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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.
Soaping Spike's shoulders and back, Buffy had a satisfying sense of continuity.
Post-patrol shower check was part of the usual drill and one of the pleasanter
parts, as well.
The water was cranked up as near scalding as Buffy could tolerate because tired
or battered or both, Spike craved heat and craved close, both of which Buffy
was totally on board with. Typically he was sleepy and soft and biddable, quietly
announcing ow when she touched something sore, identifying the place
for monitoring the healing's progress.
Today his torso was a mass of bruises just coming on, and he had several lumps
under his hair that she found by touch and determined had quit bleeding; there
were probably broken ribs, and he showed general evidence of having been considerably
knocked about. About par for daybreak on a Sunday morning. With good rest and
feeding, everything would likely be 90% healed by nightfall. But Buffy still
liked checking. All that warm, wet skin and her fingers identifying the muscle
knots for later luxurious kneading. All that comfortable and accustomed intimacy.
She had a banged-up shoulder and a sore foot some clown had tramped on. The
usual. She always appreciated the warmth and closeness too and had been known
to do him either in the shower or on the cold tile floor with its famous small
skating rug: shiversome but urgent and satisfying. Slaying generally left her
wildly turned on, and Spike would be there and always interested: one of the
benefits of having a vampire lover.
Similarly, if Spike hadn't burned off enough energy, his checking out her injuries
would turn rowdy and randy, leading into sessions of hot shower sex done in
frantic haste to beat the chill blast that followed emptying the water heater.
But this morning he was quiet, accepting whatever it pleased her to do to him,
and that was always good too.
It seemed months since they'd performed this customary small ritual. Buffy had
missed it, and him, desperately. Since it was plain the opposition could now
locate him no matter where he was, the point of staying away was gone. He'd
made no objection to coming back. That interval was done, the soul back in place,
and Buffy was heartily glad to have it so. Glad he was finally home and wholly
hers again.
She bent her forehead against his back while the shampoo washed out. Then she
went up onto tiptoe to murmur, "Let's get dry. Then I want to do some loving
on you."
Spike didn't respond except to cut off the water and step out of the enclosure,
bending to collect the oversize towels. She loved him sleepy-eyed, with his
hair in an untended tumble. After minimal drying came robes and a quick scuttle
from the bathroom to the bedroom. Buffy had cranked the electric blanket up
to the max beforehand, get the bedding all toasty. As soon as he'd shut the
door, Spike shed the robe and slid under the covers with a soft hiss of satisfaction.
Buffy paused to pull on lace-trimmed babydolls because she never was comfortable
naked, and she liked feeling she looked nice though she suspected Spike would
like her just as well slathered in peanut butter (though not crunchy-style--that
hurt!) or nothing at all.
When she padded toward the bed, Spike rolled over and opened his arms for her.
But his eyes were still tired, not full of glee and mischief, and she shook
her head, bending to the bedside cabinet and pulling a zip bag out of the drawer.
She'd had Mike bring down the whole pill stash from the factory, and he'd patiently
sorted the pills by color and told her what each color meant so she could label
the bags. The red-and-white capsules were the pain pills. She picked one out
with thumb and forefinger, then sealed the bag again. "Nuh-uh, Crash, the deal
is that I love on you, you don't get to do anything." She leaned with the pill
and a glass of water she had ready on the cabinet, and he took them, eyes uplifted,
not bothering to check what kind of pill it was.
He'd mixed them into a complete muddle, she thought. He didn't like what happened
to him being all that predictable. Hurting, he wouldn't have known what kind
to choose. He needed her.
The thought made her smile, setting the glass aside.
She'd already decided that with both his forearms jaggedly sliced from wrists
to elbows, play with the silk scarves in the bottom of the cabinet wasn't on
the menu. Some hurt was fun; some wasn't. And this was for him: her welcome,
her praise. So she started with some general cuddling and petting, kissing slow
and wet and thorough, until she felt a little of the bracing release and his
eyes hazed over, wide and deep. The pill had kicked in.
"Headache?" she asked softly.
"Bit of one, yeah," he admitted, sagging back even more bonelessly, gazing at
the ceiling.
No wonder, with multiple concussions--all those lumps.
So then she admitted to the sore foot and turned around, head to toe, to let
him work those muscles with his strong, clever fingers: he liked to do for her,
and this was something he could do without exerting himself. "Left shoulder's
bad, too," he mentioned after awhile. "Come back up here, an' I'll see to it."
She lifted her head to look around. "Nope, I'm just fine and comfy here," she
commented, returning to what she'd been doing--playing with his personal "dangly
bits," as he called them. He was aroused, of course, but not specially interested.
She stretched the well massaged foot and rubbed the side of his face with it.
Enough foreplay, she decided. Time to get down to the main event. Nosing into
the wiry pubic curls, she began giving his shaft the serious lollipop treatment
with mouth and with fingers. Though he'd certainly felt what she was up to,
there was a big indrawn breath of startled reaction, held too long.
His abs went rigid. He was not enjoying this. But he hadn't said anything to
stop her, either.
She lifted her head to look again. In the faint light through the new windows,
he was braced up on his elbows, head thrown back, eyes shut. His beautiful chest
and his face were all piebald with the full bloom of bruises now: purple shadows
cast by no light. His hands were fisted tight in the bedclothes. Buffy scuttled
quickly around to kiss and cuddle him, asking, "What?"
He shook his head.
