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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.
Shortly after slipping unnoticed out of Dawn’s room and pulling his clothes
back on, Mike found himself sent off to attend on Rayne.
It was past midnight: the lair was bustling with activity, since that was
vamps’ normal time to be most alert and active, their wake/sleep cycle the
reverse of humans’. As usual, he passed bored sentries, packs of dirty fledges
digging/repairing/shoring the main passages, vamps setting out to hunt by twos
and threes, pairs of mature vamps delivering cows for the larder (fledges
weren’t to be trusted for that and anyway weren’t allowed out until they could
demonstrate minimal control of trueface and therefore their demon), single
vamps tending the occasional lights, and couples fucking or fighting as the
mood struck or thinking there was social leverage to be had from it.
Overall, Mike found it a relief to fall back into traditional ways. Spike’s
penchant for doing things in the daytime meant that Mike hadn’t had a good
day’s sleep in months. And then the sweeps through half the night, on top of
it. Besides aching from the evening’s beating, he was exhausted. Since
returning, whenever he could get clear of Digger’s supervision, he’d slept
every chance he could get.
Though Digger was keeping him on a very short leash, that was normal and
expected, almost reassuring--Mike knew precisely where he stood: under Digger’s
orders, every minute (or nearly), dancing attendance and under the elder vamp’s
critical and highly suspicious eye. Watching for any sign of willful
independence and raining down punishment whenever Digger caught or imagined
one…or just for no reason at all except exerting a Master Vamp’s prerogative to
pound on the juniors in his regime. Mike didn’t mind, particularly. It was
normal--what he’d been brought up to, as a fledge here. It was Spike’s
freethinking ideas that were a puzzlement and an annoyance. The rules changed
from one day to the next. Confusing and tiring. Coming back to Digger’s
predictability had felt like coming home.
Not that he wouldn’t do the old bastard anytime he saw a good chance. Which of
course Digger knew and expected. How vamps were, mostly. Again, it was Spike
who was the aberration--wanting and expecting connections other than force and
dominance; socializing with the food and letting himself be swayed by their
opinions and expectations. Mike had accepted it, but he’d never understood it.
Simpler, lots simpler, just to be a vamp and not yearning after things that
made no sense. Live in the moment and the hell with the rest.
Except for the problem of Dawn, Mike would have been reasonably content.
But that was a big except and probably a deal-breaker, once Mike came
up with an alternative plan.
Rayne had been assigned quarters near the surface. Humans didn’t like the dank,
entombed air of the deeper passages or the darkness or the imagined weight of
all that tunneled earth a tremor could collapse in a smothering, crushing mass,
burying them alive. California shook itself frequently; and Sunnydale sat on
the deepest fault line of all--the Hellmouth, with not only tectonic but
dimensional torques at work, forces actively engaged and at only uneasy and
temporary equilibrium.
Hauling himself out of a vertical shaft with some difficulty because of the
stiff joint of a dislocated and swollen shoulder, Mike limped along the
passage, passing a couple of sentries, not giving the least damn what Rayne
wanted. Merely going where he’d been sent.
The chamber was a natural cavern partitioned into a maze of bays. Likely been
used for equipment storage and a staging area for the deeper levels, back in
the day. The wooden partitions were hardly more than head-high, with the cave’s
rocky, irregular ceiling maybe twenty, thirty feet higher than that, so the
place had the feel of a stage set, not an actual dwelling. A partial toy house
set up in, and dwarfed by, an immense and inimical surround not made by hands.
Following the scent of prey and the petulant rise and fall of Rayne’s voice,
Mike wandered through bare “rooms” like abandoned boxcars, rooms with shelves,
and rooms with stacked crates some way along in the process of collapsing into
dust until he reached an opening he found he couldn’t pass. Bespelled. Supposed
he should have expected that.
Calling, “Digger sent me,” Mike waited with perfect indifference to either be
let in or not.
“Oh, come on,” Rayne directed in an annoyed voice, and a poke of Mike’s fingers
informed him that the barrier was gone.
Climbing three metal stairs and sliding back a door brought him into what
actually was a train car, a caboose--about 30’s vintage, as a guess. Mike could
smell the wheels rusting. It was bright inside: half a dozen lanterns were hung
between the blank and mostly broken windows, two to a side, that framed views
of the surrounding dark. The enclosed space stank of blood and magic, an uneasy
combination. Easy to tell where the bloodsmell came from: a grimy, keening cow,
a malodorous woman, was handcuffed to the handle of a fold-down cot just inside
the doorway. The cot on the opposite wall had also been pulled down. Spike was
stretched out on his side there in what looked like black satin sweat pants or
pajamas, maybe, giggling and twisting around but not fastened down that Mike
could see. Trueface coming and going, plainly completely off his head, wide
no-color changing eyes wandering unfocused, babbling something about being
Queen of the May.
Kneeling beside that cot, Rayne was trying to get Spike to lie flat so Rayne
could finish fingerpainting symbols on Spike’s torso and arms in some kind of
thick, slateblue clay. Spike was behaving as though he was being tickled, and
Rayne looked all put out with him.
Without even glancing around, Rayne directed, “Hold him still,” reaching for a
wide, shallow bowl on the floor about half full of the blue stuff. That was the
source of the magic stink, then.
Going to the head of the cot, Mike set his hands on Spike’s shoulders and
leaned. No stinging oil. Would have interfered with the clay markings, maybe.
Mike had it clear in his mind that it would take a triangle to make this go:
the mage, the monster, and the girl. Take any away, and the thing wouldn’t go.
