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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.
Having re-warded the house and everything appertaining thereto, making it a hermetic bubble not quite synched anymore to the outer world, which left her sweating and wrung out, Willow joined the others in the swap party at the end of the tunnel and they all went through. Xander, who’d begged off work to come along, handed her a lantern. They went last, to not interfere with Spike’s dark-sight, Xander with the stake bag over his shoulder and a medium axe in his hands, the kind that could be swung in tight spaces without slicing up your companions.
When Willow stumbled wearily, Xander’s hand was there, catching her up by an elbow, squeezing her arm reassuringly before letting go. Then Giles dropped back, offering a hand without comment, with different meaning. Willow gratefully clasped it and sucked up a draft of raw power, energy taken from many sources and stored the night before.
A slight bit squicky, using Giles that way, but he was so gravely calm about it all that Willow tried to be matter-of-fact about the implicit ick of it, the way Buffy was about Spike living off her, pretty much, nothing anymore in the refrigerator so you had to figure. They didn’t talk about it, just how it was, so Willow tried to be similarly offhanded about making herself a sort of life-energy vampire.
But after that first pull, she disengaged, smiling weakly and waving fingers in thanks. Giles’ power was for containing Rayne, helping her bind the mage, and she didn’t dare draw too much lest it not be there when she most needed it. Because she’d be pretty much alone in that. Anya had supplied a bushel of crystals, herbs, magical implements and artifacts (on loan, payable only if they were broken or used up, which was pretty generous because, well, Anya) but wasn’t coming within a mile of the house today because, well, Anya. Willow would have to do this pretty much on her own. She’d studied all night, learning the spells designed to cage Chaos within Order, if only for a time.
She wished she had a nice, hot espresso. Several. Triple sugar. That gave her a thought and she hustled a little faster, passing Giles, Dawn, and Buffy, to fall into step with Spike, in the lead. “You have any of those pills on you? The waker-uppers?”
She knew he did: she could see the effect in the unnatural alertness and the pause it took him to process anything said to him. Like Casa Summers, he wasn’t quite synched to the normal anymore.
He gave her a narrow, dubious look. “You’ll pay for it, later on.”
“I know. But that’s later. Give.” She held out her hand and waited out the pause while he thought about it and decided, producing and uncapping the vial, tipping one of two remaining pills into her palm. She bit her lip. “You’re almost out.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he responded, putting the vial away. “Use what you got while you got it.”
Buffy was watching and overhearing but making no comments about not needing two pill freaks in the party, Buffy knew about accommodation and necessity, so Willow swallowed her uncertainty and guilt and the pill, swallowing hard until everything went down. She meekly stood aside to let everybody pass her, rejoining Xander at the rear.
Xander was telling Dawn, “What is it--about an hour or so? Not counting the going and coming, of course. Piece of cake. What can go wrong in an hour? Wait, don’t answer that.”
Dawn didn’t even smile, strolling along in pink corduroy overalls and a plain white long-sleeved mock-turtleneck with a droopy white sweater on top, her hands stuffed deep in the pockets.
“Just trying to cheer you up a little,” Xander offered, starting to chuck her under the chin, but she winced her head away.
“It’s OK, I’m good with it,” Dawn commented, pulling a fist from a pocket to rub at her eyes. “Notice the not-screaming-and-complaining of me. It’s only a swap to secure the meeting. Just like last time, right? Except without the kidnapping part, and we get a good swap in exchange, not Digger’s skanky ho. So all plus and with-it-ness here, no problemo.”
She lied like a rug, she was scared to death, but it wouldn’t do any good to say so, so Willow kept shut, just admiring Dawn’s shaky courage.
“Might even be candy again,” Dawn added, pulling a smile out of someplace it’d been stuffed down tight, folded, and full of wrinkles. It wobbled, but she wore it. “Double points for candy, since it’s a proven fact that chocolate solves everything.”
Willow noticed Dawn was wearing a double necklace: the shield against mental influence/intrusion, in its locket, and the pierced fang on a thin cord--the keepsake of her defeat of the dragonlike taskin, something Willow thought she was secretly proud of; but since the Road Trip from Hell, Willow had never known her to wear it. All her defenses, magical and otherwise, conspicuously in place.
Willow asked, “Do you have your taser?”
Dawn shook her head, smooth hair flying. “They’d only take it. Can’t expect even a vamp to be that stupid about the same thing twice.” She shrugged. “It will be all right. Nobody’s gonna hurt me. I’m only of use virgo intacta and all that.” Another shrug. “And like Xander says, it’s only for an hour or so. What could go wrong?”
Willow hastily made a sign against ill-omen, that was supposedly also good against the Evil Eye, but the whole thing was superstitious nonsense, not a proper ward at all. Still, it made her feel better.
She didn’t like the bit about virgo intacta, since that only applied to the conditions of blood magic and maybe Dawn’s Keyness, since bloodletting had been involved in that, too. Both highly dangerous and waaay from the Dark Side of the magickal spectrum, too risky even to know much about, let alone use. But Rayne wasn’t gonna be there, he’d be under ward at Casa Summers as a counter-hostage, so maybe it was nothing.