Buffy tried to ignore the idiot keen of He doesn't want me! Doesn't want
me! that her insecurity instantly started whining. Babble, though, was harder
to stop. "It's OK, we don't have to, if you just want to sleep or something,
it's OK, I just wanted it to be good for you, easy, I could--"
He pounced her. All of a sudden she was flat on her back and being unceremoniously
entered, hard and fast, and the sudden gulp of surprised breath was hers. His
face, over her, was intent and almost angry, inward-focused the way it sometimes
was when the play had been rough and he was all wound up with it and turning
loose. Good times too, though. The babble became the noises he wanted and the
incoherent encouragements, she'd been aching for him nearly forever, and she
could do sudden role changes, dancing the new dance with him because finally
it was all the same dance, the shock and turn and pressure of them-coming-together
in all the weathers they could be, serene or stormy.
He was done before she was, and she wasn't surprised. It'd felt like it would
be like that. After a minute or two of collapse, he had his face bent into her
neck, shuddering and sobbing and saying hoarsely, "Sorry, sorry," arms everywhere
as though he wanted to hold her but had forgotten how or didn't dare, and the
next minute he'd be flying--down to the basement or even out the door, just
had to move when he was this wound up. She grabbed his face, held him still
a second, wrapped both legs around his thighs and locked at the ankles. "Wrong
side," she told him, and he just blinked at her, not taking it in. She turned
her head, offering the right side of her neck. "Go for the mark. Remember: dessert?"
There was the familiar slight grating of the bones adjusting, fangs elongating.
Then his weight shifted, heavy upon her, and the good pain of his biting into
the scarred flesh of the claim mark. Instantaneous rapture. All sensation magnified
manyfold. The ecstasy of deep communion obliterating awareness of anything else.
The joy of being wanted, needed, and sufficient to so great a need and hunger
and knowing it was joy to him, too. The perfection of Slayer and vampire, sufficient
to one another and at last satisfied and still.
Dozily content, Buffy pushed fingers through his hair and then stroked his shoulders.
She couldn't have said how much he'd taken. Not a lot, though. Enough. When
he'd had what he needed, he stopped. The mark itched and tingled with its renewal.
Kissing his again fangless mouth, she whispered, "You home yet?"
"Nearly. Working on it. You…all right, love?"
"Fine. Very fine. Rest now: we have all day."
She held him until he slept, until they both did.
********
They’d all slept late. Stumbling downstairs about noon, Dawn found Spike in
the front room, sitting on the floor in front of the couch and staring in the
direction of the TV, currently showing an infomercial about some device to suck
disgusting stuff out of carpets. Going on to the kitchen, she had a glass of
extremely cold orange juice that sort of woke her up, then took the paper plate
of hot toaster pastries back to the front room and settled down next to Spike.
It was very nice to find him there and she’d missed him, what with him being
away and her being away, but he’d know that so nothing had to be said about
it. Cracking off an oozy corner of pastry and touching her tongue to the filling
to see if it was edible yet, she asked, “What’cha not watching?”
He looked around lazily. “Dunno. Some crap or other.”
“Are we bored yet?” Deciding the corner was sufficiently cool, Dawn dropped
it into her mouth and chewed.
“Dunno. Too shagged-out to tell.”
By mutual agreement, Dawn didn’t ask how literally he meant that and Spike didn’t
offer details.
It was as though they were underwater, she thought, and floating among tall,
stirring weeds. Everything slow and languid. But not easy with each other, the
way floating things should be: he was holding himself carefully separate and
moved away when she started to lean on him.
She knew what would be great for that and raced up to her room. Returning, she
dumped the bottles and tissues and the separators that were like pink foam brass-knuckles,
on the rug. “I have indigo,” she announced, setting the bottle upright. “Also
black, if you want to be a pig about it, as per usual.”
“Yeah, all right,” he decided eventually.
She worked the separator between the toes of his right foot and set seriously
to work. Since he hadn’t specified, she chose the indigo: almost charcoal-dark,
but with a slate tone that also came through. While his toes were drying for
the second coat, she straddled his knees and offered her fingers for being done
in violent chartreuse. He did the first nail meticulously, then set it aside
on the shelf of his forearm to do the next one.
The undersides of his arms were healed smooth again, she’d noticed. And the
other bruises were on the yellow-brown side of green and fading. As he finished
a second finger, she lifted her hand to brush pensive fingertips along the freshly
unmarked back of his left arm, hand to elbow: where the tattoo that meant Dawn
had been. Then she obediently set the fingers back on the right-arm shelf without
needing to be told.
“Do tattoos hurt?” she asked.
He hitched a shoulder without changing the precision of the brush strokes. “Some.
I expect. Was asleep pretty much the whole time, if you must know. Stings awhile,
after. Though you wouldn’t have to soak it in vinegar to have it set, like a
vamp would. Thinking of having yourself done?”
“Might. Sometime. How’d Rayne get it off?”
“Dunno. Don’t recall.”
Noticing how his face tightened, she dropped the topic and went on about where
tattoo designs came from, if you could search them on the Web, what custom designs
cost--was it by the inch or by the color, and were all colors available, and
were some more expensive than others?--steadily getting more and more comfy
in each other’s space. When she leaned forward to inspect the job so far, and
her hair was in danger of sliding onto her hand, Spike casually smoothed and
held it clear until she straightened, and that was good.
She was perched on the couch and Spike was stretched out on the floor, doing
the toes of her first foot propped in the separator, the two of them in a fanciful
argument about which new musical instrument needed inventing and what it should
sound like, when Xander came in, sliding a high but narrow rectangular box over
the sill--another new window, no doubt. He’d been doing two or three a weekend,
as they arrived from the manufacturer, fitted with the special glass.
Catching sight of them, Xander stopped, doing a take.
“We’re toe bonding,” Dawn announced regally.
“Don’t wanna know about it,” Xander responded, letting the box rest and setting
hands on hips, above his tool belt. “Just clear out, OK? Because this is the
big baby, the front window, and the sun’s coming in here for awhile, and that
could be poof time. Unless of course you want to practice your new trick, fangless,
in which case, you can help get the plywood off.”