So while easily holding Spike down (Spike twitched and giggled and tried to
roll as Rayne resumed his fingerpainting, but didn’t offer any organized
resistance) Mike gave some thought to twisting his head off. At least slow
things down, maybe give Mike time to think of a way to get Dawn out before
Rayne could come up with a replacement. But although it’d be done, and Spike
gone to dust, before Rayne knew or could stop it, Mike thought his own chances
of surviving the next entire minute were pretty low, which would leave Dawn
with no protection whatever. So regretfully Mike set the idea aside for now.
Eventually rising, wiping his hands on a towel, and stowing the bowl in a
built-in cabinet at the rear of the car, still not having spared Mike a glance
and turned half away from him, Rayne remarked, “He won’t feed. He did before.
What’s the problem?”
Then Rayne looked around, and there was something about his eyes Mike didn’t
like at all. Straightening too, Mike stuck a hand in the pocket where the watch
was and closed his fist around it, hoping it could keep Rayne out or prevent
the mage from throwing any goddam compulsion at him.
Rayne said, “You’re his claimed get, so I presume you know him as well as
anyone does. Enlighten me. Why won’t he feed?”
Mike shrugged, holding the watch hard. “He’s always been weird about that. One
way or another. Slayer’s his cow. Could be, it’s spoiled him for anything
else.”
“Well, I happen to have no Slayers on hand,” Rayne rejoined, irritated, “and he
must feed to be ready for tonight.”
“Don’t know what to tell you, then,” Mike replied, holding tight within himself
the knowledge that there was no difference worth noting between Slayer blood
and what ran in Dawn’s veins. Though Mike had never tasted the Slayer herself,
just by the smell, you knew. Wasn’t a thought he wanted to put into the mage’s
head.
Spike had had Dawn’s blood a time or two and had even marked her once, but it
hadn’t gone well. Mike didn’t think Rayne would think of it for himself, intent
on Dawn’s blood for another purpose altogether. As magic, not as food.
And Rayne seemed not to have picked up the knowledge from him. The watch
worked. A good watch. Spike had donated the watch itself; Willow had provided
and activated the charm inside; and Dawn had given it to him. Mike felt the
watch as a set of powerful and puzzling connections that opened some doors and
shut others. A good watch. It even kept time.
“You’re human,” Mike observed dryly. “He gone for you yet?”
Rayne just maintained his cold stare, indicating he wasn’t on the menu.
So Mike said, “Maybe he’s not hungry. Been known to happen.”
“I think you should find a solution. I think you should find it very quickly.”
Thing to do was make feeding a non-issue, Mike decided: get Rayne’s mind off it
altogether.
Mike didn’t blame Spike for not wanting to feed on the trull--cows didn’t
improve with keeping: at the last, they weren’t even very afraid, so the dregs
were flat and bland, not properly charged with terror. But whether or not Spike
was hungry, Mike was. Digger kept him short in that respect, too. Short rations
slowed healing and made it hard to focus on anything else. Mike was proud of
himself that he hadn’t even asked for a taste at Dawn and hadn’t let the cow
distract him.
He took her fast, the killing bite to the jugular, and locked jaws into the
bite as she pumped her life into him. The taste exploded into his mouth: she
was fresh enough to be frightened, though without the strength to struggle as
he drank her down. In a few minutes, he had the last of it. Letting the body
drop onto the cot, Mike turned, stalling a moment, feeling the blood working in
him, diminishing the soreness, knitting bones. Then, while Rayne watched
impassively with arms folded, Mike set fangs to his own forearm and presented
the hot blood of the fresh kill to his claimed sire. Immediately Spike went to
trueface and latched on, drawing powerfully. At least he wasn’t too crazy for
that.
Behind him, Rayne said, “I thought vampires couldn’t feed from one another.”
It was like the tribute again, in the hospital parking lot: the deepest of
connections. Mike shuddered with it and shut his eyes. “Don’t know a lot about
vamps then, do you?”
When Spike lapsed back without sealing the wound, Mike lifted his bloodied arm
and did it himself. Spike hadn’t taken even half what Mike had acquired by the
kill: he felt the healing progressing, felt strong and clear-headed.
“Wait outside,” Rayne directed, again kneeling by the cot. “I may want you for
something later.”
Dismissed and as good as ignored, Mike did as he’d been told. Hunkering down
within call, he used the time to faithfully wind the watch and reconsider all
the options.
Short of taking up with a Slayer, Mike figured this was the stupidest thing
Spike had ever done. Up to Mike, it seemed, to make it right.
**********
Spike’s demon was happy.
When he eventually woke in the golden fog, from dream into dream, there was
nothing to worry about or plan, nothing to do but hazily relax into the pleasure
with no objection from soul or self, that seemed not to have wakened yet or
taken notice of the mage or this new, interesting smelling lair deep underground,
so no need to think about sunrise, except that there was something about the
idea of midnight he shied away from and forgot as quickly as possible. Easy
to forget, and just be, lost in sensation.
When the mage said words to him he paid no attention, not with all the splendid
fucking pleasure rolling into him and over him like a tide, nothing to do but
just enjoy it, which was all very well but you couldn’t live off it. Finally
coming out of the deep crash he’d fallen into when the pills wore off, he was
hungry. Well, no surprise--he was hungry all the time: he was a demon. The
surprise was that he felt no constraint on how the bloodthirst could be
satisfied.
Rolling over, pushing clear of the golden fog enough to notice, he eyed the
mage speculatively, weighing the likelihood of losing the pleasure (without
knowing how he knew, he was aware that the mage commanded the pleasure: thin
stuff, as such things went, but abundant and here and the demon wasn’t
particular) against crunching down and gulping hot, fresh blood. Being considered
with a predator’s unblinking stare made the mage nervous: he had a cow delivered,
but Spike’s demon wasn’t interested in such. If he went for her, soul and self
would wake and give him bloody hell about it and it was so much nicer as it
was, being dominant without interference (except what the mage was doing to
him, of course, not that he objected), just idle, silly, floating, drifting--like
being zoned out on opium.
