Chapter Twenty Two: The Law of Unintended Consequences

Dawn was sitting in the yard talking with Kim, Rona, and Mike--just hanging out, in the bright moonlight, not talking about anything in particular--when Willow came through the break in the hedge and waved her to come.

“What?” Dawn asked.

“Spike wants you to sit in.”

“On the Scooby council session?” Dawn was surprised and excited. She was never allowed to even lurk and eavesdrop in the hall. Having her presence requested was unheard of.

Willow dropped a kind of crummy necklace with two beads over Dawn’s head. Her expression suggested that working the string clear of Dawn’s hair was an operation that took serious concentration. When that odd chore was done, Willow just stood.

“OK, am I in trouble or something?” Dawn asked warily.

“No, nothing like that. It’s…” Willow’s serious expression became a tight, grim frown. “I’ll break it down. Spike’s gonna talk about something and he says he only wants to do it once. He wants you there so he doesn’t have to repeat it, or have you hear about it from somebody else and maybe wrong. That’s the immediate situation. The context for this is that he seems to have made up his mind to take that amulet into the Hellmouth in daylight. If he does that, chances are that no matter what else happens, he’s gonna die. He claims he’s responsible for opening the Hellmouth and should therefore be the one to try to close it. That’s what he’s been told to explain. Be prepared for the fact that a number of people in there are having a major Technicolor wiggins. I’m one of them. So: I’ve told you. Come on.”

Dawn gulped and followed.

From the tight, clamped-down silence of everybody in the front room, the wiggins had progressed to the point that nobody was speaking to anybody else and they were now waiting for Dawn to get settled as the signal to start yelling again. Except Angel, sitting in the big chair like a negative picture of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, dark instead of floodlit marble. And except Spike, sprawled with his head leaned back on the couch, legs outstretched with crossed ankles, an arm across his eyes--the general effect was somebody laid out on a diagonal plank.

When Willow and Dawn came in, Spike lifted the arm and looked around. No blindfold. Dawn thought that despite appearances, it probably wasn’t his eyes he was identifying her with, so she went straight to him and did The Greeting: touched his hand and said Hi.

“Find something to sit yourself on,” Spike said, flipping a hand.

Looking around, Dawn found that Willow had taken the only vacant chair. “I’m fine here,” she responded and dropped down comfortably crosslegged next to his ankles, facing him.

She’d expected the suspended argument to relaunch, but everybody stayed still, waiting for some other signal. Waiting, apparently, for Spike.

Bending at the waist, Spike became a bit more upright than diagonal and folded his hands. That wouldn’t last long, Dawn thought: he was an incorrigible gesturer.

“Well, it was like this, Bit,” Spike began, and Dawn knew at once Willow had been wrong. Dawn wasn’t there to listen--she was there so Spike could say it at all. Only turning it into another story for her made it tolerable. “When the Bringers came and took me that time, I didn’t have much sense of what was goin’ on for, I guess, some while. My demon had come on me like it was doin’ then, an’ I’d just have flashes an’ try to begin to make things out and then lose it all again. Dunno how much time I lost that way. Seemed to me Buffy was talking to me quite a lot, an’ she was real put out with me, what I’d done, what I’d not done, layin’ into me quite harsh…. Thought I was here, for the longest time, not where I really was….”

Sure enough, the hands unfolded. But instead of gesturing, Spike held his left hand out to her. Dawn grabbed it hard in both her own and wasn’t at all surprised to feel it shaking. She’d been anchor for him before when he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t, and knew that was what he needed her for now.

“And then there were other people round about,” Spike continued, a little quieter, a little more distant. “Some I could see and some just voices. Couldn’t see any too well by then, I’d got hurt some way in one of the lost times. Couldn’t move, neither. Strung up to something, I expect. But I didn’t know that then, it none of it made sense, and the people, they were all telling me what I’d done stupid or wrong, how I was a total waste of the space…. And that went on awhile, by bits and patches, like I said. Pretty much like it’d been before, in the school, before Buffy changed her mind and took me out, made me stay with Harris for awhile.”

Dawn shot a look at Buffy: sitting next to Spike like total strangers on adjoining bus seats. Like Spike was some wino muttering scary nonsense Buffy didn’t want to let on that she heard. But she was listening, because she said, “I didn’t change my mind.”

Spike stopped and sighed. “Well, you weren’t you all the time, pet. But I wasn’t hardly able to distinguish on account of all the voices and the masks. An’ how do you expect me to explain it when I don’t understand to begin with and you’re already telling me how I’m wrong?”

Before Buffy could say anything, Dawn shook his hand a little and prompted, “Spike--topic drift. After the Bringers took you. That’s after the school and Xander’s closet. That’s after you were here.”

“All right,” Spike said, and considered, with his blank face and his near-blind eyes. Brisk again, he continued, “Wonderful thing about pain, it focuses your attention something amazing. It all got real clear when they started hurtin’ me as a regular thing. Whole hours at a time, I’d know I wasn’t here and quite a lot of what I was seeing and hearing wasn’t no way real. Didn’t know what it was, but I was pretty sure of what it wasn’t. It was Bringers hurting me, some ways actually pretty silly. Tried to drown me at least one time. Think they’d know you can’t very well drown what don’t need to breathe to begin with. But they done it anyway, and that was real and actually happening because it was so fucking dumb. So after I made out it was Bringers, I had a pretty fair idea what was happening even if I didn’t know why or what it meant. How to sort the masks from the faces. At least some of the time. Know it wasn’t all of it more craziness but somebody actually there. Regardless of, of what it…looked like.”

Spike ran out of words, or air, or endurance. When he hung up at that point, it seemed to be a signal for intermission. Willow got up and left. Xander started talking, low, to Anya. Giles rose, getting his flask out of his jacket pocket and unscrewing the cap. Meanwhile passenger Buffy had decided the muttering wino needed support and comforting and thrust her arm behind him, around his back, and butted her forehead against his shoulder, which prevented either of them noticing the flask Giles was trying to offer. So Dawn let go one hand of her two-handed grip to accept the flask and stick it under Spike’s nose. And even at that, it took him a whole minute minimally to notice. Then he disengaged his hand from hers to take and upend the flask. By the time he’d emptied it and was just sitting, holding it, Willow came back with a large glass of water, seeming at a loss what to do with it. Again, Dawn arranged things: took the flask and passed it back to Giles, who didn’t even look annoyed to find it emptied, then accepted the glass from Willow.

“Spike, there’s some water here. Spike?”

“Not just now.”

Dawn set the glass on the floor so she could take his hand again as he reached out to her. The shaking had steadied a little, but Spike’s grip was just short of painful. He blinked hard a few times. “All right, now about the seal. Like the biggest sewer cover in the world. Sections, points to it--”

“Spike,” Buffy told him softly, “we know what the Seal of Danzalthar looks like. You can skip that part.”

“All right,” Spike responded, but predictably stopped again, losing his focus, vaguely frowning. Hunting a different place to catch hold of the account. “All right, then. So the Bringers, they cut me. Never did see it properly. But a circle of symbols--” His pointing finger described a oval that took in his entire torso.

Again, he didn’t really need to describe it: everybody but the newest SITs, Angel, and perhaps Giles had seen those symbols in all their gory, mutilated glory. Some of the scars still hadn’t faded. But this time, nobody interrupted him, so he went on describing how the symbols had been carved into his flesh, again mentioning what a useful aid pain was in clearing the mind and helping to distinguish between illusion and hallucination, on the one hand, and reality on the other, so that he really was quite confident what he described had actually happened.

The scars apparently weren’t enough verification, or he’d forgotten about them and nobody wanted to throw him off again by reminding him. He was way inside his own head and nobody appeared eager to join him there.

Only Angel seemed able to accept Spike’s obviously sincere testimonial to torture and its beneficial effects on the victim with equanimity and unchanged attention. Major Ewww showing everyplace else: wincing, squirming, squinting, grimacing, and assorted face-making that Spike of course didn’t notice.

After the cuts had been made, or maybe before (he wasn’t sure of the exact sequence and got briefly lost trying to work it out), he’d been fastened spread-eagle to a suitably sized wheel-shaped armature. After the cuts, the wheel had been suspended horizontally over the seal, positioned so he could bleed on it conveniently. After he’d bled on it enough, the seal had opened its triangular leaves and the first of the Turok-han, plainly the one Buffy’d had so much trouble with, had emerged: greeted and announced with suitably apocalyptic speechifying by what was obviously the First, whoever it had been pretending to be and showing its captive at the time.

It was very important to Spike to establish that this had happened. It seemed one of three markers he used to contain the experience: that he’d been taken; that his blood had opened the seal and the Hellmouth, permitting the intrusion of the first Turok-han into this dimension; and that Buffy had come for him finally and taken him away. Except for those three points, all the rest was a horrible agonized surreal confusion Dawn knew she couldn’t imagine and could barely stand to hear described, and Spike could only with extreme difficulty bear to remember.

She could understand his wanting to limit his account of it to this single recital.

Spike reached down and Dawn passed him the glass of water. And still the argument hung waiting, suspended like a wave in a Japanese painting.

“So it’s all been set up,” Spike said presently. He sounded like a guy noting with satisfaction the provisions of an insurance policy. “I’m fit to use this amulet, and the amulet is fit to be used for this mission. It lines up right: like five ball in the side pocket.” He mimed doing the shot, striking the ball home. “When I close the Hellmouth, it will all make sense.” He leaned back, shut his eyes, and laid an arm across them.

After a moment, those not resident at Casa Summers stirred and began making preparations to leave. The expected and immanent argument dispersed like fog. Apparently after Spike’s harrowing recital, nobody could find anything to say.

Which left Dawn looking at her sandals that showed her precisely ten human toes, thinking that it would be churlish, selfish, and mean-spirited of her to mention or even think (although it was too late for that) how since her existence on this plane was locked onto a tiny borrowed fraction of his soul, if Spike went, Dawn went.

**********

“He can’t do this!” Buffy exclaimed, thumping the porch.

“Actually, he can,” Anya responded, taking the cool, rational approach to Spike’s manifest insanity. “Assuming Angel will surrender the amulet and the impressive bragging rights of self-immolation. And I imagine he will. After all, how much bragging is Spike apt to do, afterward? And Angel can do the humble benevolent praising-the-fallen-hero thing, which is almost as good, especially when not contrasted with actual bragging.”

Willow said fiercely, “Sense isn’t worth it. Sure, it’s important. Sure, it’s better when what you do means something and you actually know what that meaning is. But it’s not worth going up in flames for, just to make a point!”

Holding her knees and rocking, Dawn muttered, “He was set up. They’ve set him up. She’s set him up. Because he was handy, and willing. Just like last time except this time, he knows. And he’s gonna do it anyway. Because She noticed him: because of me. So She went ahead and decided to use him and then set him up. And is gonna fucking use him up! Fuck up his entire unlife because we annoyed Them. Because he’s crazy and convenient and She doesn’t care!”

Of course nobody paid any attention to what Dawn muttered.

As if by accident the Women’s Chapter of the Spike Is Crazy And This Is Wrong Association found itself convened on the front porch in the bright moonlight. The Men’s Chapter had all piled into Angel’s convertible in furtherance of Giles’ expressed intention of getting Spike as drunk as possible as quickly as possible, and of course Spike hadn’t said no and had let himself be dragged along. Which of course wasn’t going to change anything except temporarily because tomorrow they’d all be sober and Spike would still be crazy and wouldn’t even have the grace to have a hangover because he never did.

Of course the Women’s Chapter hadn’t come up with any better answers, still stuck at the bitching and moaning phase, each from her individual perspective.

“I mean, he just got his eyes back!” Buffy flung her hands. “I haven’t seen his eyes in nearly a month and do you have any idea how important that is? When your main backup and your lover is blind and you have to do all the seeing for both of you? I don’t think he can even see much yet, he was just showing off, and how can he think of doing something like that when he can’t even hardly see?”

Anya remarked, “After all, it’s not as if Angel can use the amulet himself although he’s the designated Champion. He has the soul and all, but it didn’t hum for him. And not a single solitary spark. It’s attached itself to Spike, probably because of the aura and because the soul has worn him out, into stupid altruism. Demons shouldn’t have souls. It only confuses them. With the demon soul, that makes two, and who can listen to two souls at once? It’s just bicker, bicker, bicker. Once you lose sight of the personal profit motive there’s no valid basis for choice and you’re at the mercy of any wind that blows. You have to keep a firm grip on yourself and your own priorities. If you don’t, who are you? Nothing, that’s what. Nobody. Just an empty shell. On fire. Admittedly spectacular but burning up isn’t an answer, it’s only another way of avoiding the question.”

Willow reflected, “Can’t make him forget about it. That’s not allowed. Can’t spell him inside the house, that’s personal freedom too. Goddam personal freedom, personal choice, they ruin everything, nobody sees clearly enough to make really good choices for themselves, just pick the nearest thing that looks like a solution which it almost never is and you can’t tell ‘em, they won’t listen, and you can’t make ‘em because that’s the personal freedom issue again, right there. Even when you see it so plain and they don’t, you can’t just solve it for ‘em by fiat because it’s not allowed. And they won’t accept it anyway because they didn’t get to choose it, as if that was the most important thing. And what the hell use is power if you can’t goddam do anything?”