“Ruin m’nails,” Spike declined, displaying the back of his one completed hand
with its indigo nails and flipping Xander the two-fingered British “bird” in
the process. Dawn giggled, and Xander only pretended to look insulted. Spike
and Xander were working on finding their comfortable distance again, too, Dawn
thought, carefully collecting what Spike would call “the doings” into overall
pockets and the fold of a bent arm held tight against her ribs.
After a consultation of glances, they reconvened the toe bonding outside, in
lawn chairs dragged into the patchy shade of the big maple. While her second
foot was finished, Dawn looked wistfully past the hedge: where Casa Spike had
been. She missed the shaded porch and the lazy summer mornings there, with all
two-dozen plus SITs doing exercises and drills in the sunlight and she and Spike
steadily carving stakes and chatting about nothing much, just being happily
in each other’s presence in the part of their day that overlapped, she just
awakened and he slowing toward sleep after the night’s patrol or fighting or
whatever, casting a critical eye at the SITs and calling a comment or correction
from time to time.
“It’s too chilly out here,” Dawn announced suddenly, wrapping arms around her.
“No, stay--I’m only gonna get a sweater or something, I’ll be right back.”
But she brought more than a sweater, carefully assumed to avoid smearing the
polish: she brought an armload of the drooping lengths of rough pine 1x1 stock
Xander supplied, nobody asked from where, and her own sharp knife and a paring
knife from the kitchen for Spike, whose genuine Sheffield folding knife had
gone somewhere in the events of the summer. Dawn knew fine blades were made
in Sheffield because Spike said so.
Dumping the wood, Dawn explained, “That sack last night was about the last.
We’ve been…otherwise occupied, and there was nobody to fill in. Do your other
hand, though, first.” Settling on the empty facing chair and pointing to her
knee, she uncapped the indigo polish and began work when Spike obediently set
his spread fingers where she’d pointed. After a few fingers, she asked offhandedly,
“You haven’t nagged once about my anchor. Why is that? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Been thinkin’ about that.”
“And?” Dawn prompted.
“Still thinkin’ about it.” Spike had his head bent, so she couldn’t read his
expression. “Need me a new knife, I guess. Get one up to the mall, there’s a
store there. Buy it, even. You could come with. If you want.”
“Well, be a little offhand, why don’t you?” Dawn responded, brandishing the
brush in a threatening manner. “Supper?”
“Sure, why not.” After a moment’s thought, he added, “Have to ask Buffy for
her card, though. Mine’s gone west.”
“A lot’s gone west. Now that the soul’s back, and you’re back, and I’m back,
it should feel the same. It doesn’t, though.”
“Need a new cell phone of my own, too, now I think of it. Way it is, I’m clear
out of the loop: out of touch with everybody, everything that’s going on.” It
was clear he knew, as she did, that they’d begun cautiously treading the edges
of the dangerous ground, because after the seeming digression, he swung right
back like a shark: “What’s doing now, between you and Michael?”
“None of your business. I’m seventeen now.”
“Michael is mine, and that makes it my business. And last I knew, you were mine.
‘Less that’s changed, that makes it my business from the other end, too. An’
I expect you know why Rayne wants you. What qualifies you.”
Dawn’s head made a quick, embarrassed bob. “I know: because I’m a freakin’ virgin.
Magically pure and potent, and channel besides for quite a lot of energy for
anybody who can take it, or that I’d give it to. Glory’s gone but I still have
my Keyness.”
“Yeah,” said Spike quietly. “And I’m kind of wondering what you mean to do about
that--the part you can change.”
“I’m thinking about it,” snapped Dawn tartly, giving him some of his own back.
“And when I make up my mind, it won’t be you I tell.”
“Never expected it would be. That’s for you to choose and say. Never wanted
that from you. Except that while, when I’d marked you….” Spike looked up at
her then, the blue eyes piercing and steady, making her hold completely still.
“Don’t. Not till this is all over and settled, anyways.”
“Why?” Dawn challenged.
“Because all the players are in place now. Where and as they need to be. I can
feel it. Makes the right shape in my mind, like lining up a pool shot. Can’t
explain it any better than that. You consult with the Lady, if you want, if
you can. She’ll say the same as me.”
“But…he was in my mind, Spike! And I couldn’t do anything! When I tried
to throw him out, I just fell down, I couldn’t do anything! And I don’t
like him, he giggles--”
“Don’t like him neither,” Spike cut in, making the habitual cigarette-getting
gesture for about the fifth time since they’d come outside, each time aborted
or changed into something else. This time, he reached out and smoothed her hair,
then cupped her cheek. “Can’t promise you won’t get hurt, Bit, but that’s what
you signed on for when you latched onto me, the way you did. An’ you know that.
May need to risk you like I’d risk myself. Figured you’d be up for that, ‘f
we talked it through first, maybe.”
And never, she thought, but didn’t finish the thought. And never….
Wringing her neatly en-greened fingers in an agony of uncertainty, perfectly
aware she was being addressed as an adult and not wanting to fall short of that,
she blurted, “Will it hurt him? Hurt him really bad?”