With Giles’ help and the Council’s resources, she’d considered and consolidated every recorded way of locking down a mage and disabling his powers. She just had to trust in that. As Dawn did. Surely Buffy and Spike wouldn’t have agreed to the exchange unless they were sure it would work, right?
Ahead, Spike had stopped short of the junction of a cross pipe, so everybody stopped behind him, fanning out a little into fighting formation, just like on patrol except with Dawn protected in the middle. Willow understood: you took your stance at a defensible position, where nothing could come at you from the sides, and having secured your retreat. That was Xander’s job, mostly, and he stayed a few paces back, attending to the pipe they’d come through.
“There’s a ladder and a cover,” Spike said, lighting a cigarette, then crumpling and pitching the pack, “about halfway back to the last junction. Everybody notice it?”
“Yeah,” said Buffy, for all of them, though the fact was that Willow hadn’t noticed.
In a rush, she felt the pill take effect: better than a double espresso, tingling with wide-eyed alertness. She recalled it was roughly three o’clock on a sunny afternoon, and with Spike gone on ahead to the meeting, all they had to do--
“All you have to do is get topside,” Spike was continuing, “if this goes sidewise, an’ then run like hell. No vamp’s gonna follow you. But I dunno that vamps is all Digger’s got to call….” Voice trailing off, he looked away, up the pipe, head lifting. Glancing back, he’d gone to game-face, stark and bronze-eyed. “Showtime.”
**********
Ethan Rayne strolled clear of his vamp escort as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He paused by Spike to whisper something Spike recoiled from: snarling, indignant. The mage laughed, patting Spike companionably on the shoulder (another flinch) before coming on and linking an arm through Giles’ and starting to turn with him before Giles stiffly removed the too-familiar appendage like an offending dead fish somebody had draped on him. They squared off a moment, heads cocked alike but Rayne’s face open and pleased and Giles’ shut and forbidding. Giles held out a hand stiffly to Willow, and she took it, weaving the power to lock temporary wards that weren’t absolute since they had to move Rayne back to Casa Summers and weren’t about to carry him unless they had to. But the wards prevented movement in time and dimension except for a limited oval she’d extend as needed to get where they were going. Once inside the heavily warded house, she could be more specific and absolute in her controls.
Spike had already moved off, out of sight; Buffy hugged her sister close, refusing to surrender her until Willow declared the counter-hostage secured.
Having prevented him from moving except within a restricted range, Willow proceeded to cut Rayne’s connections to the ambient magic he might otherwise have drawn upon, undistracted by his claim, “Ooh, that tickles,” or Giles’ demanding the mage turn out his pockets. Willow found surprisingly few nodes of active connection (apparent in his aura) and concluded he’d expected this. No matter, what he’d expected: Willow sealed them all grimly, methodically, the active and inactive. That required touching them, something Rayne could have made salacious and embarrassing, since they included the genitals; but he just watched, dark eyebrows high as though interested and amused, judging her procedure, until she put a thumb to the “third eye” space in the central forehead. He shut his non-mystical eyes at that, looking momentarily drawn and grim, commenting, “Now that’s a deprivation. But I suppose I must endure it for the good of the team and all, since I’m your prisoner.”
Blinking, rousing, he laid his hand on top of Giles’ and Willow’s. Giles shook off the touch impatiently: such power-sharing could only be done by consent. Rayne couldn’t tap into it uninvited, though Willow could feel him trying.
“Ah, well,” he said. “What can’t be cured must be endured. Shall we be all evening about this, Ripper? Not that I don’t adore being your guest, but I’m a bit peckish. There’s tea laid on, I hope? I trust we needn’t be totally uncivilized about this--I did volunteer for it, after all. Some minimal courtesy would seem indicated.”
Giles didn’t reply, festooning the mage with a variety of charms and sigils on chains or cords. Then Giles secured Rayne’s wrists behind his back with the very latest in handcuffs: sturdy plastic strips, the sharp end poking through the loop end and pulled tight, locked.
Not being a natural material, plastic (vinyl, really) was extremely hard to manipulate magically.
Rayne said, “Ah--now at last we know how the Dormouse was suppressed. Are you going to do me here, dear, or not until--”
Giles silenced the babble with a length of silver duct tape, smoothing it into place with fastidious fingertip touches, from one cheek to the other, covering the wide, smiling mouth. Rayne’s eyes were still bright with mischief and amusement. Giles stepped back, head bowed, arms at his sides--disengaging, withdrawing.
Willow asked carefully, “Are you OK?”
Giles muttered what sounded like sodding prat. Looking to Buffy, he declared formally, “I believe the pax bond is secure.”
Hands on Dawn’s shoulders, Buffy gave her taller sister a searching, enquiring look as if to say nothing was required, Dawn could still back out if she wanted, which of course wasn’t true, not with Spike already gone on and surrounded by now, on enemy ground and undefended except for the exchange of the pax bonds.
