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Nan
AU, continues from The Blood Is the Life. As Spike and Buffy try to
hold onto their partnership and their love, recently unsouled Spike tries to
secure his position as self-proclaimed Master Vampire of Sunnydale...against
the wishes of The Powers That Be and the Slayer's ancient mandate. Magic, new
arrivals, old friends (and enemies), dreams, visions, e-Bay, tribute blood,
and cookies all play a part in the tense give and take between vampire priorities
and human necessities.
Disclaimer: All is Joss's. None is mine. No profit. Just more Spikejoy for everyone.
What Spike saw was a moving cubist collage. Blocks of bright, patches of color he supposed were the lawn, trees, and houses opposite, oblongs of varied darks that were shadows, smeared contrails that maybe were passing cars. He could guess, make tentative assignments, but it wouldn’t resolve. Add to that the sense of whirling, and it was pretty much like viewing the world from a spinning roundabout.
Only Buffy was he certain of.
Her scent, her voice, the motions of her hands and the warmth of her body were a tether, an anchor, an escape from confusion. He tried to focus just on that but all the rest was too strong. His head was still full of fog.
He guessed they were on the front porch, sitting together on the glider (which he knew because it moved slightly whenever he needed to rock to keep from being swept away) because…well, in back, in the kitchen, the mid-morning sun had been coming in. So that would rule out the back porch, right there. And he still fought off the associations of the upstairs room that was hers, where he’d hurt her, or the demon had, or something like that, he couldn’t get it straight except to know he must stay away until he knew better what he was doing. Had done. Might do. Something like that.
Her voice said, “I don’t want to push--I want to understand.”
“Then that makes two of us.” Freeing his hand from the clasp of hers but leaning against her, keeping the contact down the length of his arm, hip and leg against leg, he opened the cigarette pack and lit up--nearly all of it by touch. Trusting muscle memory to get him through. Considering the cigarette, he remarked, “Dunno why I keep doing this. Could stop anytime, but I don’t. Need something to do with my hands, some way, seems like. Should take up knitting. Smoke, that’s not good for you or Bit. Should quit.”
Undistracted, Buffy asked bluntly, “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing that hasn’t happened, or I haven’t done, before. Had a bit more choice about it other times, is all. Except…. Nothing I think…you’d understand.” He bent his head, to not meet her eyes.
“I’m a big girl, Spike. I know it wasn’t your choice. But I want you to tell me.”
Her demand compelled him. Trying to make sense of it for her might help him make sense of it for himself. He shut his eyes, trying to get his thoughts in order. “Well, he fancied me, didn’t he? An’ he could get at my demon direct. Demon, it don’t say no to that sort of thing. Real or not. Demon, it’s not particular--no more than about what it feeds on. Never thought you’d hear me say I’d got more of that than I wanted, did you?” He was embarrassed--not because of what he’d done in that regard but what he thought she’d make of it.
He continued, “Fact is, problem is, it meant nothing. Generally doesn’t, to vamps. No more than scratching an itch, forget it the next second, unless you’re playing power games, that sort of thing. Not like it is to humans. Not like…us. But so much of it. So strong. Like bein’ forced to drink from a fire hose. Can’t disconnect from it and can’t really want to. And you’d do pretty much anything to keep it coming, stay connected there, even though it’s at the price of everything else. Everything you actually want; everything that matters.
“All the sense…all the sense runs out of things. Everything. Bleeds away. Soul, it wants it all settled and tidy. What’s right. What’s wrong. And it won’t go like that.” He waved at the yard and the sidewalk. “See the sunlight, there, and know quite plain it’s death to me, and I still halfway forget that, or don’t care, or something. I look at it and it’s just bright and empty. Doesn’t mean to me what it should. Expect it will sort itself out some way. But…can’t right now. Can’t let it get mixed up with that other…that didn’t mean nothing. But was all….”
The glider moved: he’d started to rock again. Buffy hugged him, held him close, until he could settle and be still. She said quietly, “So…you miss it.”
“Yes. No. Demon, it’s all satisfied. It….” A memory surfaced and he locked tight, rigid with it. “Oh god.”
“What? Spike, what is it?” She shook him.
The fog was thicker, rolling in blood-tinged, cutting him off from everything else.
He’d been somewhere. Not here. He’d hunted and fed like a ravenous fledge--to repletion and beyond. If it’d been left up to him, he’d still be doing it. He’d been freed and loosed to it, the whole of his desire. A feast to all his senses. An orgy of bloodlust it had taken the oil, and more immediate sensations, to draw him out of to the point that he could attend to new instructions. He remembered, and the soul sickened so that he felt it as horror, not only as satisfaction. But that, still, too. Because he still wanted it. And mustn’t. Soul was repulsed by what the demon craved. And he couldn’t reconcile them.
So he just said NO. Not aloud, likely--only inside. The soul didn’t force him but the soul gave him a place to stand and the leverage. He could not want this. He could not choose it. It still dragged at him but couldn’t wholly carry him away without his consent; and that, he did not give.
Like Rayne himself, whom Spike hadn’t even begun to consider, apart from his effects. Who to some degree still had access, still could get at him. But could no longer force Spike’s acceptance, lacking the complicity of Spike’s demon yearning toward the mage’s sensual blandishments and dragging Spike along.
Once he’d endured agonies to get to YES and surrender. Now he fought the pull of pleasure unending and meaningless to maintain a NO and refusal.
NO: I will not do that, be that. NO: I will not want what the demon wants and delights in. NO: I will not give up choice.
Non serviam. Non serviam. Non serviam. Non serviam.
**********
Dawn leaned in at the front room arch, where Buffy and Giles were in solemn conference, to report, “He’s having another ‘Oh, god!’ moment--at the computer this time.”
Rising, Buffy asked Giles, “What is that--the fifth? Or the sixth?”
Dawn led the way across the hall.
Recovered from the basement, the laptop sat on the long den table cleared of birthday decorations. Spike was leaning over it, talking in mostly incoherent phrases full of swearing over the phone: “--don’t care, just get it the fuck out of there. Right now. And how do we stop ‘em? What d’you mean, you don’t know?”