“Bad as I can contrive. Figures, Rayne does, I’m just a mutt moron. Pretty,
maybe, and nice for a toy for a day or a few but not much of a tool except I
can work the Stone. And he’s got other ways for that ‘f he needs to. But I’ve
been thinking.” Spike sat forward in his chair, frowning thoughtfully, hands
folded on his knees. “Lady, she pushed and she nagged, but she’s never forced
me to nothing, never. And whenever I put out my hand, she set power in it, as
much as I could handle or understand. She sent the amulet, guided Red an’ Demon
Girl to it, same as. Sometimes she can’t stand me…but she’s always respected
me. Always left me my choice. If she’s pulled out now, it’s because she figures
everything’s in place that needs to be, to end this. And she don’t care to do
things direct, barge in and force events. Ain’t got the fine touch for that,
I expect. Scale is too small for the kind of thing she could do. Like trying
to hit a fly with a mallet, knock down the wall. Seems that’s how Powers are,
or we’d all be flat, long since…. Instrument. That’s what she’s called
me. And so long as we see the same and want the same, I got no objection to
that. Won’t be her dog, run to her heel, bay at her moon like some…. But seems
as though she’s prepared to put up with that. Settle for what I’m willing…what
I can give. Not so much, maybe, as I thought. But I see this lining up,
like I said….”
“Spike, nine tenths of that was utter nonsense,” Dawn mentioned, perfectly fairly,
“and the rest was vague to the point of uselessness. You know that, right?”
Spike tilted his head and gave her a slow smile. “Let me tell you about this
tower there was, one time, in Northumbria. Had ivy on it so thick, there were
whole stretches you couldn’t see an inch of stone. A bit nasty in the wintertime
but this was October, still warm days and the trees roundabout a riot, lots
more trees then than nowadays, go for miles and miles and never see anything
else. Anyway, we were up there because Herself had taken some notion or the
stars had told Dru staying where we were was bad luck, or some such nonsense,
nobody explained it to me because nobody ever did then, s’how it was--I wasn't
but a fledge. Now then, Angelus, he--”
It wasn’t often, anymore, that Spike would spin her a tale of the bad old days.
Maybe he figured she was now old enough. Or he was.
He’d made it completely clear it would be impossible to drag him back to the
point. So he was cracking the one-inch stock into stake lengths with his hands
and regaling Dawn with the unsuitable, gruesome, perverse part when Buffy came
out onto the porch, looking around under her hand. “Oh, there you are,” she
called, and came toward them. “What’cha doing?”
Holding out her bare green chilly toes for Buffy’s admiration, Dawn said, “Spike
is being incredibly non-PC and I think I’ve been blinded with balderdash into
promising to die a virgin, but I’m not entirely sure, it was all so philosophical
and like that.”
Buffy did a blinking take, pushing a sheaf of uncombed blonde hair off her shoulder
and not-so-incidentally revealing a freshly swollen and reddened mark low on
the right side of her neck. “Well, I was only gonna say, I’ve invited Giles
for supper. He says he has news, so I thought we might as well all hear it together….”
Her voice trailed off uncertainly. Face twisting, she demanded, “Die what?”
Dawn and Spike traded a glance that meant Mall now and efficiently separated
to collect the necessary.
**********
At a junction in the pipes nearest the factory, Spike set the parcels down and
had a solitary cigarette before going further. Buffy, that was one thing, she’d
never live to grow old, never die of a disease, and she had that Slayer healing
thing going, near as good as a vamp, repairing all damage, both obvious and
subtle. But Bit, now, that was a different matter. Coming back into this reformed
body, she’d been given the option of continuing always exactly as she was: seventeen
because she said so and the right date had rolled ‘round. Said that was what
she wanted and had fixed on, but Spike didn’t know, there seemed some wavering
from that direction lately. And anyway it seemed an Elvish kind of immortality,
like that Arwen Evenstar--eternal youth, sure, but only if they stayed out of
harm’s way. Knife or a fall off a roof, drowning, fire, that sort of thing,
that’d kill ‘em just like anybody. Spike didn’t want to be the one to put that
to the test. Decided he wouldn’t smoke anymore around her, or any of the SITs,
or basically anybody with the habit of breathing.
Been a pariah, he had, for the past decade or so. Nothing new, just one more
reason to mind what he did around the humans, that were so fragile it scared
him sometimes. That would be where his unlife was, far ahead as he could see.
So begin as he meant to go on.
Stubbing out the butt, he got the parcels together and put them into the shopping
bag, which he hadn’t bothered doing before, then walked the rest of the way.
He stopped at the ladder to announce himself, and the sentry up above was a
fledge (that Toby or some such stupid name) who dithered and then let him come,
though of course he didn’t know the password. Unsatisfactory. Spike set down
the bag and belted him as soon as he was clear of the hatch.
“You go by what you were told. Let just anybody past, you won’t last long.”
“Knew it was you, perfectly plain,” the fledge protested, from the floor. “Smelled
you, and--”
“That don’t signify. Anybody don’t say the password, an’ you ain’t been given
a go-ahead in advance, you leave the hatch locked and yell for somebody else
to make the call, if you’re not sure.”
“But I was sure!”
“Shut up. Tell Michael I’m here.”
The fledge looked, if possible, even more nervous. “But he’s…busy.”
Cocking his head, Spike made out raised voices from out past the barrier wall.
Mike and…Kennedy, it was, and the fledge nervous of approaching, afraid of becoming
collateral damage. Spike told the fledge to carry on, and left the bag by the
hatch. Passing, he noticed the Dalton in the office, bent over the computer,
but getting things sorted with Mike had to come first. Find out how the lad
meant to play things, then make the hand-off in good order, plain, where everybody
could see.
Or there’d have to be a fight, which was in nobody’s best interests.
The two of them, arguing, were out in the open space, everybody else backed
off or up in the rafters: staying well clear. Kennedy had a clipboard and was
waving it about, looking as though she’d try to swat Mike with it any minute,
absolutely within Mike’s striking distance, which was dumb, but maybe she’d
forgot to take such things seriously in her time with Spike. So that would have
to be sorted, too.