Dawn said tightly, “Yeah.” Pulling out of the tight hug that followed, she turned and walked steadily away to join her waiting vamp captors, who hustled her off without any formality of binding. Obviously, none was needed: she was only a slender child, with no power she herself could draw upon. Like a princess surrendered to the Visigoths as tribute, Willow thought.
Buffy watched them out of sight, then turned, remarking harshly, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Xander went first, with the lantern. Buffy was behind as rearguard. Between were Giles and Willow, and compliant Rayne moving amiably between them. Bound with magical and mundane restraints though he was, Willow still had the sense of leading a pacing tiger on a string--controlled only as much as he consented and pretended to be, content to play this game for awhile, as long as it was entertaining.
Unnerved but incredibly alert, extending the free space ahead and pulling up behind the area in which Rayne could move, Willow stood ready to slap him down at a second’s notice. If she got a second.
**********
Buffy didn’t like it. She didn’t like any part of it whatever, not even a little. She hated operating on nothing stronger than faith: nothing she could confirm with touch, nothing she could shove or hit.
Standing in the hall while Willow and the mage, Rayne, found places to sit in the front room and Giles went past to arrange tea in the kitchen, Buffy was on guard, on watch--against what, she didn’t know, and didn’t like that feeling.
Rayne was constrained mainly because Willow was plainly convinced he was. Wary, anxious, even a little belligerent, of the “You better watch yourself, Mister!” variety but not expecting anything to happen right now. Buffy had to take Willow’s unspoken word for it that this minute, right now, Rayne was not an active threat.
Spike was away, in the middle of the danger, because he’d maneuvered and contended to be so. She had to believe he knew what he was doing, even though “Spike has a plan” was a phrase to rouse dismay in the most confident of hearts.
Spike’s plans had a tendency to exhibit major suckage. Either he’d overlooked something, or he got bored and lunged into action any old how, or something went egg-shaped, and the result bore no resemblance to the prediction. For example, the conspicuous fiasco that was the smell.
But they’d talked, after the class. For quite a long while, actually. In front of the Civic Center, after they’d stowed the pads away in the SUV, Spike had paced and smoked and flung his arms, and she’d called him names and actually bopped him in the nose once, but since it all came down to Buffy’s concern for him and her uneasiness at feeling shut out, the radius of Spike’s circles grew smaller and his gestures less grandiose, their glances longer and more assessing. They ended standing in each other’s arms, foreheads touching.
“This is mine, now, pet,” he’d told her quietly. “Mine to see to. You can’t take it from me or do it for me. Can’t make it go away.”
“But I get the hard choices! I’m the Chosen One, not you!”
“And so you are, love,” he’d agreed, nuzzling her cheek with his poor bopped nose, then leaning back a little to smile uneasily into her eyes. “And brilliant at it, too. But this isn’t a thing a Slayer can fix. Took on the ending when I took on the beginning: claiming the rights of Master Vampire of Sunnydale. This comes with the package. Have to leave me to it, love. To do it the best I can, to stop it so it won’t come back and bite us in the ass again down the way sometime. Keep the Hellmouth shut and locked so tight, next idiot comes with an itch to open it will see how hard it’s shut, how well it’s guarded, and not even bother trying. If I don’t manage, you’ll have to. So I’ll manage,” he’d promised earnestly, grimly--wanting her to believe, stroking her cheek in reassurance. “Not how you’d do it, fair fight an’ all. How I do it. How vamps do things. Different way of thinking, love. This part, this is for me and Bit to settle, ‘cause she’s a part of it, too. Always the Key.”
“But you’re hurt,” she’d protested, “and confused, and it’s all just a mess, with the Lady, and Digger, and Rayne, and Mike all mixed into it, and now Dawn--”
“And you. All coming from different directions, but it all comes together. I can see how it moves, love--how it has to be. You can’t be there. It’s vamp business. Mage business. Not Slayer business…until afterward. Just have to trust me on that.”
As Giles returned with tea things on a tray, Buffy looked hard into the hall mirror, pulling her collar aside to confirm that the mark still showed.
It had always been her fear that Spike could be dusted somewhere and she’d never know. Just an absence, a lack. In their talk, Spike had reminded her that as long as the mark, his visible claim on her, was there, he was still in one piece, still fighting to get back to her. Only at his final death would it fade.
Considering the scar, her worried reflection, Buffy took some reassurance from it…but not much.
She wanted the confirmation of his presence, his body, his stillness and his suddenness. She wanted his voice and his eyes and how he tasted, how he was; his offhand shy gentleness, his stubbornness, and his volcanic temper; the way he looked when he came to her and when he came, the astonishment in his face every time, above her or beneath her, no matter, when they were together in that way. She didn’t like it that he had a life apart from her, independent, that she couldn’t know or take part in.
But however grudgingly, she accepted it: as she did with Willow, and Giles, and Xander, and Dawn--the other people that she loved. Love wasn’t ownership. Spike wasn’t hers exclusively. This whole business of Master Vampire of Sunnydale had made her feel that most keenly--that Spike had his own priorities, his own choices, separate from her.
And she accepted that, mostly. But she didn’t have to like it.