Dawn thought miserably, It’s because he opened up to Buffy. And to me. And then opened more when she was gone: to find something to hold onto. Mostly me then but the Scoobys too, trying to hold onto them but they wouldn’t let him, patrolling, trying to continue so it would make sense, but there wasn’t any real satisfaction for him in that or not enough, just killing things isn’t enough. Just letting yourself be used and going through the motions isn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for Buffy, when they brought her back, and she’s the fucking Slayer, after all. So how could it have been enough for him, who’s basically just another vamp, just wants things simple, fucking and feeding and a little fun now and again, the three F’s of vampire existence? No Chosen One, no Sacred Duty, no Champion--just trying to get on with it and have things make some kind of sense. And because he was open, and empty, They latched onto him and used him, even though there was nothing in it for him, nothing that would make sense to a vamp.

And when the Scoobys brought her back, They let ‘em, it was more convenient that way, the genuine article, after all. And then They didn’t need him anymore so They just gave him the push, left him adrift, and he tried to hold onto Buffy again but she wouldn’t really let him, didn’t want the Mission even for herself and wouldn’t share it with him, wouldn’t share anything with him that was real or made sense that a vamp would understand. So he went and got the soul, hoping that would help him make sense of it but it only made everything worse; except by that time, Buffy was desperate enough to let him have a little part of the Mission. Rescued him from the school basement and from the First so he could take some of the weight of the Mission off her. The Slayer versus the incorporeal origin of all the Evil in the world--a major mismatch, after all. No way she could handle that all by herself, so she needed him and admitted it. Giving him the SITs. Patrolling again. Not caring about him, or me, or what we had invested in each other as long as the damn Mission was being seen to and she didn’t have to do it all herself. Because that part of her that might have cared, They’d given that to me, to bind people to me. To make me mean something to them. So they’d goddam protect me. Like he protected me, and They used him for that while Buffy was gone. Because he was convenient and willing and because he’d promised. And loved me because he didn’t have anything else to love and he always has to do that, that’s how he is. And then They took me away and he used everything he’d opened up for, everything he had, wrote my name in poetry into his body even, to get me back. And I let him. Because I loved him and I thought I was helping and didn’t trust anybody else to love him and help him make sense of things.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have stayed scattered because now there’s nothing left in Them or in Her that loves him and doesn’t want him hurt. Now his priorities are all screwed up and he’s been so banged around, so hurt, that the Mission is the only thing left, it’s Priority One, Two, Three, and Last. All four sticks. And They’re letting him, They’re pushing him, They’re setting him up to do Their goddam dirty work again promising that it will finally make sense if he’s willing to die for it. They always promise that, and it never does. And it’s all my fault, well not all--Buffy’s fault, too, because the Mission is really hers and maybe she loves him now, so she’s willing to share it with him like everything else. But he’s just a vamp, he’s not made for that although he tries to be. He might even do it, They’re pushing him so and giving him the weapon he needs, and he thinks if he does it Buffy won’t have to, and I’m sure he doesn’t realize I’ll be gone too, and he wanted so badly to take the hurt on himself so it couldn’t get at Buffy and he thinks that’s what he’s doing. What it would mean. And it’s all my fault. Because if he hadn’t come for me, played chicken poker with Lady Gates with me as the stakes, They never would have given him the slightest notice. What’s one vamp more or less to the Powers, for crap sake?

“Dawn.”

“Huh?”

Anya tugged at Dawn’s arm again. “Dawn, I don’t want to be indiscreet or bring up anything awkward. But I really don’t like the present options. Admittedly there are significant commercial advantages to closing the Hellmouth. True, you lose a major tourist attraction, but casual demon traffic is hardly without its downside. Property damage, potential customers killed or eaten, decrease in nighttime foot traffic. Demons don’t even tip particularly well. Not your desirable tourist dollar in the long term. Moreover, if the Hellmouth isn’t shut down and the First wins, there is no long term. The Magic Box and Sunnydale and minimally most of North America is down the toilet.” Anya blew an expressive raspberry by way of illustration. “However, I’m not prepared to accept the price. It’s definitely a very bad bargain for Spike. Prestige, status, achievement, altruism, they’re all intangibles: nothing you can count or take to the bank. And not a whole lot of use when you’re dead. It’s not as if Spike’s the love of my life or anything remotely as melodramatic as that. But when you have sex with a person, even under circumstances of mutual misery, even if it’s a vamp, there’s a connection. Always. You can’t just ignore the prospect of his turning into a flaming pile of ash while doing something stupidly noble. So having given it serious consideration, I’ve decided that I want to call in my favor now. You know: what you promised me, a couple of months ago in return for teleporting you into your basement, when Spike was hurt that time.” Anya regarded Dawn searchingly with a gathering frown. “Surely you can’t have forgotten: an open-ended marker for services rendered, against the Powers That Be, that isn’t something you just forget.”

But the fact was that Dawn had. Forgotten completely. She puffed out her cheeks and said, “Ohboy.” Lady Gates wasn’t going to be pleased. Not pleased at all.

**********

If Spike looked very hard he could see the flame of his lighter. It fascinated him. Couldn’t make out the coal of his cigarette yet but that was coming. When it came time, he’d be able to see the light he’d dreamed about. The light that was everywhere, everything. The light he’d been ducking, fleeing, hiding from for a century and more, yet glancing at from careful angles and distances lately. Looking at it from shaded porches, out of windows. Yearning toward it more than he’d realized until the dreams started coming with him at the center and the light all around like a shoreless ocean. Burning without pain. Just brightness and himself finally part of it.

He wanted that.

Angel pushed the lighter shut. “It’s hot, Will, and you’re drunk. Don’t want to anticipate the event here.”

True. All true. The body of the lighter was hot from keeping the flame so long. Now that he bothered to notice, his fingers did hurt a bit, holding it. Spike pushed the hot lighter into his pocket and licked his singed fingers until they quit hurting. Tried instead to make out the duller coal of the fag, but his eyes wouldn’t do that yet, weren’t ready to take in the smaller illuminations.

Angel’s hand closing on the back of Spike’s neck, the way he knew Spike never had liked, too heavy and too strong from behind, rocking him not quite to the point of shaking him like a dog with a rat (although he did that sometimes too and that was the grip he used for it), saying fondly, “How many fires is it I’ve pulled you out of?”

Obediently Spike tried to think back. “Four. Counting China.”

“Five,” Angel said, pleased at correcting him. “I bet you’re forgetting Amsterdam.”

Spike had counted Amsterdam and the two in London but it wasn’t worth arguing about. Let Angel be right. He was less inclined to hit you when he was right and pleased about it. Or pleased about anything, actually. Though you could never depend on that. Sometimes he hit you because he was pleased and just felt like hitting something and you were handy. So you couldn’t always go by that.

“You want to see something bright,” Angel added, “you take a look at this.” He went off somewhere in the suite, past where Spike could make him out, and pulled open a long, long zipper. Of his Acme Rental Champion costume, Spike thought, grinning. No harm to grin if he didn’t explain. Nobody could know what he was grinning at, could be anything, with Red’s fine new charm around his neck. Head shut entirely. Nobody in there but him. He could be really certain of that. So everything he saw or felt or heard was actually there, actually real. Amazing how good that was to know.

“What is it, Angel?” Giles asked, getting up, coming closer. And that Harris somewhere about the place too but Spike had momentarily lost track of him, couldn’t locate him except for knowing he hadn’t left.

Spike didn’t like being in a place he’d never seen, like Angel’s hotel suite. Didn’t know where the walls were or where the windows were placed where the sun might shine in except it wasn’t anywhere near sunup yet, a long way from that still. Didn’t know how the furniture was aligned or what furniture there was, that might become a weapon at need in his hands or someone else’s, couldn’t reach to grab it quick because he didn’t know where it was.

Actually didn’t like Angel’s suite much at all. Full of faint smells of past, absent people, like vague drifting ghosts, overlaid with strong chemical smells of commercial cleaning agents. He wondered that Angel could stand it and then, thinking back, realized Angel could have spent next to no time here because he’d had to attend to the Supplice d’Allégance. Likely hadn’t slept here more than a daytime or two because he’d been with Spike all that while….

Spike was trying to make out how long ago it’d been since it had ended and couldn’t, he’d lost too many days into the dark, when Giles said his name and wanted his attention, asking, “Can you see this at all?’

“What?”

“What Angel has here. Come look at it. Or--”

While the Watcher tried to fumble around with the way English relied on words like looking and seeing as the only way of knowing about a thing, Angel took the more direct approach. Hauled Spike up (by the scruff of his neck again) off the bed where he’d been sitting, all peaceable and not bothering anybody, dragged him ahead and then crooked a few paces, then grabbed his hand and set it on something that screamed.

Spike backed away so hard and fast, the bed caught the back of his knees. He went over backward, spilling his drink and losing his cigarette, and everybody around him dealing with that, Angel cursing and cuffing him, so he ducked and rolled away.

His hand still tingled with whatever it’d made contact with; and having made contact, he could still feel it, sense it. Like a huge waterfall when you were out of sight of it: you could still hear it and feel the vibration in the rock, smell the spray in the air, feel the updraft coming off it. Even without sight, you knew it was there.

And after the first shock of contact, it drew him. Drew his demon: he felt himself going to game face, reaching out and moving toward the thing. When he touched it again, his body knew it. It was part of the utter confusion he’d made himself remember earlier because that account had been required of him. There all the time, the background to everything that had happened then. What had caught and held him, so even unbound he probably couldn’t have left it except that Buffy had come and given him something else to focus on and made him move in a different direction that was away. It was utterly terrifying. Yet he couldn’t will himself away from it. Even touching it wasn’t enough. It still drew, wanting more of him. Deeper contact. It wanted to devour him and he wanted to let it.

Behind him, Angel laughed and yanked him away. Broke the contact. Took the thing away, remarking, “Even unamplified and from this distance, that’s a lot of power. Imagine what it will do when it’s set within a couple of hundred yards of the source and has some major witch mojo behind it. You want vampires, Giles? I assure you, we’ll have vampires. Probably including every Turok-han above ground and in range, though that hasn’t been tested yet. The biggest vampire brawl ever--complete melee: the all against the all. On our timetable, not the First’s.”

Harris asked, “OK, so what has it got going for it besides major ugly, that’s presumably not a big factor with blind bleach boy here? What is it?”

Spike didn’t hear the answer because he was out in the hall and remembering his way to the elevator. Finding the cool metal doors told him where the buttons would be: to the right because everything was set for the convenience of the right-handed, so he always knew to reach the least convenient way for himself. When the doors opened, no trouble with those buttons, the bottom one would be down. And from the lobby, no trouble finding the street.

He hadn’t needed to hear Angel’s answer because he knew it. His circle of scars knew it. His bones knew it. Hellmouth. The essence of it stored somehow like a battery in a jar.

Out in the open, he could still feel it. Anywhere within a hundred miles of Sunnydale, a vamp could feel it. But not compelling, with so many other things around. Simply attractive. Pleasant to the demon. Like the prospect of a really wild fight. Excellent feeding. Fucking and coming all night.

He checked, touching fingertips to forehead, but he’d had the sense to shed game face somewhere between the suite and the street. He wasn’t making any kind of scary exhibition of himself to the few people still abroad. Having been at rigid attention, his demon had settled back into its accustomed vague boredom with nothing much to interest it, so that was all right.

He got another cigarette lit but didn’t play around with the lighter because he had better lights now. He could see the double lines of streetlights and therefore knew where the street was, and dimly the parked cars though not the make or model or color very well. In front of the hotel, he knew where he was and therefore knew how everything was laid out around him. After nearly seven damn years in Sunnyhell, not counting the occasional absence in South America or Africa, he certainly ought to know.

Hearing Harris’ voice, Spike started walking quite fast, head bent because he knew his hair was conspicuous, taking the first corner. Finding that all quiet, he ran. Didn’t mean to be caught, taken back to that hotel suite where the thing was, even if that was where Angel wanted him. Angel couldn’t command what he couldn’t catch, and Spike had had about all of Angel he wanted for a single night.

After a few blocks, Spike figured he was beyond all likely pursuit and slowed to a stroll. He didn’t want to go back to Casa Summers, Buffy was all upset with him over the amulet and would want to argue with him about it. Casa Spike and Casa Mike were too close and too predictable. Somebody might look for him there. Spike decided what he really wanted was to go home.

By the time he’d left the last of the streetlights that surrounded the cemetery, he found that the moonlight was bright enough for him to see by reasonably well. He could see the headstones and the shadows they cast on the ground. He could even distinguish between the shadows and the occasional open grave, though the warning was mostly the smell of fresh-turned earth. Anyway, he didn’t fall into any of them. He’d noticed some other vamps abroad but none close and he’d waited until they’d passed out of range without noticing him in return. He didn’t particularly feel like a fight or like killing anything and drunk and unarmed, it was probably better to just stay out of the way of trouble.

His old crypt was a mess, of course. He hadn’t expected anything else. First it’d been blown up, and when he’d left it he hadn’t been much more popular with the cousins than he was now, so it’d come in for quite a bit of deliberate trashing in his absence. Nothing Clem, that he’d left as a sort of caretaker, could have done to prevent it. No blame coming to Clem over it. Just how it was.

