Barb
Half an hour later, Willow was setting up her laptop
on the kitchen table, Spike was pouring himself another helping of Dawn's
science project, and Tara was sitting cross–legged on the couch listening
intently to everyone else. Hank Summers was fighting a growing sense of
unreality with stronger coffee while Dawn gave him the Dealing With Vampires 101
lecture. Dawn was obviously enjoying finally having someone less clueful
than herself to instruct in the ways of the supernatural.
"...the most important thing to remember in
Sunnydale is never, ever invite a stranger into your house, especially at
night. And keep a cross on you. You can't ever trust a
vampire."
Hank regarded his daughter
for a long moment, looked over at Spike, and coughed. Three pairs of eyes
fixed him with reproachful looks of various intensity. "Except Spike,"
Dawn qualified. "He's cool."
Doing his best
to live up to the description, Spike abandoned his inspection of the
refrigerator, and sauntered over to set his cup of blood on the coffee
table. He dropped down on the couch between Dawn and Tara, casually
draping his arms along the back, not quite touching their respective
shoulders. Tara rolled her eyes at the possessive male vibes, but there
was a very slight smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and she didn't move
away. Hank's frown deepened, and Spike returned the favor with a smirk a
notch or two further down the nastiness continuum.
He seldom needed to look for reasons to
dislike someone, but Hank Summers came with an oversupply. That the
man had left Joyce, the first person to whom Spike had applied the term
'friend' in over a hundred and twenty years, was enough in itself to get
him permanently inscribed on the vampire's shit list. He'd
compounded the initial faux pas by disappearing into the aether as completely
and mysteriously as a fledgling's soul for months when Buffy and Dawn had needed
him. Beyond all that, there was just something about the man which rubbed
him the wrong way. Dawn, oblivious to the tension,
continued, "And Angel, he's OK most of the time, but you have to be careful of
him 'cause he loses his soul sometimes and he's in L.A. anyway so forget him."
"Hear, hear." Dawn elbowed him in the ribs.
Spike gave her an entirely ineffectual evil glare and she grinned smugly
at him. Her father looked on, disturbed at the byplay, until the
vampire turned the million mile stare on him and the man's eyes dropped.
Wanker. Buffy must have been created parthenogenetically.
Tara, apparently deciding that the pissing contest had
gone on long enough, twisted a strand of long sandy hair around her fingers and
dragged the conversation back to the point. "So these guys with the
van––is the Initiative back in town?"
Spike’s unbandaged hand involuntarily strayed to the back of his
skull. There was no scar beneath the white–blond hair to show where
the chip had gone in, nor any evidence of his subsequent efforts to have
it taken out. "Not bloody likely. First thing I thought of, but
these buggers weren't that well–equipped. That was no military van,
and no trained driver." He frowned. "But the big pile of dead
demon in the alley didn't phase 'em, and it sounded as if they were
picking and choosing older vampires. Or as old as they come in
Sunnydale these days."
"That's weird. If I
were capturing vampires I'd go for little baby ones." Willow, fiddling
with the laptop's adapter, matched his frown. "Unless they need the old
ones for some reason because they're more powerful? But that can't be
right if they only wanted you 'cause you saw them take the other one out, you're
about the oldest vamp in Sunnydale now, plus inconspicuousness is not a thing of
Spike. Double plus it's gotten around that you can't hurt humans so you'd
think they'd think you were easy pickings."
"Maybe
they didn't recognize him?" Tara suggested. There was a general
disbelieving silence. She spread both hands. "It could happen!"
"Bastards'll recognize me from now on," Spike
growled, nettled. It might have altered in substance slightly over the
last several years, but he bloody well still had a reputation.
"Oh, you the vamp," Willow said with a little
grin. The laptop beeped. "Here we go, all powered up."
"What are you doing?" Hank asked, sounding as if he
didn't really want to know.
The hiss and
crackle of the modem connecting filled the room. Dawn said, "We’re
gonna track them down, Dad. Willow and Tara are witches, but Willow's kind
of a hacker, too."
"Sometimes the old ways are
best." Willow graced Dawn's father with a beaming smile over the screen of
the laptop. "I can't tell you how cool it is you being down with the
slayage concept, Mr. Summers. Buffy's mom was always great about
it. I was so jealous! My mom's still in denial, and the whole
secret identity thing––well, it's fun for awhile but then you just get to
the point where it's like 'Aunt Miriam's birthday party, or saving the
world?' and the world has seniority even though you wouldn't think it to
look at Aunt Miriam. Spike, you have that license plate number?"
