Buffy demanded.

Not backing off an inch, which was exactly the way you had to do it, Amanda replied, “We’ve been discussing this for a while. All of us. We have some ideas about how things could be better. And we’re entitled because it’s our lives here. Some choices, nobody else gets to make for us. Now back to the point. Where did you figure to go, Spike? After the patrol.”

“All right,” Spike decided. “To the cousins. For awhile, anyway.”

“What?” Buffy exploded, though this time without kicking him.

“Would have still turned out for the patrols, an’ all. Just need to get back where I know how to do without having to think it all out every bloody minute. An’ then wrong anyway, for all that. Can’t do that no more. I told you.”

Addressing the back of his head, Buffy demanded, “You were gonna leave?”

“Yeah. Be my own dog for awhile. Didn’t think you’d have much objection.”

Dawn heard what he didn’t say: After tonight.

Buffy’s hand flew significantly to her neck at the realization that the snacking hadn’t been accidental, spontaneous, or reflexive.

Dawn thought her original idea of tying them both down and making them talk still had been the best. According to Spike’s admittedly incoherent blurt, he’d expressed a wish to “set his mark” on Buffy, and Buffy had made no objection. What had Buffy thought he meant? What else could it mean if your vampire boyfriend said he wanted to set his mark on you? He was gonna give you his team jacket instead of a really severe hickey?

So here’s Spike, thinking that he’s asked and been given consent, and here’s Buffy freaking and sending Spike off the deep end. Totally ridiculous.

Sometimes Dawn wondered if they ever actually communicated at all.

Amanda and Kim had agreed: adults were insane.

“Proceeding,” Amanda said rather loudly before a quarrel of really major and embarrassingly intimate proportions could break out, “Spike, what’s the worst thing about pigs’ blood?”

He frowned at her as though she’d sprouted a second head. “What?”

“What’s the worst thing about pigs’ blood? The taste? Something about pigs? What?”

“Well, it’s dead, innit?” Spike responded with obvious sincere revulsion.

“Hadn’t thought about it that way--that what we eat is dead,” Amanda reflected. “But that’s true. Even vegetables. They’re dead. Anything cooked is dead. Sprouts? Never mind.” She shook the thought off. “So once the blood’s been processed, sitting in a plastic jug in the refrigerator, it’s no good anymore.”

“Well, it hasn’t actually coagulated,” Spike commented with about the expression somebody else might show contemplating day-old road kill. “Blood can be deader than that. But not much. Imagine, you lot, eatin’ dead rats raw. Every day. Keep you alive, that would. But it’d hardly seem worth it. You can cover the taste, mostly. But can’t do nothing about the fact it’s dead. Really putrid stuff.”

“OK, the food around here is really terrible. What are the other problems? What else would you want different, to be willing to stay?”

“No point goin’ on about it.” Spike sounded less wary and defensive, more fed-up and exhausted. “Nothing’s gonna change.”

“You changed for us. We’re willing to change, for you to stay. But we don’t know what’s bad if you don’t tell us. Who knew how much you hated pigs’ blood until now? I hate lima beans, but it’s not a big thing, I can eat something else. For you, blood is it. That’s important. Everybody knows you don’t like pigs’ blood. But nobody knew it was borderline nauseating and spoiled! How would we know, Spike? Did you ever say so?”

“No,” Spike said, after a minute, soberly, “I never did. Didn’t see any point.”

Over on the far side, JoAnne burst out, “Give us some credit here, Spike. You think you can tell us fifty dozen times that to those vamps we’ll be patrolling with, we’re just lunch, and we don’t know that’s you too? You think that we don’t know you’re not just some guy, you’re a vampire? That we don’t know that you’re so goddam homesick for it, or however you’d call it, that it’s barely worth you putting on the mask anymore pretending otherwise?”

In a deadly voice, Spike said, “Which of you children has complaint against me for how you been treated?”

Waving down voices of the other SITs protesting, Amanda shot back, “Nobody, Spike! Nobody. All right? You’re not hearing us. Nobody at all is criticizing you here. Just the opposite. We need you and don’t want you forced out by, by ignorant neglect. OK, leave the other issues aside for the moment. Just stay with the one thing. And we’re not children. Get rid of that habit. The past week or so, we’ve been talking about cooperation between us and vamps against a common enemy. That’s a basis for cooperation--enough to try. Right? Slayer?”

“Yeah,” Buffy said. “It at least seems worth a try.”

“Spike?”

“Yeah. So?”