Until she’d seen it, Dawn hadn’t realized that Spike, Inc. had a web page. Red on black, natch. And full of recruitment (read: bounty) notices. What was on offer for a “specialist in pain application:” a torturer, Dawn figured. Delivered FOB, the going rate (described as a finder’s fee) was $ 1,000. Not to be paid to the torturer, apparently, but to the one who located and delivered the recruit. Another listing was for a “martial arts trainer, black belt level” but was listed as “filled:” Dawn guessed somebody had been recruited (or kidnapped) to fill that position, and the recruiting bounty paid.
Before she could read any more, Spike refreshed the page, which vanished. “Revoke it,” he said to the phone. “I don’t know, put up a notice. Say no more recruiting, no bounty gonna be paid, nothing. I don’t care about the goddam fucking type style, just do it!”
“Hey!” Dawn protested when Spike held the phone away with the clear intention of pitching it against the opposite wall. “That’s my phone!”
“Right. Right.” Spike carefully set the phone down, arm’s reach away. Then he buried his face in his hands.
Buffy leaned against the door casing, arms folded. “So what is it this time, Spike?”
It was plain to Dawn that these successive epiphanies of guilt were wearing down Buffy’s capacity for sympathy.
Spike slid his hands so his eyes showed. Through the day, he’d looked more and more exhausted. Worn out, Dawn thought, by the effort of trying to connect. Which wasn’t being helped by the inventory the soul seemed determined to make of everything Spike had done in its absence and then pointing out to him, in glaring clarity, why that had been the worst possible thing to do, letting him know he was a monster and a stupid monster, at that. She wished the soul would shut the hell up and grant him a little peace. But it seemed perfectly merciless and paid no heed to anybody’s preferences except its own.
“The Dalton was due to be delivered today,” he announced, in helpless misery. “Likely too late to stop it.”
“China?” Giles inquired.
“No, Chicago.”
Buffy put in, “Start at the beginning. What’s a Dalton?”
“The real one, the first one, was the Master’s. Master that was. Expert on ancient languages, mystical texts. I inherited him, but he didn’t last long. Big Blue, the Judge, wiped him out, just like that. For no reason at all. Been missing him,” Spike explained listlessly. “Need help with the translation. Need a new Dalton. And I’d got to talking with this chap at the University of Chicago, good knowledge of Sumerian and related languages. Been sending him pieces I’d had trouble getting straight, context was ambiguous. Cyrus Smith. Another chap at Oxford, but the transport would have been a problem, so I’d settled on this Smith to be my new Dalton. Sent him this made-up thing about a grant, total shit but enough to get him interested….”
Giles said quietly, “You were going to have him turned,” and Spike bobbed his head.
“Simpler that way than having it done at the other end, and there’s no control over who does the turning. Could ruin him.”
Even Dawn was vaguely appalled by the matter-of-fact explanation.
Face pulling into an expression of acute distaste, Buffy said, “People turned on demand? On order? Spike, that’s terrible!”
Spike lifted his head and looked at her with an expression that said he knew exactly how awful it was. “It’s how it’s always been done. How Dalton was done, most like.”
Giles looked as though he wanted to make notes.
Buffy said grimly, “You have to stop it.”
“Dunno if I can. He was supposed to come today. This morning. Had a driver gonna collect him at the airport. Maybe it’s already done. Have to get onto Huey, see where it stands. And Mike.”
“Why Mike?” Dawn inquired, and Spike just looked at her with that horribly weary blank-eyed expression, leaving her to figure out for herself that of course Spike wasn’t gonna turn anybody himself, hated the very idea. But Mike, who’d do nearly anything for him, would have no qualms about doing that. “Oh.”
Spike said to Buffy, “Told you there were parts of this just can’t be done with a soul. It’s gonna all go smash now. Can’t do what’s needed. Can’t even think it out right. Best if I’d never tried.”
“I didn’t say that!” Buffy responded hastily, and went to put her arms around his shoulders. “It was a good idea. It still is!”
Spike shook his head. “Might as well just go on up to the factory and dust ‘em all. Get it over with. Do me too while you’re about it.”
“Now you’re just being all depresso-guy. Because of the soul. It’s good, that you got it back, but I guess it takes some getting used to if you’ve been without it awhile. Don’t try to make these sweeping decisions until you’re more rested. Connected,” Buffy advised anxiously.
Reaching for the phone, Spike said, “Have to get onto Huey,” and dialed with Buffy hovering over him.
Dawn and Giles retreated to the hall, watching, then traded a thoughtful glance.
“This isn’t good,” Dawn commented. “Between Rayne and the Lady, they’ve just about done him in.”
“They’ve certainly incapacitated him from functioning as the de facto Master of Sunnydale. But is that altogether a bad thing?”
“Would you prefer Digger? And the Hellmouth open, blasting the ‘Come one, come all’ dinner bell and making Sunnydale an attractive piece of demon real estate again?” Dawn retorted. “Without Spike, it’s a power vacuum, Giles. And power vacuums have a way of filling themselves. Spike’s the best of the available choices. He’s the cornerstone and the connection. Without him, everything will fall apart. Let’s have some realpolitik here, please.”
She found Giles regarding her quizzically. He inquired, “Dawn?”
She felt herself flushing. “Yes, I’m me. Just because I’m seventeen doesn’t mean I don’t know things!”
“Quite. If I implied otherwise, I apologize. I’m going to contact Ethan now. See if it’s possible to make him see reason. That or threaten him effectively. I’d meant to have Spike in attendance, but….” Giles was again viewing the den.
“Not such a great idea,” Dawn agreed. “Are you inviting me to sit in?”
“I believe some objectivity is called for, yes. Ethan and I…have history.”
“I’d already figured that out. But if you want a referee, an impartial observer, I’m not it: I want that bastard dead. For what he’s done to Spike.”
“I am duly warned. Ethan tends to inspire that view…. I think it would be unwise to involve Willow further at this point. And Buffy doesn’t present an effective threat in this particular instance, since Ethan is human. Regrettably. You, however, are an unknown quantity, especially if Ethan can’t be sure the Lady is no longer in residence. Let’s leave it that way, shall we?”