He heaved out the bodies of some dead cats someone had slung in and piled some of the lighter debris onto the remains of one of the tapestries he’d had hung against drafts, clearing the floor enough, at least, to let him move around between the central sarcophagus and the walls. Decent fighting space, nothing major to trip over.

Of course looters had picked the ground level clean of anything worth selling or using and trashed the rest. But he’d never kept anything he much cared about topside anyway. He figured there was a good chance some of his caches belowground might have been missed. When he had the ground level space mostly clear and smelling habitable, he dropped down to the lower level and started checking there.

He found a candle by stepping on it, and it was still intact enough to be lit.

His bed was gone. Must have been a bitch to take apart and transport because it’d been a bitch to get there in the first place. He didn’t envy whatever scavenger had taken on that chore. Of course there were so many abandoned houses in Sunnydale now, nobody would go to that much trouble with easier pickings to be had. The TV was gone too, naturally.

One of his caches, back in the tunnels, yielded some of his weapons. In poor condition from rust, and the leather hilts mildewed, but none beyond recovery with a little care and patience. They were good weapons, well made and well balanced and familiar to his hand. He thought the children might care to see them since some were quite old, many times antique; and he didn’t think they’d mind helping bring them back to good serviceable condition.

He laid them out below the topside opening, by the foot of the damaged ladder nobody had bothered to steal. Then he went back into the tunnels, farther in, to check the cache he’d left for last, fearing to find it empty: the S-curved niche where he’d hidden his treasure box. He sighed when his hand found it, still all waterproofed and safe. He patted it and left it there, returning to the job of transferring the weapons topside a few at a time. But when that was done he found he’d changed his mind. He dropped to the lower level and retrieved the box and carried the candle back with him.

The sarcophagus had served him well enough for a bed before Slayer visits had required something less rigid and narrow. After that it’d been a table and something to lean against, talking, besides a barrier and defense in case of intrusion. Now it was a clear place where he could sit, unwrap the paraffin-sealed edges of the oilcloth, open his tin box, and examine the contents by candlelight.

A cameo pierced as a pendant and rubbed nearly flat. Two packets of letters, each bound with a ribbon. Some tintypes, a little clouded but still holding the faces--some beloved, some less so--against change and forgetfulness. The daguerreotypes Angelus had had done in Marseilles Spike set aside quickly, having had all the recent reminders of that he wanted. A doll’s head, bald, with its eyes poked out with sharp scissors: the first Miss Edith. A black garter, slightly moth-eaten. A plastic bag of yellowed newspaper clippings.

Spike began sorting the objects into two piles. Some he decided he was ready to be rid of. The others would go back into the box.

Aware of a presence, Spike said, “Slayer.”

Just inside the door, Buffy said, “I saw the light.”

“Patrolling?”

“Giles called. I knew pretty well where you weren’t. So I thought maybe I knew where you might be.”

When she didn’t move, Spike said, “You can come in. Nothing much here anymore. The reavers have been through. An’ quite a lot of dead leaves.”

Maybe because he hadn’t looked at her, she circled around behind him and leaned her elbows on the sarcophagus, which was a good height for that. Spike turned the Marseilles pictures face-down.

When Buffy didn’t try to touch or examine any of his things, Spike picked up the cameo and showed it to her in his palm. “My mother. Her name was Anne.”

With hesitance that asked permission, Buffy took the cameo in two fingers and moved it nearer the candle’s light.

“Don’t be polite,” Spike said. “It’s not very like her anyway. Such things were cheaply had then and not many proper artists employed in the making of them. Like three-for-a-quarter pictures in a booth in the five and dime. An’ there’s not even five and dimes anymore, they were gone before you were born.”

Buffy handed the cameo back carefully and Spike returned it to the box. She asked, “Nostalgia pangs?”

“Just a few things I’d as soon not lose.” It wasn’t a good time for sorting. Spike scooped everything back into the box and shut the lid. “Did you walk, or come in the van?”

“Walked.”

“Then maybe you’d lend me a hand with some of these weapons. I think maybe the children, the Potentials, would help me get them back in proper condition.”

Between the two of them, they gathered up all the weapons. Spike tipped his stack over his right shoulder with his box under his arm. Buffy carried her stack like a bundle of sticks, across both arms, blades laid carefully flat.

Walking the way they’d walked so often before, from his crypt to Casa Summers, Spike was waiting for Buffy to bring up the matter of the amulet. Waiting for her to start arguing. When she didn’t, his wariness drained off. They fell into step. The distance between them diminished and they drifted together, shoulder against shoulder, hip against hip.

Buffy shot him a sideways glance but didn’t say anything.

“What is it, pet?”

“Only your eyes. I’ve missed them.”

“Not gonna tell me how much better I look?”

“Nope.”

“Good, because I’m sick of that, truth be told. Only time anybody says how much better you look, it’s because you look so much worse than you’d like. Seen a starved vamp a time or two. Know it’s not a pretty sight. Much sooner none of you lot had seen me like that.”

“I like you better this way, that’s true. When there’s something to get hold of. But I still love you, regardless.”

As it had each time she’d said it, that comment struck him like a hard blow to the chest. He bent his head and didn’t reply.

They’d come to Revello, but Buffy kept walking on past the house.

“Where you headed, love?”

“Casa Spike. You said you wanted the SITs to work on the weaponry. And I don’t care to try getting a two-handed broadsword through a little gap in the hedge.”

“Yeah.” Spike caught up in a couple of strides, then matched pace again.

As they turned the corner Buffy added, as if casually, “Anyway, it’s quieter there.”

“You don’t have try being subtle about it, love. I know you’re not pleased with me. Know perfectly well I’m being humored. Managed.”

She looked around again. “D’you mind?”

“S’pose not. Just don’t fancy spending the time fighting with you, is all.”

“Don’t want to fight with you either. I can think of several better ways of spending the time. Since our supply of sometimes seems less infinite that we’d thought.”

Spike took a very sharp interest in that. “Meaning…sometime is now?”

“At least soon,” Buffy responded. Before disappointment could set in, she added, “I’d rather get indoors first. Your crypt was very nice in its way, very atmospheric. Cozy. Fine for a couple of old formerly dead people to hang out. Talk. Have the occasional brawl. Good fighting space there. Not so much on the comfort.”

Spike quoted Marvell: “‘The grave’s a fine and private place / But none I think do there embrace.’”

“Not without a whole lot of aches and pains the next morning. As I recall. I prefer a bed.”

“Ahuh. All right.”

“You can manage that?”

“I expect.”

“Thought you could. Watch the axe, it’s gonna hit-- Never mind.”

Chapter Twenty Three: The Chaos Stone

The SITs discovered the pile of old weapons with cries of joy and admiration. Pouncing on them, they refused breakfast and weapons practice in favor of sharpening and polishing the blades, bringing the leather back to a sticky luster, rubbing linseed oil into the hand-smoothed hafts. Spike was surprised because the weapons were plain and had seen years of hard use whereas their usual weapons, the Renfaire goods, were all tarted up with enamel work, etched curlicues and banding, tassels, and the like. Far prettier.

Drawing a whetstone along the blade of a Napoleonic cavalry saber in long even strokes, Kim commented, “Tourist trash. Better than nothing, but really. Now this, this is real. Anybody could tell. Look how it takes an edge! I could cut wood with it, not that anybody’d want to, and it would slice right through. Hit bone and it wouldn’t shatter. The balance is perfect. Just gorgeous! Tell me about this one, Spike.”

So he settled down and started working on a Syrian blade modeled on a Roman short sword and told Kim the history of the saber and why it curved the way it did, how it wasn’t for thrusting but slicing, long arc of swing. Why it wasn’t wielded two-handed like the similarly shaped katana. And after that, nothing would do but his demonstrating the weapons in turn, all the SITs crowded against the walls and perched in a tight row along the back of the sofa.

Picking up a long-hafted battle axe, Spike said, “Axe like this, it’s a fine weapon for fighting afoot, but it needs space. Not for close quarters or attack in a group. Too easy to slice your chums on the backswing. And not the best weapon for children such as yourselves: too top-heavy.”

“Upper body strength,” the sofa row chorused in a disgusted sing-song.

“No shame in it. Best weapon is the one you can use the best, the one won’t get you killed. Not the prettiest or the longest. Fit the weapon to your strengths, then fit yourself to the weapon. Learn it so it’s a part of you. Learn its powers and its limits, ‘cause everything’s got limits. Can’t take out the opposition at ten paces with a saber but might with a good throwing knife or even a slingshot, though we don’t have any of those.” Spike stopped to consider, then put the thought away. No time now to add a new weapon or get the children, the Potentials, trained with it. “It’s all in the circumstances. Axe like this, it’s good against massed opposition, most particularly with swords because then, see, you got the reach of them. But if you can’t dance fast with it, they’ll come at you on the backside of the swing. And no particular good against archers. And the good part about that is?”

Just about every hand went up. Spike nodded at Gail.

“Present opposition has no archers!”

“Right you are. Biters are dumb as every other vamp, don’t like using weapons at all, the glorious stupid purity of size, quickness, strength, and the ever-reliable fists and fangs. Barehanded and just about unbeatable against unarmed opposition. And the Bringers with their wavy knives and berserker tactics, just come at you, no defensive moves at all. So long as there are still people here, the First can always make more Bringers and so isn’t sparing of those it has. You lot have every advantage but one. You’re well armed and well trained, you’re experienced in lots of different situations, you know your team moves and your proper distances so you’re not blundering into the arc of somebody else’s swing or getting in each other’s way. You listen for the signals that tell you how the whole fight is going, so you push or back off together, nobody gets stranded and surrounded. What’s the one thing they got goin’ for them that we don’t? ‘Manda.”

“Numbers. And reinforcements. We’re all we’ve got.”

“Exactly so. So our defensive moves are as important as our offense. We got to keep ourselves alive because there’s no more of us coming to replace any casualties. Better to duck out and wait for a better chance than keep going and get hurt bad or maybe killed. We’re lucky that way: nobody here apt to go all crazy and berserker. Except me sometimes. And I can get away with that why?”

Amanda answered, “Because if they don’t kill you outright, if you’re not dusted on the spot, you heal. Eventually. And you’re still a maniac in a fight, and it’s still stupid, because we need you to watch and understand how it’s all going and call the signals for us. So we wish you’d think to be a little more careful of yourself, Spike.”

Spike shrugged, smiling. “I just do how I do, you know that. Not really made for a general. Just pretending as best I can. Not used to sending others to do my fighting for me, much less a bunch of children. Potentials. But I don’t forget so quick as I used to--have to credit me for that.”

Spike sobered, laying the axe down, because he could see no way he’d be with them when the big fight came. Couldn’t be helped, but he still regretted having to surrender this partnership. They’d have to choose a new commander from among themselves. Nobody else was trained or fit.

Kennedy commented, “It’s going to be soon. Isn’t it.”

“I expect. Pretty soon now.”

Kim said, “When it’s time, I’d really like to use that saber, Spike. I know there’s not enough of the fine weapons for everybody and we probably ought to cut cards for it, but if it’s OK with you for us to use them and if I get high card, I’d like to put first dibs on the saber.”

Noise erupted, everybody calling to claim some weapon. Amanda settled things by getting the deck and letting everybody cut. It took two draws. Drawing a face card granted the option of claiming one of Spike’s weapons. A third draw settled the order of claiming. Practically apoplectic with glee, Kim claimed the saber.

“Now, show some sense,” Spike warned them. “Don’t anybody claim one of my old toys if it doesn’t feel good to your hand. If it’s too heavy or too long for you to control the swing and the whole of the blade, hilt to point. If you can’t dance with it, you don’t want it. No amount of dumb sentimental goop is worth adding to your risk, and reducing your effectiveness, by fighting with a weapon that’s not fit for you. ‘M almost sorry now I fetched ‘em back. Didn’t imagine you lot taking to them like you have. ‘Tisn’t a fine weapon if it gets you hurt. Or killed. Wouldn’t want to be the cause of that.”

Nobody answered him. Everybody ignored him, busy with the weapons claiming.

There was a lot more of that than there used to be: got too fucking independent by half while he was away. Since he’d given them back to themselves. Frowning at the floor, worrying, Spike wondered if he should try to do something about that or let them be.

Best they be independent, not waiting on his every word, since they’d be going into the fight that way. Maybe the old weapons would build their confidence and be lucky for them on that account, against logic. Hard to know or even guess right, a thing like that.

And every one of them bandaged someplace on an arm from feeding him up so fine over the past weeks. But none needed today, of course: last night had been someday. Spike felt as though he wouldn’t need to feed or sleep ever again. As to shagging, that was something you could never get a surfeit of. Though it was true Buffy had been hard to waken and had threatened to call in sick rather than return to Casa Summers and make ready for work…. Fair worn out, she’d been. And not from blood-loss, neither.

Slayer healing renewed the supply within minutes. And not much needed, no more than a couple of deep swallows, then little sips at appropriate moments, at the last instant before explosion. More and more an automatic part of the reflex of release, a completed circle. After the first few times, no more needed to set them both off than the press of his mouth to the mark.