Prospect of a fight would have made him rouse completely and would have been
nice if didn’t mean surrendering dominance to the other consciousnesses with
which he shared the body. Better to do without, not risk it. He was too lazily
content.
The mage said more words, still nervous and vexed, too, that the demon hadn’t
taken the offered prey, which left his scrawny self still potentially on the
menu. Spike’s demon was mildly amused. Might still taste him a little when the
one appetite overruled the other, and soul and self likely wouldn’t object if
he didn’t drink to completion--the death of the prey. They seemed to have an
agreement about such things now. But at the moment the demon was too lazy and
sated to bother.
He felt the Red Witch stirring at the edges of his consciousness and mentally
snapped at the intrusion. With something like an eep of alarm, she
pulled away, and well she should. Had no business messing with his head. Nobody
liked it. Bad enough to have the mage glancing in every now and again. Then
he vaguely recalled something the self had laid on him, to tell the witch if
she came , and sullenly contemplated it when he felt her creeping back. Silver.
He kept the shine of it in his mind, how it nestled raw in seams in the rock
like tinder carelessly scattered about. Didn’t mean a thing to him, but that
was what the self had required that he do whenever he felt the arrival of the
witch’s immaterial presence. Didn’t like the thought: it connected somehow to
the midnight he wasn’t thinking about in the pleasant now. But it had been laid
on him, and he did it, long enough anyway that the witch surely caught it if
she wasn’t a total moron.
Mage didn’t notice the exchange, pottering about with powders and stinks and
liquid in a bowl. Nothing interesting to the demon until the mage started painting
stinky magic onto Spike’s front. Unlike the pleasure, it was an actual touch--real.
It tickled and opened and bound him in uncomfortable ways. He giggled helplessly,
unable to focus enough to resist. Wasn’t supposed to resist. Only supposed to
let things happen however they would, relax into the amber wash of stoned, drunken
pleasure and let things become.
Mage had no respect for him anyway. Some uneasiness but no fear, expecting the
steady wash of pleasure to keep him quiet and malleable, as it had before. Show
only the expected and the mage wouldn’t guard against what was held in reserve,
still deep asleep. Wouldn’t know there was more to Spike than the evident demon
luxuriating in the abundance.
Another demon came and was present, sizzling and yet somehow aloof, like a color.
Blue, maybe--bright and controlled. Oh: Mike. So that was all right, then.
When Mike suddenly took the cow, drank her straight down, Spike’s demon didn’t
like it. The cow had been his to eat or not, not Mike’s. But it seemed Mike
knew that because he immediately offered the kill second-hand in deference.
That was allowed and accepted. After all, the cow was already dead, and Spike’s
demon was hungry and nothing if not pragmatic.
When the blood began to cool and change, Spike’s demon found he’d had enough of
it. The charge of Mike’s deference, the meaning of the exchange, was strong and
vital enough to make up the difference.
Bloodthirst quieted, though not fully satisfied, there remained no reason to
bother holding on to consciousness. Happy and content, he lapsed into passive
dream.
Midnight was still far off and maybe the burning would never come.
**********
“Well?” Buffy demanded anxiously as Willow roused from her trance of
concentration.
Willow shook her head. “Not much there--he has his demon to the fore, and the
demon doesn’t exactly think much. Maybe it’s deliberate--to present a surface
with nothing much to read. I don’t know. There was one thing, though…came
through clear. But I don’t know what to make of it.”
Buffy said, “What?” and Giles looked attentive, the three of them sitting
around the kitchen island. It was nearly four in the morning and Buffy had been
pacing and frantic the whole time since they’d lost Rayne and therefore Spike
and Dawn. But Willow had simply tipped over and conked, completely wiped, and
Buffy could only shove a pillow under her head, toss a blanket over her, and
wait impatiently for her to wake up.
Willow still had dark circles under her eyes. Even her hair looked limp and
dispirited. She kept brushing it absently out of her eyes. “Silver,” she
reported, puzzled.
“As in Hi-yo Silver, away?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Just plain silver. Metal-y. I mean, not
jewelry or anything like that.”
“What, are we dealing with werewolves, now? What’s with the silver? What does
it mean?”
“Well,” Giles ventured, “silver is a magically sensitive and conductive metal.
Might Rayne’s spell somehow involve it?”
“Maybe.” Willow spread her hands helplessly. “That’s all I got. Silver. In the
ground, I think. Just plain old silver.”
“Wait,” said Giles, and the two women watched while he fussed with his
tea and visibly concentrated. Finally looking up, Giles said, “Thinking about
its being available to Ethan…in sufficient quantity to help power a spell…but
no. There’s no affinity between silver and a portal spell. That I’ve ever heard
of. I could research it--” Giles started to rise, then settled again.
“Insufficient time,” he commented bleakly. “We have only approximately eighteen
hours to come up with a way of blocking the spell. Or preventing it from being
cast at all. Since you’re still able to contact Spike,” he said to Willow,
“might you be able to, well, incapacitate him? Sufficiently that Rayne couldn’t
use him?”
Willow made a wry face. “He’s already incapacitated. High as ye proverbial
kite. Nothing but pretty basic stuff going on.” She tapped her forehead. “Not
much higher function at all, that I could tell.”
“But Rayne will need him cognizant, competent, when the time comes. Could you
interfere then?”