“I’ll try not to pop my gum or say anything too blatantly teenish.”
“Let’s be about it, then.”
Dawn followed Giles into the front room.
**********
“Why, Ripper!” Ethan Rayne purred. He had no eyelids, Dawn noticed--at least none that showed. Eyes set--black, lively, and sardonic--flush to the face, as though slits had been cut, showing sparking blackness underneath.
About half life-size, the image of the Chaos Mage’s head and shoulders hovered like a hologram within what had to be a genuine crystal ball on the coffee table. Like a low-tech picture-phone. Dawn was seated on the couch next to Giles, violet overalled knees decorously together, intending to be a silent audience unless Giles gave her a cue to be otherwise.
That was gonna be hard, though: anybody as pleased with himself as Rayne made her want to do wretched things to his kneecaps.
“What a delightful surprise,” Rayne continued, all sly mischief. “But I should have known you wouldn’t be able to keep away, sending your little contact niggle. You’d think I’d have forgotten it after all this while, but somehow I haven’t. Now that you’ve seen the makeover, isn’t he sinfully decadent? And surely all bewildered and confused over what he’s been playing at. Rumpled and pliable. Aren’t they delicious when they’re like that? I know I was. Or at least so I was told.”
“He has a soul now, Ethan. You--”
“What a coincidence! So did I!”
“--You won’t be able to recapture him easily.”
“Ah, then it will have to be hard. Hard boy, our vampire. Or is he? Ours, that is. Hard is really a given, with vampires. And if you think the censorious miss will make me curb my tongue out of dire shame for what she may infer, remember how keen you used to be about the proper education of the young? I’ve come around to your way of thinking: catch ‘em when they’re still credulous and trusting, so as to waste the least possible time in corrupting them. If--”
Giles broke in wearily, “Don’t be such a prat,” and Rayne paused and cocked his head, smiling a surprised, more genuine smile.
“I’m used to being the annoying one. Must see if I’m still the reigning champion, don’tcha know.”
“Ethan, you’ve been in his mind: you know his current obsession. It’s certainly not knackered old retired librarians.”
“But why ever not, dear boy? The librarian was merely one mask; this is only another. Halfway mage, halfway magister, a succession of pious timidities. But we know one another’s true faces, don’t we?”
Rayne’s face changed. The tight lines vanished. The cheeks filled; the forehead smoothed. Dawn was looking at the face of a boy her own age: humorous, intelligent, alert. But the eyes…the eyes were the same.
Giles shut his eyes, looking pained. “Merely another mask.”
“Reality is malleable, dear boy. Infinitely so. I’ve told you and told you but you still won’t admit you see it. It’s very vexing of you.”
“Appearance is malleable,” Giles contradicted curtly. “Reality is rather something else. But you’re far beyond being able to tell them apart anymore. I’m attempting to give you warning, so kindly leave off the piffle.”
The mage’s face slid back to its former fortyish appearance. “But I’m so good at it,” Rayne complained, pouting.
“The reality is that in interfering in this matter, you’ve made some serious enemies.”
“What, my newest pet? I doubt it. Vampires are all children of Chaos, as you well know. I am their natural mentor.”
“Not this vampire. I doubt you’ve known many if you don’t realize to what degree he’s turned his nature to consistency and Order. But I wasn’t speaking of him. This isn't your typical mischief that you've undertaken, Ethan: you've engaged not merely individuals, but forces. You’ve antagonized the Slayer: the oldest and most powerful there has ever been. Who has allied and bound herself to this vampire, and he to her--much against my advice, I might add. An injury to one is an injury to both; it will be repaid in full measure. She is the guardian of the Hellmouth. And then, there’s the Lady of Doorways, who’d gladly have your guts for garters. This matter of the Hellmouth is within her purview, and she was at some pains to have it shut. She’s taken a personal interest in seeing that it remains that way. Not a good enemy to have. Add a third female and you face the Triune Goddess, terrible and merciless. If you persist, they will have you dead, Ethan. I’ve never wanted that. Soundly thrashed, yes. Not dead.”
Rayne said nothing for a moment--remarkable in itself--as the two men regarded one another. Then Rayne turned his face aside, his mouth twisted in bitterness. “I’m touched by your concern. Since our ways parted, I’ve known the Slayer was no friend to me. And when have the Powers ever been kindly disposed to Chaos or those who worship infinite change?” Abruptly smirking, cordial and offensively familiar, he went on, “As to the third, are you put out with me, Dawnie, for giving our Spike a little treat, a small holiday from responsibility? He’s been so glum, so mum-faced, of late. I merely showed him a good time: all the three F’s that define vampire nature, in full measure.”
“Yeah, I just bet you did!” Dawn shot back. “You hurt him, and nobody does that and gets away with it! I’ll make you sorry!”
“Temper, temper,” chided Rayne, the smirk fading into a thoughtful expression.
“All three,” Giles mentioned quietly. “The Hellmouth is nothing to you. If you persist, it will be your undoing. Go play your tricks elsewhere. Leave it, for pity’s sake.”
“My goodness: a chance to annoy three remarkable females and you, in the bargain. However could I give that up? Achieve my greatest work to date--opening a dimensional gate not merely to anywhere but to everywhere simultaneously, random energies flooding out to disrupt and transmogrify mundane reality with the faery kiss of the deeply strange. How could I forego that? Besides, I’ve been paid. I have a contract,” declared Rayne, prim and smug. “Surely, Rupert, you’re not suggesting that I default on my responsibilities? My sworn word?”
Giles, mouth pulled tight, said nothing. And the crystal was suddenly empty. Removing his glasses to rub his eyes, he commented, “Well, at least I tried.”
Dawn thought it was more a matter of “Hell hath no fury like an Ethan scorned,” but she tactfully didn’t say so. After all, she was seventeen and supposed to be cool about such things.
**********
Cyrus Smith was dead and expected back shortly. Day or so. Spike set the phone down on the table with immense care since it was Bit’s and he didn’t want to break it. Too much already broken. Everything, it seemed to him. And no fixing it.