Slayer and vampire, each doing for and seeing to the other. The achievement of what felt like a state of corporeal grace and entire contentment. It made glorious, complete sense, but who would ever have imagined such a thing except in a dream?

**********

Explaining, “I didn’t want to reveal anything about this until we had a reliable way of guarding our thoughts,” Angel set a box on the weapons chest.

When Angel opened the box, Willow turned her eyes away after one glance. The object inside was disturbing: if she tried to look at it steadily, she was gonna throw up--not because of its appearance but because of its roiling incoherent energies.

Angel went on, “It was a dimensional key. I tracked it down hoping it would give access to a dimension that can’t be reached by spells or conventional portals. It doesn’t. It’s been spoiled--randomized--by being sealed in a Hellmouth for at least a thousand years. One of the stories connected to it is that it was originally Atlantean. According to the story, the fall of Atlantis was caused by the opening of a Hellmouth there. Or maybe its collapse. Anyway, this was supposedly involved. It’s called the Chaos Stone.”

Willow chanced another quick look. Bitter fluid filled her mouth and she swallowed it down. The original shape of the object could no longer be discerned. About the size of a melon, it was encased in a lopsided grey accretion of shells cemented in sand. It had been underwater for a long, long time, gnawed by the sea.

Mouth twitching, eyes narrowed and pained, she blurted, “I can’t heal that.”

“You don’t have to. It’s fine for our purposes the way it is. What we’ll need you to do is amplify it. Increase the range of its signal.”

“It’s not a key. It’s a dimensional rift and everything’s trying to pour through. A mini-Hellmouth in its own right!”

“Yes, I know.” Angel shut the box again and latched it. The horrible feeling coming off it decreased a little. “The box provides some shielding. You might want to add some wards to the house, and maybe the box, to keep the signal contained. But I’ve had it in my hotel suite for over a month without any problem. There can’t be significant leakage. Otherwise I would have had company, since no invitation’s needed to approach it.” Angel looked at her to see if she understood that as a vampire, his residence in a place created no mystical barrier to intrusion by other vampires, as a human’s would.

Willow knew that: vampires had no right of place. Willow also understood that, unpleasant as she found the Stone’s emanations, vampires would be attracted to them as they were to the Hellmouth itself. She asked Angel bluntly, “Why aren’t you affected?”

“I don’t let myself be. It’s a matter of control.” He shrugged. “Spike was all over the thing when I showed it to him, last night.” That plainly pleased him.

“Yeah,” Willow responded tightly. Thinking about Angel and Spike and control, all together, made her almost as sick as the Stone did. She backed away from the box, one hand gripping the other. “All right, it’s here. I’ll ward it. Then I’ll see what I can do with it on my own. Working with a talisman with that kind of power takes a circle. A coven. An experienced coven. You’re expecting a lot here, Angel.”

Angel showed no reaction to her anxious, resentful look. He said soothingly, “I’m sure a witch with your power will find a way. Borrow power, if you need to. I’m certain you know how to do that. This is half the equation, Willow. The other half is the amulet. So this is important.” He started toward the door. Since it was mid-morning, Willow figured he had come through the tunnels and would have to return that way. With the door open, Angel turned to say, “Be sure you have it locked down by dark.”

A breakfast of tea and gnawed fingernails provided Willow with no means of safe approach to the Stone, much less manipulating its energies. Sure, easy for Angel to tell her to borrow power. Leech power was more like it. Drain people of their natural energy like a vampire going through a congregation or a schoolroom. That would be a bad business. Not outright dark, if the circle was willing, but extremely dangerous.

On a panicked impulse, she called Giles. She wouldn’t discuss the problem on the phone. Although both she and Giles were protected, the phone lines weren’t. She just asked him to come.

When Giles arrived, Willow opted for lawn chairs in the yard, in the sunshine. She felt frozen to the marrow. “I don’t know what to do about this, Giles. Could you maybe contact the coven for me? Ask them to lend power?”

“Willow, you know better than that. The Stone is not a Natural object, and Natural forces are not going to contain it. The coven would refuse, considering the attempt both abhorrent and useless. No point, I’m afraid, in even asking them.”

Willow blurted, “You stored power once. That time. Couldn’t you do it again? Drain off and store as much as you can, then let me tap into it?”

Giles thoughtfully looked in the direction Willow was looking: toward Casa Spike and the Potentials leaping and turning in weapons drill in the yard. “I am not a mage, Willow, as you know. I can accept power: I cannot take it. And yes, unless we are to involve total and uncomprehending strangers, which really isn’t feasible, the Potentials are the only possible source numerous and vital enough to endure such a drain. Which would affect their ability to function as fighters for some considerable time. Even if all went well.”

“Yeah.” Willow laughed bitterly. “And my record in controlling myself in a power drain is so fantastic. My record in handling that much power, once I got it, without going all black-eyed and veiny is even more fantastic. Giles, I really, really don’t think I can do this! I know it’s important, and I want to help, I’ve been waiting to help, doing my meditations and everything, but this is too much, I can’t do it--” Fists against her eyes, scrunched up all tight in the chair, Willow began to bawl. She was such a terrible nerd loser, letting everybody down, able to imagine what was needed but bone-afraid to do it, stupid awful nerd coward loser, helpless when faced with a real crisis or anything with real power.

A hand came down on her shoulder and, beside her, Kennedy’s voice demanded coldly, “What’s this all about?”

Willow looked up. In her swimming vision, Kennedy was glaring at Giles, suspecting him of being responsible for Willow’s distress.

Willow felt even worse, realizing that she was making such a pitiful exhibition of herself that the SITs had noticed from the next yard. They were coming, concerned. Giles abruptly rose and returned to the house as Willow tried to explain there was nothing anybody could do, except maybe there was, but she didn’t dare try it, sucking energy out of them all.

“Maybe we need to set up another roster,” remarked Kim, some kind of joke Willow didn’t understand. Kim bristled when told by Kennedy to shut up. Kim accused, “You’re just being a bitch on account of the saber.”

“I don’t want any of his filthy old rat-stickers. I didn’t even cut for one,” Kennedy retorted.

Several of the other SITs started getting into the quarrel, leaning forward into each other’s faces, scowling, loud-voiced. Spike’s sardonic drawl cut in and the SITs gravitated to him as he reached the sufficient shade of the maple tree, discarding the blanket he’d used to cross the sunny open space. The Potentials pointed indignantly, claiming injury and disrespect, many gesturing with long sharp weapons. And Giles came back with the box.

“Ah,” said Spike in the tone of one to whom everything was now clear. “Everybody, settle. ‘Tisn’t you, it’s what’s in that box there. Stone of Discord, or whatever the hell it’s called. Why are we so lucky, Rupert?”

Giles crossed the yard and started explaining. The SITs grudgingly separated to give him space, and after a moment Amanda brought and opened a chair for him. When Giles sat, Spike dropped into his usual feral crouch, head cocked, listening while his eyes slowly scanned the SITs. They quieted, most settling on the grass, when they found Spike looking at them.

Spike called to Willow. She didn’t want to go, admit her coward loser nerdiness in front of everybody. But Spike couldn’t come to her, not in the broad daylight, so she forced herself across the yard.

Instead of demanding why she wasn’t doing what was necessary, Spike remarked sympathetically, “Gets into your bones, doesn’t it. Sets your teeth on edge, like.” That, of course, only made Willow feel worse. “Think maybe I can sort that a bit. No harm to trying, anyway. Let me have your hands here a minute.”

His upturned waiting hands let Willow know what was expected. Not knowing what else to do, she sat down, about knee to knee with him, and put her hands in his.

Something changed. Eased. Stilled.

Wide-eyed, Willow asked, “What did you do?”

“Sorted you, just a little. Damped down the edge where it was bothering you so.” Releasing her hands, Spike looked from her to the box Giles held. “Let me have that, Rupert.”

“Spike, do you believe that’s wise?”

“Not gonna hurt me none. Not as well as I know it. Just set it down. Now, how about if you all back off a ways. Go on, clear off.”

When he was satisfied with their distance, Spike opened the box and took the Stone into his hands. He was quietly poised, holding it, eyes shut, face calm. Nothing to see in the normal way. But when Willow looked with other sight, she found his aura flaring, closing, leaning oblong, twisting: like a sheet warping and cracking to a high wind.

Willow muttered to Giles, “He’s actually channeling the damn thing!”

“How?”

Willow just shook her head. All she could think of was the contrast between Angel’s grim self-control that refused to let the Stone affect him, and what she saw as Spike’s serene acceptance, poised in the midst of chaos. Letting it in. Letting it affect him and yet in a curious way unmoved by it nevertheless. It was frantic and flailing; he was at rest, comfortable within it--as casual about doing this chore as any other.

She couldn’t maintain othersight long enough to see what happened. But she felt it happen. Like an overcast upon her heart, lifting. Her conviction of worthlessness and inadequacy retreating, dissipating.

Spike sighed and set the Stone back in the box. “Should be a bit better for you lot now,” he remarked, shutting the lid.

Giles asked, “What did you do?”

“A little hard to describe.” Spike busied his hands getting out a cigarette and lighting it. Small chores to occupy his hands, no different from holding the Stone, that became simple in the doing and nothing remarkable at all. “Hellmouth itself doesn’t bother humans much. High School’s built right on top of it, after all, yet it’s rare for anybody to come down with anything worse than a case of the fidgets. Buffy works there most every day and it doesn’t trouble her. So I guess one way to say is, I tuned it to the same resonance as the Hellmouth, damped down the extra harmonics it was putting out. If it’d been music, I’d say I transposed it to a different key you can’t hear so well as we can. Or adjusted the bandwidth, or the spectrum, same difference. A matter of feel, and there’s not really words for that. Stone’s still doin’ what it did, just not anymore in a way that should trouble you lot so much.”

Willow prompted, “But how could you do it? With no energy draw, no--”

Spike shrugged. “Used to it, I expect. Tuned to it, my own self. Demon here, an’ all. So no great matter to latch onto it, let it latch onto me, more like…. Something like lifting a load. Take it up, then come to balance with it. Like I said: hard to describe.”

Giles remarked gravely, “You must have an extraordinarily strong sense of balance, then.”

“Yeah,” said Spike, with a slow, reflective smile. “Got it back, seems like. Had to get rid of a whole lot of things first. Distractions. But with them all set aside, the rest has come back to balance. Know what I am. What I’m for. What I’m doing….” Rising, he looked around at the SITs. “So, my treasures, what exactly do you think you’re doing hanging about here, idle as sheep?”

As the SITs scattered and Spike pulled the enveloping blanket over his head to make the sprint back to the shade of the porch, Willow watched until he was safely there, then bent to scoop up the box.

She could amplify the Stone’s force now the way Angel wanted. She could braid it and tie the skeins with blue ribbons. She could bring it to a steady boil like a teakettle and make it whistle Dixie. Whatever its effect on demons, its power was no longer power over her.

She’d had it all backward. She’d believed she needed to control things, external forces. Manipulate them. Whereas what was required was that she change herself and let herself be changed. Willow finally saw what the coven had been wittering on about, all those months. What Tara had tried, over and over, to tell her. She had to find her own balance. Then the rest would fall into place.

She regarded the vampire with happy, ungrudged admiration.

Spike was going to close the Hellmouth and Willow was going to help him. She no longer had any doubt or any resistance to the prospect.

**********

For Anya to stick a Closed for Inventory sign in the front window of the Magic Box and lock the door before noon on a business day showed Dawn that Anya was really serious. So Dawn was actually gonna have to make good on her claim to being the onsite representative of the Powers That Be.

Well, she’d try, because she had to. And they’d squash her like a bug. She just knew it.

While Anya bustled about, collecting nice candles and other unnecessary but decorative paraphernalia, Dawn remarked, “I told Spike to think of Her as Lady Gates. So he could have a person in his mind, that he could imagine, that he was dealing with. But She’s not. She’s a Power. She’s not even a she: She’s a They. Might as well think of having a chat with the Pacific Ocean. I’m the only part who’s a person, a single viewpoint. And I was soooo stupid to make you a promise like that!”

“Well, it’s not as though I twisted your arm,” Anya responded, entirely without sympathy. “You named the bargain, I didn’t. I fulfilled my part, exactly as contracted. Now I expect you to perform yours. And it’s in your own interests, after all: if Spike incinerates, you go poof. I can’t imagine you’re looking forward to that.”

“I could go poof just as easily here in the shop--”

“Hadn’t thought of that.” Biting her lip, Anya started rapidly gathering up everything she’d put down. “Training room, then. Away from the merchandise. Well, come on, and bring the crystal.”

That was the only object that actually was needed. A big hard lump in a red velvet drawstring bag. About grapefruit sized. Dawn took the bag by its cords and dragged after Anya into the annex.

Anya was setting up again on one of the benches by the streetside wall. Dawn plunked the bag down and got a glare. Anya said, “Take care with that, it’s very valuable. I lent it to Spike, and he left it laying in the alley. So I couldn’t even bill him for its use, not that there’d be any point in it. He never has anything anyway. It’s a wonder it wasn’t damaged. Just spill it out. Gently. Without touching it. And you don’t have to tell me about the Powers, I’ve been dealing with them for years. I just think of large international conglomerates. Absolutely no personality, nothing you could hit, but intention and effects, oh, yes. Arashmahar is more a committee consensus than an actual place. It’s there because everybody has agreed to believe it’s there. Rather like Lourdes or the South Pole. Consensus reality can be very annoying, let me tell you: get out of step with everyone else and you start sinking through the floor. Very disconcerting. Particularly in multi-story buildings.” Anya lit several pillar candles and a stick of patchouli incense and considered the effect. “Now, are we all set?”