“That’s what we already have, Spike. You and us. And it’s worked. Last night you told us you’d taught us the best you knew, and we all really believe that. We’re good, and we know it, and it’s because you’ve been teaching us. Training us. We’re good because you’re good. And we want to keep going with it. All of us. No more crap about your troop and the Slayer’s troop. Buffy, half the day you’re at work, and then there’s patrol most evenings. When is there time for you to put in a six-hour training session with your troop, like we have every day? There’s not enough of you to go around. That’s not a criticism, that’s a fact. Spike has a job too, but it doesn’t start until midnight and it’s only four days a week. The rest of the time, he’s teaching us. General sessions and individual training, whatever’s needed. Full time. It’s come to the point that half the people in Slayer troop are sneaking over here every morning to get in on the weapons drill. Because how else are they gonna learn? Spike, you can divide us up any way you want, but it’s all the SITs. Who in the Slayer’s troop wants to resign and be just the SITs, training with Spike? Show of hands.”

Nine, and then eleven, and then thirteen hands went up--some defiantly, some apologetically, some sneaking barely shoulder high but still up. Unanimous.

“I try to make time,” Buffy commented plaintively. She looked as though she couldn’t decide between being indignant, defensive, or relieved.

Amanda soothed, “Everybody knows you do. But it’s not practical, and it’s not working. It’s time somebody said so and did something about it. With this new arrangement, Spike, the food gets better. Effective immediately. Us.” Amanda did a slow wave indicating all the SITs gathered around. “Since Dawn is the only one who’s ever bothered to find out what a vampire needs per day on average, Dawn helped us run the numbers. And it’s doable. There’s twenty-seven of us. All healthy. About a pint in rotation, every couple of weeks, isn’t gonna do the least harm to anybody. You take care of us and we’ll take care of you.”

It was the moment Dawn had been waiting for: when they understood the offer. While Buffy gaped like a fish, Spike handled the revelation by going after his cigarettes, away off by the bed, lighting one, and leisurely returning with an ashtray, dropping back into his former place. Keeping his face and his reaction to himself. Typical. Poker habit, probably.

The first thing Buffy found to say was, “You can’t.”

“We can,” Amanda contradicted. “And we will. Everybody has agreed.”

“Spike--?” Buffy began in an ominous tone.

Not looking around, Spike responded, “Slayer.”

“Did you put them up to this?”

“First I heard about it. But you don’t have to take my word on it: ask ‘em.”

Kennedy stood up. “It was my idea.” As usual, she was frowning, but still composed. “We need what he has. He needs what we have. It seems like a fair exchange. I thought about it and we started talking it over a few days after that business at the airport.”

It was in rescuing Kennedy from her own arrogant stupidity, almost six weeks ago, that Spike had effectively burned both his hands off.

Buffy was back to making fish faces, and Spike was regarding Kennedy thoughtfully, because everybody knew Kennedy didn’t even like Spike. So this being her idea immediately deflated a good many counter-arguments.

More quietly, seriously, Buffy said to Amanda again, “You can’t.”

“Yes. We can. This isn’t up to you, Slayer.”

Spike tapped his cigarette on the ashtray. “Yes it is. ‘Cause nothing don’t happen here without her say-so.” Then he gave Amanda a calm, level look that said this was not negotiable.

Nobody had foreseen this problem. Kennedy sat down, and Amanda and Dawn traded a semi-panicked look.

Deciding it was Amanda who needed backup this time, Dawn slid off the cabinet and went to stand behind to her: the designated sister. “Why not, Buffy?”

“Well, because biting people and drinking their blood is wrong!”

“Sez who?” Dawn responded, and folded her arms.

“Everybody knows it’s wrong!”

“Everybody minus how many? Show of hands.”

All twenty-seven hands went up. Actually twenty-nine, because Dawn put her hand up and Kim stuck up both of hers. Spike conspicuously did not vote, but Dawn considered that a discreet abstention.

Dawn said, “Buffy, vampires bite people and are sustained by live blood. Notice I said live. That’s part of the definition of what a vampire is, Buffy. That’s what they do. What they are. What they need. If you have an objection to this fundamental need of vampire metabolism, you’re in a minority here, you might notice.” Dawn had no scruples against heavy-handed hinting, and was pleased to see Buffy’s hand again go to the side of her neck where a new white quick-healed mark was apparent if you looked really hard. That gave her a matching set, with the bite-mark from Angel on the opposite side.

Amanda said earnestly, “Please, Buffy. We need him to stay. We need to change things so he can. Nobody’s being unreasonable about this. It’s a workable arrangement.”

And Dawn asked Spike, “Does this make sense to you?”

He considered, quite soberly. “Could. Could do. Maybe.”

Buffy muttered something, and Amanda said, “What?”

“One for the Boogey Man Credo, I said. Giles will go stratospheric. We’ll need a telescope…. All right. One week trial. And if anybody objects, this stops.”

“No,” said Dawn, “if anybody objects, they drop out of the rotation. As long as there are enough in the rotation to make it work, the arrangement stands.”

“And who says if there are enough?” Buffy challenged.

“I do,” said Spike. “Because I’m the only one who knows. If you children are willing to abide by it, so am I. An’ I’m not gonna quit calling you children, so get used to it. By my standards, you’re all of you children. Slayer?”