He shut his eyes rather than watch the eddy-spin of shapes and colors that wouldn’t resolve into any sense he could take in or understand.
Michael, he’d been so proud of himself, stopping to let the dying man feed. Never done such a thing before. Might know the one thing that couldn’t be undone, that’d be what Mike would do, exact to orders.
“Too late,” Buffy’s voice surmised.
Spike nodded. He made a graphic throat-cutting gesture, then let the hand thump onto the table top as though he'd lost control, it didn't belong to him anymore. “Michael didn’t do nothing except what I said. S’all on me: the responsibility. You go ahead, do what you have to.” He sagged back in the chair, eyes still shut, not even waiting. Couldn’t bring himself to care. Had it coming, didn’t he, for messing things up so bad.
The blow to his chest barely registered. The punch to his nose, though, he noticed since he hadn’t expected it or actually anything past an initial short, sharp shock.
Buffy’s angry voice ordered, “Look at me!”
No point to that. Already knew he’d failed her and she was furious with him for it. Could smell the rage boiling off of her, hear the quick breath and the blood pounding fast.
“Look at me! I’m not gonna be forced to do that. Not again. You don’t get to give up, leave it all on me. I won’t, and you can’t make me! We work through this together, God damn it! Look at me!”
She commenced slapping at him but it was the crying that hurt. He never could bear her crying. Soul told him it was all his fault and that was certainly no news and no help either and he couldn’t even wish himself rid of the fucking thing because he acknowledged he was pretty well blind without it--do things like decide to dispatch the fledges wholesale, have a new Dalton turned, all blithe and confident. Without it came things like the demon’s eager submission to that Rayne and the orgy of feeding wherever it was he’d been. And the unendurable chasm of distance from Buffy.
Demon, it wanted to fight back against the pain, lash out and make it stop, never mind how. Soul told him any idiot would have made a better job of protecting Buffy than he’d done and now it would all fall apart and be worse than if he’d never begun. Territorial warfare on the streets of Sunnydale and the Hellmouth open again, vamps and others drifting in from a hundred miles roundabout, more than Buffy could ever deal with, and all of it his doing, his fault. Trapped between them with noplace to stand.
Seemed he’d lost some time there because he was struggling on the porch just short of the brightness and had an arm cocked to belt Bit, clinging to his knees, and of course that was wrong so he didn’t and everything whirling and then suddenly he was in the kitchen leaning on the counter there and Buffy had cut herself and was telling him to feed from her and he recoiled because that was wrong too, must never do that again, not if she didn’t love him, and some more spinning and he was someplace dark and quiet except there was small music somewhere, so small as to almost be silence, and he was breathing, which was stupid and useless, so he stopped.
“Hey, evil undead,” came a casual voice, “as long as you’re down here, make yourself useful. Yeah, Spike, I’m talking to you. Hold this door while I get the hinges set. Come on, you’re paying for it, so the least you can do is lend a hand.”
Spike couldn’t get his mind around that, why his paying for it should oblige him to do the work, but hold the door, that he could take in. Guessed he must be back down in the basement and not even token chains anymore to remind him to take care, only the bracelets still there. He rubbed at them uneasily, frowning, because he was hungry and he didn’t think he’d lost so much time as that. And of course Harris was only prey to the demon, food on the hoof and nearby, could smell him and sense him perfectly plain though all his eyes rendered was the heat-blur of hunting sight, which let him know that his demon aspect was ascendant and manifest, the demon running things because Spike was all unfocused and useless.
But he could hold a door, once his hands had been guided to it. So he did that, distracting himself with keeping it steady. Demon couldn’t make him lunge aside and take the unwary food like it wanted to.
Mike feeding on him: that was why he was in blood-debt. So that was all right, then: he’d puzzled out the sense of it.
He winced at the noise of the drill, close by his ear, but otherwise stayed still because he could do that. Not do anything right but at least not do anything wrong.
“You can let go now,” Harris’ voice commented quietly, almost a question there but Spike didn’t understand anything but the words and obediently made his hands open. The door stayed in place, so it must be fastened, hinged, something. No more need of holding. As he turned away, Harris added, “Come on, we’ll get the other one now. Finish up. Then Wills can get ‘em both magicked tight, right?”
Spike felt himself taken by the arm (hot human hands) and steered, cool dirt underfoot and the smell of raw earth and the demon leaning closer and ready to bite but Spike pulled away, stumbling aside into the dirt wall and down on his knees there and Harris much too close, bending to him, and noplace deeper to hide that would let him in. So Spike shoved: a small violence to prevent a larger one. Not that he had any affection for Harris but the witch did, Willow, and Buffy too, some, so Spike had therefore always exempted the oaf from what he otherwise would have done to him, consulting only his own inclinations.
“What’s your problem here, Spike?” Harris inquired, not nearly as nervous as he should be, well within striking distance of a game-faced vampire huddled on the ground. Spike knew himself to be totally pathetic if not even Harris was afraid of him anymore. “Thought you were all into making yourself useful these days. Getting Casa Summers safer than safe. Keeping the streets free of obvious mayhem. Helping Buffy out with her class. Nice tame bagged blood and everything. Soul even back, they tell me. Regular Boy Scout, right? So be useful: hold the door so I can set the hinges and then the lock plate.” Again leaning close, Harris gave him a light punch on the shoulder. Spike bared fangs and snarled, braced and ready for a second, then sagging at the recollection that Harris was protected and not to be taken or even flashed out at. Mustn’t do that. Mustn’t make things worse than he already had. Despite himself he was breathing again and grabbing at the bracelets to remind himself. One broke and fell off. Everything broke. Everything twisted tighter and tighter…then went helplessly slack.
“Get off your lazy butt, fangless, and be some help around here,” Harris demanded, nudging him with a boot. “Got to get that door set before something that’s actually evil gets in. Come on. Hold the door.”
You’d almost think Harris was trying to provoke him, and even Harris couldn’t be that stupid, could he?
But Harris was right: the door at the end of the tunnel needed to be set and shut and secure against the dark. Spike remembered that and didn’t need to puzzle out why because his sense of threat was overwhelming. The people he loved were in terrible danger that he’d put them into and was incapable of keeping from them. Wrong, useless, guilty, and rightly unloved. The least he could do was hold the door in place.