Rubbing her neck, Buffy turned from the mirror and resumed her sentry duty in the hall.
An hour, maybe two. Then she’d have Spike back, Dawn back, safe and close. Then there’d be time to make a plan that actually had some chance of working. Something they could all contribute to and do together.
**********
Turning his teacup (his wrists had been freed--after all, inside the house, and nobody was gonna feed him, for Goddess’ sake) and then lifting it to take a sip, Rayne shot a glance at Giles, asking casually, “Is this the part where you try to teach me the error of my ways?”
“I shouldn’t have been surprised,” Giles replied aridly. “You’ve worked for demons before: Larconis, the baby-eater.”
“No, I was employed by the vampire, Trick. Ah--oops. Does rather prove your point, doesn’t it? Creature of habit, then, it seems. But they do come up with such inventive plans, vampires--completely mismanaged and unlikely of result. Need a firm guiding hand, as it were.” Rayne displayed a hand, fingers spread, and waggled it theatrically. “It’s really too bad of you, Ripper, to deprive me of my newest pet just when I was getting him nicely trained to come to my hand for…certain things. Jealous, are we? Or merely playing dog in the manger? Is nobody to have fun in your vicinity?”
“We are not discussing this,” Giles declared, setting his cup down on the low table between them. He folded his arms. “You were better than this. You at least had conviction and were pursuing something real, however misguided. You--”
“With a passion. So I was. But you know what, Rupert? After you really get in to it, all the way, Chaos is pretty much all of a muchness. Random, and occasionally terrifying of course, but not particularly distinct. As a steady diet, even the best porridge eventually palls. I’ve found the best antidote is the particular. Taking on someone else’s purpose, something they’re all passionate about. All that delicious energy and purposefulness and want. The bright glitter and intensity. Vampires never do things halfway, do they? Throw themselves into sensation completely, utterly…. But oh, pardon, we’re not to talk of that. I forgot. Your ground, your rules. After all, I’m the hostage here, in obedience to their banal customs…. They even pay me, not realizing that their refreshing linear muddle-headedness would be quite enough reward in itself.”
“You batten on them. Like a leech.”
Rayne tilted his head, considering. After a minute, he said, “Psychic vampire? Hadn’t thought about it precisely that way, but I suppose. You always had to be the dominant one, putting names to things, thinking that would control them, limit them to the names and natures you assigned. But it doesn’t, dear heart: reality always transcends names, is finally ungovernable. Do you know that even a little, now? Have you begun to discover the limits of Order, as I have of Chaos? Is there finally a middle ground, where a rapprochement is possible?” He bent his head, looking at Giles through his lashes. “I’d so much rather batten on you.”
“No.”
“And you’d like it,” Rayne rushed on, unheeding. “You know you would. I’ve learned things, connections, enhancements of the most profound kind. Break you right out of your stolid shell into ecstasy unending.” Rayne made a wry face. “Except to eat, now and again. That sort of thing. We’re still mortal, after all; and the years have touched us. Let me show you. Just let down your wards one instant, let me through, and I’ll show--”
“No, Ethan. You may not have access. You’re not trustworthy. For the right inducement, you’d abandon Digger and his plans in an instant. I know quite well what you are--now we’re merely haggling over the price.”
Rayne giggled, then outright laughed. “I was your whore first, dear heart, so it’s not really kind to throw that in my face. But you were very seldom kind. I liked that in you, actually. Something to fling myself against, cling to…. The intensity of your angers and your passions, flailing about. So delicious, even though I didn’t then know half what I do now about how such intensity can be shared. Enjoyed…. You ground me, I free you. An equal partnership--does that have no appeal? Dear heart, the dark is coming down whatever we say or do. Why not warm one another with our opposites while we can?”
Willow had been embarrassed for some time. It was plain both men had forgotten her completely, deep in the throes of what was obviously a heartfelt courtship, at least on Rayne’s side. She’d had the vague impression there was old subtext between them. She hadn’t been prepared to have it become overt text, and present--in Ethan’s cajoling; in Giles’ stormy eyes and expression.
Willow, the conspicuously and outspokenly gay, had in principle no objection to that kind of subtext. But it made her feel all squirmy that two old guys, and one of them Giles, should be making doe-eyes at one another and openly acknowledging passion past and anything but dead or forgotten by either of them, whether to invoke it or refuse it.
It was almost as bad as having to listen while your parents had sex. Supremely ooky.
“I knew,” Rayne continued, “that if I answered the advert and came here, it would draw you. Out of the new routines you’ve been trying so hard to impose, to remake the Council into something more humane and workable, less rigid, paranoid, and insane. The irony: instead of bringing Order out of Chaos, Ripper trying to instill a bit of healthy Chaos into a fossilized and moribund Order. Oh, yes, I know about that. The news went out instantly, within the general demon community, when the Council was decimated. So I was eager to find a pretext to put myself in your way. Or what would surely become your way, if I presented an…inconvenience to your Slayer. You’re the reason I’m here, dear heart. And the only reason for me to leave is your company. I could be so useful to you! And I would! And we’d be happy--”
Willow leaped from her seat and went to join Buffy, glowering in the hall. Safely out of earshot of whatever reply Giles made.