At last he looked around, and Buffy’s hand came down from her neck to rest on his shoulder. They were looking at each other, faces maybe a foot apart. “All right. One week trial, agreed. Because I…really don’t want him to leave either. Spike, are you sure you didn’t set this up?”

Spike only smiled.

**********

In hastily convened mass-SIT session in the front room of Casa Spike about an hour before sunrise, it was initially felt that Kennedy should be first to try the new arrangement, since it’d been her idea. But to really nobody’s surprise, Kennedy wasn’t all that eager. For her, it was clearly a matter of principle taking priority over strong personal preference. Not only did she not want to give the required report, but there was the whole guy thing, and the Spike himself thing, and apparently several other things that she didn’t want to discuss. She’d take her turn when it came but didn’t want to be first.

Dawn would have volunteered, but she wasn’t a SIT and it just wouldn’t have looked good, after Buffy, which everybody now knew about but had agreed not to discuss in public. About like the sex, which occasionally was noisy beyond anybody’s ability to ignore. Particularly Buffy. But sometimes Spike. Just one of the less appealing perks of living at Casa Spike. The SITs dealt.

Amanda raised her eyebrows and made a wincing, woeful face like a Kabuki mask. “So I guess I’m it.”

Dawn hurried to reassure her. “It’s a token: I’m certain he’s not really hungry right now. And besides, Buffy will be there, watching for anything even vaguely approaching hanky-panky. Like the proverbial hawk, you can believe it. And I’m really sure Spike doesn’t want to scare you!”

“Yeah. I guess. Like the striking distance drill, only for real. OK, no fainting. I’ll just be mortified to death if I faint. No fainting.”

Chubby, solid Kim in yellow baby dolls shoved past and trudged down the hall. About half the SITs came out or leaned out to watch. At the top of the stairs, Kim turned to remark, “If you faint, everybody will freak, ‘Manda. I’ll do it. I haven’t been running around sans bra for the past month like some people I might name. Not built for it. I suggest a permanent moratorium on that, if anybody cares. It’s vile.” Then she stomped down the stairs, making as much noise as possible.

She didn’t stomp, coming back a few minutes later. While everybody stared, Kim grinned, taking obvious pleasure in making them wait. Then she tilted her head, pointed, and turned a full rotation, to make sure everybody had a chance to see the two fang marks over the big artery right behind the hinge of her jaw.

They all gathered around.

Peering, Suzanne remarked, “Just like in the movies. Awesome.”

“No blood or anything,” Amanda noted, looking hugely relieved, as was natural because seeing or smelling blood generally made her throw up. She was fine against vamps but against Bringers, not so much.

“He’s neat,” Kim agreed.

“Did it hurt?” Rona asked anxiously.

“Nah. On a scale of ten, not even a one. You can hardly feel it. Kind of tingles, as much as anything. And kind of numb, too. If somebody’s that curious, they can ask him why it doesn’t hurt worse because I’m not gonna. Dawn, you want to know that bad?”

“I’ll think about it,” Dawn commented, and added smugly, “I can ask him anything.”

“Yeah, well, there’s things I don’t particularly want to know that much about. And afterward, he licks you.”

“Oh, ick,” said somebody in the back.

“No ick,” contradicted Kim. “Not the least ick. Seals it up, he said. All tidy, he said. He was real nice about it, looked me in the eyes and everything. Serious. Trying real hard not to be scary, just like you said, Dawn.” Kim hitched a shoulder. “‘Course, I knew that anyway. He knows how to be nice. After all, this is a kind of a business arrangement. So not too nice, if you get what I mean. Slayer was looking absolute daggers. But he was cool about it.”

“Punnage! Punnage!” Gail chimed in, while several people groaned.

“My turn next,” said Sue avidly. “When’s next?”

“I’ll make up a roster,” said Dawn.

“No, I will,” said Amanda. “This is SIT business.” To soften what might otherwise have seemed a snub, Amanda hugged her. “You were terrific: you stood right up to her!”

Dawn shrugged with elegant casualness. “Sisters are useful for that sometimes.”

**********

Buffy had stayed on the loveseat while Spike took his little careful chaste nip at Kim and sent her on her way. No squeals of delight. No cinematic swoons. About the heat level of pecking your visiting ancient maiden aunt on the cheek. Buffy still didn’t like it, not one bit, and would never be completely convinced he hadn’t somehow connived with the SITs to pull off this minor mutiny.

And Giles’ reaction didn’t even bear thinking about. He’d go into cardiac arrest. And after that, he’d start talking and the tirade he’d given Willow over the irresponsible use of magic would recede into memory as a happy chat. Maybe he wouldn’t find out.

Sure, right.

Sure, no swoons. But no exclamations of horror and revulsion, either. And why had squeals of delight been the first dire possibility that had leaped into Buffy’s mind? Just too many dumb Lugosi and Christopher Lee movies? Media mind-wipe?

That reflection started her rethinking matters very soberly.