“Rayne will have wards set. I’m surprised he hasn’t set them already. To punch
through those wards and then affect Spike at all, that would be about like
doing brain surgery in boxing gloves. And blindfolded. And I’ve never even
attempted that level of control. Giles, I’m certain I’d screw it up. Do
permanent damage.”
“Nevertheless,” Giles responded steadily, “it would disable the spell. Lacking
a viable alternative, I believe we must consider it.”
“No,” said Buffy, folding her arms. “I don’t care what you throw at Rayne. But
Spike and Dawn, they’re mine. We protect them. We don’t hurt them. We don’t
even consider it.”
She leveled a glare at Giles because he was the one who’d advocated killing
Dawn to stymie Glory’s plans. Not acceptable. Not then, and not now.
“Rule out magic,” Giles responded tartly, “and what’s left? Force? Harsh
language?”
Buffy lowered her eyes, sighing. “No, I’ve already given up on the idea of
barging in with Super Soakers full of holy water. It’s a big, dark place, and
none of us know it. And with only three SITs left, that won’t get it done.
Direct assault is out.”
“There might be some of Spike’s crew left, that haven’t defected,” Willow
mentioned hesitantly.
Buffy shook her head. “I wouldn’t trust any of them at my back. It would be
like going in already surrounded. They’d be stupid not to go where the power
is. And if they’re that stupid, I don’t want ‘em.”
She was angry, frustrated, and jealous. Oh yeah, despite Willow keeping
decorously mum, she knew perfectly well what Spike was addled with, and his
retreating to let the demon enjoy it didn’t make it OK by her. But that made
her mind cast back to how earnest and serious he’d been about her not mixing
into it, in their talk-and-hit-and-talk conversation in the Civic Center
parking lot. How it was a vamp matter, and vamps would have to settle it.
What had changed, since then? Except Spike and Dawn captured and irretrievable,
of course. He’d meant Mike to blow up and leave, to be in place when Dawn
arrived. Therefore, improbable as it seemed, he might have meant this, too.
Might mean it wasn’t the disaster it seemed but was in fact intended, all
along, to get everybody (except her) within striking distance of Rayne and
inside Digger’s stronghold.
Trojan horse sort of thingie. Maybe.
If it was, her bursting in and disrupting it would be the last thing Spike
would want her to do. What he’d so earnestly argued against, there in the
parking lot. He’d want her to trust him to make the running and hold back on
the response he’d known she’d otherwise reflexively make, diving in headlong,
unprepared, and underpeopled as though force were the only answer she was
capable of.
Buffy could do trust. Buffy could do subtle, if somebody banged her head
against it solidly several times first.
“OK,” she said abruptly, “here’s what we do. We make a show of force with the
SITs and anybody I can collect, but not to the point of actually getting
inside. Because that’s what Digger and everybody will expect. So we show them
that. A feint. Meanwhile,” she continued, looking at dispirited Willow, “you
and Giles figure out how silver comes into it. It does, because Spike said so.
He didn’t explain because then Rayne would know--pick it out of his mind. He’s
depending on us to understand. For once, we play this Spike’s way. It’s his
thing, he knows what he’s doing. He’s the lead, we’re the backup. So that’s
what we do.”
Giles looked at her over his glasses’ tops. “Buffy…do you really consider that
wise?”
“No, but it’s what we’re gonna do anyway.” She hopped off her chair to go collect
her cell phone: she had a lot
of calls to make. Turning in the doorway, she added, “And as soon as I have
things rolling, Giles, you’re gonna tell me what this frickin’ Venusburg thing
means!”
**********
Spike woke to Rayne’s voice inquiring if he’d had a nice nap.
He woke not because he wanted to but because he had to: Rayne’s voice had
acquired the power to compel him. Rayne had cut the pleasure off, too, the
bastard--probably to force Spike to be something like coherent, something like
aware.
Spike resented missing it, but the fact was, he ached to have it back, have it
flood over him again. Had felt so good to let go and let himself be engulfed,
everything coming in, drowned in sensation.
Waking felt like being tossed out of a tawdry second-rate heaven--everything
too bright, too sharp, too solid. A little, maybe, like Buffy had felt after
Red and the others had called her back from the real thing.
Cut-rate heaven of the senses, bloody Venusburg, was likely as close as a
vampire would ever get.
“Yeah--good one: don’t remember it,” he said, offhanded despite being forced to
answer because it’d been a direct question. Mage seemed to have set some kind
of truth spell on him, but Spike knew his way around those: just pretend he was
Anya and drown the asker in meaningless details until they gave over asking or
offer the Cliff’s Notes version, so brief and compressed it was as good as a
lie. “So why’d you wake me up?” he grumbled.
“I want to ask you…about the Initiative.” Rayne sounded almost shy, as though
the topic embarrassed him. He smelled angry, though.
Spike didn’t give a fuck. Since it wasn’t a question, he wasn’t forced to
respond and didn’t.
Swinging his legs over the side of the cot, he sat up, scrubbing fists into his
eyes and yawning, reaching to a pocket for cigarettes. No pockets. Right. No
shirt, no jeans, just silky pajama-bottom sort of togs like he was gonna appear
as a rent boy in a grade Z porn flick. Right.
And stuff painted over his chest and arms. Well, an improvement over it being
cut into him, he supposed, like the First had done, deep enough that the scars
still showed in certain angles of light….
Stank of magic. Wards, most like: keep the witch out. Too late, on that—already
done. And compulsions, as noted. Have to see how that went.
“Have a nice cuppa.” Rayne was holding out a mug of strong tea, sweetened
almost to syrup. Had another, the same, in his other hand. “Though lacking most
of the amenities, the service here is excellent.”
Spike closed his hands around the offered mug but only held it on a knee,
savoring the heat and the odor, looking around.