“I suppose so,” Dawn admitted, and sank down on the bench.

“Hold hands, then. You touch first because you’re the broker and I’m the client.”

With Anya’s hands resting on hers, Dawn made a squint-eyed, wincing face and set her fingers on the crystal.

Immediate attention. Something vast, whipping around to attend. Immense disapproval focused from interstellar distances upon one extremely tiny and frightened point.

“It’s that bargain,” Dawn said. No reason not to speak, They’d understand her just as well no matter what she did. “You can find it if You review. I made it a couple of months ago before You reabsorbed me. The one with Anya.”

“Hello,” Anya trilled. “I’m Anyanka, formerly of Arashmahar. Quite a lot of experience, as a Justice demon, in making and keeping bargains. I’m the client, and it’s very kind of You to take a moment to attend to this. I know it’s trivial to You to the point of utter insignificance, but from our limited perspectives as mortals, it’s quite important to us and we do appreciate it. The bargain was made in good faith and fully kept in all respects on my part. I deal in wishes. So if it’s agreeable, I’ll cast my request as a wish. I wish--”

Anya broke off because the Presence had located the bargain and was doing the equivalent of holding it up with two fingers at the furthest possible remove from Itself. Viewing it with immense distaste.

Dawn was made to feel how utterly and stupidly reckless it had been for her to tender such a promise. She had no right to commit the Powers to anything.

“But You took it. When You took me. It’s right there, and You can’t pretend it isn’t. I promised on Your behalf and spoke with Your voice, and You didn’t repudiate it because You didn’t repudiate me. It wasn’t for myself, after all.”

As proof, Dawn offered up the gestalt of circumstances and splendid altruistic motives that were the context of her asking Anya for a simple little teleport into the basement, so she could see how badly Spike was hurt and decide what to do about it. That had been very important, and she’d promised Anya a favor--anything in her power--as reward for help, and corresponding unnamed but dire punishment if that help were withheld. A bit melodramatic, perhaps, but quite straightforward in its terms.

“I’m sure You’re aware,” Anya said, “of the present situation involving the Hellmouth here in Sunnydale at the present time. In fact, I’m quite certain You are, considering the degree to which the Powers have been influencing events and some of the people involved. Quite blatant, actually. In the nicest possible way, of course. And nobody could be more thoroughly in favor of closing the Hellmouth, as the direction Your influence has taken indicates is also Your intention, than myself. Nasty nuisance and always has been, and the alternative would be catastrophic to this dimension. I know it’s not much, but it’s become home, and I can’t believe you want to cede control of it to a Personage of such limited imagination as the First Evil. After all, what does the multiverse need with yet another hell dimension? In its present state, it at least has a mildly diverting variety.”

“Anya,” Dawn muttered urgently. “They know. And They don’t care about your opinions, one way or the other. Get to the horses, Anya!”

“Certainly. To business, then. Given Your involvement in the situation, You certainly know who Spike is. The vampire who dreams about the amulet. I want a period of 100% guaranteed total invulnerability for him within a range of three miles, in all directions, from the Hellmouth. This period is to begin two hours before he begins the attempt and last for two hours, local time, after he completes it, whatever the result. And during the attempt itself, of course. No loopholes, no exceptions. And nothing to hinder his freedom of movement or his freedom of choice. No dropping a hill on him, for instance, or burying him in some pit. He goes in intact and he comes out intact.

“Given that this is a service he’s performing in part at Your behest, I shouldn’t think You’d find this an excessive precaution or reward for services rendered. I simply think his interests should be safeguarded. These are very reasonable terms. I--”

The crystal sagged and melted into a puddle of dull slag. Contact was broken.

Snatching her hands away, Anya exclaimed, “Well, that certainly was rude and sudden, and I’ve lost the price of a very valuable crystal in the process.”

“They agreed, Anya,” Dawn announced glumly.

“What?”

“They agreed to your terms. On one condition: when Spike goes in, we have to go in with him. With no invulnerability clause.”

Chapter Twenty Four: Hellmouth

Tipping the broadsword onto his shoulder, Spike turned and walked backward a few paces, surveying Casa Summers--the light seeping around boarded windows, the shape of the roof, and the long porch in the bright moonlight that was everywhere. The moon was westering into some streaky high silver clouds. It was just past three, and he’d got away easier than he’d expected. It’d been a final briefing and sendoff--completely unnecessary. He wouldn’t have showed up at all except that he needed the amulet. He’d had to accept a twist of herbs and feathers Willow said was a clear-headedness charm, and various good wishes, handshakes, and hugs, but it could have been much worse. No arguments. Hardly any emotional outbursts except for Dawn, hanging on so and having to be patiently pried off before she’d let him go.

People did make such a fuss about things. But Spike wanted it simple, just turn and leave without dramatics, and mostly they’d let him do that. Even Buffy. It had been chiefly her reaction he’d been concerned about. Braced and waiting for it. But as things had fallen out, she’d never made a peep, which was uncommonly sensible of her.

The SITs weren’t back from patrol yet, so he’d ducked all that predictable flap too.

The amulet purred on his chest like a tiny motor at idle. Other banked energies he could feel, like the aura the witch claimed he was putting out, spread wide like wings. Didn’t altogether believe that, but felt as though it could be true. Likely just sick of being still, bent tight as a bow, impatient to be gone. Anyway, everything Planned: in place and set as much as it could be in advance of the event. His place in it locked in and certain.

Wheeling about, he continued down the deserted street. Off in the distance a house was burning with nobody taking any apparent notice. Quite a lot of feral pets about, a few cruising dog packs forming up and running silent along the suburban lanes though with sense enough to steer wide of him. Cruising vamp packs, too, sometimes: with people fewer and staying indoors through the dark times, hunting was bad enough that the cousins had been forced to turn creative. Since they couldn’t get in, they’d toss gasoline bombs improvised in soda bottles to drive the prey out. That burning house off aways was probably one such. Spike shook his head, still a little sad about how his idea of putting some of that wasted potential to use, turning the cousins into fighters, had fizzled out. Vamps wouldn’t stir one inch beyond what they had to, what they could see an immediate chance of satisfaction in. Spike had imagined something like a militia. Angel was quite content with a mob and would likely get what he wanted, since he didn’t want much.

Along about four thirty, Angel, Willow, and that Harris would set up in the bank building Angel had chosen and fortified. Then Angel would open the box. The witch would magnify and direct the enticing shriek of the Chaos Stone, identifying that location as the most desirable piece of real estate in the whole of Sunnydale. Vamps would start gathering from all over, drawn to it. With locks, barricades, wards, spells, and weapons, the cousins would be kept out long enough for the Biters to start showing up: drawn by the same call, the same promise of satisfaction. And of course they’d start fighting over it. Fighting with each other. Just fighting. Once a brawl like that got rolling, it would feed on itself till nobody was left standing.

Spike felt several ways about the Plan. He appreciated its simplicity, that meant not a lot could go wrong if you were prepared to accept the wholesale destruction of several city blocks and any people unlucky enough to get caught up in it as minimum collateral damage. He appreciated its indirection: it wasn’t the main battle but a diversion, to pull as many of the Turok-han as possible away from the school, to give Spike the best chance of slipping in unnoticed before sunrise.

When the light drove surviving Biters and cousins alike underground, into the tunnels and sewers, they’d find the limited ways back toward the school blocked by the Slayer and the SITs, who’d have an advantage in the enclosed spaces, with the opposition having to line up to get at them.

Spike’s job was to close the Hellmouth and prevent reinforcements arriving from behind. Close off the First’s access to this dimension altogether. End it all.

Spike appreciated the trust and responsibility that represented--what he’d endured the supplice for. This time, he wouldn’t fail. This time, he’d do the thing properly and get it right.

And of course Angel’s stratagem also promised to be a cracking marvelous brawl, the finest in centuries of vampire mayhem. Spike mildly regretted having to miss it.

Up ahead, somebody stood in the intersection leaning on a battle axe comfortably propped, blade down. From any distance and any direction, Spike knew that silhouette: Slayer.

Approaching, he shook his head and sighed.

Buffy swung the axe onto her shoulder and fell into step on his right. “I don’t join the show until after sunrise,” she remarked in her brightest, most unconvincingly cheerful voice. “So I figured you might not mind a little company.”

Spike didn’t say anything, just gave her a look. In spite of himself, he found himself shortening stride so she wouldn’t have to trot to keep up. She was so tiny, vivid, and indomitable. Her delicate ferocity never failed to tug at his heart.

She had no business being here, and they both knew it, and here she was anyway, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

She wore dove-grey slacks, little cuffed boots, and a dark green halter top with tiny spangley flecks woven in some way: a different outfit than she’d had for the sendoff. That was what’d kept her, then: she’d stopped to change clothes.

She’d pulled all the hair from her ears upward into a high bouncing ponytail. The rest swung free, golden and shining. She smelled wonderful.

He’d never expected to see her again.

“Do you?” she persisted. “Mind?”

“If you cared, you wouldn’t have come. And that’s no fit weapon for a tunnel. Be bangin’ into the walls, both sides.”

“You think so? Maybe. It’s what I felt like for tonight. Big blade, long swing. Be a good weapon against Bringers. Against Turok-han, not so much. You want to swap?”

He took a long stride and came to a stance, blocking her way. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Making everything harder. Making yourself miserable.”

“I’m not miserable. Do I look miserable?” Without waiting for a response, she leaned to see past him. “Look, there’s Anya. And Dawn.” Buffy began waving. “Hi, Dawnie!”

When Spike turned, he saw the van parked up ahead. Anya and Dawn were leaning against it, eating ice-cream cones. With no effort he knew the sequence: the three of them piling into the van and getting ahead of him, then Buffy loping back to intercept.

As Anya and Dawn strolled toward them, Spike saw Dawn had a crossbow and a cylinder of quarrels hanging on a shoulder strap. Anya had a hand axe slung from a belt and almost concealed within the folds of her full skirt.

Spike turned his head hard away. “Oh, come on!”

“Yeah,” Dawn chirped. “Nice of you to invite us.”

“You’re not invited, Bit. Not none of you. Where I’m going, you can’t go. What I do, you can’t have any part in. You know that! So what are you damn well playing at?”

“There’s been a change of plan,” Anya commented.

Dropping the playful pretense, Buffy said flatly, “Spike, I put you on notice some time ago. I know what you want and what you think you’re for. But what I do isn’t up to you. And I told you: if you go, we go. Both of us or none at all. If Faith has to break out of prison to field the next apocalypse, then that’s her problem. Somebody’s problem. Not mine. My duty as the Slayer has eaten about every damn thing I care about. It’s not getting this. You can’t argue me out or force me out.”

“And how about Dawn?”

Dawn said, “There are factors you don’t know about and can’t change. Sorry, Spike. I’m kind of obligated here.” She stood beside Buffy.

Spike moved a few paces aside, looking around and trying to think it all through. If he could protect neither of them, if they didn’t want, wouldn’t accept that from him, what was the point of anything he was doing? Where was the sense in even trying?

For an instant, he was angry. But the next instant, he let that go and was only desolate and resigned. He said to them quietly, “Maybe I been mistaken then. What is it, that you want me to do?”

**********

He wasn’t getting it: Buffy could tell. Either she’d said it wrong, or he’d heard it wrong. Maybe it was some other damn vamp thing she didn’t know about and how could she, as though she was dating some freaking Elbonian exchange student with all these cockamamie rules you kept blundering into, worse than wicca-pagan Jewish lesbian geek Warren-killer Willow you had to tiptoe around, there were so many things they were touchy about.

He had his eyes back--steel blue, lifelessly downcast; and his eyes (and his shoulders and his voice and the way he was standing and all of it) told her this was more than hurt pride. This was get-away-from-me-evil-soulless-thing wounded. This maybe was even bathroom-I-could-never-trust-you wounded.

Dawn knew it too, exclaiming, “No, no, no!” running to him and grabbing his arm, then swinging both of them to face Buffy, demanding, “Say it a different way. He doesn’t understand.”

When even the official interpreter was stumped, what was scraping-by-C in Spanish 101 supposed to do about it? “What different way?”

“I don’t know, but we’re making it bad and it’s not supposed to be that way. Spike, tell her.”

He shook his head. “Dunno what you want, Bit. All I can see is, whatever it is, it’s not what I been doing. So I dunno anymore what you want.”

That of course was the moment the Potentials came sweeping up, all pleased and full of themselves to have played such a neat trick on him, then standing in awkward poses as even they saw it, that he hadn’t reacted to protection and concern and love dammit the way they’d expected him to, and if nobody else could figure it out either, if it was just him, he was just gonna have to suck it up and deal because nobody had time for his damn moods and cockamamie Victorian vamp sensibilities right now.

Buffy named the mark and sent them all off toward it with a word and a swing of her arm, that little alien routine of his that everybody had down with no misunderstandings, still facing him with one hand on her hip and the other of course occupied with the axe, and asked, “You coming?”