Spike had conspicuously found things to fiddle with, kick around, and do in the middle of the room as a pretext for not returning. From time to time he’d absently rub the side of his neck: probably where Dawn had tasered him. More than once, Buffy caught them both performing the same gesture at the same time, which was really absurd.

“If this biting business is so freaking natural, why’d you go all hysterical afterward?” Buffy demanded.

He looked around, answering simply, “’Cause I’d hurt you.”

“What’d you expect--I was gonna enjoy it?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. Been known to happen.”

“Exactly what is your basis of comparison?”

He shook his head, barely a smile. “No, you don’t get me to go there. Expected you to disapprove. Afterward. Never thought you’d take it as any harm. I--” He threw away any attempt at further explanation with a flip of his hand, circling off again.

He did that when he gave up, Buffy thought then. When he despaired of her understanding and gave up trying.

“C’mere,” Buffy said, very seriously, and got a wary, spooked look as reply. Buffy was thinking of Dawn’s saying that he’d been hard to understand because he’d kept forgetting to breathe. She’d never seen him as totally freaked as that. Spike without words was unthinkable. To him, it hadn’t been a scheme or a careless mistake. It’d come very near to being a catastrophe.

It was like algebra, or trig, or some other very hard thing for Buffy to not only realize everybody didn’t see the same world the same way but to imagine actually being somebody else and seeing that different way. Specifically, to be Spike. See things as he did. Even trying made her feel cross-eyed and dizzy. But sometimes, she could imagine. Sometimes she could connect, even after he’d given up.

“Come on. I want to ask you something. Nothing bad. No hitting.”

And she thought then what a good and sustaining thing it was that whenever she truly asked, he would hardly ever refuse her. He came and settled on the floor, the way he’d been before: backing her up against the SITs. Not only leaving the choice to her but insisting nobody had the choice except her.

Head bent, Spike told her, “I expect I told you some time or another, but I never been with anybody but Dru--yeah, and Harmony, her too--like I am with you. Just vamps. So sometimes I make mistakes, an’ I don’t mean to. Never thought there’d be any harm in it. Just that you wouldn’t think it was right. Wouldn’t approve afterward. ‘S’why I wouldn’t show you, first time you asked. Thought you’d…think the worse of me, or yourself, or something, on that account. Didn’t mean no harm though.”

“Spike, without even trying I can recall ten, a dozen times we did something together really off the wall…sometimes actually involving walls…and afterward I’d turn around and go all ‘Get thee behind me’ and blame it all on you. I would have denied I was even there, if I could, much less denied I’d enjoyed it. About the only time I didn’t was that once I was invisible…. So there’s precedent. For you expecting me to act that way. But we’re trying a new thing here. Don’t assume I’m quite as predictable as you think I am.”

He gave one of those shaky laughs that twisted Buffy up inside. “No fear, love. You never stop surprising me. Likely never will, neither.”

All the surprises hadn’t been good. It wasn’t what he’d said or maybe even meant. But it was true.

“And how’s the soul at the moment?”

“Still hurts. Still tryin’ to poison me for being such a wretched git as to hurt you.” A self-mocking, bitter chuckle. “Just the usual, I s’pose.”

Buffy leaned forward and hugged him, both as reassurance and to keep him there, and laid her cheek against his hair. “Tell me honestly: did you like it? Is that something that feels good to you?”

“You’re joking.”

“No. Not even a little.”

He pulled out of her embrace, to swing around and look at her fully. “You-- I can’t believe-- Well, I guess you don’t. It’s very fine, love. Dunno how to say it except that. Only once before did I ever feed from a Slayer. An’ no, I wasn’t fucking her at the time, neither. First one I killed. It was a brilliant fight, and I won, and I drank her. Afterward I lived off the memory of that…well, up till tonight, actually. Never knew anything to compare. An’ now there’ll never be anything, ever, to compare to what this was, this one time, an’ no death in it now between us--only joy. For me anyway. Couldn’t wish for better.” Spike laid his arms across her lap and bent his head on them. Couldn’t speak of such an enormous joy without touching her.

“Well, I’ll tell you something if you promise not to tell Giles.”

“What, love.”

“Until I started thinking how horrified I should be, and all the reasons my forty thousand closest friends would all be horrified and disgusted, and Giles would be horrified and have me committed….before all that got in the way…it felt very fine to me. Too. And I’m dying of shame here, admitting that. Not exactly shame--embarrassment, awkwardness, confusion…. Sometimes…I lie to myself about what I feel. But I don’t know that’s what I’m doing until later. Sometimes much later…. It’s been hard for me to accept there are things we do, that I like, and we like, that I would never ever dare admit to anybody. Except you. Because in that, you’re the only one that matters. Discovering oral sex, for instance--when I actually had to do anything--was a thing I thought I’d never accept. Too horrible and repulsive, nobody could possibly expect me to do that! Which attitude has, you may have noticed, slightly moderated over time….