Spike took a meditative sip of blood and
stared at the ceiling, calling up the brief glimpse he'd gotten of the
van's plates. "It began with... 4KEM2. Next number might’ve
been a five. Couldn't make out the last one at all."
Willow nodded. "OK, better than
nothing. Hold on and I'll see if I can get into the DMV database."
For several minutes there was an awkward lull
enlivened only by the tap of Willow's fingers in the keyboard. Hank sank
deeper into his funk. Spike nursed his blood and wondered if he were going to
get any more sleep today. "Here we go." Willow reached up and tapped at
something on her screen. "There's eight plates that match those numbers
registered to addresses within twenty miles of that alley. Darn, no
printer... Dawn, do you have a notebook or something?"
"Yeah, in my room. You want the purple one or
the green one? Hold on." She bounced to her feet and ran off down the
hall.
“Purple!” Willow called after her. At
Spike and Tara’s bemused looks she said, “Notebook color is fairly vital.”
"All right," Hank said as soon as she'd left the
room. "Suppose I believe all this bullsh... stuff. God knows
it would explain a few of the wilder things Joyce dropped on me over the
last couple of years. That doesn't mean I'm 'down with slayage'. It
may be shallow of me, but finding out that Buffy supposedly died to save the
world instead of in some stupid college dare doesn't make me feel any
better. She's still dead, and damned if I'll lose another daughter the
same way. Dawn's coming back to L.A. with me as soon as we can get a buyer
for the house, and she'll be well out of this. I want all of you to
know..." He stopped and rubbed the bridge of his nose, obviously hunting for
words. "Willow, I'm grateful to your family and Mr. Giles for taking care
of Dawn till I could get back to the States, but for her sake I'd like to ask
that you stop involving her in this business once we've moved. I'm going
to try to give her a normal life––"
"Too late,
Summers."
"Shut up, Spike," said Willow, but she
didn't look particularly happy herself.
Dawn
breezed back in with one of her school notebooks, ripping out a page of
blue–lined paper and handing it to Willow. "Here's a pen too.
Are we gonna go check them out?"
Spike and Willow
each opened their mouths, exchanged looks, and thought better of it.
Spike made an 'after you' gesture to the witch. "Not today," Willow
said. "Spike needs to heal up, and he can't leave till sunset
anyway. Plus Xander’s working overtime today, and Anya won't get off work
till after three, so why don't we meet at the Magic Box after hours to
strategize?" She wrote down the last address with a flourish and folded
the paper up carefully and handed Dawn her pen back. “Thanks, Dawn.”
Tara nodded. "That's a great idea.
'Cause we have to talk about... stuff."
"Right." Spike finished the last of his blood in a gulp. "Stuff."
Dawn gave the three of them the once–over.
"You're trying to ditch me again."
Hank
interrupted, "Dawn, you know we’ve got an appointment with the probate lawyer at
ten. That’s the only place you’re going today, and you’re not going to be
running around through alleys getting shot at with dart guns tonight,
either. Now, I have to get dressed, so I'd appreciate it if..." He
stood up and made vague shooing gestures in the direction of the front door.
Willow shrunk in on herself slightly. It
never failed to amaze Spike that someone who could blast hellgods with lighting
bolts without blinking an eye still retreated so readily into mousiness when
confronted by an ordinary human being. "We'll just be going," she said,
flipping the laptop closed.
“Horned toads,” Spike
whispered. He couldn’t be certain, be he thought that a wistful look
flicked into Willow’s eyes for a moment.
"Remember I told Spike he could stay
here," Dawn said. "If we're going to be out all day anyway you won’t be
bothered if he sleeps on the couch."
Her expression
was hopeful, but as her father’s hesitation to consent lengthened, it began to
slip towards the mutinous. The vampire gave Hank a charming and completely
untrustworthy smile. "You'll never know I was here.” He glanced
around the room. “Nothing worth nicking."
Hank retreated into stone–faced irritation. No fun at all, this one.
"Dawn, I'd like to talk to you in private for a moment. Willow, glad to
see you again, and pleased to meet your, um, friend."