“What’re they talking about?” Buffy asked, frowning, meaning Why is it taking so long?
Willow was reasonably good at translating sideways Buffy-speak.
She shrugged elaborately. “British guy stuff. Order and Chaos, blah, blah, blah. We don’t have to worry about Giles, though. He’s tweed all through.”
“Why don’t they just get on with it, then? And why would we worry about Giles? Are they talking about Spike?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly? Are you going all commercial on me? What’s that mean--not exactly?”
Willow was too frazzled to be circumspect. “It means they’re using him for code, for things still too sore to talk about. For who and what they used to be.”
“Giles was a vampire?” Buffy blurted, horrified.
Willow’s eyes were drawn by motion. Setting down his cup, Rayne rose from the couch and bent to place a sudden, dry kiss to Giles’ forehead. Then, like a soap bubble bursting, he was gone.
**********
Spike had got Digger onto the subject of the wholesale turning and recruiting of fledges, and Digger was being coy about it and blustering, when he felt the witch in his mind, announcing frantically, Rayne’s gone!
Spike hadn’t paid much attention--any, really--to the two robed humans in the back of the chamber. So he hadn’t noticed them gesturing and muttering, except to be sure the hands held no weapons and weren’t pointing in his direction. All the same, he wasn’t surprised when Rayne materialized between them, dusting off his arms with a look of frustrated distaste.
No, Spike replied. He’s here.
A retrieval spell. Must have been. I stopped anything he could do, didn’t think about somebody else retrieving him. I’m so sorry! What should I do?
Turning, Rayne looked at him, showing a foxlike, welcoming smile, his eyes bright and feral.
Everything went golden, sweet, and slow.
With a sense of relief, like stepping off a cliff, Spike fell into the shining eyes.
**********
Dawn had won $ 11.47 at poker from her two vamp captors (neither an itchy fledge, fortunately) with only minimal cheating and was holding trip queens when another vamp leaned in and gave an obviously prearranged signal. The two vamps grabbed her, one complaining, “But I had aces! Aces!” as they hustled her back into the pipe from the alcove they’d used as a holding area.
Dawn thought Oops! but she wasn’t truly surprised. Couldn’t hold Rayne, most likely. And with the cross-hostage free, nothing to prevent Digger from collecting her into more secure custody, valuable virgo intacta and all.
She tripped, and one of the vamps smacked her, and she stabbed him good with the taskin tooth dagger before backing away. “I’m to be delivered! Delivered, you moron! Digger will likely dust you for that!”
“Then I got nothing to lose, do I?” the vamp countered, grabbing her wrist so she couldn’t stab him again. The other vamp intervened half-heartedly, preventing his chum from closing with her. Dawn twisted at the end of her tethered arm.
At close quarters, the vamps stank. Like wet moldy dirt and old blood and nameless filth. Spike never smelled like that. Because he paid attention to himself and had people to remind him if he forgot. People who cared about him. If she was here, what was happening to Spike?
As the two vamps bickered about the merits of eating her, another bunch came up from behind and swept them acrimoniously along, apparently in haste lest the Slayer get between them and the lair before they were safely inside. A couple of times, there was what seemed to Dawn a sudden change of direction, and she imagined Willow doing a location spell on her and the van careening around corners with Buffy at the wheel, trying to reach a good intercept point. Or maybe it was Spike, maybe he’d had warning and got clear in time and was coming after her, he’d never abandon her to this, it was possible--
She fell and skinned her knees and scraped her hands and thought that was it, she was gone, because some of the party around her were fledges and the bloodsmell sent them completely insane. She curled up tight while the fight proceeded over and around her, thinking about Frodo in Minas Morgul and the orcs falling out over looting his mithril chain mail, maybe she’d have a chance to run but she was just so scared and could barely see and before she could even uncurl she’d been grabbed and draped over a vamp’s smelly back, and they were all running, full-out, the way vamps rarely had to, that almost felt like floating, arrowing along through the dim tunnel.
When the smell changed to dirt, the darkness was complete, and the pace slowed to a shambling lope, Dawn knew that the run had been the final sprint to home and safety and that doors were now shut between her and any who followed. There were shafts recklessly descended by rope, kicking off the walls to land in different passages, some of them lit with candles or torches on the walls, always descending. When she began to notice shoring overhead and to the sides, she remembered how the basement passage had been supported and reinforced, remembered Mike telling her that the core of Digger’s lair was a long-abandoned mine from pioneer days. Silver, he’d thought, which was ironic, given that silver was an antagonistic element to all unnatural creatures--some more, some less. Didn’t bother vamps particularly unless it was blessed or enchanted. Maybe whatever traces remained helped to keep the more ferocious demons away, since vamps were pretty low on the demonic prestige scale according to Anya, who wasn’t prejudiced about that, not at all….