Exhaustedly he pushed to his feet and followed the blood-red blur that was Harris down the tunnel.
**********
“God, he’s spooky,” said Xander, shuddering and rubbing his arms as if against cold, standing in the front room’s door arch to deliver his report. “Game-faced the whole time and itching to come at me, trying so hard not to that he’d shove his face into the dirt rather than look my way. That is one totally screwed-up vampire.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” commented Dawn scathingly, glumly hugging her knees.
Buffy, sitting next to Dawn on the couch, said nothing. They were none of them in any danger from Spike. Hadn’t been for ages and on some level, even Xander knew it, to volunteer to see what kind of response he could prod out of the profoundly withdrawn vampire.
“Couldn’t get him to talk,” Xander continued, “but he’s listening OK. Give him an order in words of one syllable and he can take it in, do it. About like Bruno, in my crew. I thought maybe giving him something tangible to latch onto might help. But….” Xander’s shrug said the rest.
Dawn judged, “It’s the goddam soul, that’s what it is. It’s punishing him for putting it away, just when he was trying so hard to keep everything balanced. It’s not fair!”
“I actually feel sorry for the creep,” Xander confessed with a wry expression. “And you did not just hear me say that. But I never figured he’d get as far as he has, under harness, so to speak. Not our well-known poster boy for attention deficit hijinks. I expected maybe a week of good intentions, token efforts, and then he’d get drunk or into some brawl and blow it all off, not just keep plugging at it.”
Willow, who’d come in on the tail end of that, commented soberly, “Vampires obsess. He took that as his obsession and threw absolutely everything he had into it. Including us. Since Rayne broke that connection, he hasn’t been able to latch onto it again for some reason. I wish I understood why he started it to begin with, since he doesn’t want it. I’ve seen him up there--more than anybody, I think. At the factory. And it’s a chore. He doesn’t enjoy it.” Tight-lipped, she shook her head. “Oh, I’ve set the wards. For magical purposes, the tunnel is part of the house, and nothing with unfriendly intentions is gonna want to get near it, much less be able to come in. I’ve sealed the doors to the frames and the frames to the bedrock. It’s as secure as I know how to make it.” She crossed to the weapons chest and sat down on it, looking discouraged.
“I’ll get him a new watch,” Dawn announced. “That might help, don’t you think? Buffy?”
“If you want,” Buffy responded, her thoughts elsewhere. Rising, she said, “I’ll start supper. Xander, you staying?”
“And miss the wonders of lukewarm Thai take-out? You betcha!”
Buffy nodded and went off to the kitchen. Spaghetti, she thought, since there’d be four of them, Giles having taken his jet-lagged self back to the motel. Spaghetti was always good for quantity. She rose on tiptoe to inspect the contents of the freezer: she always made extra garlic bread for Spike--
She leaned hard against the refrigerator as a pang struck her, strong as a knife in the gut.
Vamps were killing and turning people, doing their usual vamp thing…under Spike’s authority and on Spike’s orders. Maybe more discreetly than before, not in the streets and scaring the horses. But it was still going on, all the same. And always would, as long as there were vamps in Sunnydale. The turning of the new Dalton had crystallized uneasiness she’d been able to keep formless and unacknowledged until then. And she’d been implicitly condoning it, turning a blind eye. Because what was the alternative? What alternative had Spike left her?
He’d acknowledged the responsibility and offered, for the hundred-nth time, to let her stake him. He knew. And certainly knew, by now, she’d never take him up on that offer. It was unspeakable, unthinkable. But the offer hadn’t been made cynically, not considering it’d been followed by a blind bolt for the porch. Suicide by Slayer; and absent that, by sunlight. He’d rather be dust than try to sort out the ramifications and the loose ends in which he’d left her entangled.
Tomorrow midnight, sweeps should resume. Tuesday, there was supposed to be a class: Anya had somehow pulled strings with the Chamber of Commerce and maybe others, calling in favors, to get the use of the workout room at the Civic Center. Spike’s active, sane presence was crucial to both of these. Without him, they’d collapse. Then the fallout would begin.
He’d gotten her into this. No way would she tolerate his not helping them get out of it. And trying to tempt him with hot garlic bread was so not gonna do the job!
And sobbing on the fridge’s Matte Ivory enamel wasn’t either.
Impatiently wiping her eyes on a paper towel it was convenient to blow her nose with after, she returned to the den, collected Dawn’s cell phone, and made a call. That done, she returned to making supper and fed the ravening multitudes. As they were finishing, she took the plate of extra garlic bread out of the oven where it’d been left to stay crunchy and warm and took it down to the basement.
Spike looked asleep, curled up small on the lawn chair pads in his grief posture that she’d seen a lot more of than she ever wanted to. Wrists thrust between his knees, trying to manacle himself with his own body: that was new, she thought aridly. Still game-faced. She’d never known him to sleep like that. Some comfort in it, maybe. Like the rocking, before. But he was inert now. If he was aware of her, it was too much trouble to stir or show acknowledgement.
Somehow knowing he wouldn’t touch it, she still thumped the plate down on the floor in easy reach, then went to the tunnel door no longer coyly concealed behind the screen and shot back the bolts: this door wasn’t made to be opened from the outside.
Lighting her way with a flashlight, she trudged down the tunnel and opened the door there. As directed, Mike was waiting outside. She gave him points for prompt.
“Come in,” Buffy said formally. “You’re welcome here.”
“Don’t need to do that,” Mike complained, evidently annoyed by empty gestures, sliding past her. “Had an invite, been here before, you recall?”
Slamming each bolt home again, Buffy replied coldly, “The whole house has been re-spelled. All invitations are revoked. Spike can go out but he won’t be able to come back without a fresh invitation. Tell him, so he’s not surprised. Doesn’t take it wrong. Which of course he will anyway.” She led Mike back up the tunnel, ignoring the alarms the awareness of a not-Spike vamp close behind her set off, and showed Spike to him in the garlic reek of the basement. Nobody moved for awhile. Gnawing at the edge of a thumb, Buffy demanded, “What’s wrong with him?”