Still sad-eyed, he responded, “Yeah, I guess,” and fell in jogging on her left, exactly where he was supposed to be, dammit, and what was the freaking problem here?

Well, Buffy admitted, she’d known he wasn’t gonna like it, known it was gonna be a standoff. That was why she hadn’t even attempted to argue with him but instead presented him with a done deal too late for anything to be changed. He wasn’t gonna budge, and neither was she. OK, the mission mattered, and OK he was key guy on that because of the amulet. But how could anybody imagine that she was gonna let him try to get in there all alone, back to the place of his insanity and his torture that he still had nightmares about and was so deeply afraid of he could barely talk about it, and not surround him with all the layers of love and support that’d come clamoring to her, demanding to come along?

How could somebody contrive to take that as some sort of mortal insult?

The advance scout, Mike, who now had some connection with the SITs that Buffy didn’t understand either, came put-putting up on Spike’s motorcycle except it seemed to be Mike’s now (don’t ask) and stopped in the middle of the street to report to Amanda. When Amanda went on and all the SITs had passed, Mike swung the bike into a leisurely curb-to-curb Uey and then paced them on Spike’s far side. He was wearing jeans and a loose camouflage jacket over a green Hellmouth souvenir T-shirt.

“Hi,” he said to Spike, smiling pleasantly.

Spike waited a beat to acknowledge him. “Hullo, Michael. What are you doin’ here, then?”

“Point.”

“Ahuh.”

That minimal exchange was followed by a couple of minutes’ silence, maybe in respect for the cool tough-guy terseness of it all. All uber-cool, Buffy thought: almost like a couple of Initiative lunks with their John Wayne imitations. Then Mike said, “I got a couple of cases of incendiaries together, past few weeks. Me and Huey, some others. Kept a few loose, just on principle. The rest, and some other small ordnance, I passed along to Angel. Thought he might see more use for it at his position.”

“That’s very enterprising of you.”

Mike scratched under an eye, still smiling. “He cussed me out. On account of it wasn’t specified in The Plan. Showed him my demon the whole time. He didn’t like that much neither.”

That got a sideways look from Spike, head actually consenting to turn.

After another couple minutes of silence, Mike asked, “Where d’y want me?”

“If ‘Manda says point, I expect that’s where you belong.”

“I kind of took point my own self. Free ranging at the moment. Independent unit. Open for assignment.”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not running this operation.”

Cutting in on whatever Mike had started to say, Buffy said, “Run it.”

No look, no immediate question or comment. Maybe a dozen strides in silence. Then Spike acknowledged, “Slayer,” in his most ironic, irritating drawl, halted Mike with a gesture, and mounted pillion. They roared off.

Buffy wasn’t sure that setting Spike in charge was the right thing to do. But she figured snark was preferable to sullen. Pair him up with another vamp, who might actually know what his problem was or pry it out of him and maybe make him deal with it. At least they knew the same hand signals. She’d let the spot to her left go empty for that.

**********

With minimal direction, Mike pulled up by some parked cars in view of the sewer lid covering the most direct below-ground route into the school. Dismounting, Spike scanned the area, taking care to avoid the stretches illuminated by the streetlights.

Spotting a sentry, a Bringer, off in an alley, he sent Mike to halt everybody at a new mark a block away and signal when they were in place.

Except that it wasn’t by mechanical means, nobody had yet figured how Bringers communicated. Spike wanted to give the sentry no chance to relay an alarm or be missed, either one.

He mapped out a route starting with a fire escape and over successive rooftops that would put him overlooking that alley. Using utter stillness and bursts of vampire speed, he crossed the street zig-zag: no direct lines, no sustained motion to draw the eye. He waited under the fire escape, laying the sword aside as unwieldy, until he caught a high-pitched whistle just off from a nighthawk’s shrill tone. Then he made an angled jump: to one wall high, then rebounding to the fire escape above where the last ladder would have creaked going down. Onto the first roof and then the way he’d mapped in his head, short jumps and soft, collected landings that made no sound.

It was well he’d taken care because there were two sentries. Not an unreasonable distance apart, if he dropped right. He took a taser in his right hand and his favorite hand axe in his left. Then he dropped, extending both arms in the instant of landing. Axe had to be more discriminating, so he made sure the angle and backhand force would take the one Bringer’s throat out, reaching more heedlessly with the taser because any contact would be good enough, any hit disabling. The second Bringer was dead too before it’d finished falling.

The spilled blood stank: though they started as human, whatever changed them to Bringers rendered their blood inedible and repulsive.

Spike showed himself at the mouth of the alley and pointed. Everybody started coming from the mark in small fast groups, to not make a congested bunch waiting by the sewer cover Mike was lifting. Spike backtracked to retrieve the sword and found a rag in a dumpster to clean the axe before suspending it from a belt loop. Didn’t need the stink of Bringer blood announcing him, just at the first, anyway. Later, it wouldn’t matter.

Slayer and most of the SITs were down. Mike held Dawn’s arm in a wrist clasp to lower her, and Spike laid the sword aside to do the same for Anya. He hadn’t the least clue why they were there but accepted that they were, since Buffy had made no objection and brought them along. Not up to him. Not as if he’d made the Plan, now was it?

All quiet below, so far. Spike named Mike rearguard and assigned him responsibility for Anya and Dawn. “Since you’ve gone free agent here, you’re not under my word. But I don’t want to have to keep track of you and I don’t want to set you to do something and then find you left it.”

Mike nodded, responding, “Understandable.”

“You don’t go off on your own without you let me know, is all.”

“I can follow--” Mike broke off, head lifting, flashing to game face.

Spike knew why because he’d done the same. Hellmouth, that was before them: vast and pervasive as wind. Not needing to pull because it was strong enough, just being. The new awareness was like tornado sirens in Kansas. Loud. Hot. An assault on the senses, reverberating in the bones. Full of excitement and promise.

Spike grabbed Mike’s arm as the younger vampire started moving. Mike took a stance and started breathing, open-mouthed, scowling heavily at his boots.

Spike told him, “You drop game face, it might be easier.” He waited another minute. “You drop game face or you go your ways. Can’t be around the children like that.”

“You first,” Mike growled.

Spike did, although that made it harder to hold his concentration and his balance. Lad needed the example. After a moment, Mike’s features smoothed, too. He said, “Set me at point. Can’t answer otherwise. Do less damage in front if I can’t hold.”

“All right. Only be a while. Enough fighting for everybody, soon enough.” Enough to keep the demon, increasingly angry and impatient from being denied, occupied and happy.

Between them, he and Mike got the sewer cover back into place from below. Then they edged among the SITs, moving through the column. Spike knew their scents and their voices, so even had there been no light at all, he would have known them all perfectly clearly. As it was, there was enough light for him to distinguish outlines. But it occurred to him that they had none of these familiar markers but voices maybe and he didn’t think any of them had ever been through the tunnels before. He paused in the midst of them and said quietly, “Here,” so they knew him and gathered close around.

He said, “There’ll be light soon. Torches on the walls. If anybody’s fetched a flashlight, don’t use it. Dark don’t bother Bringers, and showing a light will mark you and spoil your dark-sight for no gain. Slayer’s put you back in my hand, dunno why, but that means you keep an ear to her but I call the mark, all right?”

Amanda said flatly, “Good.”

“Sue, you sing out,” Spike directed. “Soft.”

“Here,” called Suzanne, from the back rank.

“Sue, you team with two or three others, don’t leave anybody short, and take rearguard. Mind Bit and Anya, all right? Sing out loud if anything comes at you from the back. ‘Manda, you keep an ear that way and turn and take it with your team if we get trouble from behind. Kim, if ‘Manda has to turn, you take point. Everybody clear?”

They all murmured Clear, Spike..

Spike added, “Willow’s running the Stone now. Any vamp you come across is gonna be sore distracted. Biters too, though I hope we won’t meet many if we just wait here a bit. See any, go right at ‘em. ‘S’not a good fighting space for them. Too constricted. And be mindful of Mike, he’s a bit off. He’ll do as best he can, but keep out of striking distance. Gonna keep him with me at point. Don’t dust him except he makes you. Or me, for that matter.”

Soft chuckles with an edge of nervousness but nothing severe.

“Anybody who wanders off is goat for a week and will get a real spectacular penalty. Or we’ll have her bones for soup. When time comes to move, hold hands like elephants and go slow. Want to let things clear out, up ahead.”

They sounded and smelled more settled, so he continued on through them to where Mike and Buffy waited at the head of the column.

Spike sent Mike on ahead to locate the next cross-tunnel junction. They’d have to be past that before open fighting began or opposition could come at them from the sides, cut them off. As soon as Mike was gone, Spike relaxed back into game face because that made it easier to hold focus. Not try to hold against the pull of the Chaos Stone, just let it drag a little and let go, like standing hip-high in strong surf. Breathe and release. Stay steady within the larger motions. He rubbed a hand across his eyes.

“Is it bothering you yet?” Buffy asked.

He laughed shortly because she could have any of about fifty things in mind and still be right. “Mark how we go, pet. You’ll have to come back this way. Pipe along here is pretty solid. I hope it’ll hold--long enough for your lot to get clear, anyway.” He set both wrists on her shoulders. “When it starts, don’t you hang about. Dunno what it’s apt to be, but I don’t figure it’ll be anything your being there is gonna change or stop. I want you gone.”

Head lift, likely a major glare. “We are not still having this discussion!”

“Well, yes, we are. I have to be there, see it out. You don’t.” He began rubbing a thumb along the edge of her jaw. She was so fierce and smelled so fine, exactly like herself as though no clothes were between them: demon was becoming real interested. Wanting to find some way to explode--fight or fuck, no particular preference. Strongly aware of her, Spike went on quietly, “Maybe you think because there were no good ways I could stop you coming, there’s not ways I could make you go. You’re wrong. Truly don’t want to fight you over this, love. But I will if you make me.”

“You and what army?”

“I always been all the army I needed until I started messing into apocalypses, missions, world-ending tripe. You want to do dumb stuff, then I’m gonna have to go back to doin’ dumb stuff, too. Wouldn’t like that to be the last of us, doin’ like that again.”

She lifted up and kissed him hard on the mouth, game face and all. Surely felt the difference but only pushed herself tighter, closer. He could feel his mark on her very plain, very strong. She said, “This isn’t gonna be the last of us. I won’t let it.”

“Pet, your hope could be the ruin of it all and us besides. Please. Put it away.”

“Never gonna happen. I’ve just gotten you trained exactly the way I want you and I’m not gonna let all that work be for nothing.”

Spike couldn’t help laughing. Still rubbing at the soft place under her jaw, he returned her kiss and then bent his forehead against hers. “If all this has been training, we both made a right mess of it because neither one of us will mind worth a damn. All right, you do how you do and we’ll see what comes of it. Not gonna argue with you no more.”

Returning then, Mike reported everything clear to the next junction. Everybody moved, gathering past that. Up ahead, some way off, the smooth curve of the sewer pipe became rough rock walls. The first pair of wall torches were visible. Even from that distance, it was enough light for vampire sight: catching Spike in game face, Mike growled and shifted too. It wasn’t worth discussing because those two tiny points of light were cut off by the crouched, stalking form of a Turok-han ducking low under the top of the passage. The rustling footfalls and motion behind it were dark-robed Bringers: enough to fill the tunnel from side to side.

“Finally!” said Mike, lunging ahead, and it was begun.

**********

Crouched with Anya against the tunnel wall, watching Spike’s black silhouette carving up Bringers in shadowplay mayhem too far away for it to be gross, Dawn asked, “Are you really positively sure we shouldn’t tell him?”

“Absolutely really positively sure,” Anya confirmed, which sounded pretty decisive. “Tell somebody as inherently reckless as a vampire that he’s been granted invulnerability, much less invulnerability with a time limit, and the first thing he’ll do is forget the time limit. Therefore the second thing he’ll do is something totally reckless and stupid beyond the limit and get himself dusted. You never tell someone a thing like that. It’s certain doom. And defeats the whole purpose of the thing.”

“Anya…is there anything you’re not telling me?”

“Of course not. I had just the one marker to call in, and you heard all of that. They didn’t even have the manners to let me finish my sentence.”

“Yeah. I was afraid of that. Why couldn’t you have wished the invulnerability spread a little wider?”

“Self-serving wishes are seldom granted and always backfire even when they are. And look how vindictive and petty the Powers were even as it was. There’s such a thing as pushing your luck right off a cliff.”

“Oh! It’s not working! Look, it’s not--”

“He just got knocked down. Or tripped. Don’t be ridiculous. Invulnerability doesn’t protect against that. See?” Anya waved and pointed simultaneously. “He’s up again.”

Dawn worried, “Maybe we’re not in far enough. How far in is in? Do we have to be where he is, right there, for it to work right? Oh--they’re moving!”

That meant they had to move too, harried forward by Sue and her team, following the rest of the SITs toward the dim light ahead. Pretty soon they had to step over dozens of dead Bringers or at least Dawn sincerely hoped they were dead and jumped fast to each new place she could set a foot, like a macabre game of hop-scotch, because she was convinced one of the robed corpses was gonna suddenly roll and grab. Once she misjudged the jump and stepped on a hand, freaking herself into a swallowed screech.