Dawn was dumped onto her feet and roughly steadied until she found her balance, then forced forward just by the pressure of the vamps behind--fewer than there’d been before, she thought, though some might have peeled off. Since none attacked her, no undisciplined fledges were left in her escort anyway. So her situation had stabilized that much, at least--she wasn’t gonna be drained and discarded, some vamp’s fortuitous dinner, before being delivered. She moved along as fast as she could, to reach Digger and Rayne, maybe, that knew her true value--nothing separable from her, like a mithril shirt--and could be expected to take good care of her on that account.
When her escort burst through an open doorway into a largeish room lit with lanterns, dazzlingly bright to her eyes, she was unsurprised to hear a voice that she remembered rumbling, “Well, Missy. So you’ve come to be my guest again.”
Digger.
Blinking, she made out the frog-faced old vamp: seated at a table. As her escort dispersed, Dawn brushed at herself crossly with her stinging palms. “If this is how you treat your guests, you don’t deserve to have any!”
“Fetch water,” Digger ordered someone curtly, and they left through a different door. Of course he’d noticed the blood, right away. Vamp. Duh. “We’ll get you fixed up in a minute, right as rain,” Digger said cordially, pushing out of his chair and coming to guide her into it, then turning it sideways to the table so the vamp returning with a basin and a cloth could get at her properly. And it was Mike--game-faced and sullen, not lifting his eyes as he took each of her hands to pat them clean of blood, dirt, and grit.
Still, Mike. Something frozen inside her relaxed. No matter what went on between him and Spike, Dawn had never had the least fear of Michael. It was hard to be afraid of somebody you’d sat through whines and tears and misery with, nodding and commiserating with the cell pressed tight to your cheek.
When he paused, clearly debating how to clean her knees with the impediment of her torn overalls, Dawn reached and patted his hair, feeling greatly daring. He jerked back, finally looking her in the face, his own all transformed and fangy, golden-eyed. “You’re so dumb,” he declared. “Never thought you’d be so dumb as to do it anyway. I made it so you wouldn’t have to. Now look what you got yourself into.” With fingers and thumbs, he took the overalls at the seam, near the rip, and tore the fabric jaggedly apart above the knee with no more effort than if it’d been a paper towel. Simple: impediment gone. Then he rocked and settled, staring at her bleeding knee. Breathing deep.
Not so simple.
Dawn found herself saying, “It’s OK. It will heal better if you do, anyway.”
As Mike started to lean, Digger belted him, then followed and kept hammering at him. Grabbing a rock off a shelf, Digger used it to hammer some more. Arms wrapped around his head, Mike took it, curling into himself protectively but making no move to defend himself. Dawn had never seen him submit to Spike so unconditionally…but she’d never seen Spike go after him that way, either--with the fury of a Master Vampire disciplining a subordinate.
Methodically bludgeoning Mike, Digger was pointing out that Mike fed only when Digger said, only when Digger gave him leave, not otherwise, and Digger would beat him back to a fledge if he had to, to remind him of that basic fact of vampiric life.
Dawn itched to jump in and pummel the old vamp, stab him painfully if not usefully with the taskin dagger, but knew enough of vamps to know that would only make it worse, prolong the discipline. Not impossible that Digger, distracted, might lash out at any interruption, and that would likely bring Mike actively into it, defending her, and it could get awful real fast.
Spike had dusted crew for open insubordination. And he’d broken Mike to incoherent, uncontrolled fledge-hood once, rather than dust him: done what Digger only threatened. And Spike was relatively benign, as Master Vamps went.
She wouldn’t be helping Mike, getting in Digger’s way. It was a vamp thing. Hard as it was, she had to leave them to it.
Bending, she picked up the damp cloth and began patting gingerly at her skinned right knee, trying not to hear the noise of the beating. If vamps didn’t dust, they healed. And if Digger had wanted to dust Mike, he would have done it to begin with. Mike would heal and be OK. She repeated that to herself several times, a mantra of shaky reassurance.
It was Rayne who came in and stopped it--scooping the stone from Digger’s upraised hand, tching over its bloodied condition. And Dawn realized then that it wasn’t a stone: it was the Stone, with Chaos forces roiling within it beyond anything she could sense, that Digger had grabbed as a casual hammer. As Digger straightened, gulping down his fury to present a controlled face to the mage, Rayne passed the stone back, directing, “Best if it were cleaned. Quickly. Don’t want nasty vampire all over my implements.”
Digger cast a glance at the pink water in the basin, decided against, and kicked Mike in the stomach. “Clean it,” he directed, setting the Stone on the floor. It took two tries, but Mike managed to collect the Stone and rise, wavering toward the farther door where apparently the water was.
Leaving Dawn alone with the Master Vampire and the Chaos Mage.
“Well,” said Rayne, considering her amiably, acutely. “Bloodied but unbowed, I see. Which am I entertaining? The maiden or the ancient?”
Patting at her other knee, Dawn responded clearly, “Go fuck yourself.”