“That Rayne,” said Mike at once. “Took him out of himself. He ain’t got back.”
“Not good enough,” Buffy snapped. “I’ve had vamp lore up to yo, and I want an explanation. I know he’s not back, I can see that. I want why.”
Mike looked around at her and didn’t say anything.
It’d probably been too much to expect, that Mike could explain it to her. Vamps weren’t into subtleties, nuances. Not into relationships, not really, beyond dominance and competition, spaces for their own egos to bloom.
Willow said Spike’s sense of himself had been injured, and what the hell did that mean? Dawn seemed to think it was the lack of the watch: that Spike couldn’t tell time properly without it, when all vamps knew dawn and dusk with precision, to the second, with no need of watches. Watches were alien: for appointments, agendas, not the unfolding now that the new Dalton would wake to experience. Along with the crazy hunger of a fledge. And the creature that’d turned him was standing beside her, unrepentant. Proud even of his restraint, his control, to be able to do such a thing, if Spike had been right about that.
Probably was: Spike had been interpreting vamps for her for a long time, trying to make her understand, and she never would. His word for such things would have to be good enough.
They were what they were. It was either dust them out of hand, where they stood, or accept that. Nothing between. There weren’t gonna be any compromises. Or any accommodation, without Spike there to enforce it.
She looked at Mike: wary, self-contained, comfortably silent, with no need to speak to her; without the human need to reach out, offer explanations, make contact. Impervious to her regard. As long as she didn’t come up with a stake, he’d tolerate her company and even respond to her summons, for Spike’s sake. But she had no relationship with this creature. None at all. Their only connection was through Spike.
She felt it--the alienness of it. Spike was tame, compared to this. He’d made himself tame. For her. Until he couldn’t do that anymore. Sleeping in his demon.
“Take him up to Willy’s,” she directed abruptly, “or wherever you want, wherever you think is best. Get him drunk. Start a fight, get him into it. Or if that doesn’t work, if he won’t, then beat the crap out of him yourself.”
“Don’t need me for that.”
“From me, he’d take it,” Buffy responded bitterly.
“Maybe. Maybe,” Mike conceded, finally turning his attention back to Spike. “You giving up your claim on him?”
“Never!”
“That Rayne, he’s marked him. But I’ll see to that. By me, you still got first claim.”
“All right,” said Buffy, not sure what she was agreeing to or why Mike had felt obliged to tell her that. Finally not caring as long as she got the results she wanted.
“And you take the forbidding off Dawn,” Mike added, and Buffy was startled. “She ain’t mad at me no more. Talking to me again. Ain’t nothing gonna happen to her except what she wants, not when I’m close by. So no need of a forbidding. And…she’s seventeen now.”
“All right,” Buffy said again, stifling uneasiness. “But you hurt her, or turn her, I’ll come after you and you’ll be dust on the breeze!”
“Sure. If you could,” agreed Mike indifferently.
“She’s my sister! Mine!”
“She’s her own. Spike made me see how that was. And Dawn herself, of course. Nobody has rights over her except the Lady, and I ain’t yet seen there’s anything to be done about that. Just so it’s clear, then.”
“All right,” Buffy said a third time and made herself turn and go up the stairs, surrendering Spike into the custody and care of his claimed childe, hoping that was what Spike needed now, that she was doing the right thing.
She had to get him back. Whatever it cost.
**********
Obviously the first thing was to get him some replacement boots: he couldn’t be seen in public with his bare shins hanging out like some wino. Since it was Friday, the mall stores would still be open, but Mike didn’t head that way. Best place for boots, in his opinion, was the Bronze. Parking behind some crates in the broad back alley, he ducked in long enough to get Spike a fifth of decent whiskey to keep him company on the bike, then went back inside to make a more leisurely appraisal. Choosing out a rowdy biker everybody would be glad to see gone, he picked a fight, broke some furniture before taking the fight outside, and presently had a fairish pair of boots to try on his charge, all sorts of straps and rings, as well as a gaudy shirt to go over the undistinguished black T.
Spike wasn’t cooperating but he wasn’t objecting, either. So maybe that was good, Mike thought, and maybe it wasn’t. Anyway the boots seemed to fit well enough: Mike thought he had a good eye for such things, and he knew Spike had much smaller feet than you’d think, getting one in the gut.
One of Mike’s T-shirts had the picture of a snarling Chihuahua with the sentiment, Not the size of the dog in the fight, the size of the fight in the dog. That was Spike. What he lacked in size and weight, he more than made up for with sneakiness, skill, and passion. Mike had seen him take on vamps four or five at a time and dust them all, with verve and glee. For a number of reasons, Mike didn’t like the idea of the Slayer’s final command, to beat the crap out of Spike. One bad possibility was that he’d lose. The other bad possibility was that he wouldn’t.
He’d had a couple of showdown fights with Spike so far, testing the limits, and hadn’t yet come out on top. But other than being awake and balancing with the bike, which was pretty much automatic, Spike had yet to say a word or take good notice of anything, which upped Mike’s chances considerably. A fair chance he could have the fight over before Spike had noticed it had begun.
The bad side of that was that it wouldn’t mean anything, any more than if he’d jumped Spike drunk or asleep. The other bad side was that it would. More than one Master Vampire had been dusted in his sleep, choosing the wrong sentry or the wrong bed partner, and sporting or not, they were just as dead.
Mike, the ex-mercenary and expert sniper, had never much concerned himself about fair odds. Nothing counted but the mortal practicalities: who was still moving at the end of things. But now, the idea of taking Spike down without Spike even knowing about it made him feel itchy, uneasy in his skin somehow.
Table that, Mike thought, and instead considered where to go next. Then he noticed that the bottle of J.D. was still capped: listlessly held, likely for no more reason than Mike had closed Spike’s hand around it, figuring he’d do the rest. Well, that wasn’t gonna get the job done.
A fifth, that was just for openers: not enough to get drunk on. Uncapping the bottle himself, Mike downed some thoughtfully although he preferred rum--the thicker, the better. He smiled at the memory of Willow’s rum punch, compared with which Jack was thin, sour tea. But good enough, he supposed, if you liked that sort of thing. Certainly felt warm and got your motor running.