When they reached clear running space lit on both sides by a succession of torches, Dawn was in no further doubt: they were in it now for sure.

**********

Spike tried to concentrate on the fight to block out where he was fighting. Tried to face blank walls because every time he caught sight of the seal, there was sideslip. Every time he saw either the wall where he’d been secured or faced the direction that’d been all he could see for that long, terrible time of confusion, his certainty of now became more difficult to maintain.

The Plan was working: most of the Turok-han had been drawn away by the pull of the Chaos Stone, leaving only Bringers to defend this threshold, and the children had already reduced the number of defenders by nearly half, although more were still coming, summoned by the unseen First, which could act only indirectly, through its agents. Spike had Willow’s charm: nothing could get into his head, tell him lies of illusion. He, Mike, and Buffy had effectively split the cavern among them, disrupting and dividing the massed front of the defenders so the teams of SITs couldn’t be overwhelmed and had time to take on two or three Bringers at a time, drop them with tasers and finish them, then regroup to engage the next few.

Then a Bringer lunged in behind the swing of Spike’s broadsword and rammed a knife into his ribs. Or tried to. The knife skidded off without penetrating. The Bringer stumbled into Spike’s side. Reflex made Spike slam the pommel of the sword into the Bringer’s head, but certainty had collapsed.

As Spike slowly looked around, the sword tilted down of its own weight until the point rested on the floor. Everywhere, the battle continued. He was bumped and jostled by Bringers closing in around him. But none of their blows truly touched him. Everything slid aside. It wasn’t real. Just another in a series of hallucinated battles, rescues, escapes to get his hopes up only to fade and leave him fastened to the same wall trying to believe there was any hope at all.

So it wasn’t true, then: he’d never escaped this place. Buffy hadn’t come for him. Only something put into his mind. The defensive charm was only false comfort to make him rely upon it, feel secure until it was ripped away. Nothing was to be believed.

His hand opened. The broadsword clattered onto the floor. Refusing the other lie, he broke the cord and pitched the charm away from him.

Buffy stood before him, her eyes contemptuous. “As if you could accomplish anything. As if a pitiful corrupted wreck like you could have any power. As if anybody would trust you with any. You’d only spoil it, ruin it, keep it from the one person who actually could have done something with it.” Buffy was gone. Angel stood there, hand commandingly extended. “Give it to me, boy. You’ve bollixed the Plan but there still may be time to salvage something from this fiasco. Hand it over. Now!”

Shudders ran through him. He had no thought of disobeying. His hand went to the chain of the amulet and he was lifting it over his head when something slammed into him and knocked him off his feet because he wasn’t maintaining a proper stance, had only been standing, hopeless and confused.

“Spike, it’s not before, it’s now!” It was Dawn who’d knocked him down and was flailing at him, slapping and pounding. “You have to believe me! I never lie to you. Look at your arm, Spike! Look at it! Oh!”

As a Bringer’s knife stabbed into Dawn’s shoulder, Spike saw the tattoo spiraled around his left arm and remembered how and why it had been set there--real beyond any doubting and no part of this place. From after. Everything rearranged and came back into clear focus. Angel’s voice continued to rant but Angel’s smell was absent and there was no sense of his presence. Only a mask, a deception. Taking no more heed of the phantom, Spike twisted to shelter Dawn behind and beneath him and struck at the crowd of Bringers, calling, ”Here!” The Bringers’ blades had no effect and Spike didn’t understand but he fought them anyway, taking a stance over Dawn and knocking attackers away and into each other, his swinging fists and his arms weapons enough to hold them back until SITs came and surrounded him, clearing an expanding circle with deadly efficiency.

Game-faced Mike barged through, drawn by the bloodsmell, leaning toward sobbing Dawn. Spike got the taser out of his pocket and hit Mike in the shoulder, dropping him. Then Spike felt the amulet’s humming vibration strengthen suddenly against and within his chest.

Day had come.

Spike whirled, looking for Buffy. She was engaged with a crowd of Bringers. Spike sent the SITs that way with a wave, following as the Bringers retreated and were pushed back, and Buffy had to let the bloody axe head drop to avoid hitting the SITs. She turned and saw Spike coming. Their eyes met for an instant before he lunged and hit her in the back with a taser charge. Her mouth opened in a silent cry of protest as she collapsed.

The SITs were all gaping at him. He directed, “Take the Slayer and Dawn. Mark is the street, and then the van. Get as far away as you can. Go!”

Turning, Spike found Anya refusing to let the SITs collect Dawn.

“Spike, no!” Anya shouted. “We have to stay. And don’t even think of it!” She glared at the taser in his hand. “Go, go!” She waved the SITs off with flapping arms.

The SITs looked to Spike, then whirled and ran when he sent them off with a tilt of his head. No time to dispute such things. It would all go as it had to.

He was finding it hard to move. Everything seemed to have become heavier, denser. Pressure pushed in from all sides and somehow he was stretching, expanding, to meet it. The remaining Bringers were advancing. Spike slowly bent to pick up the sword and flung it high. The point impaled the ceiling. A single stone was dislodged and fell. Then the sword itself, clanging onto the rock. Pencil-thin, a sunbeam slanted down, a bright golden cord striking the wall near the rings he’d been fastened to for so long.

Anya helped Dawn stumble toward the point where the light fell. Following, Spike took Michael up and carried him, laboring against the forces that tried to hold him in place. The First flickered before him in successive shapes, shouting, howling, and yammering. Spike took no notice and laid Mike down against the wall. He didn’t know if that would be enough, but it was all he could do. He straightened and moved to put Dawn and Anya behind him. Then he turned, assumed a steady stance, and gave himself over to the light.

The bright rod of sunlight met the amulet. From the amulet an answering ray shot upward, in parallel, widening the chink in the ceiling. The down-slanting beam grew broader and so did the beam that returned, shuttling back and forth in thousandths of a second, expanding until the ceiling began to fall. The whole cavern was illuminated then. It began to topple and collapse, taking the Bringers with it.

Channeling the immense light, Spike was locked in place, perfectly balanced within it. He let none through to those he sheltered. No heat or harm touched them because he was between and that was exactly right. He felt that. He knew that. It made him glad.

And still the light grew. Everything was white, was golden. Cascades and spinning fireballs bouncing, rolling, exploding into sparkling destruction, chaotic and splendid. Spike started laughing. He could no longer feel his body at all. Only the flow of the light defined him and the light was his joy.

He directed the core of the light against the Seal of Danzalthar that his blood had been used to magically activate as an interdimensional portal, a stable gateway. Soon it began to bubble and sublime into the air. Its triangular plates twisted and withered like leaves. When the seal was gone, it was as though it’d been a plug in a drain. Everything started spilling into the widening crater. Masonry, whole walls toppled from above and were gone. The high school was collapsing, eaten away from below. Everything that fell vanished because the Hellmouth itself remained--immaterial, intangible, incoherent chaos within and without. Swallowing everything, even light, and spewing it back as random energy. A spiral, a whirlpool, a cyclone developed. For an instant the flows inward and outward exactly matched. The Hellmouth winked out and the flow of the light faded into daylight, general and unfocused, obscured by rising clouds of dust.

**********

By the time the SITs rendezvoused with the SUV, somewhat haphazardly driven by Sue, Buffy could talk and she did. At length. Scathingly. She was chiefly furious at (and afraid for) Spike, but her ire extended to the SITs for dragging her out in the middle of a fight like a sack of potatoes.

Helping load Buffy into the back seat, Amanda said, “Be reasonable, Buffy: once Spike tasered you, what were we supposed to do? Leave you there? Try to form up and defend you while who knows what shit erupted around us?”

Kim chimed in, “That place was going up, that was the whole idea, right? We were escort, not attack force. The whole idea was get in, clear the place as much as possible, then get the hell out. Which we did.”

“Oh, God, look!” exclaimed Sue, and everybody did except Buffy, who couldn’t straighten up to see past Sue, Rona, and Chloe, packed into the front seat.

“Don’t look,” yelled Kim. “Cover your eyes!”

A giant flash camera went off just beyond the windshield and continued to burn there, red against Buffy’s eyelids. No heat. No concussion. Just searing, blinding light. Then an abrupt deep thudand the distant creak of tearing metal. More impacts, heard more than felt, and the glare cut off.

As the SITs sorted themselves out, four couldn’t see, including the driver, resulting in a Mexican fire drill of people piling out of the front and others sliding in. The SITs who couldn’t see were shoved in next to Buffy on either side, and the remainder clambered into the back.

Without consultation Kim, the current driver, headed back toward the street where they’d entered the tunnels. It was now full of spouting water mains, and large stretches of the pavement had begun to sag and buckle. A gas line had likely ruptured: nearly the whole block was afire. The water was several inches deep…and running into the storm drains. Into the sewer. No use trying that way.

Kim slammed the SUV into reverse, backing to turn. Except for Kim, everybody was pressed against the passenger side windows. Several blocks away, the high school was hidden within an immense rising dust cloud, golden-white in the early light.

Blinking, trying to clear away black after-images left over from the flash, Buffy asked, “Dawn?”

“With Spike,” responded blind Sue, beside her, calmly. “And Anya. They wouldn’t come. And Mike. Dawn got hurt--bleeding. Spike had to take Mike down.”

Kim shouted, “By the hardware store, right?”

Several SITs yelled back confirmation. Buffy said, “What?”

“Nearest sewer entrance between the school and the bank,” Amanda said. “Where we were supposed to be, except we detoured. Any Turok-han will use that line, trying to retreat to the Hellmouth, now that it’s day. We were supposed to be in front of them. Now we’ll be behind them. If the passage is clear. If.”

It wasn’t that Buffy hadn’t heard the Plan. She’d simply paid no attention, knowing quite clearly that she was going with Spike. And then he’d tasered her. If he wasn’t dead, or more dead, she was gonna murder him. But it wasn’t possible he could be dead. And if he wasn’t, Dawn was all right too, even though apparently wounded. It was beyond question that Spike would prevent any harm coming to Dawn. Or to Buffy, even if he had to hit her with a taser charge to do it, the bastard. So there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Buffy concentrated on regaining control of her body in the cramped space so that when Kim’s maniac driving brought them to the spot, Buffy wouldn’t jump out and fall on her face.

When the SUV screeched to a halt partway up the sidewalk, Buffy was able to climb over the SITs and step down with decent coordination. “Who has a spare weapon?” She didn’t care whether her battle axe had been retrieved: it wasn’t a good weapon for fighting in a confined space anyway.

Amanda passed out a heavy two-handed blade. “Take mine, it’s one of the good ones.”

“Yeah.” Buffy took the pommel with the sense of shaking hands with an old, trusted friend. She’d done a whole lot of patrolling with this sword.

In the middle of the street, Kim and Rona were kneeling by the uncovered sewer opening. Rona had head and shoulders into the hole. “No water yet. Lots of dust.” Gripping the opposite edge, she jackknifed her legs inside and was gone. Less acrobatically, Kim disappeared a minute later. Buffy named Meagan to stand watch on the SUV and its blinded occupants, then stepped off into the hole.

The half dozen SITs who’d preceded her were already out of sight, running noisily and in full cry. To draw any opposition back toward themselves, away from the school. If they succeeded in attracting any, they’d be in trouble. Buffy took off after them full speed. The rest of the SITs followed.

Buffy found the vanguard engaged with a greater number of Turok-han, but the SITs had the advantage. The Biters were impeded by their own numbers--only three at a time could turn and fight, and they had to stoop low, too tall for the space. But one Biter had gotten its claws on Kim and was lifting her bodily toward its jaws when hit with at least four taser charges, including Kim’s. Buffy jumped up on the narrow walkway at the side of the pipe. That gave her enough height to swing the sword into a Biter’s neck without endangering the SITs. As that Biter dusted, Buffy did a quick shuffle step forward in the backswing and hacked into the next, methodically cutting them down as the SITs, below, pushed forward with blades and tasers.

As the rest of the SITs arrived, they slammed right up the middle, not stopping to engage, striking only to keep from getting grabbed or delayed. Much of the yelling had died down, so the distant but unmistakable sound of Spike’s voice shouting, ”Here!” came clear. Grinning and hooting, everybody laid into the retreating crowd of Biters with even greater ferocity.

The farther the SITs went, the more problem the dust--of various sorts--became. Many had to back off and rip clothing for makeshift masks and still were wheezing, sneezing, and choking. Buffy’s eyes stung, but as long as she could find a target, she kept swinging. A Biter lacking an arm or sliced across the torso was still fighting, but a second swing was usually enough to dust it.

There came to be five layers of fighting. Buffy and what had become the rearguard had perhaps twenty Turok-han between them and the main body of SITs, who in turn were engaged not only with the Biters behind them but another pack ahead that were fighting some group yet farther on. It was the SITs in the middle who were in the most trouble, bottled up between the two groups of Turok-han. And alarmed calls said that the tasers were beginning to fail.

Even with a good blade, none of the SITs had the strength to behead a Turok-han; and nothing short of that was much more than an annoyance. Buffy concentrated on beheading, letting the SITs do what they could to engage and wound. Frequently, as a Biter dusted, the arc of Buffy’s blade carried it into the concrete sides of the sewer pipe. The sword rang and shivered but didn’t shatter. Buffy’s shoulders and arms were tiring with the shock of the rebounds.