Fucking caboose. Well, he’d known Rayne was a back-door man, but shacking up in
an ancient caboose did seem a bit over the top, symbolically. If one went in
for symbolic, which Spike did, lately. On account of the fucking dreams, mostly--trying
to figure them out. Paradigms and patterns and such….
He still felt muzzy-headed and drifty, but that was all right. Not time yet to
be anything else, only a few hours past daybreak by the felt angle of the sun.
Dead cow on the other cot. That came back to him hazily, and Mike here awhile
but gone now by the smell. And the fact of his absence, of course, as Spike
blinked and looked around. Spike remembered feeding from him, and no least
trace of Dawn in the mix. Apparently Mike was still minding his manners in
regard to her; so that part was all right.
Spike was fed and rested, for once with no dreams of burning (that he
remembered, anyway); the crazy was close but still a little way off. Not bad
for someone who’d been cored out like an apple, pulled apart like an orange,
then shakily reassembled as if by somebody who’d lost the Japanese
instructions.
Taking a mouthful of the scalding, intensely sweet tea, Spike reflected you
could get used to just about anything, even being off your head and
hallucinating in Technicolor and SurroundSound more than half the time. At
least, he thought bleakly, he didn’t seem to have killed anybody or delivered
any severed hands.
Rayne had settled into a wooden folding chair by the foot of the cot, sipping
tea and regarding him over the mug like a squirrel with a nut. “The
Initiative,” Rayne prompted. “How did you escape?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Spike twitched a shoulder dismissively. “Took the first chance and
scarpered.” That was true…as far as it went.
“Someone didn’t rescue you? Buffy, for instance?”
Spike laughed. “Not hardly. Wasn’t on that kind of terms with the Slayer then.
She didn’t even know I was back in Sunnyhell, to miss me.”
“Or Dawn?”
Spike had trouble not admitting that Dawn hadn’t existed in those days, except
for faked retroactive memories. “No,” was still true, and enough to satisfy the
compulsion. “’F I was on fire, none of the Scoobies would have pissed on me to
put me out.”
Hadn’t meant to say that, or at least not quite that way. Have to put a better
curb on his tongue.
Holding the mug to his chest, Rayne prompted, “Ask me how I escaped.”
“So how’d you escape?” Spike responded obediently, startled to realize those
wankers’d had Rayne too, apparently.
“I didn’t,” said Rayne brightly. “Thanks for asking.” His twitch of a smile
wasn’t the least convincing. Rage was coming off him like smoke though his face
didn’t admit it. “I gave him every opportunity to ask, inquire after my three
fucking years in hell, three years of unremitting torture. I waited for it.
Practically pleaded for it. Some least recognition of what he’d done to me.
Even without an apology, I would have forgiven him. But quite plainly, it
wasn’t merely a prison…or a laboratory, for that matter: it was quite literally
an oubliette--a forgettery. He handed me over to those military savages…and
never once troubled to wonder what had become of me. If I’d died, or gone mad,
or been carved up into specimens for boffins to gawk at.”
There were, Spike observed, different
compulsions, and Rayne was in the throes of one. “That’d be after you’d turned
him into a Fyarl. Good one, that,” he added objectively.
“I thought he’d lose a few inhibitions. Have to admit to raging insecurity and
anger at how he’d caged himself away from his true feelings, his true nature. I
thought it would be instructive, as well as amusing.”
“Slayer nearly offed him. But she does that to most of her friends, so it’s
nothing special.”
“There, you see? The merest prank. For which I was dragged off to that obscene
place, and tortured for the greater good of science, and forgotten. For
three bloody years!”
Spike stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it. “So how’d you get out, then?”
Rayne had a hand to his mouth, biting at the knuckle not quite hard enough to
make it bleed. After a moment, he said, “I didn’t. I didn’t escape. Was never
rescued, never freed. The whole place was forgotten, it seems. Abandoned. It took
me at least a week, after the food was gone and the water became undrinkable,
to think to try the cage door. Standing was an issue, you see. And forget about
walking. I crawled, and couldn’t remember if the door opened inward or outward,
and wasted absolute hours trying to push it when all I needed to do was crawl
clear of the swing and pull.” With another rictus smile, Rayne added, “I won’t
bore you with the other tiresome details, dear boy. You’ve been in their hands:
you know.”
“Yeah. I do. Haven't much liked hospitals, anyplace white with bright lights,
since. Smell of--"
“--Betadine. Yes. We know." Rayne tipped his head up, drawing a long, strangled
breath. "And not for putting me there but for forgetting, for
not even bothering to care what had become of me, when the Hellmouth opens all
the ways and dimensions, I intend to find the most painful and chaotic dimension,
possibly Quar’toth. I shall drop him into it and then seal the gate for all
time. See how he likes being forgotten, with all his Council airs and
authority and his priggish denial of everything vital and real in him! Wouldn’t
you like to help me, dear heart? You can have no great affection for the Council
in any of its incarnations; and Rupert merely tolerates you because Buffy gives
him no choice. We're natural allies, you and I: both children of Chaos, after
our own fashion. Wouldn't you prefer to be free? Help me willingly?”
Spike had to admit the idea had some appeal, if only to see the expression on
Rupert’s face. Soul didn’t like it, insisting that Rupert had changed, showed
him proper respect lately. Even helped get him out of the fog he couldn’t have
escaped on his own, though that was mostly the Lady, stuffing the soul back
into him, so the soul was bound to put a favorable spin on it.
Rayne wanted comradeship here. Wanted willing cooperation based on shared
misery. Which was rather a stupid thing to want of a vampire.
“Oh,” Spike drawled, “so I have a choice about it, then? An’ Bit, Dawn--does
she get a choice, too?”