“So I’m trying really hard here not to lie to myself and certainly not to you, because…because it’s important, that’s all. There’s no rules for what we are, together. Or for what we do. Never a Slayer and a vampire together, the way we are, or else it’s been very thoroughly hushed up…. We have to make it up as we go. And sometimes, figure it out…. So it was. Very fine. Scary and unexpected and waaay overwhelming, but fine. Underwhelming not a virtue here. So you practice on your SITs and nobody better get dead or too happy, and we’ll put this aside for a while until I can…make my peace with it. But sometime again. Sometime, that will be OK. And more than OK, it’s huge and strange and scary. But that’s part of it, always--the scary stuff. The stuff you have to trust me for, or the stuff I have to trust you for, that would be real bad without the trust. World-famous trapeze act with no safety net…. I know I’m gonna dream about it. And it won’t be scary in a dream because then it’s all allowed.”

After awhile he said, “There’s been times when loving you has been a curse even my worst enemy wouldn’t have wished on me. And then there are the times when it’s as close as I can imagine to a blessing. An’ one time like this, it makes up for all the rest.”

Buffy wished she could say back to him what loving him was like. She still didn’t have those words to say. But she thought she was closer than she’d been.

Maybe not now, not yet, she thought. But sometime.

Chapter Twelve: Patrol

Under other circumstances, Spike would have started drinking and not quit until he passed out. Just too much to deal with. Some of the things brilliant and splendid, and some so awful that his mind shied away even while their effects kept hitting him like the end of a bad fight when you couldn’t see the blows coming anymore and only knew when the next one knocked you crooked and staggering.

He watched Buffy dealing out weapons from the chest. The children were all about, coming and going, so he made himself wait until only the last few were left. That was long enough. He released himself to her, clove fast, kissed her hard and hungry, for all they’d spent the whole morning shagging like minks till he couldn’t tell where he left off and she began and didn’t want to, neither.

“Could do you right here,” he told her when he quit to let her breathe. And his demon wanted to. Hell with the children. Hell with the patrol. He could smell the morning all over her and wanted her again and still.

She took what breath she needed very quick and came back at him, her mouth a furnace of heat. All of her, scalding right through the clothes.

But there wasn’t time, and they both knew it, so they held back from utterly scandalizing the children, who’d cleared out fast anyhow. Not neither of them inclined to stop, breathing hard, except that time was too short to have another proper go that wouldn’t change or ease anything anyway.

“Tell me again,” he asked her, very soft.

“Didn’t hurt me. Just scared me. No: it scared me, you didn’t. Just too much, too strong. And too strange for me to deal, right away.” Buffy thumped him on the chest, demanding in a fierce whisper, “Stupid soul, leave him alone!”

But the soul still paid no heed, kept telling him he was wrong, and had hurt her, even though he knew, and she said, he’d done no such thing. All still confused and contrary and all running on the supercharged Slayer blood, so strong that he was pushed past his limits and felt as if he might shake himself to pieces.

He tried to make the same distinction as she had: it didn’t make any sense. But she did. All sorts of good sense and simple, powerful connections. He tried to hold to that and shove the other away.

But there was too much of the other to do that for long. The despairing panic, the wish to just be gone never mind how, that hadn’t been changed, only set aside, suppressed. Every now and again, it erupted nearly as strong as before and blindsided him. And like everything else it was powered, it ran roaring, on the Slayer blood.

Like swallowing down the living heart of heat. Enormous heat coiled into his core and radiating, pulsing, hardly cooled in him though nearly a day had passed. And coming so hard all twined into it, so sometimes he seemed still suspended in that moment, the finest he ever expected to know. Exploding and taking in simultaneously. Emptying completely and being ecstatically filled. Nothing else could be that fine. Nothing at all.

And then the damn soul would kick in with its wretched conviction of wrong, hurting her, destroying her, and all sense would drop out of everything again and he’d just want to curl up and die. If the wonder of feeding on and climaxing with a Slayer wasn’t right, then nothing was and everything dust and ashes and no hope at all.

Like she’d said: Way out on the far edge of nothing, where it’s all dark except for the fires. The world as hell.

And him too caught up in it to sort any of it or do anything except try to keep moving and not be overwhelmed.

Drinking himself insensible was a really appealing alternative except that anything short of that, he’d only have lost what sense and control he still had. Everything roiling in him so heavy and hot and fast, and then take the brakes off and wreck the steering.

Didn’t seem wise.

Seemed like utter fucking insanity, in fact. But then, so did all of it.

Second choice: go kill something.

Fortunately, that could be arranged.

Slayer was taking the witch, the children, and all the weapons in the van. As they pulled out, Spike turned to get the motorbike, searching his pockets for the key. Not finding it. Recalling then emptying his pockets so as not to waste the money--leave it for them, what he had. Must have dropped it then. Just what he didn’t need, one more damn thing getting away from him. He wheeled and started back toward the house, and there was Dawn, smugly holding up something in two prim fingers.