Willow looked as if she were about to correct him,
but Hank turned away with a distracted air and herded Dawn off towards the back
of the apartment. Willow watched them go with a little shake of her head,
then stuck the laptop back in its case, leaned over to Spike and whispered, "You
sure you're gonna be OK here?"
Tara nodded.
“We c–could put you up if he kicks up a fuss.”
Spike regarded Hank's plaid terrycloth back with a curl of his lip. "If I
can't handle 'im I deserve to be staked. Though you might leave the
blanket on the landing in case of emergencies." He hesitated.
"Thanks."
She smiled at him again, that eminently
biteable Willow–grin, and took Tara's hand as they went out the door, opening it
carefully so the sunlight didn’t hit the couch and closing it behind them.
Spike settled back thoughtfully on the couch, arms crossed behind his
head. The witches' concern was balm to some deeply–buried part of him
which had gone shivering and untended for years before his death. Willow
was just like that, he knew, impulsively warm in liking, impulsively fiery in
anger, and Tara would follow her lead. Still... knowing that the two of
them cared whether he lived or died was a bit of all right.
His eyelids began to droop. He was still a
little hungry, but that was a sign that he was healing quickly. His hand
had settled down to a bearable throb, and with any luck he’d sleep through the
maddeningly itchy phase where the bones realigned themselves. Sleep wasn’t
in the cards yet, unfortunately. The voices from Hank's bedroom probably
would have been audible without too much straining even without the advantages
of vampiric hearing; the apartment walls were thin and Dawn wasn't trying to
keep it down. He eavesdropped, of course; his current set of eccentric
hand–tailored ethics didn’t extend to denying his curiosity about what other
people were doing behind his back.
"...dangerous," Hank was saying.
Too right,
mate.
"Not to us!" Dawn shot back. "He
wouldn’t do anything--not without a really good reason anyway, and I told you
that with the chip in his head he can't hurt you. "
Not quite, Little Bit. Depends on how much I feel like taking for the
privilege of dishing it out.
"Dawn, you just
can't go around letting vagrants stay in our house."
"This isn’t our house. And he's not a
vagrant! He has a... place over by the cemetery."
"Then he should be staying there."
"Maybe I should be too! It'd be better than
staying in this shitty apartment and way better than moving to L.A.!"
"Young lady, I’m not going to stand for that tone
of voice––"
Spike rolled over and propped himself
up on one elbow, a citrine flicker in his eyes and a low growl building in the
pit of his stomach. He half expected to hear the sound of a slap in there,
but it didn’t come. Whatever Hank Summers’ faults, smacking his children
around didn't appear to be one of them. Dawn’s voice raised to a shout.
"I haven't seen you for over a YEAR, Dad!
Forget that he's saved my life three or four times, Spike's been
here! When Mom died, he was here. When Buffy died, he was
here. Whenever I needed someone to talk to or a shoulder to cry on
or... whatever, he was here! Even when he was busy or––or had other
things on his mind––"
You give me too much
credit, Niblet. That's the nicest way anyone's ever phrased 'drunk off his
arse'.
"––he never walked out on me and
I'm not going to walk out on him!"
"'Whatever?'" Hank wasn’t quite shouting, but he sounded extremely
upset. "Dawn, you haven't been... going out with this Spike, have you?"
"Going out? Dad, ew! Tacky
much?" Dawn's voice dripped disdain. "I'm so over him. He's my
friend. Even if I was interested, he was totally in love with
Buffy and it would be majorly crass of me to take advantage of him when he's all
heartbroken." A pause; then the anger left her, replaced by something
stiff and brittle. "It's almost nine. Shouldn't we be going?"
Spike, torn between amusement and a tiny bit
of lingering Victorian shock at the idea of Dawn taking advantage of him,
lowered himself back to the couch as she came storming out of her father's room,
her mouth a thin hard line and her eyes flashing lightning. She looked
very little like her sister, but there were times when the resemblance was so
close that it hurt. "Oi, Niblet."
She turned,
hand on the doorknob of her own room. "What?" Now that she was
no longer facing down her foe, her voice shook and tears threatened to
spill over. She was getting so tall... she could almost look him in
the eye now. Wouldn't be able to call her ‘little bit’ with a
straight face much longer. Not like her sister. The top of Buffy's
head had hit him just about in the chin, even with those incredible heels
she was always wearing, and he wasn't particularly tall himself.