Arms folded to not just swat her, Mike was glowering and looming, like he did--Angelus’
get, after all: same demon, and like calls to like--and spending much too much
time and attention on whatever was wrong between him and Kennedy, considering
everything else going on. Should just deal with it and go on. But that would
be for Mike to learn and not up to Spike anymore.
Mike flicked him a glance as he approached, but it took Kennedy longer to notice
him. When she did, she wheeled around (that put Mike, unwatched, at her back,
and that was wrong, too) demanding heatedly, “Spike, am I some kind of concierge,
goes with the place? Did you give me away and not tell me? Where does he get
off, giving me orders?”
“Getting that sorted now. Michael, I’m claiming the SITs for mine. Slayer’s,
actually, but mine as far as here’s concerned. Marked ‘em, now, so that’s how
it will go. You need ‘em for something, you go through me or the Slayer, either
one. Oh, an’ I lessoned your sentry on the pipe ladder, and I shouldn’t have.
Yours to see to, how that’s set up. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s all right,” Mike responded slowly, watching him steadily, accepting
the awkwardness of what they were doing.
It was mostly the fledges, Spike noted, up along the rafter-beam. Showed sense:
when there was a scrap, no matter who between, it would be the fledges that
got hurt first.
Spike had been most of the day working up to this, how it should go. Going to
the mall first, that had been good. No issues of dominance, ever, between himself
and Bit. Got himself some fresh plain T-shirts, black, nothing special, but
Bit, she’d enjoyed choosing them out for him. And got herself one of those wash-off
marker tattoos of a star on her cheek, all pleased with that. Lovely and quick
and shrewd and glad-hearted, she’d done a lot to settle him down to the unheard-of
thing he was doing and had meant to do all along.
Scratching an eyebrow, Spike went on, “Came up to collect my bike. Few other
things. On account of I won’t be up here so much. Got other things to see to.
Except where I say directly, whatever Michael says, goes. You all, you go by
his word an’ his authority. He’s got that already pretty much settled, I expect,
but I don’t want anybody in any uncertainty whatever that he’s who you have
to mind. Anything I want done, I’ll relay through Michael. Like about the sweeps
an’ all. This place, an’ blood deliveries for the fledges, that’s all set up
now like it should be. So now Michael, he has the running of it. So I can tend
to other things, like I said. You got any problem with anything, you go to Michael
with it, or whoever he says. You hear that, Huey?”
“Hear you, Spike,” Huey answered, from back by the wall.
“Then that’s sorted. Michael, this all suit you?”
Mike knew what this was: a thinly disguised abdication. Kept any change of expression
off his face; but he smelled sad, and uneasy.
They both knew Spike’s role as titular Master of Sunnydale had to continue--neither
Mike nor his regime would survive without it, without Spike plainly seen, and
felt, to be in charge. But for Spike to cede to Mike the day-to-day running
of things, and to thereafter defer to that delegated authority--to another Master
on his own ground, among his own people--could be an acceptable compromise,
not requiring a fight to publicly settle the dominance.
“Sooner you stayed,” Mike said wistfully, and likely there was some truth to
that. Not a lot, but some.
“Can’t. You need me for something, you know where to find me. An’ ain’t real
eager to run a Supplice d’Allégance on you, Michael. Don’t neither of us have
the time for that. Just have to trust you to be true. Like you have to trust
me. Hell of a thing.”
Mike nodded, acknowledging this terrible state of affairs, for vamps to have
nothing more reliable than trust to keep them from each other’s throats. Blow
that in a second, generally.
Glancing at the rafters, Spike added, “Sue, you come down, follow along. Keep
clear of Ken. Ken, you come along, too. Michael,” Spike said, strolling toward
the barricade wall of big, dead machines, “there’s a couple of people I need
you to keep boarding, ‘cause I ain’t got a place for them yet. But I want the
use of them. Answerable to me. Sue, here…an’ the new Dalton. Need ‘em for doing
my stuff, not be thrown out on sweeps or other risky stuff. Long as they make
their manners to you and don’t start trouble, you let ‘em be, all right?”
“Got no trouble with that,” Mike allowed. “Spike….”
“Later,” Spike directed, as they passed through the barricade.
Dalton, or Cyrus, was cranky today. For one thing, he was a brand-new fledge,
and the blood ration was late today, and Kennedy was human, and though he knew
he was forbidden to go after her, that barely registered. Second, if he couldn’t
have Ken, he wanted Spike. But Mike was his sire, and Mike could beat him down
and make him mind, and Spike sent Ken farther away, outside the glassed-in enclosure,
and stood in the doorway himself while Mike enforced the necessary discipline.
Spike noted that they both kept carefully clear of the computer, which normally
Spike wouldn’t let any fledge get within falling distance of. But a Dalton without
his materials was useless.
Curled on the floor, Cyrus rubbed his bleeding nose and licked the hand, reporting,
“That is truly annoying. Does that continue any considerable time, Sire? Master?
Bizarre, uncontrollable urges. It’s almost something like being a teen-ager
again. A time I loathed.”
Spike set a hip on the corner of the desk, looking down sympathetically. “Lasts
till you can make it stop. Years, for some. But you look at Sue, here: turned
just a few months ago, can control her demon pretty well if she keeps her mind
on it. Michael, he’s your sire, he’ll teach you what he can, what you need.”
“I could find nothing online,” complained Cyrus, pushing to his feet, only a
little wobbly after a beating that would likely have killed a human. “Only some
ridiculous mysticism. Master, I have nothing to do. I don’t have access.”
“An’ you ain’t gonna have, neither. Ain’t gonna give you my log-in or passwords.
But I’ll pull up enough for you to work on, offline, an’ have Red set up an
e-mail account for you. When you get a piece roughed out, send it on to me,
and then we’ll work on it together. Maybe there’s some way we can do that live,
from different locations. Current piece is Russian…that’s the location, anyway.