“You are missing the point!”
“If you say so.”
“Are you expecting the Slayer to come and rescue you? She won’t. She can’t.
You’re here at my pleasure as long as I have use for you. And you’ll come to
accept it. Like it, even. Or do you like it enough already, that the thought of
being without it forever sends shockwaves through your lovely, delicious
system?”
It was lucky Spike couldn’t answer all the parts of that at once. The jam of
competing responses gave him time to choose what to say and how to say it. He
lifted a shoulder in a negligent shrug. “Slayer will come for me. I know that.
Wish she wouldn’t, it will only bollocks things up, but she will. It’s what she
does. No matter how I've failed her, fucked everything up.... Just how she is,
how she does. Won’t work, I know that already. And as to the mindfuck, demon
likes it well enough. Probably could get him to roll over and beg, if you
haven’t already, just for chuckles. As for me, I’ll do what I have to and what
I can, just like always. Not quite to the rolling over and begging stage
because the sound track is bloody awful and the visuals make my eyes ache. So I
expect--”
The wave crashed in and took him away into half-resented bliss. Piss ‘em
off, that’s the ticket, he thought dimly, look how well it worked with
that hellbitch Glory, in the instant before there was no more thought,
only the demon roaring satisfaction.
**********
Drinking herbal tea and trying to find the calm part of awake, thinking blankly
silver, silver, silver, Willow slapped her forehead and dashed for
the den…and the laptop, sitting open on the table, just as Spike had left it.
It was turned off, though (Better be, she thought rancorously, since
if left running, it would have exhausted the battery by now). While waiting
for it to boot and load, she ran back to the kitchen for her tea, set it down
to the left of the keyboard, and then forgot it altogether while mousing and
punching and frowning at the screen, navigating the levels and branches of the
Council of Watchers database until she located Spike’s directory. She’d set
it up, but that had been months ago, and she’d forgotten.
Naturally, it was password-protected. But it was Spike. Her third guess, Ramones,
opened the file listings to her and she was off and running--specifically, running
a search on Silver. Five entries. Five of the documents Spike had translated.
The first one was nothing goop on the completely fanciful effects of silver
on vampires, which was nothing, nada, as Spike had annotated in the drop-down
commentary box with scathing, profane glee. The next one concerned a magical
artifact, the Mirror of Aelron, whose polished silver surface supposedly displayed
the future if viewed under particular conditions, with elaborate preparations.
That one worked, Spike commented, except that, like Dru’s visions, what one
saw was completely incomprehensible without the surrounding context…which the
mirror did not show. Without being able to read the meaning, the visions
were pretty…meaningless. Magical but useless, was his conclusion.
Before diving into the next file, Willow stepped back mentally and realized
that Spike apparently had been concentrating on documents involving silver--choosing
them rather than other files to work on. And he’d made a directory called
“REF.” She went into that and found about thirty discussions of the alchemical
properties and uses of silver from the Council’s main archive: just scanned in
as-is, some with handwritten commentaries from earlier
scholars/alchemists/mages, in a wild variety of languages. Likely the ones she
couldn’t read, Giles could, so she picked the ones in languages she knew fairly
well--her Medieval Spanish wasn’t that great, but with the heavy Latin
influence, she could make out the gist of things—know whether it was a spell or
a recipe for stewed chicken. She half rose, intending to call Giles (napping in
the front room’s big chair), then forgot as she’d forgotten the tea, intently
reading through a discourse on the fundamental nature of unworked, unspelled
silver. Raw in the ground: the impression she’d gotten from Spike’s demon, she
recalled, now that she saw it in pointy Gothic capitals.
Ten minutes later, she was shaking Giles’ shoulder, and he was blearily
reaching for his glasses, set aside on the chair’s broad arm.
Willow blurted, “I know what it is, what to do. Earth magic!”
**********
When Mike insinuated himself as one of her guards, moving up the slant of the
corridor, Dawn asked him sourly, “And how was your day?”
By her watch, it was just past eleven o’clock, and despite all the sleep--there
was nothing to do in the wretched storeroom--she was achy, dirty, sore,
thirsty, and miserable. And scared. Mustn’t leave out scared.
This was it, then: Rayne was gonna cut her. Her own fault: she was still a
stupid virgin. Having refused Mike, she’d had no other opportunity. She
wondered if he held that against her.
He was wearing a blue tee tonight with the slogan “Happiness is a warm puppy”
and a picture of a young, floppy Dalmatian on the front, all big feet and big
eyes and flocked white spots. On the back was the name, phone number, and
website of the Animal Rescue League. Mike paced beside her silently--maybe
assigned to her escort by Digger; certainly wouldn’t be here without Digger’s
knowledge and consent.
Last night, he’d been implicitly willing to be dusted for her. Now, by his
silence and the way he didn’t look at her, he’d distanced himself from such
pointless impulses. Distanced himself from her.
She sort of guessed he hadn’t come up with an alternative plan.
She imagined he felt really bad about it. Might feel really bad about it for a
century or longer…when he bothered to remember…whereas she’d be rendered into
her constituent elements and energies in less than an hour. It didn’t seem fair.
They brought her at last into a cavern only slightly smaller than an airplane
hanger, all cut up with partitions she would have blindly banged into except
that her escort could see really well in the darkness and steered her around
the turns with sudden jerks that made her flinch and stumble. They carried no
flashlights or lanterns because they didn’t need any; and making a frightened
human girl more comfortable wasn’t on anybody’s agenda.
The only light she could see was a dim splotch on the ceiling. Then her escort
turned another corner and it was like finding a campfire in a clearing in the
woods--sudden brightness but so much smaller than the surrounding dark.