Buffy... Stupid name. God, he missed her.
"Not like yours truly has a steady job
pinning me to Sunnydale, pet. Been awhile since I gave the L.A. night life
a look. In fact, the chance to make Grand–sire's unlife miserable again
might be worth the relocation all by itself.” He cocked his head and gave
her the grin. “You're not getting rid of me that easily."
Dawn said nothing for a moment, her mouth working,
and then she dashed over to the couch and dropped to her knees, giving him
a quick, hard hug, all mortal warmth and impulse. He hugged her
back, a little clumsily; he wasn't really used to this yet. "Can I
get you anything before I go?" she whispered.
"As long as you're offering, I'm still
a bit peckish..." She jumped to her feet and in a moment he heard
her rummaging around in the kitchen, the opening and closing of the
refrigerator door.
"You want this
heated up?"
"Yeh, sure." That
Dawn had been keeping a plastic milk carton of blood on hand for him, without
knowing exactly when or whether he'd turn up here, touched him no end.
"Here you go," Dawn said, handing him a mug
full of warm blood. "This is it, I'm gonna have to pick up more
while we're out, if I can get Dad to stop at the butcher's. The
remote’s over on the TV if you want to watch anything. And no
smoking." She scrutinized him for a moment, then added, "You look a
lot better. When was the last time you ate?"
Spike looked down at his half–empty mug and realized that he'd gotten
outside of a gallon of blood in the last three hours. Not to mention the
donuts. "Er...” Today was Saturday, he’d first gotten wind of the
Ghora on Thursday night... “Two days ago?"
Dawn
planted one fist on her hip disapprovingly. "Geez, no wonder you
looked half–dead." He raised an ironic eyebrow. "You know what I
mean. You've got to take better care of yourself."
"All right, cross my heart, Niblet." He
thought longingly of the man whose arm he'd split open with the axe. Life
had been so much easier... and tastier...when people were nothing but Happy
Meals on legs. Pig’s blood was revolting no matter how you drank it, but
it kept him alive. So to speak. Thank God he'd retained his taste
for normal food; most vampires didn't, and even if it didn't nourish it kept him
from pining away of culinary boredom. He remembered Darla and Dru's
bemused looks the time he'd dragged them to his favorite fish and chips
place. They'd gone and eaten the fish–and–chips man instead, which had
irked him, especially as they hadn't saved him any. Best damned chips in
London, just the right amount of grease and no stinting on the salt...
On the other hand, it had been brought forcibly
home to him in the last two years that with very few exceptions, vampires were
so utterly sodding boring that he had difficulty seeing how he’d managed to put
up with them as long as he had. Once you were off killing people, and if
your opposite number wasn’t interested in a shag, there simply wasn’t anything
to do with another vampire, whereas humans frittered away their time with all
sorts of fascinating rubbish. He sighed and took a philosophical swallow
of second–best. It was much better warmed up. Maybe he could nick a
microwave somewhere for the crypt.
He looked up at
Dawn with a roguish glint in his eyes. "Be a love and see if your Dad will
stop at Willy's and get me a pint or two of the real thing?"
She laughed. "As if! He'd roll
over and die if he knew Willy's existed." She glanced over her
shoulder at the sound of her father's door opening. "Bye,
Spike. I'll see you later."
When they'd
both left he pulled the duster over his shoulders again and settled down
to get some more sleep. He did feel better. Better than he’d felt in
quite awhile, actually. Buffy. He closed his eyes and
imagined her sitting on the end of the couch, there by his feet, small and
golden and tougher than nails.
He'd
dreamed about her for years, almost from the first time he'd seen
her––first of killing her, later of shagging her senseless and then
killing her, still later of them shagging each other senseless and... well...
not killing each other. He’d never been very clear about what would happen
after the not killing each other part, because he was perfectly aware that it
was pathetic and ludicrous that he'd fallen in love with the Slayer, and doubly
ludicrous that he should be making fumbling attempts to impress her with his
virtuous behavior. Vampires weren't made for virtuous behavior, that mopey
pseudo–Byronic poof Angel notwithstanding.