Some ice demons, six hundred years or so back. Cognate with Cyrillic, anyway--using
that alphabet, close enough if you can make out the sounds of it in your head.
How’s your spoken Cyrillic?” Talking, Spike had slid behind the desk, logged
in, and was downloading the first document from his own personal directory in
the Watcher Database. When the download commenced, he got his glasses out of
the second desk drawer and put them on, so the screen resolved for him without
squinting.
“Wretched,” confessed Cyrus, looking ashamed and worried, like he thought he
might get dusted for not knowing every language extant and all its cognates.
“All but non-existent. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it spoken.”
“Well, skip that first one, for now,” Spike said, considering the list of alternatives
as the first download finished, “Go for the one titled ‘Concerning Urns’ that’ll
be second down.” Spike clicked that entry, starting the download. “And lose
the contempt for the mysticism real fast, because what you’ll mostly be translating
is spells, and a good third to a half of ‘em work. So don’t say ‘em aloud. Never.
You clear on that, Dalton? Or Cyrus, whatever--”
“But that’s magic!” Cyrus protested in a scandalized tone suitable for
referring to pornography.
Looking up, Spike pointed out, “You’re here. You work it out. What d’you want
to be called?”
The fledge put a thoughtful forefinger to his lips. “I gather that’s the sire’s
prerogative, to say how his get is to be called. But…. I gather that Dalton
is a more a function than a person. Is my impression correct? Because no one
other than you and my sire has designated me so.” Off Spike’s nod, the fledge
continued, “If given the choice, then, I’d be ‘Cyrus, the Dalton,’ to
honor my predecessor and preserve continuity.”
“Fine,” said Spike, who could possibly have cared less, but only with an effort.
Starting the third download, he absently sent Sue to collect his bag and, when
she brought it, flipped a plastic-wrapped cell phone and its boxed charger stand
onto an open part of the desk. “This is yours. Keep track of it. Michael will
give you my number. I have this one. Once we get rolling, we’ll likely talk
or pass stuff back and forth at least once a day. This is the whole reason you’re
here, so this is where all your attention goes.”
“I understand,” replied the Dalton formally, folding his hands in front of him
and bowing his head in acknowledgement.
They left him unwrapping the charger, joining Kennedy waiting near the wall
of machines. Going toward her, Spike was keenly aware of his mark on her and
realized for likely the first time ever, his basic reaction to Kennedy was liking,
not barely-controlled irritation. He felt proprietary toward her. She was property,
accessible anytime he chose. He knew exactly where he stood in regard to her,
and all that had been complex and difficult was rendered simple, comfortable,
and direct.
That Kennedy would have no such changed feelings toward him was pretty much
a given. But it was easier on his end, anyway, which counted for something.
He put his glasses in their case and slid the case into a pocket. “Kennedy,
you don’t have to come up here anymore. Ain’t gonna be here myself, and ain’t
gonna need…whatever it is, you been doin’ for me. I need you, I’ll yell. The
rest of your time, it’s your own. Get you and Michael out of each other’s faces.
But there’s a thing I’d like you to do. You and Sue and Rona and ‘Manda, if
she’ll go for it. The three of you, if she can’t, some nights. Run your own
patrols, those places you’re most likely to find fledges just rising. Stake
‘em or not, I don’t care. Main thing is to find out who turned ‘em. Since I
took over as Master of Sunnydale, there’s been more fledges than adult vamps
by something like a factor of four. Somebody’s making a real business of it.
I want to know who. Appearance ain’t likely to do much good: at the time, humans
are so locked into being scared and their first sight of game-face, they’re
not taking in much. ‘Less they’re told, most vamps don’t know who sired ‘em.
Location’s useful, though. Time of day, maybe. Were they come at from the left
side, or the right? Was the vamp taller than them, or about the same? Did the
vamp say anything? When you get started, you’ll think of other things. Sue,
you’re point and lead. Kennedy, you plan out the patrols and take notes. Rona’s
for third, or however the three of you decide to sort it.”
“I’m lead?” Sue asked, quivering and excited. “And I get to go out? Every night?”
“You all three of you know the drill. Should run well together. Soon as possible,
Sue, you set your mark on the other two, but separate--one to look on and call
‘enough,’ case things start getting carried away. Then some other night, the
other. It’ll keep ‘em safe from you, calm your demon down toward them. You’re
let off all other patrolling and sweeps to do this, all three of you.”
“I don’t think we need ‘Manda for this,” Kennedy reflected. “Three’s a good
number, and ‘Manda has her midterms coming up.”
Sue said, “Ken, you gonna have a problem about me at lead? Or me covering Spike’s
mark?” Her voice ascended to a strangled squeak at the daring of it.
“Oh, I imagine we’ll work something out, if you’re past the acute bitey phase,”
Kennedy drawled, and shifted the clipboard to hold out her hand. When Sue cautiously
took Kennedy’s hand, the shorter, dark-haired girl drew her in and hugged her,
murmuring, “Welcome home, Sue.”
The two SITs went off with arms clasped around each other, so it looked to Spike
as though that might work out all right. “They’re gonna have some sort of Scooby
thing,” Spike said to Mike, at his back, “tonight, after dinner. Sit in, if
you want. Eight or so. Or I’ll relay back to you anything I figure you’d want
to know. Whatever you say.”
Mike laid a big hand on his shoulder and turned him, so they were facing each
other, Mike looking sober and a bit wary. “No way you’re gonna just walk away
from all this.”