Lanterns were hung at the corners of the big bay, and a flickering green-tinged
flame burned in a brazier in the middle of it. Rayne was finishing drawing
chalked lines to define the magical space, with an obvious corridor left open
to let Dawn and her escort come in without touching any of the lines.
She saw Spike then: sitting on the ground in the dark circle below the brazier.
Head and torso slumped forward onto arms folded over his knees, just the pale
curve of his bent back showing. Not moving, not looking at anything. Not even
rocking. Just puddled there like some street-corner beggar or homeless person
too beaten down to even lift his eyes to the passers-by. If somebody was
looking for a model for “hopeless despair,” there he was, all set.
When Dawn recalled him doing the power walk entering the gym, that first time,
all swagger and self-assurance, like he was the king of the world and
cheerfully slumming among the peons with his entourage of SITs and crew fanned
out behind, all in sublime, arrogant synchronicity, it made her stomach hurt
and her eyes sting.
She dropped down on her knees beside him, flopping to sit with her legs tucked
next to her before the knee scabs and bruises could protest too much. Patting
his elbow tentatively, she greeted him hoarsely, “Hey.”
Her touch startled him. He flinched away, huddling even tighter into himself.
“It’s just me,” she explained, lifting her hand, uncertain. “Only the star
attraction, the headliner. The unique soon-to-be-bloody-sacrifice-Summers,
appearing for one midnight only.” She rested fingertips on his temple, stroked
down the edge of his ear. “Your not being all charged up and rah for this makes
me wonder if I should be worried. Spike?”
He wasn’t taking it in, wasn’t reacting. Seemed oblivious to her presence.
Rayne came then and gripped her elbow, raising and pulling her off to the
inside periphery of the chalked circle. While one of the attendant vamps held
her from behind with one hand gripping her shoulder and the other bent under
her chin, around her neck, Rayne briskly secured her ankles, then fastened her
wrists in front of her with narrow, very tight cord. It didn’t budge when Dawn
experimentally pulled against it. As he stooped and bobbed, checking his
handiwork, Dawn barely restrained the impulse to knee him in the chin, mainly
because she couldn’t. With her ankles lashed together, all she could have
managed was a small bunny-hop quickly followed by a humiliating falling-down.
When Rayne straightened, she took some satisfaction finding herself taller by
at least an inch. Just the right height to spit straight into his face. Her
mouth was dry: by sucking her teeth, she’d saved up spit against this opportunity.
“My sister is so gonna get you for this!”
“Doubtful,” Rayne said, going to a small table set up by the brazier and
returning with a potato-sized crystal he moved here and there before her like a
light meter. It shone yellow, whatever that meant. “Fine. Exactly as
advertised….” Strolling back to the table and fussing with the stuff there,
Rayne continued, over his shoulder, “I’m told that the Slayer has already made
her appearance, about an hour ago, at one of the lesser-used entrances, and
been soundly beaten back. Strong and fierce, but not wise, with her little
party of inept followers. Threatened bloody mayhem, but couldn’t deliver on it.
I’d think even she would now be persuaded of the futility of trying to
interrupt our ceremony. But she’s welcome to try as many times as she likes…in
the small time remaining.” Bringing back a wet cloth, Rayne proceeded to
remove, with small, precise dabs, what Dawn guessed were smudges on her face,
squinting critically like a cosmetician applying makeup. Or a technician
preparing a clinically eviscerated corpse to be pretty for public viewing.
Dawn shut her eyes, unable to prevent tears from leaking from under her
eyelids.
Buffy’s try at rescue had failed. Spike was practically comatose, withdrawn,
and probably crazy. Mike had no plan except blowing everything up and bringing
down several gigillion tons of ceiling on them, which really wasn’t likely to
help. Nobody was gonna save her. She hoped Spike was fucking happy she’d
maintained her fucking purity on his say-so, done what she’d promised despite
all misgivings. Herself, she didn’t take much satisfaction in it. It was all
such a waste….
With her wrists tied and without a tissue, she couldn’t even blow her nose.
Bent over Spike, Rayne roused him enough that when Rayne proffered the rough,
irregular globe that was the Stone, Spike accepted it and set it in his lap,
clasping it in wide-spread hands. Head raptly thrown back, Spike was in game
face: stark, beautiful, and alien in the flickering illumination. Serpentine
blue markings down the tensed muscles of his arms shimmered and seemed to
crawl.
Although Dawn could sense nothing of whatever opening arpeggios he was performing
through the Stone, the vamps around were reacting, dragged a pace toward the
center: hunched forward in palpable desire, their faces more bestial and feral,
their yellow eyes wide and seeming moon-blinded; close pairs turned on each
other in sudden indignation, snarling, squaring off. Things nearly blew up then,
Dawn wildly hoped they would, only belatedly realizing, as Rayne angrily hauled
the Stone away from Spike (who didn’t want to let go and let himself be dragged
rather than release it), that if all hell broke loose, she would be one of the
first casualties. So she supposed it was just as well Rayne did something
to Spike that made Spike lose his hold on the Stone and collapse, arms still
outstretched.
Again, Dawn could only infer the cause from the effect.
Stalking to the table, Rayne thumped the Stone down there and then proceeded to
scuff-erase enough of the containing circle that the vamps could pass through,
single file. Vamps could have jumped to beyond the circle without even a
running start; but clearly Rayne didn’t know that, just as he plainly hadn’t
anticipated the vamps’ reaction to the siren Stone.
When he’d remade the circle with quick strokes, and only the three of them were
left inside, Rayne strolled slowly back to look down at Spike, arms folded.
“That wasn’t very nice.”
Raising himself on braced arms, Spike lifted a fanged vampire grin, and the two
of them regarded each other for a long moment.