“Forget something?” she asked, snippy and provoking.

“Not in the mood, Bit.” But when he reached for the key, she closed her hand around it.

“Condition,” she said. “I go with.”

Almost, he took the key anyway. But not quite. He fisted his hand at his side to keep it there, make it mind. “’S’not what the Slayer said.”

“It’s what I say. Deal.”

“Get your helmet, then. Go on: not takin’ you without.”

While she scampered off to wherever she’d stashed it, Spike went to the bike and paced, trying to wind down. Nearly flashed out at her, and that wasn’t acceptable. When she came running back with the helmet and consented to hand over the key, Spike told her, “Bit, you sing small around me. Altogether out of patience here.”

Mounting up behind him, she responded cheerily, “Got my taser,” and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that but decided best to leave it alone and pulled out.

Reaching Willy’s, the first thing Spike saw was Harris’ truck. And the second thing was the Watcher’s rental red Mustang, the new ugly design that had no style at all. Oh, fine. Wonderful. Spike kept going, slow and weaving through the crowd in the mustering place, and stopped the bike in the weeds out back, where it was dark and empty. Turning the key, he felt Dawn scrambling down and quick grabbed her arm and held her there, trying to think what to tell her.

“Dunno who to tell you to stay with. Red, maybe. Or Harris, yeah, that’s better. C’mon.”

There were vamps and other assorted demons everyplace--wandering around like Fourth of July, waiting for the fireworks. Like a fucking county fair except no Ferris wheel, no cheap prizes. A right glory of inhalables though: get stoned just standing in the vicinity. With Dawn in tow twisting and complaining, which set up ugly echoes of the night he’d lost her, Spike shoved whoever he found in his way, looking for Harris. Naturally they instead ran into Michael, who wanted to talk about the arrangements.

“Not now, Michael. Got to get this child off my hands,” Spike said, starting past, but Bit had set her feet and didn’t budge.

Wearing her hugest smile, Dawn stuck out her free hand. “Michael. Hi. I’ve been wanting to meet you. I’m Dawn.”

Mike’s eyes cut back to Spike for a clue what he was supposed to do. Spike sighed. “Dawn, this is Michael. Michael, Dawn’s mine and I’ll do anybody who so much as touches her. All clear here now?”

“Handshake count as touching?”

“No, go ahead and shake her fucking hand, she won’t quit else. Bit, you’re gonna drive me round the bend, you go on like this.”

Dawn of course paid no attention, shaking Michael’s hand and grinning like a fool, just like Mike wouldn’t drink her down in a second and three more like her if he got the chance. Really bad idea bringing her, should have bloody well walked if she wouldn’t give up the key, should turn right around and take her home now except that everybody else was here and he had things he was supposed to be seeing to. Goddam fucking hell.

Whole thing was a terrible idea and he should’ve never agreed to it.

Spotting Harris, Spike dragged Dawn away while she shouted goodbyes and “Nice to meet you!” like taking leave from bloody afternoon tea. Delivering her over to Harris, as much as he could considering Harris had both hands occupied with food, Spike directed, “Get her home, she’s got no business bein’ here in the first place. Chain her up, I don’t care, just get her out of here. Bit, you quit bein’ a bitch and mind Harris. Not all that fond of you at the moment, so you behave.”

As Spike turned away, Harris was asking Dawn who’d brought her, and Dawn said, and Harris yelled some smart remark, and Spike didn’t want to know about it, not at all.

Before he could find Mike again to get matters squared away he ran into Willy, coming out from behind a plank bar set up across a couple of sawhorses, and all Willy wanted to do was whinge on about Spike not showing up last night. Spike waited through it as the reasons for not pulling Willy’s face off grew less and less compelling and some of that must have shown, because Willy decided they’d settle up about it later and scuttled back behind the bar. Willy had no goddam complaint coming, he was getting a little over two vamps’ work for no more pay, considering the minions, and where the hell had they got to, anyway?

Time to get this fucking fools’ parade sorted and moving.

**********

There were thirteen SITs and about thirty vamps divided into two troops. The Slayer was in charge of one and Spike had the other, with Mike seconding him. The plan was to loosely cordon off the two front gates of the school’s high chain link perimeter fence. There was a construction gate at the rear but Harris had padlocked it last night.

It wasn’t a full blockade: they weren’t yet fitted out for anything like that. The idea was to be waiting for whatever Biters emerged and take them down, judging in the process how well the mixed troops of vamps and SITs seemed to work.

The SITs had been trained to fight in pairs, one engaging, the other going for the kill. To each pair would be added two vamps. They’d do the engaging, a screen for the SITs and their tasers. Once the Biter was down, Spike or the Slayer would do the final honors with a two-handed battle axe.

Nothing fancy, nothing that depended on intricate coordination or split-second timing. Just see ‘em and slay ‘em. Seemed like a simple enough plan that nothing should go too wrong they couldn’t adjust to, get around.