“Ah. My best regards to the Lady, then, in hopes of her continued absence. She must have found this plane…uncomfortable. Limiting.” He continued studying her awhile, then said, “Amenities. Are you hungry? Need to use the…facilities? There are facilities, aren’t there?” he inquired of Digger, in a mildly menacing fashion, as though there’d be trouble if there weren’t. “Since someone has been so unkind as to obliterate all my places topside in a fit of petty spite, I find myself in need of temporary accommodations. And now for my guest, as well.”
“If this is how you treat your guests--” Dawn began, figuring he hadn’t heard her use that snark before.
“So you’ve read Wilde!” Rayne responded, unnervingly quick. “How delightful! We’ll have to get together a discussion of that fine old fop. You. And Spike. And I.”
So Spike was in it too. It had all gone to hell. Dawn was disappointed at how unsurprised she was. She hadn’t had much hope to begin with. But Spike had said it was important, and necessary, to risk her the same as he would himself. And now it had all collapsed, and he was caught in it too. Conscious of Rayne watching for her reaction, she only shut her eyes for a minute, then looked at the mage steadily. “Where’s Spike? Is he hurt?” She couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t have gone down fighting.
“Quite the contrary. He’s having a bit of a lie-down now--seems the first proper rest he’s had in ever so long, poor pet. Have to get him all rested and glossy, for us three to be about our work. You to power, and him to guide. To open the Way. The Hellmouth, as you call it here.” Glancing again at Digger, he repeated, pointedly, “Facilities? Food?”
“I’ll get something put together,” Digger responded, and ambled off through the main door, bellowing for “Star.”
Dawn granted herself another eyes-shut moment, trying to assess how bad things really were. When she looked again, Rayne spread his hands apologetically as if to say What could you expect? Vampires, after all.
Dawn was not charmed. “Where’s Spike? I want to see him. See that he’s OK.”
“That wouldn’t…be advisable. He’s not entirely himself at the moment, if you take my meaning. Mightn’t be altogether safe.”
“You want my cooperation?” Dawn challenged. “Then humor me. Keep me happy. Show me Spike.”
She wanted to see if he’d relapsed to the rocking and head-banging stage: if he was reachable at all. See what Rayne had done to him.
“You’re under a misapprehension. I don’t need your cooperation. Only your certified virginal Key blood. And that will be shed only when and as I direct.” Rayne’s eyes were as hard and flat as nickels. “So, no: much as it pains me to refuse a young lady, you will not be allowed within striking distance of my pet until he’s fed, and to repletion. He’s not terribly discriminating at the moment, and I’d hate for there to be an accident. To either of you. I’ve gone to some pains to secure you both. If it’s any solace, your captivity will be relatively short: only until midnight, tomorrow. And be certain, I’ll take excellent care of you both until then.”
Somehow, Dawn didn’t find that reassuring.
************
She was fed cold take-out from Mickey D’s, with flat soda, though a clueless vamp offered her some vodka: she knew it by the smell and judiciously accepted, though it tasted wretched and made her cough and she couldn’t see why anybody without banged, hurting knees and no aspirin would tolerate it. After awhile, though, it was warm and made her head swimmy, and she considered that an improvement.
She’d been allotted what looked like a storage chamber not far from Digger’s main quarters, with a heavy, lockable door--as much for protection, she thought, as for confinement, considering all the fledges wandering around. At least she wasn’t being quartered with the pitiful cows she knew had to be around somewhere, to supply all those ravenous fledges. That would have been just too horrible. But maybe Rayne had been leery of “mistakes” and had her allotted a private room. Or at least semi-private: there was a vamp on watch outside the door, and sometimes he told her the things he’d like to do to her. In graphic detail.
It wasn’t, she found, anything like Spike’s stories. Because she was in the coal bin now, and all that was keeping the vamp out was the certainty that Digger would dust him if he tried anything. About ten, by the backlit face of her watch, she heard Rayne’s voice outside--a final check on things, she guessed. And then she was left to the mercy of the vamp’s voice again, detailing what interesting things could be done with eyes. She was determined not to be afraid: he’d smell it, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. But it was hard to be brave alone in the utter dark, with the vamp outside getting anatomical and obviously from personal experience.
She used the facilities, that consisted of an improvised chamber pot, then curled up miserably in the pillowless mound of quilts and comforters with which she’d been provided. Finally she poked a hole in one of the quilts with the taskin dagger and pulled out enough stuffing to wad into ear-plugs. Didn’t shut up the vamp, but at least she could no longer hear him.
It wasn’t as though she was a real person, after all. Manufactured by monks. Not much different from the pitiful bot that had never truly known it was a bot, heartbreaking in its mangled perkiness and devotion to Spike, who couldn’t stand the sight of it during that summer: when Buffy was…gone. Maybe it had never been real, his love for her. Just a habit and one he didn’t need anymore, once he had Buffy again. He’d had Dawn poetry painted into his skin when the Lady had taken her back, but vamps did outrageous things like that and anyway the tat was gone now: Rayne had erased it somehow. Maybe erased more than that, if Spike hadn’t even bothered to check on her, that she was OK, which she decidedly wasn’t. The fries sat like lead in the bottom of her stomach and she was uncomfortable however she tossed and turned, placing and replacing the bedding and finally resting her cheek on her bent arm.