“Why did you do that?” Rayne inquired--as though he took it personally, as
though he really wanted to know.
Spike’s features shifted to his human countenance. No longer grinning, he
looked sullen, weary. “’Cause I could. ’Cause it shuts out that other, that you
keep pushing in on me. Takes up a bloke’s whole attention, making that rock
sing. ’Cause while I do that, you’re not cutting Bit.”
“But you don’t want to miss the moment,” Rayne responded, as though reminding
Spike of something they both knew. “You dread the alternative.”
The defiance slumped out of Spike’s pose. He turned his face away.
Rayne went on gently, “You’ve ruined, killed, or corrupted everything and
everyone you’ve ever touched. You’ve sown Chaos on a scale worthy of
admiration…but you take no joy in it anymore. You perceive it as failure and
let it hurt you when you should glory in it as the creature of Chaos that you
are. Succeed at this and you will be freed--”
“No. I’ll burn.”
Going down on one knee, Rayne stroked and soothed Spike’s face with his hands,
saying something to him that was to Dawn only a murmur. Then, all sincerity and
solicitude, he leaned and kissed Spike on the mouth, which Dawn considered
fairly ewww but wasn’t all that surprised at, everything considered. Everybody
reacted to Spike passionately, one way or another. Nobody was indifferent.
Spike wouldn't tolerate it. He cultivated extremes.
She’d been concentrating on doing a little heel-and-toe sidewise maneuver that
inched her to the innermost line. She scuffed and broke it, then heel-and-toed
herself back to about where she’d been, standing straight and innocent, like
when Buffy challenged her about the doneness of homework. Dawn had no idea what
effect breaking the line would have, but whatever it was, Rayne would be caught
in it too, and Spike, well, Spike could survive anything. And with Rayne gone,
Spike would be himself again--wouldn’t want to lean against the mage and be
comforted and convinced.
Still holding Spike’s face in his hands, Rayne said, “We must do this now, dear
heart. Or we’ll miss the moment. Are you going to be good for me? When I can’t
allow you to be distracted?”
Whatever he saw apparently reassured him, or at least he acted as though it did--going
to collect the Stone, then formally offering it as he had before. Rocking to
sit upright, Spike took it and bowed over it, immediately absorbed in whatever
effect he and the Stone were having on one another. It was like music, Dawn
thought, that only he could hear. But he was done fooling around: this was a
Working, and this time, Dawn could feel it as an uneasy jitter in her bones.
The vast shadows seemed to twist and loom eagerly. And Rayne approached her,
chanting, with glittering eyes. In his hand he held upraised a large, simple
dagger, without ornament or markings--as stripped to its sole purpose as a
vampire’s fangs or the taskin tooth swaying uselessly between her breasts.
It was like one of those dreams where you couldn’t run. Except, of course, that
it was real. Forgetting her bonds, trying to back away, Dawn fell, scrabbling
with her heels on the cavern floor, still trying to push herself away. Rayne
bent to take a fistful of hair and braced a leg behind her. She couldn’t move,
couldn’t breathe. The frantic beat of her heart was all she could hear until,
at Spike’s shout, everything went still.
Instantly, Rayne released her to go to Spike, who was curled up tight, arms
wrapped around his head, sobbing. The Stone had rolled away, ignored as Rayne
tried to determine what the problem was and Spike, plainly devastated, got out
that the Stone had “kicked back at him” somehow, locked him in an agonizing
feedback loop of some sort with no outlet. It was everywhere, sucking him out
of himself, he couldn’t help it, the harder he tried, the worse it got….
Seeming to accept Spike’s incoherent explanation without the least question, or
perhaps with confirmation beyond the words, Rayne looked around the cavern,
then made a gesture and spoke a Word. Everywhere, tiny lights appeared. Like
thin, still lightning bolts threaded through the rock. The cavern shone with
its own eldritch luminescence.
“Bloody hell!” the mage cried, sounding very like Spike in a rage, as the lights
began to fade. “Ashteroth damn her to the uttermost stinking pit of the Hell
of Tulips! That never to be sufficiently vilified witch has charged the native
silver! It’s become one huge magic sink, prepared to absorb anything within
its range, interfering-- It could hardly be worse if she’d blessed it, but that
would have taken actual power whereas the rankest amateur-- Here, it’s
all right, dear heart. You were not to know--it wasn’t your fault. I know it
meant a great deal to you for this to go well, for us not to be forced to the
fallback. You tried your best. It was a flawless beginning, truly. I could almost
feel the universe trembling on its hinges and beginning to open.” Blurting reassurances,
Rayne was down on his knees again, cradling Spike inconsolably sprawled in his
arms.
Definitely ewww, but Spike always had been a sucker for anybody who treated him
kindly, acted as if they liked him. Never having had much occasion, he’d never
had much defense against it, and had lost most of that, what with Buffy and
everybody, even Xander, treating him at least civilly. Some of them outright
loving him.
And Rayne was obviously a sucker for hurt/comfort. The more Spike hurt, the
more irresistible Rayne found him. Vaguely, she wondered if Spike had noticed
that.
By her watch, it was 12:06.
Yay, Willow! Dawn thought exultantly, lying trussed on the floor, aching
with relief and the buzzing aftermath of terror and panic. She wasn’t saved,
wasn’t rescued, but Willow had bought her a twelve hour stay of execution. Rayne
had missed his “moment,” and as she recalled, the next opportunity would be
mid-day…when Light was ascendant; away from the perpetual midnight of the magic-sink
caverns and shafts, the impregnable fortress.
Change the rules, change the game, maybe change the outcome.
But Spike, so puzzlingly strange, so far beyond her reach…that worried her.
TBC...
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