Maybe twenty minutes after the troops moved into place, the first few Turok-han emerged: three of the stalking grey Biters, all headed toward the Slayer’s gate. Leaving Mike to mind things, Spike headed that way too. He called JoAnne, Chloe, and their pair of vamps to him, to draw the first Biter off and leave Buffy and the rest with only two to deal with. Needed space to do a Biter, especially with tasers in the mix. The three were dusted with minor damage to one of the vamps. Spike returned to the other gate.

Maybe ten minutes later, two more Turok-han came out to be dusted. Spike loaned Mike the axe and let him do the honors. Did all right, and nobody hurt this time.

One of the SITs, Vi, found a pie plate in the weeds. She, Kim, and one of the vamps, a little red-headed runt, started playing Frisbee catch with it. Spike took the axe back and leaned on it. Two more vamps joined the Frisbee game. Sides were chosen, a midline was scraped in the dirt, and they started keeping score. The vamp who’d been hurt began grousing because she couldn’t play.

Spike tipped the axe against the fence and started pacing. He didn’t recall a night when fewer than fifteen, sixteen Turok-han were wandering around in Sunnydale. Certainly not a Saturday, the best hunting night of the week. Something off.

He checked the area inside the fence lit by the school’s roof-mounted floodlights, found it clear, and went over to Buffy. “Give it some more time, if you want, but I say declare a victory and pack it in. If they ain’t come by now, they’re not coming.”

“Somewhat less than exciting,” Buffy agreed. “On the up side, everybody seems to be playing nice….”

Two of the vamps got into each other’s faces over who’d touched the pie plate first. Mike started over to settle them down. And Buffy’s head whipped around as if she’d heard something Spike hadn’t, which wasn’t likely.

Willow in her head. Well, at least Red seemed to have learned not to do him like that. He wondered that Buffy still put up with it.

From Buffy’s changing expression, the news wasn’t good, no surprise. She said, “On the radio. At the hospital. What sounds like about ten Turok-han, except they’re claiming they’re something or other escaped from the zoo. We don’t even have a zoo, Spike.”

Spike thought that the evening was looking up again.

**********

The hot-wired 6 x 6 jerked to a rough halt outside the Emergency dock Spike had come to know quite well, and all the vamps piled out. Slayer and the SITs, female and human, could waltz in through the front a lot more acceptably than a mixed bunch of vamps in game-face. This way was best.

A few people down, crudely broken and dead, around the entrance and back by the admissions desk. There was a security camera: Spike swiped and broke it with the long-handled axe, idly wondering what’d be made of the tapes. More escaped zoo animals, most likely. Martians from Andromeda. No matter.

Once inside, it was no problem knowing which way to head: follow the smell of blood wafting so strong down the elevator shaft. Like music heard from far off. And deafening the nearer you came.

For the first second, when they all spilled from the elevators on the upper floor, it was more than Spike could take in. No sign of Turok-han: first thing he’d looked for. Instead, the general ward or whatever they called it, where Dawn had ended up that time her arm got broke in a car wreck with Red, some sixty beds all lined up, two sides, and most of them filled, was the worst mess Spike had ever seen, and that was including several battlefields. Except only a few dead. A couple of burly orderlies, some medical people--nurses or doctors with stethoscope necklaces and clipped IDs--and one man whose uniform suggested internal security, all dispatched and cleanly drained.

The rest, all the patients, had been opened and left to bleed.

A few maybe that could have been fixed, on their feet or flopping around with some energy. But that wasn’t the point or the issue anymore. Not after the vamps saw the buffet that the overwhelming sweet strong bloodsmell had drawn them to and began doing what vamps inevitably would do when presented with such a richness all laid out for them.

Walking forward into the ward, Spike set two hands wide on the axe and pushed it against a pillar, cracking the haft as near the blade as he could manage. That had to be first.

Then he said, “On the floor or you’re gone.” No need to shout. The ward was silent and they were all vampires.

Not a one paid any heed. Not even Michael, still standing by the elevators and scowling, trying to make out what this was and what it meant.

Methodical and fast, Spike started doing them all. He’d dusted maybe five before those not still obliviously feeding reacted, realized, and came at him. Wild with the blood smell and the taste, as he might have been if he hadn’t fed so splendidly the night before. No different except he could keep himself from it and they could not. No different except they’d crossed his word and he knew, as at least the younger ones didn’t, what had to follow from that.

From behind the nurse’s station, he had the reach on those coming at him long enough to dust two more before he had to move and dodge. In the open he cut the legs out from under as many as he could hit, sweeping hard to one side and then the other and then finishing those he’d taken down, quick terse punches of the butt-end of the stick crushing the rib cage into the heart and the dust following. There were fewer now because at least some of those who knew how things were had backed off and dropped flat near the set of big doors where the Slayer and the children were just bursting through.