Nowadays
he dreamed about talking to her. Just talking, for hours and hours,
telling her all the things she'd never given him a chance to say, or which he
hadn't found the right words for while she lived. The way they'd been
starting to talk, ever so tentatively, in those last few days before her
death... before he'd failed her. Telling her about his life. Telling
her about his death––the real story this time, not the farrago of half–truths
and braggadocio he’d cobbled together the first time she’d asked. Telling
her about an existence which had spanned almost thirty living years and a
hundred and twenty unliving ones in little scraps and pieces, and discovering to
his chagrin how very little in either life or undeath he could find to be proud
of.
Hello, love.
She didn't answer. She never said
anything in his dreams. He had no idea what she could say to him
that she hadn't already said. Buffy had never been one for talk. She
acted, and if her words had been few and far between in those last few days, her
actions had spoken volumes that he had yet to decipher. So in his dream
she only watched him with those grave, beautiful hazel eyes that seemed to take
up half her face, and listened.
Funny thing
happened today, and I hope you can forgive me for it. You've forgiven me
worse, I promise.
It wasn't that he'd ever
stopped wanting her. He still wanted her: her scent, her every turn of
expression, the color of her eyes, the cant of her nose, every curve of her
deceptively slender, gloriously strong body, all were burned indelibly into his
brain. But the wanting which had begun there had grown to encompass much
more than just her body, and perhaps more than just her. She was
beautiful, but no more beautiful than any one of a hundred other girls. It
was the flame that burned within her that drew him, moth to her candle, the
flame that had almost guttered out there at the end before exploding in one last
all–consuming bonfire. He could have warmed himself in the fire of her
soul for eternity.
You
know I've been hunting for trouble since you died, love. I kept
hoping I'd find some big enough to take me down for good. No such
luck, eh? You wouldn't think it from all the times you and Angel
kicked my arse, but when I'm not fighting the Slayer I'm pretty damned
good, and I've still got too much pride to give Death less than my best
fight even when I'm looking for it.
Will asked if I'd be all right
today. And you know what, love? I will be. I dunno what
happened, but for the first time in my life I've stopped wanting to
die. I still miss you. The place in my heart where you were is
still a hole a thousand miles deep and I don't know if anything'll ever
fill it up again, but Little Bit needs me, God knows why, and Will asked me if
I’d be all right. And it felt... good.
Your Dad's wanting to take Little
Bit with him to L.A. I'll probably tag along, once we suss out those
wankers in the van. I promised you I'd take care of her, and I will.
I let you down once, love, but never again. If she wants to take up the
world–saving business, I can't think of a better memorial for her big
sister. I'll give her a hand, if she'll have me. That should put the
poof's knickers in a twist. I'm looking forward to that.
G'night, Buffy.
Xander Harris pulled up outside the
apartment building where Hank Summers and Dawn were staying at around
five-thirty in the afternoon. The sun was heading for the horizon as he
got out of the car and squinted up at the second-floor apartment. One of
the windows looked odd, and a moment later he spotted a mangled-looking window
screen lying in the privet hedge nearby. Bits of stucco still clung to the
frame. "The guy couldn't knock?" Xander muttered, shoving his car keys in
his pocket and starting up the stairs two at a time.
He'd only been here once before, when he and
Anya had helped Dawn carry her suitcases over from Giles' apartment two weeks
ago. Mr. Summers had been polite but curt, and Xander, foreseeing possible
disasters when Anya's terrifying frankness next chose to surface, hadn't pressed
to hang around. When he got to the landing he stopped for a moment to
catch his breath. From the sound of it, the television was on inside, so
he grabbed the insufficient little regulation issue apartment door knocker and
rapped it as sharply as he could.
After a
moment the door opened a crack. Xander waved. "Hey, Mr. Summers, can
li'l Spikey come out to play?"
Mr. Summers,
he decided, wasn't as appreciative of Xander humor as Mrs. Summers had
been. Dawn's father shot the bolt back with a grunt that might have been
"Come in," and opened the door all the way with an expression of grudging
relief. "He's just leaving."
As Xander
had halfway expected from past personal experience, what the vampire was
actually doing was making himself completely at home in the place where he was
least wanted. Dawn was sitting on the couch watching the Cartoon Network
with a plate full of Spaghetti-Os (Mr. Summers was also apparently not as good a
cook as Mrs. Summers). Spike was emerging from the bathroom in a cloud of
steam and a borrowed sweatsuit which was rather too large for him, rubbing his
wet hair vigorously with a towel. "Is there some sort of cosmic law which
decrees I can only be trapped for the day in places where no-one has a decent
wardrobe?" he asked bitterly of the room at large. He let the towel fall
to his shoulders and Xander choked on a snicker.