“Watch me,” said Spike flatly, lighting up now that the human was gone. Looking
around at the big dark space and the lit cube, he went on, “Hate this place,
near as much as Harris does. Hate being here. Hate doing this. Having to think
it all out, every second--not just do. Schooled myself to it awhile,
but it’s itch and misery and drought to me an’ always has been. Never meant
to keep it. Just to get things settled an’ regular, so you wouldn’t have more
to contend with than you could handle. Always meant it for you, Michael.”
“That was the watch,” Mike guessed, pulling it from a pocket and considering
it.
“That…and other things. And already, things have changed between us. Always
have been changing between us, from the first. Ain’t gonna walk off on
you now. Give you whatever space you want, an’ you’ll need it. But don’t want
what you got. Not even a little. Slayer, she’s what I want and what I mostly
have, as much as I ever will. Come down to it, she’s why I made this--to give
her the space she needs. And a living place, not a devastation…or a battlefield.
Thought I could see it farther along, tried to, but….” Spike shrugged. “Peace
you made with her, working together on things, each respecting the other, that’s
a fine thing. So maybe it was just as well I made such a mess of it all, so
you had to go past me to keep it all from coming apart right there. Dunno. S’how
it was, anyway.” Spike dropped the butt and stepped on it. “You’re welcome at
Casa Summers anytime. Come through the pipes, call, and somebody will let you
in.” Pointing, Spike added, “And you hurt Bit, I’ll still tear your head off,
quicker than looking.”
“Could try,” Mike responded, with a slow, spreading grin. “But there’ll be no
need. You taught me right: no Dawn, never no more, that ain’t an option here.”
Spike had his own ideas about that, but wasn’t gonna voice them to Mike. “Got
to get going now: she’s waiting for me to collect her.”
Glancing at the bag as Spike picked it up, Mike surmised, “Mall parking lot?
I’ll come with. And she can pick who to ride pillion with.”
Spike’s expectation of Dawn happily holding on, arms around his middle and warm
cheek against his back, began to fade. He let it go. Her choice. Always had
been. And he and Bit, they were another thing and always had been, too. Not
as though she still bore his mark, after all, and well that was done, it would
have been a nightmare and Buffy would never have stood for it. Made him faintly
sick, even imagining it.
“Then let’s get gone,” he said, heading for the outer door.
“She always hates it if I make her late for dinner,” Mike agreed, rolling into
step alongside.
**********
Dawn found it an interesting meeting, not least because everybody was there:
all the original Scoobies except Oz and Cordelia, if you counted Cordelia, which
apparently nobody did. Oz was missed, though, as he had been at Giles’ going-away
party.
Anya was all proud of having talked the Chamber of Commerce into funding a Downtown
Watch, which funding would go direct to Spike, Inc., on condition that the streets
were patrolled from sunset to sunrise, every single night. Most of the downtown
merchants, having seen a conspicuous upturn in evening business since the sweeps
began, had agreed to pitch in under the impression they were subsidizing a street
gang, which in a way, they would be. That the street gang weren’t human and
hunted in their free time, the same as other vamps, were facts Anya hadn’t considered
it necessary to burden the Chamber with.
Since no overhead and no wages were required, the weekly take would have been
quite substantial, but of course it was protection money in all but name, which
incensed Buffy and horrified Giles and Xander, and Spike and Mike had to try
to explain to Anya that (1) trying to stop downtown hunting completely would
provoke a general riot; (2) there weren’t enough vamps in the colors to cover
even most of the downtown 10/7 or so; (3) Spike wouldn’t authorize it and Mike
wouldn’t do it because it left no open time for the important vamp activities
of drinking, fornicating, and brawling; and (4) all in all, it was far too much
like actual work to go down well with the troops. They’d be angry and bored,
and angry, bored vamps tended to do things not on the Chamber’s list
of approved activities.
While Anya sulked at her under-appreciated commercial coup, Giles diplomatically
suggested that the matter be tabled for now and reviewed at a later date.
Then, with diffident and unhappy resolution, Giles dropped his bombshell: no
more tribute blood. Apparently some Council operative in France had heard about
Spike’s claiming the title of Master of Sunnydale on the international demon
grapevine. From that to the red-on-black recruiting website was no huge leap.
And it had all unraveled from there, almost instantaneously. Nobody ever claimed
Council intelligence (in the sense of spying) was bad--after all, they’d been
locating and identifying Slayers for centuries--or that the Council was stupid.
But few had ever had reason to claim the Council was altruistic or generous,
either. A portion of the Council had seized Giles’ absence to ram through a
nullification of the grant to the notorious (and evidently active) vampire,
William the Bloody.
Spike went ballistic. Worse than when the tribute blood had been offered in
the first place. In graphic terms he listed all the reasons he hated the Council,
itemized starting a century past, with their willful misinformation about vampires,
and continuing through to the present, with their barbarous, niggardly, authoritarian,
treacherous, obtuse treatment of the one treasure of which they were the inadequate
custodians: the Slayer. On his feet, at the top of his voice, spinning and slicing
the air with bladed hands, punching it with furious fists.
Not even Buffy could get in a word edgewise.
“Hate the fuckers! Worst thing about the First, it wasn’t thorough enough by
half. Slaughter a few dozen Potentials, blow up the bloody ugly Georgian architecture,
but leave as many of those gits standing as they offed. Try to accomplish something,
set something up that could last, God damned fucking vipers cut the ground right
out from under you first chance they get! Miserable penny-pinching pissants!”
Still blazing, Spike flung himself away down the hall. The back door in the
kitchen slammed thunderously as final punctuation.
Willow offered shakily, “I think Spike’s kinda upset.”
Standing by the couch, Giles took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.
“I anticipated he…. But he had to be told. No alternative. He was fair: didn’t
assume I was responsible or condoned such…. He’ll manage. He always has. A setback,
true, but not…not utter disaster.”