Naturally it had taken them longer. The bait hadn’t been left for them, or the clear marked path. This set-up wasn’t for them though maybe the aftermath had been if they’d tried to interfere. As of course they would have. Among the reasons Spike had to settle it all first: before they could get involved; before the vamps could turn on them.

He had no time or attention to spare, just had to hope the Slayer had the sense to keep the children out of it, they could do no good now. If one of the feeding vamps came at them, they were well set to take it down and he’d dust it afterward if there was still need.

Michael was finally moving, approaching where Spike was holding off about eighteen vamps in the clear space between the ranked beds and still dusting them at a great rate, two or three a minute, the axe haft as easy as a pool cue in his hands. Whether Mike meant to help or attack made no matter, it was too late for that, and Spike put him down with the thick end of the haft between the eyes. The Slayer’s intent was more certain, but Spike shouted to her, “No! Tend to the children,” and for bloody once she did as she’d been told and retreated again.

Four of the vamps went at the SITs--maybe for hostages, maybe as a try for their weapons, there being nothing to hand but plastic, metal. Or maybe they’d been only hoping to get out the door. Didn’t matter. The children did ‘em, neat and tidy, their dust bursting over the ones on the floor. And after a little longer the vamps on the floor, and Michael starting to stir, were the only ones left.

Spike went and stood over the nearest one lying there. The vamp, the little red-headed one, exclaimed, “I submit!”

Spike tapped his shoulder with the haft, and he rolled over. Blood on his mouth. Spike dusted him with a quick punch of the stick. Went to the next one, and the same.

The last two were clean-faced, either had the sense to lick it off or hadn’t had the chance to begin feeding but no matter, good enough.

To each of them, Spike said, “I accept your submission. You have your life from my hand. Get up.”

Then he turned back to Michael, who was on his feet by then.

Mike said, “Would have helped. Looked like fun.” Not easy for him to talk, most likely, because Spike had hit him clean: busted the nose, likely driven some of the bone into the brain, but that couldn’t keep a vamp down for long. Barely give him a headache, if he’d lasted long enough for one to develop. Blood running down his face, eyes starting to swell shut. Not a pretty sight.

“Should have been,” Spike agreed. “Wasn’t, somehow. Maybe it’s getting played takes some of the fun out of it. Have to do you now, Michael.”

“Or?”

Spike shook his head. “’S’not the way it works.”

Amazing he could scowl with his face in such condition, but Mike managed it, pointing to the two vamps, now minions, that Spike had spared.

Spike shook his head again. The lad really didn’t know anything. “They were under your word. You’re accountable, that they didn’t mind. An’ then that they came at me. That’s on you, Michael. They maybe get the option to submit. You’d have to earn it.”

At least Mike didn’t ask how he could do that. The lad was ignorant, not stupid, or no more than most. He stood a minute, deciding, then came at Spike quick, an arm raised to fend off the stick, going for the stick.

Spike reversed it, spinning back the part Mike was reaching for and beating him down with the other, backing, circling, sliding his two hands lower until he was wielding nearly the full length. Struck a wrist, busted that, but couldn’t get the right angle on the other and swatted Mike in the ribs a few times, swinging the stick like a bat. Got the angle then and struck the other wrist, a solid, disabling blow. Sprang away when Mike lunged but the lad had done well, inside the stick’s swing and trying to yank Spike’s feet out but couldn’t do that, not with both wrists busted and Spike’s feet and balance set as they should be.

The stick couldn’t swing at Mike so close, but Spike held it vertical by the center and brought it down with the full strength of his back and arms. Cracked Mike’s shoulder and then the collarbone when Mike flopped over onto his back.

Spike stood over him, the stick poised high and straight. “You done now, Michael?”

Mike strained for a moment, couldn’t get any leverage, any way to push off, and fell back flat again. “Guess so.” His eyes, swollen all but shut and clouded with blood anyway, tried to focus on the end of the stick.

“Now you got the option. I suggest you take it.”

Either the boyo wasn’t thinking any too clear anymore or it took him a minute or two to make up his mind to it. Then he said flatly, “I submit,” and sagged even flatter, which Spike wouldn’t have thought possible.

“I accept your submission, Michael. You have your life from my hand. Now get up and help the children figure if there’s any here like to live if they’re seen to.”

Mike tried again, then reported dully, “Can’t.”

Spike turned. “’Manda, help Michael here get on his feet so he can do what I told him.”

Spike reflected that sometime he’d explain it to Mike--pack structure, and subordination, and what fealty and submission entailed and what was owed in return. Why some subordinate vamp might be allowed to submit after disobedience or failure but not one in a position of trust. Not till he’d been beaten down and on the point of death or the submission would never hold, never mean what it should. Could never trust the lad again otherwise. So next time, Mike would know such things and know how to do.

Such teaching was one of the things that was fit between master and minion.

And the first terrible thing was that it all made perfect, unquestioned sense.

And the second terrible thing was that the soul made no protest. Smug and aloof and indifferent to any pain that wasn’t human.

Spike flung the axe haft away.

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