Several SITs were wounded and down, but the bottled SITs had apparently been freed enough for some of them to turn back and concentrate on the Biters between them and Buffy’s contingent. There were a dozen. Then eight. Then none, and the whole group swept forward. And found themselves confronting, through the dust haze, a wall of stunned Biters--a wall over which Anya was precariously clambering with great haste. Following Anya, maybe pursuing her, were eight vamps in game face who halted, warily balancing--five male, three female--when they caught sight of the SITs. As one of the males shed game face, Buffy recognized him as one of Spike’s minions, and went forward to help Anya down and wave the vamps forward. As they descended, Mike appeared, carrying a kicking, protesting Dawn. And last of all Spike, grinning, looking for Buffy. When his eyes found her, he held up a length of piano wire by its one remaining wooden handle. His right hand had a belt wrapped around it and dripped blood. “A bit short of weapons, this side,” he commented, dropping in a series of two-footed jumps. “Could stop ‘em but not dust ‘em.” He hit the floor near where the other vamps had gathered--to Buffy’s right, away from the SITs--and was starting to say something else when Buffy belted him, knocking him back against the high mound of immobilized Turok-han, some of which had begun to stir. As he hit, a ropy grey arm closed around his chest. Buffy picked up the sword and swung, striking the arm. Then she sprang two long paces up the pile, grabbed Spike’s ankle, and yanked.

Depositing Dawn to stand on the floor, Mike remarked to the other vamps, “No problem, that’s just how they do. Should get clear now…Kim. Where’s ‘Manda?”

“Some eye problems,” Kim responded. “After the flash.” She considered Mike dubiously. “You OK now?”

“Pretty OK. Soon as that damn stone let up, had a bit better hold of myself. Clear away now, like I said.” Mike waved, and Buffy conveyed her agreement by dragging Spike backward by the collar, so all the SITs backed off too.

Shaking his head, Spike complained, “Fucking hell, Slayer!” so Buffy dumped him. Sitting, he began unwrapping the belt from his bleeding hand. Chloe came with the shoulder-case of first-aid supplies and handed him a wad of gauze, kneeling down, willing to apply it, but Spike waved her off, asking, “So is that the end of the dumb stuff, Slayer, or d’you want to have another go-round when I’m lookin’ for it?”

“Till the next time,” Buffy began, taking the gauze and unfolding it to find an end.

Motion caught her eye. The vamps hadn’t retreated with the rest of them. They were standing in a double row maybe twenty feet from the mound of Turok-han. Together they pitched something at the pile, turned, and dove. The mound exploded into flame that licked back along the ceiling in an incandescent wave. Spike ducked and Buffy threw herself on top of him. One of the vamps was burning, too…and then just gone. As was the pile of Turok-han. Nothing left but greasy, foul smoke that had everybody coughing and rubbing at their eyes again.

Pushing Buffy off as the SITs began retreating, collecting and helping the wounded, Spike stood up and said to Mike, still in tuck-and-cover position, “Oh, that was a fine idea,” in a scathing tone.

Mike cautiously uncovered. “Well, couldn’t before on account of the children.”

“What, no napalm? No flame-throwers?”

Another vamp, Spike’s glum-faced minion, was getting up, and the rest of the vamps around him. He said, “We gave them over to the folk in the bank. Flame-throwers, not napalm. Didn’t have any of that. Figured flame-throwers wouldn’t be too great at close quarters. For us, anyway.”

“Grenades were nice, though,” commented Mike, brushing at his knees as he rose. “Been savin’ them up quite a while now. Make a fine show, don’t they.”

“Yeah, if you don’t fry your own fucking stupid head off. Terrible bunch of nitwits, you lot. Huey.”

The minion advanced, and he and Spike shook hands. Spike’s hand made a bloody print, and Huey considered it, looking amused, then smiled and started licking it off. Spike aimed a cuff at his head that didn’t quite land as the vamp walked away down the sewer line. The SITs moved aside to let him pass.

“Grace,” said Spike, and offered his hand to one of the female vampires. She didn’t bother with a handshake, just bent enough to lick it and straightened, grinning, amber-eyed. As she followed Huey, Spike named the other vampires: “Mary. Isadora. Benny. Alfredo. Paul.” The males took a bloody handshake. The women smiled broadly and had a taste.

Some damn vamp thing, Buffy figured. She didn’t like it at all, female vamps licking him, but went to help Chloe bandage Dawn’s shoulder. Buffy looked up, noticing Mike’s name hadn’t been called. Spike was reaching toward the walkway, at least five feet away, and beginning to waver. Buffy and Mike reached him about together. Mike stood clear so Buffy could back and partly lift Spike to a seat on the walkway. Spike bent his head, eyes vague and dull. His hand was still bleeding.

“’M fine. Just come over dizzy there for a second. Be fine.”

Mike went and got more gauze. He offered it to Buffy, but she waved him to go ahead, sliding to a seat next to Spike. She hugged Spike lightly and pulled him to rest against her.

Wrapping Spike’s hand, Mike commented, “Strangest thing. When the garrote handle broke, at first the wire didn’t cut him. So he kept on. After awhile, though, it did. Kept on anyway.”

Her arm in a sling, Dawn came over and put a hand on Spike’s knee. “Spike. I could--”

“No, Bit. No more of that. I’ll be fine. Don’t trouble yourself.”

Dawn lifted the medallion, the amulet. Buffy hadn’t paid it any attention before. She now saw that the central jewel was fractured and blackened. Glancing up at Buffy, Dawn remarked, “He was all burning. All flame. All bright. You should have seen him, Buffy. It was really something.”

Buffy reached and smoothed Dawn’s hair. “But you were hurt.”

“No, not really. He stayed between and kept it from us. I can’t see auras the way Willow can. But I saw it then. Like an Elf-Lord revealed in his wraith--his astral body. Almost too bright to look at.”

“Oh, please,” Spike said. “No fucking Tolkien, Bit.”

“Well, it was. You don’t see you. I do. I did.”

As Mike finished tying the bandage and stepped away, Spike protested to Dawn, “And what the goddam fucking hell were you doin’ there to begin with? You and Anya? Makes no sense.”

Dawn made a judicious face. “Makes very good sense. Lady Gates required it. We had to be witnesses. So She would know precisely how it all happened. For it all to come out right. Spike, I really wish--”

“No, Bit. Just a little tired, is all. An’ then of course your sis had to haul off and pop me one.”

“You had it coming!” Buffy declared.

“Gave you fair warning, didn’t I? Would’a done Bit the same, if there’d been time. You’re not due any apologies from yours truly, Slayer. Not for that. If you can’t keep your priorities straight, I’m gonna do it for you. And next time, the same as now. I’m gonna do what I do, and that’s keep my girls from harm. Whatever way I can. Whatever is necessary. And if you slugging me afterwards is the price of that, then that’s the price. Anyway, I didn’t think…. Figured to get out of paying it.”

“I know you did,” Buffy said. “And that’s still not acceptable.”

“Well, it’s not happening now, so it’d be real dumb to keep arguing about it, now wouldn’t it?” Spike retorted, pushing to his feet. “Argue it some other time if you want to. But I’m done.”

Yes, Buffy reflected, he was done, all right. In all senses. Still not steady on his feet, shoulders shoved forward and head still bent with the effort of moving.

“I would,” said Mike, falling in beside them. “Only you say it’s no help. No good.”

Belatedly, for Buffy, the penny finally dropped. She understood what Dawn had been offering, and Spike refusing. What Mike was willing about, even though it didn’t work that way. What Spike would never ask for or suggest except in one special context.

“Dawn, you and Mike go on ahead. Tell everybody, get home. I need to have some words with my vampire here.”

Buffy watched them out of sight, then turned to Spike, who’d settled exhaustedly back against the walkway. Evidently, impersonating an Elf-Lord, closing the Hellmouth, and keeping three people besides yourself from going extra-crispy in a flashfire inferno bright enough to damage the vision of those watching from four blocks away really took it out of a guy. And then fighting Turok-han and blood loss on top of that.

“What is it now, pet?” His tone expected more arguments and was resigned to them.

Buffy stroked his face and kissed him. “Now comes the good part. Where you’re a vamp and I’m the Slayer and we keep each other going. Where you damn near die and don’t let me come with you, so you come to me now and let me make it up to you. And you don’t say no. You don’t say anything. You change for me because I ask you to. And then we do what we do.” She drew him close and kissed him again, holding him until she felt the change come upon him. Then she laid her head on his shoulder.

“Ah, love--”

Pressure, no pain. Then the intense connection, orgasmic but not sexual now. Warm and loving, with a large tenderness. An intimate embrace of complimentary needs gently filled. Communion. And then, after only a minute or two, his soft mouth on her, on the tingling mark, slowly licking it shut. Nuzzling softly against her neck.

They were quiet and breathed together a little while.

Eventually he murmured, “Not how it was, that I dreamed…. Doesn’t have to be so. Can do without. Don’t want to, though. Yours regardless.”

“Yours regardless too. Come on: Xander has his truck. That dust was pretty heavy. Maybe the sunlight….”

**********

Of course nothing would do for it, per Angel, but to have a big follow-up meeting, post-mortem, debriefing, some dumb fucking thing, where everybody could match their performance against parameters and explain why what’d worked was different from the Plan and therefore was probably a mistake anyway and goddam apologize for it in words of more than one syllable.

Why a bunch of cousins, drawn (per Plan) to the Stone, had split off on their own hook and instead of doing Biters in the street by the bank, had chosen to lob incendiary grenades at Biters in the sewer tunnels by the Hellmouth, which hadn’t at all been allowed for except by Mike, of course, who hadn’t bothered to tell anybody except maybe some SITs, who didn’t sit in on Scooby Council meetings and so everybody had to sit around and wait till the right SITs were fetched to chip in their tuppence worth of utter codswallop.

Spike, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, at Buffy’s feet, inquired, “So we’re playing Clue here, are we?” but was taken no notice of and contented himself with having another drink, continuing his own private unauthorized victory celebration and toasting the bewildering, astonishing miracle of not being dead about which he had his own suspicions except Bit and Anya were being all smug, mysterious, and silent and hitting them until they admitted it just didn’t seem an option somehow.

So instead, when the SITs were dragged in, everybody droned on about why nobody had considered eye protection and when the affected SITs were expected to recover. And on to the fascinating topic of why Buffy and the SITs had utterly ignored the Plan by providing escort service for a subordinate vampire and two fucking noncombatants with no business whatsoever on the sodding grid, right into the Hellmouth itself, leaving their assigned position uncovered. Said noncombatants continuing all smug, mysterious, and silent about it all, of course, and no budging them on it.

For a wonder, Buffy kept mum about being tasered and forcibly removed from the fucking goddam grid because Angel would have had an absolute cow and that was altogether too sickening to contemplate.

Angel was having enough of a cow glaring at the nice fresh bright mark set just above Buffy’s collarbone, that Buffy had left all naked and uncovered and proud but they didn’t talk about such things in front of the others, oh no, it was just there and not a thing Angel could do about it, the wanker. Couldn’t make Spike stop petting Buffy’s ankle, either, except to keep yelling at Spike to quit “fidgeting,” and that wasn’t specific enough to quite make Spike mind, or keep minding, now was it?

Because it wasn’t fidgeting. It was petting. Like what Buffy’s fingers were doing in his hair and on the back of his neck, that felt all sorts of good, and Angel would turn three colors of red before he was gonna comment on that or try to make her stop, like to see him try, the bloody ponce. And she smelled all excellent too and none of it for Angel, and as soon as this bloody fucking irredeemably stupid meeting was through Spike was gonna give her such a seeing-to that neither of them would be fit to move for a week nor want to, neither.

And now Anya was nattering on about having incurred several expenses in furtherance of the Plan, namely losing a great bloody expensive crystal and no point billing Dawn for it since Dawn had no income, and also namely and to wit, the cost of the Eye of Ra, no longer in salable condition, he’d purely ruined it (cauterized its image and shadow right into his goddam chest and likely to scar, he thought, rubbing the mark absently, hadn’t even known it was there until he pulled off the intact shirt to shower the dust and the ashes away). The point of all the foregoing being that Anya wanted the Stone (nearly silent in its box at Willow’s feet) as compensation for her losses, it was only fair, and she thought there might be a profit in it considering that the Hellmouth itself, that civic attraction that brought in thousands of tourist dollars per annum, had been shut down and you couldn’t expect that the word of that wouldn’t get around, resulting in a substantial drop-off of trade and who the hell fucking cared.

It seemed that Angel did. Buffy was willing for demon girl to have the goddam rock, and Willow passed the box over, except that Angel got up and took it because it was his, he’d had his L.A. team research and find it (even though it was no use for getting into bloody Quar’toth, that Peaches still hadn’t admitted to Buffy, having a son with Queen Darla, never would admit what he’d got up to with his sire and you’d think you’d share that kind of news with your goddam fucking soul-mate ex even if she was apt to explode and disarrange your terrible stupid hair when you did).

So Spike uncurled, all sudden, and did the only reasonable thing--hit Angel a good one, grabbed the box, pitched it to the handiest SIT, and ran like hell.



Finis