"Hello, Fluffy. Ready to roll?"
Spike glowered and made a futile attempt to
get his hair to lie flat sans gel. "We're stopping by my crypt
first. I'm not going anywhere looking like this."
"I'm with you, bro. God forbid we head out to
fight the forces of evil without Vidal Sassoon." Xander paused, attention
momentarily snared by the television. "Ooh, Dexter's Lab. Is this a
Justice Friends episode?"
Dawn shook her
head. "It's the one where Dee Dee breaks Dexter's invention."
"Oh. Darn." He snapped his
fingers. "Never seen that one. Hey, Dead Boy, sun's down, get a move
on."
Spike tossed the towel over the back of one of
the kitchen chairs, retrieved his duster and shrugged into it. He and Dawn
shared an enigmatic look. "I'll be in touch, Niblet," he said.
“You’d better. You have to bring Dad’s
clothes back.”
"What's with Dawn and the looks of
angst?" Xander asked as they clattered down the stairs outside.
"Daddikins is takin' 'er back to bright
lights, big city with 'im."
"Eerg." Xander
made a face. "Well, that's somewhat sucky, but not the end of the world."
"Is when you're fifteen." Spike hopped over
the railing and dropped the rest of the way to the ground in one jump,
apparently just because he could. Xander heaved an exaggerated sigh and
continued to descend the hard way while the vampire stood impatiently on
the oil-spotted asphalt of the parking lot, waiting for him to catch up.
"As I'd think you'd remember, bein' a hell of a lot closer to fifteen than I
am."
"Just goes to show which of us is
more mature." Xander unlocked the Corvair and swung inside. He threw
the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot and turned the car's nose
in the direction of cemetery which housed Spike's crypt. Spike turned up
the radio, switched it over to the local indie/punk station and slouched in the
passenger seat, tapping his good hand on one knee and singing along with
Radiohead in a surprisingly tuneful baritone. "What, no snappy
comeback? You're in a good mood all of a sudden."
"Clean living agrees with me."
"I'd take your temperature if I thought
it would do any good." He switched lanes and turned down the quiet
tree-lined street which ran by the cemetery’s front gates. "Willow wants
us to pick up some burgers or something on the way to the shop.
Strategizing food."
Spike snorted.
"Brilliant. Be seen in your company once or twice and I’m consigned to
donut patrol." He produced a wallet from his hip pocket and pulled
out a couple of bills at random, tossing them in Xander's direction.
"Here, I'm buying."
Xander did a double-take and
stuck a finger in one ear. "Excuse me? I thought I just heard you
say... Hey! That's my wallet! Gimme!"
"You have a sad fixation on petty details, Harris."
Xander snatched his wallet back and stuffed it into
his pocket. "I think I preferred you depressed."
Despite his sarcasm, it was something
of a relief to see Spike starting to bounce back to his old
ball-of-nervous-energy self, though Xander had been expecting it for awhile
now. Spike wasn't a brooder by nature, unlike certain other vampires
Xander could have named. In the past his method of dealing with personal
disasters had been to go on an extended bender and then rebound with a fierce
determination to fix the problem, whatever it was. Of course, in the
aftermath of said bender, Spike didn't always hit on something intelligent as a
solution. Kidnaping Xander and Willow after Drusilla had dumped him had not
exactly been the height of non-dumb planning, and having Warren build that
robot... less said about that the better. With any luck, this time around
the insane plan stage of Spike-recovery had been circumvented by the necessity
of looking after Dawn and the fact that in this case, there just wasn't anything
that could be done...
Xander swallowed
hard. The massive unfairness of a Buffy-less world still blindsided him
occasionally.
After a brief stop at
Spike's crypt (from which he re-emerged with pale hair slicked ruthlessly into
order, and clad in black jeans and T-shirt distinguishable from the first set
only by the lack of demon-induced gouges) they were sitting at the window of the
In-And-Out Burger drive-through while the vampire turned the charm on the
waitress ("Does it look like I care about E. bloody coli, luv? I want it
rare, and by rare I mean I want it to scream in agony when I bite into it") when
Xander saw the van. It was a nondescript dark blue Chevy with a crumpled
front bumper, and it wasn't until it pulled to a stop at the corner light that
the sight of it sparked a faint memory of Willow saying that the mystery van had
been blue. He reached over and whacked Spike on the shoulder.