“So,” said Xander, leaning against the wall, holding a can of beer. “What do
you guys think of the new front window?”
Mike’s phone buzzed. He rose to get it out of his pocket and stood with it held
to his ear, thoughtfully frowning, and was in Buffy’s way when she started to
go after Spike. So Dawn bolted in pursuit and slammed the door behind her too,
scanning the dark yard from the porch. No Spike. Then she smelled cigarette
smoke and slowly followed it diagonally across the grass until she was standing
under the big corner maple.
She heard Spike’s voice muttering quietly and looked up until she located him:
about halfway up in the tree, seated astride a branch, back against the main
trunk. The coal of his cigarette disappeared, and there was a tiny beep as he
shut off the phone.
Dawn performed a slow clap. The next thing she knew, she’d been grabbed under
the armpits, lifted, and plopped side-saddle across the branch, with Spike perched
next to her, farther out the branch, holding her until she found her balance.
“What gave me away?” he asked, cheerful and companionable.
“No, it was a very convincing rant,” Dawn assured him. “Reduced Giles to incomplete
sentences, even. Just the small problem that you already knew. Had to.”
Spike chuckled. “Rona called, little while ago. Just after we’d got back. I’d
left my new number on their machine. Hospital wouldn’t fill her standing order
or whatever the hell they call it because the last invoice had been refused.
All worked up about it, didn’t know what she should do. Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em all,
the bastards.”
“Then why the tirade?”
“Don’t need ‘em anymore, the great galumphing gits.” Angry, Dawn had noticed,
Spike sometimes ran to promiscuous alliteration. “Would only have added it to
the fledges’ ration anyway. Not gonna give ‘em the satisfaction, though, knowing
how it’s actually fallen out. Knowing I’m off the dead stuff altogether, an’
Buffy, she’s all right with it. Goddam honorarium, pat on the fucking head for
being a nice harmless bloody lapdog of a vamp, grateful for their charity. Knew
it wouldn’t last. Never depended on it. Bloody back-stabbing parsimonious wankers.”
Spike was truly angry and stirred-up, Dawn decided, although not to the extent
he’d pretended. He added moodily, “Nothing they do toward me, now or that before,
signifies anyway. It’s how they treat Buffy, or try to, that drives me spare.
And what she’s got rightly coming, I pry out of ‘em with the translation. Now
I got that Dalton, get that caught up in a week or so. Can put in the time on
it now, if Red will let me use her laptop, nights when she don’t need it. Till
the kitty’s built up, get the mortgage paid off an’ all that, and what Harris
has been doing, get the house right again….”
“If you’re through with your theatrical snit, shouldn’t we go back inside?”
“Presently…. Bit, told you might be I’d have to throw you into something, risk
you like I’d risk myself for a good enough reason. You still game for that?”
Dawn felt her breath catch, and every bit of courage she had seemed to drain
out through her dangling toes. “Yeah, I guess. What are you throwing me into?”
“Gonna have Michael set up a meeting with Digger. Need to exchange pax bonds
for that. Gonna require that Digger put up Rayne. And I’ll put up you. Like
before.”
Swinging her feet, Dawn picked nervously at her sweater, recollecting the old
frog-faced vamp and the huge stash of indiscriminately chosen candy he’d figured
was appropriate for keeping a young girl quiet, not bursting into hysterics
at capture and captivity.
“Rayne knows what I am,” she said quietly. “He knows about the Lady. Knows about
the Keyness. More than I do, probably. And my…other qualification. Last night…he
was in my head. Checking around about this and that. It was me they came after.”
“I know. But you an’ me, we’re the only ones that do. Like to keep it that way.”
Dawn nodded slowly, seeing it. “Mike, he’ll have a fit. You haven’t told him
yet.”
“Not sure how he’ll jump, when I tell him that part,” Spike confirmed soberly.
“Not a good time to be at odds with Michael--still too much unsettled there.
Need to get it squared away with you, first. So you can help get Michael to
go along with it. Let on it’s just the same as before and you’re not worried
about it. Even if you are.”
“Buffy?”
“Believe I can manage Buffy. So long as you can stay steady about it. But it’ll
take the both of us to finesse Michael, the way things are.”
“Is it? Is it the same as before?”
Spike took time lighting a cigarette, then made an annoyed noise and pitched
it away, down on the grass. “Don’t expect it will fall out that way, no.”
“Gonna tell me why?”
“Can see the shot. Where the balls need to be. Matter of balance, angle, force,
reaction. How they hit, how they’ll bounce.”
“In other words,” Dawn deduced, “no.”
“That Rayne, he’s got too much access for me to spell it out much, even for
myself. Just feel it, see it shaping and coming together. Thing is, he looks
but he don’t see. ‘Cause he don’t know the proper value to put on things. Doesn’t
know what it means, that I’d risk you and you’d agree to be risked, just on
my word. Doesn’t know what it means, that Rupert would set everything down to
come back…before that Rayne had dragged me off to a place I couldn’t come back
from. Doesn’t know what it means that the Lady will delegate what she wants
done, keep to the limits she’s set herself.”
“Doesn’t know,” Dawn cut in, remembering Giles’ warning, “what it means to have
the Triune Goddess fully arrayed against him. So the precautions he’ll take
are the wrong precautions. His staff is too long and he’s digging in the wrong
place. But will he accept being surrendered as a hostage to the meeting? A pax
bond? Could Digger make him? Because Rayne doesn’t know vamp ways.”
“A chance to see Rupert again, and gloat, and preen, and Rupert can’t do a damn
thing about it? He’d fight for the chance.”
“I’ll do it,” Dawn decided. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ll do it.”
TBC...
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