All well and good to say she had a bit of his soul, but what did that matter when she couldn’t feel it?
She must have slept because she woke in a panic because there was a big hand clamped over her mouth. Cold. Clean vampire smell, that was nearly no smell at all.
For a second she thought, hoped, it was Spike, warning her not to make a sound. Come for her finally, after all. Then he moved, more awkwardly than vamps generally did: settling beside her, stretching out on top of the covers, the other hand brushing hair away from her face in the blind dark. And without a sound and no glimmer of sight, she knew it was Mike and knew what dangerous action was on his mind.
She just hung onto him convulsively, gone all liquid in relief that somebody cared for her enough to come, though it really changed nothing and he was nearly as much a prisoner as she was.
Touching his brow, his mouth, she knew he’d dropped game face and knew he was looking down at her with that stillness that was particularly Mike.
She whispered, “Where can I hold, that won’t hurt?” Not hearing herself made her remember the ear-plugs. She hastily pulled them out and pitched them away.
“Don’t matter,” he muttered back. Barely words. Barely breath. “Won’t hurt you more than I can help. But it’s…what you are, they want you for. Change that, they won’t have no more use for you.”
“Fine,” she whispered into his neck, right under his ear, exasperated, “then they kill me. Or keep me for a cow, to get some use out of me. And then kill me.”
“Maybe could get you out first. I know this place. If I was fast--”
“But you’re not: you’re hurt. And I’m not fast--not like a vamp, or a Slayer.” She petted his smooth forehead. “You’re dreaming, Mike.”
“Could slow ‘em up a bit. Digger, he don’t know everything happens at the edges of things. Planted some charges. Collapse the main shafts. Bring the roof in on him. He’d be years digging out again. Could try, Dawn. Can’t leave you to this. If they didn’t want you, couldn’t use you, maybe there’d be a chance….”
He was dreaming, but it was a powerful dream. Not what she’d ever dreamed of, but full of kindness and caring and desperation…and she felt that doing the sex thing with him, giving up her hateful virgin status, would somehow make her real and solid--not a construct, not an un-person, not a mystical Key to anything. Just a girl, afraid in the dark, facing impossible choices and offered something like escape. Something like solace. Something very like love.
She made up her mind to do it, because surely the consequences couldn’t be any worse than what was certainly ahead and at least the Hellmouth would remain shut, and because he’d settled on his elbows over her to kiss and taste her and it felt so good, so comforting, all blind sensation, the solidity and strength of him so protective over her, even though Spike had told her not to and asked her solemnly to stay just as she was. It wouldn’t be breaking faith with Spike, she thought rebelliously. He couldn’t have known this would happen, the fear (and the French fries) whooshing around in her gut like clothes in a washer and yet the warmth gathering there too, which was so strange considering Mike wasn’t warm at all.
Tremulously, she lifted to his mouth and kissed him: probably awkward and not at all what he was used to, but that didn’t matter because what they were doing wasn’t about that. Yet she wanted to be good for him--the way Buffy was good for Spike, you could tell when he wandered downstairs in the morning, still barely awake and deeply happy, all loose and carelessly bed-headed, swooping in to tickle her or just looking long out the kitchen window into the sunlight….
Well shagged, he'd say when she commented on his good humor, smiling with his eyes and everything, not shy about it in the least.
She found Mike’s bare shoulders with her fists and pushed hard until he lifted, breathing, waiting.
“They’d not only know what--they’d know who. When Digger smelled you on me--!”
“Don’t matter,” Mike responded in a muzzy, sleepy voice, bending his mouth again to silence the argument. But she jerked her head, put the point of her elbow into his cheek, shoved and twisted in the covers until no way could he not know her flailing refusal to have him sacrificed on the altar of her virginity, that she knew was as sure as sunrise if she gave in now.
He wouldn’t force her. Not even to save her. Rolling clear, he lay beside her on his back, breathing hard; and she had the strong suspicion that he wasn’t wearing any clothes at all.
“You always smell so good,” he said, all soft acceptance. “So nice. Always liked that about you.”
She pushed his arm. “Get out. Before you’re caught. Digger would dust you so fast--!”
“In a while. Sleep now, rest easy. When you wake up, I’ll be gone.” She felt him turn to look at her, felt the phantom warmth of his gaze. “Would have been worth it. Just so you know. I’ll just think of something else, that’s all. Some way, I’ll get you clear of this, even if you were dumb enough to let yourself get talked into it. You just rest and let me think on it some more.”
His chest was nicer than a pillow. Still quietly lifting and falling as he breathed her in and out. Leaning into his loose embrace, the puffy soft layers of the bedding still between them, she felt solid and definite, centered within herself. Even though they hadn’t transformed her into a dud virgin. Huh. She asked, “You do the vamp on the door?”
“Sort of had to. Nobody I had any use for.”
“Good. Had a nasty mouth on him.”
“I expect. Didn’t like it, that he scared you. Could smell it…. Took him real fast, before he even knew.”
“Yeah.”
Snuggled close and safe, Dawn slept.
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