"Psst! Does that look familiar?"
Spike looked in the direction of Xander's pointing finger, and his eyes
flickered gold for a second. "Bloody hell, yes! Move over,
Harris, you drive like my grandmother."
Xander's
brain conjured up a wild image of a nineteenth-century little old lady from
Pasadena whipping a horse and buggy madly through the streets of
Sunnydale. "Oh, no you don't!" He clung tenaciously to the steering
wheel with one hand and grabbed the bag of burgers from the drive-through window
with the other. "Run your own car over the median and play chicken with a
semi all you want, you're not getting your chilly paws on mine."
"I never! Not sober, anyway! Step on
it, then, the light's changing!"
Flinging change at
the confused waitress, Xander threw the car into gear and roared out of the
drive through with all the massive power that six cylinders could muster.
Saturday night traffic was heavy, but the Corvair was smaller and more
maneuverable than the van, and Xander swerved from lane to lane, trying to catch
up to their elusive quarry. The fact that Spike was now sitting in the
open window of the passenger side door, hanging onto the side view mirror with
one hand and leaning half-way into the next lane of traffic to keep the van in
sight didn't help much.
"Get back
inside, you idiot! They'll see you!"
"All the better! Stop clucking
and drive!"
A large pickup truck zoomed
by within six inches of the vampire's platinum head, horn blaring. Spike
flipped the driver off and yelled an anatomically impossible suggestion.
Xander hunched over the steering wheel and reflected upon the mildly terrifying
fact that Spike's control over his temper really had improved considerably over
the last two years. At the next light he reached over and grabbed the
vampire by his shirt-tail, dragging him back into the car. Spike was
yellow-eyed and grinning like a maniac. "I definitely prefer you
depressed."
Luckily none of their antics were
anything particularly out of the way for a Saturday night in Southern
California, and the drivers of the van didn't appear to pay any more attention
to the honks and shouts behind them than to any other road-rage altercations
that happened to cross their path. Ahead of them the van made a sudden
swerve into the left lane and Xander gritted his teeth and cut off a beer truck
to follow it. He scraped through the left turn as the light went from
yellow to red and barely made it through the intersection ahead of the voracious
horde of oncoming cars. "Yeeeeeeaow!" Spike whooped, halfway out the
window again. "Turn off your headlights!"
"Like hell!"
Traffic had thinned out, and Xander
hung back, trying to keep at least two cars between them and their prey and stay
inconspicuous, which wasn't easy with Spike determined to play Road
Warrior. "Wait a minute, this is familiar," he muttered after a mile or
so. "This is the way to the abandoned warehouse, isn't it? We're
just coming in from the other side."
Spike craned
further out the window and then dropped back inside. "Cor, Harris, think
you're right. There's the turn-off." He looked indignant.
"Some nerve they've got, usin' my old lair."
The
van, indeed, turned off on the disused road leading to the warehouse.
Xander drove on by and kept going for several hundred yards before pulling over
and turning off his lights. "So... we know where's they're holed up.
Do we go get the big gun?"
"I'd like to 'ave a bit
more to say to the big gun than 'Ooo, they're at the old warehouse'," Spike
groused. "Every bloody black hat in Sunnydale ends up there sooner or
later." He opened the car door and stood up, gazing over the dark,
overgrown fields. Xander got out rather more slowly, feeling a little
peculiar. There was enough light to see the broken hulks of rusting,
abandoned cars scattered here and there among the long grass, not enough to see
the treacherous shards of glass and torn metal lurking to trip up the
unwary. The last time he'd covered this ground, almost three years ago
now, he'd been Spike's captive.
The vampire, who'd
started off across the uneven ground with the total unconcern of one who could
see in complete darkness, turned round with a questioning look. "You
coming, Harris?"
Xander shook himself.
"Yeah. Just... happy memories."
Spike
actually looked... not guilty exactly, but somewhat sheepish. "Ah."