But it wasn’t food; and Mike thought Spike had a starved look that said he hadn’t put back what Mike had taken from him last night. That was just downright stupid in a house full of warm humans with heartbeats let along bagged blood delivered twice a day, if you please; but Spike could be stupid about the most peculiar things. He’d been muy weird about feeding as long as Mike had known him. Deal with that first, then. Then more drinking, when the liquor had something more substantial to float on the top of.
He’d always wanted to hunt with Spike anyway. This was his chance.
The current approved prey was druggies and pushers, but Mike was wary of getting a heavy dose of unknown chemicals with such a meal and did his cruising elsewhere. He liked the hospitals. Had two, just in his own assigned territory--the only thing more numerous, in Sunnydale, was cemeteries. Mercy General and St. Elizabeth's. He'd spent whole evenings observing, learning their rhythms and their ways. People coming and going at all hours, and some incoming injured that could be diverted and just be speeding the inevitable. Nurse’s aides were also nice, every now and again, as a change from the comatose, diseased, and dying.
So he immediately noticed the Mercy Gen candy-striper, wearing a white cable-knit cardigan over her pastel blouse, waiting in the lit bus enclosure at the front of the parking lot. Usually he’d just invite one for a ride, but that was no good since he already had someone at pillion.
Scrunching up his forehead worriedly, he pulled up to the enclosure and asked hoarsely, “Are you a doctor?” Over her flustered Who, me? reaction, he continued, “Think my buddy got some bad stuff, but I can’t find the emergency entrance. Been around this frickin’ parking lot at least a dozen times and I can’t see where it lets off. Can you help me?” Throwing different signals at her too fast for her to question any of them, looking all earnest and dumb, he edged the kickstand down so the bike wouldn’t fall over, then pointed urgently at the Emergency Entrance sign, at least big enough to be advertising a motel, demanding, “See?” to direct her attention that way.
No more was needed: he had her. Big enough to fold her to him, all seeming romantic if anybody bothered to notice, which nobody did. Noticing wasn’t common in Sunnydale.
He himself was fed up fine, what with last night and then the new Dalton, today, even though he’d had to give some back. So he didn’t need to drain the nicely terrified girl completely. Only to the point where her heart started to falter and she was limp in his supporting arms. He could stop, distract his demon the same way he’d distracted the girl and enforce his will on both. Choose to kill or not, proving he was in control, not his demon. Not a fledge any longer.
He tucked the limp girl neatly back on the bench in a pose of sleep, more or less. Shift change was in less than fifteen minutes: she’d be found and all handy for care and a few transfusions, everything the way Spike would like it, nobody dead and therefore no reason to refuse.
He opened his left forearm and presented it, saying formally, “Sire.”
That got Spike’s dim attention. No bagged blood smelled like that, with all the mingled flavors of respect and terror and fresh, desperate, vigorous life. Wouldn’t stay good long, not like Slayer blood in that way, but for a little while, Spike could feed direct from him and have all the good of it.
Couldn’t turn away from a thing like that, true tribute blood; and Spike didn’t. But he didn’t just plow right in, neither, the way Mike expected. The teeth exploring the wound Mike had made stayed blunt, and eyes slowly blinking were deep indigo blue in the harsh sodium lighting over the bus kiosk. The suction became deep and regular, and Mike leaned against the bike, feeling a little drifty. Then he fumbled in the right-hand saddlebag for the bottle, got it open, and finished it off, passing that along, too.
Would have been too complicated, maybe impossible, to shove Spike into going after the girl himself. But maybe, Mike thought lazily, this was better. A communion. A sort of hazy rapture. A sacrifice. A gift. So many things, all twined together, for the blood to mean. He and Spike leaned heavily together, Mike rather dizzy from the transaction. The wound was closing. Spike licked it clean, accepting the natural term.
“Wouldn’t have been good much longer anyway,” Mike found himself commenting sadly.
“Was good,” Spike responded, head bent against Mike’s biceps. “Was real.” At last he looked up. “Where’s the bottle got to?”
“Dead soldier,” said Mike, and pitched it overhand as hard and as far as he could. He heard it smash satisfyingly on a windshield in the MD RESERVED section, the sound immediately followed by the yelping indignant squeals and warbling siren of the vehicle's alarm. “Could be more, if you want.”
“Yeah. Let’s do that, then.”
**********
“Shut up,” Mike said tightly.
“But it’s true,” Sue said, leaning boozily on an elbow to stare into his eyes, “and you know it. You don’t need him. With all his restrictions and complications, he only gets in your way, slows you down. You’re a Master in your own right now. Don’t have to run around all the time licking his feet or else get pounded on. What if he takes another crazy spell and takes it into his head to dust you?”
Spike wouldn’t do that. Had too much invested by way of time and teaching to end it in a casual puff of dust. He’d given Mike the watch. “Shut up.”
Sue attended to trying to sip her pink drink through the stirrer, under the impression it was a straw, still shooting him telling glances from time to time. Friday, past midnight, at the Bronze, was too noisy to hear yourself think. Mike was getting a headache and was in an increasingly foul mood.
He’d opted for Willy’s, but Spike wouldn’t get off the bike. Wanted noise and dancing, not an assassination attempt. Not even a fight that could easily get out of hand in a demon bar that actively encouraged fighting. Could turn in a flash into a pitched battle, with only him and Spike doing the pitching on the side of the colors.
He didn’t like Spike being all cautious and prudent. Didn’t like him ducking a fight which in fact was the whole point of the outing. Mike had collected four of the crew by the theater in their usual spot, trolling for prey in the departing rush, for an escort in force, but even then Spike wasn’t satisfied. Stepped down from the bike and started walking toward the Bronze, face golden-pale as he lit a cigarette, so Mike had no option except to trail after, feeling like an idiot.
Once inside, though, Spike took a corner booth away at the back and went blank-eyed and comatose again, reeking misery. Not even drinking much, just watching the dancers as though they were all Buffy and all had dumped him.
Shouldn’t have never told him about the general disinvite at Casa Summers. Only factual, but he’d taken it personally, just as the Slayer had said he would. It galled Mike to admit that in some ways, Buffy knew Spike better than he did.
So he’d had an assortment from the pill stash fetched down from the factory to cut some of the gloom. On a free night, nobody much up there, except for Huey tied down with keeping watch over the new Dalton and Emil stuck with guard duty. So Mike had picked Sue to summon, to bring the pills. Figured she’d be all excited and bubbly, allowed to leave the lair for her first permitted public outing, even though she flashed in and out of trueface faster than a yellow caution light. The corner was dark and if she kept her back to the room, nobody was apt to notice. Bought her a couple-few drinks, for a treat. Had been fucking her on and off, mostly because she was there when he had nothing better to do, but women always tried to make something personal out of that and she’d been mouthing off lately about being his exclusively, using his minimal interest to scare off her least-liked partners. Women did that. Specially fledges, who needed all the leverage they could get, indiscriminately used by anybody who was older and stronger, that they didn’t dare say No to. Mike didn’t grudge her that and hadn’t disputed her claims. Showed her a bit of favor, even: bringing her things, a nurse once all to herself as a change from the bagged blood she didn’t get her full share of anyway, elbowed aside by the male fledges. Didn’t cost him all that much and she had energetic ways of showing her appreciation.
Now Spike was drunk and manic, having a shouting, arm-waving argument with the bass player between sets over who was the greatest jazz singer ever. And Mike was drunk and sullen, with Sue gone all Lady Macbeth on him, on the strength of Spike’s ducking out on his responsibilities and Mike’s turning the new Dalton. Change was in the air, electric, and Mike didn’t like it. Yet it pulled at him. Because what Sue said was true.
If Spike couldn’t straighten out and get back to normal soon, all he’d put together and held together by main force was gonna start coming unglued. And Digger would capitalize on every weakness, maybe even commit to the attack in force that’d been simmering ever since the sweeps began. Nobody liked the Sunday through Wednesday curfew on the prime downtown hunting district. A fight over that was coming, of a certainty: they all knew it. The only question was when.
Since Rayne had taken him, Spike the Master of Sunnydale was swiftly deteriorating into Spike the liability. And the smart thing would be to get him out of the way as fast as possible and assert and establish Mike’s own authority before strong opposition could organize. He had one foot solidly planted: in Spike’s absence, Huey and the crew obeyed him. All he had to do was set the other foot down hard and assume the stance. Quick, while there was still a place to stand.
“If you switch sides now,” Sue pointed out, giving the straw pointed and intense suction, “while you still have something to bargain with, I bet Digger would grant you a real good territory. He likes you.”
“Shut up.” Mike knocked back his drink and poured another, scowling.
He liked Spike well enough. But not enough to go down with him if he failed, which now seemed increasingly likely. He’d see to Rayne, certain sure: couldn’t afford to have a mage running around loose with a yen for dominating the strongest vamp he could find. Just common sense, really, to do him before his whim turned in some different direction. Hit him before he saw anything coming.
Wandering back from the bandstand as the musicians got ready for another set, Spike had his head lifted and his eyes shut as though listening to music nobody else could hear. More of the random crazy. Mike pushed the bottle toward him, checking that the escort were still around and paying good attention. Each was ready for his inspection, meeting his eyes in the intermittent flash of the rotating mirror globe overhead. A lot more alert than Spike, still standing rapt in his own private world.
Then Spike’s eyes opened, slow and dark and sad, gazing steadily down into Mike’s. And Mike knew without question that Spike knew everything Sue had been saying, all that Mike had been thinking, down to the least detail. And accepted it.
Intolerable.
Bolted down, the table was only wrenched half loose when Mike shoved it out of his way and came up at Spike. Full of rage and indignation and a dozen other conflicted emotions, Mike knocked Spike halfway across the room, disrupting the dancers, setting off a panic. Slapping away converging bouncers, Mike kept going, determined to pound Spike into the floor, make him fight back, force some unnamed acknowledgement from him. Not knowing what else to do, the four vamps in the colors slid in and started clearing the space, trying to keep interlopers from butting in. Plowing through the confused brawl like a truck, Mike paid no attention, focused only on Spike, who was simply waiting for him, letting it happen, which absolutely wasn’t to be borne. Mike pitched him into the bandstand, musicians and instruments flying everywhere and a huge feedback drone erupting from the sound system, reverberating in the bones. Mike went into one of his rare battle flashbacks, translating the crack of breaking chairs into small arms fire and the harsher reports of AK-47s, the flashing, broken light as tracers and grenade bursts, and the surrounding swirl of fighting bodies as the fierce mayhem of direct hand-to-hand. Whatever he touched, he broke.
“He has it open,” murmured Spike’s voice in his ear, close as a lover’s, quiet and casual.
“What?” Mike stopped with an arm cocked, ready to pound down again into Spike’s belly.
“The box. Has the box open, and he’s playing with the Stone. Can’t you hear it singing?”
Going still within himself, Mike realized that he could. Not the voice of the Hellmouth of old but very like, a shrill threnody that ran up and down his nerves like rats, at once disruptive and attractive. Not quite a sound or a scent, nothing known with the senses but felt deeply, everywhere. An Influence. A door cracked ajar on wild, chaotic energies like his vision of battle. Feeding his rage that went cold, separated from it; feeding his confusion, that scattered like dry leaves the moment he identified the influence and knew it as outer, not within himself. His demon was all frantic and disrupted with it, but Mike stood apart, listening. He could do that now.
“Always thought it would be Buffy,” Spike continued dreamily. “But that’s all right. You’ll do well enough. Might as well get on with it, then. Best, all round.”
Mike couldn’t hold the clarity: the rest came roaring back, sweeping over him. Utterly overwhelmed and deep in his demon, he found himself clutching Spike close and sobbing into his chest, inconsolable. In desperate need of his sire’s close presence and reassurance that the ambient craziness could not unweave him wholly into flapping tatters. Needing his protection and wisdom and strength.
Besides, if he’d actually gone ahead and done anything terminally bad to Spike, Dawn would never have forgiven him.
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