He ducked his head and ran a hand through his hair, noticed it was the left one,
flexed it a couple of times and began undoing the bandage with perhaps more
attention than the task deserved. "Right then. Nasty bit of ground
'ere. Watch where I step and maybe you won't end up down a well."
Which wasn't exactly an apology, Xander thought as
they picked their way cautiously towards the warehouse, but it might pass for
one in a dim light.
The warehouse loomed against
the night sky, even more dilapidated and skeletal than Xander remembered
it. "Weird to think that in another year or two the subdivisions are gonna
swallow this place up," Xander whispered. Spike shrugged.
"’appens. Last time I went home there was a
McDonalds where the house I was born in used to be. Couldn't even be a
sodding British chain."
Xander spent the next few
moments trying to wrap his head around the bizarre concept that Spike had been
born instead of popping into existence full-fledged, duster, bleached hair and
all. He hadn't made much progress when the vampire's cool hand touched his
shoulder, bringing him to a halt. "They're in there all right," Spike said
softly, dropping into a feral crouch. His nostrils flared. "Four of
'em."
"The van guys?"
"Vampires." He tipped his head back, eyes half-lidded, inhaling deeply the
better to catch the scents on the breeze. Satisfied with the information,
he casually left off breathing again. "And two blokes."
The walls of the warehouse rose sheer
and grey overhead, broken panes of glass opening into the deeper darkness
within. A rickety metal staircase led upward to a winch platform.
Xander tugged at it dubiously, and a shower of rust flakes shivered to the
ground. Without comment, Spike took hold of the railing and started up the
stairs. Xander didn't argue; the vampire was smaller and lighter than he
was, not to mention much stronger and much less vulnerable to physical damage;
if the thing was going to collapse with someone on it, better Spike than
him. Spike skinned up the staircase with inhuman speed and leaped lightly
over to the winch platform. He turned and crouched down. "Feels
solid. Come on." Xander followed as quickly as he could,
wondering why it was that he always ended up tagging along after someone
who moved like a big jungle cat... or in Spike's case, something that hunted big
jungle cats.
The door behind the winch
platform was locked, or maybe just crusted shut, but Spike broke it free without
much effort, and the two of them slipped through. They were standing on
the catwalk with ran around the perimeter of the interior. Down below the
floor of the warehouse was illumined by a forest of candles which rivaled the
bank Spike kept in his crypt.
In the
dim yellowy light Xander could make out four heaps of rags on the floor--no, one
of the heaps had just moved. The vampire sat up groggily, its demonic
visage turning blindly from side to side as if searching for something... or
someone. It stared up at the catwalk. Xander stood stock
still. Could the thing sense his heartbeat even at this distance?
After a moment it slumped back to the grimy cement again. Now that he was
looking he could see the other three twitching now and again. "Drugged?"
"Must be. Not enough time to starve 'em that
stupid." Spike's voice held a tinge of disgust.
The two men who'd been in the van came into sight,
carrying... buckets of paint? Man and vampire watched in mutual
confusion as one of the men produced a push broom and began sweeping the area of
the floor around the drugged vampires. His right forearm was heavily
bandaged; he must have been the one Spike had hit with the axe earlier. In
the process it became obvious that the vamps were chained as well as drugged;
the rattle of metal links on concrete was clearly audible when the push broom
man moved one of them aside.
The second man was
prying open the bucket of paint, and (after stirring it properly, the
professional part of Xander's mind noted) dipped a brush into it. In front
of the first vampire, he began marking out the outlines of an elaborate symbol
on the floor.
"Don't get too fancy," the man with
the broom said, his voice echoing hollowly through the expanse of the
warehouse. "They'll do the details when it's time for the blood."
The paint man grunted and moved on to the next
vampire in line. One by one, a sketchy symbol in red paint was inscribed
on the floor in front of each of the vampires, and at the last, a fifth symbol.
The first man leaned on his broom surveyed their
work critically. "We still need one more."
"We'd have our quota already if that blond asshole hadn't broken Number Four's
neck," the second man said.
Xander looked at
Spike. "Sure they don’t know you personally?"
"Well, hell, why not take him, if we can find him?” Broom Man said.
“According to the amulet he fit the criteria."
Paint Man grunted again; it seemed to be a favored mode of expression. "He
exceeded the criteria. We’ll find another one, and exactly which one isn’t
important. You can't spit without hitting a vamp in this town, and we're
running on a... deadline."