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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.
Spike returned to the factory in a really foul mood. Paying no attention to
the vamps variously sleeping or performing disorganized hand-to-hand fight moves,
he tramped directly back to his office, booted up the computer, and plowed into
the neglected translation, which gave him the usual eyestrain headache. Blinking
hard, he grimly kept himself at it until he’d finished the bit he’d been working
on, carefully zipped it with the notes he’d made, and transmitted it to the
Council of Watchers with an attached invoice and a request for confirmation
of receipt.
Ten hours, all told. A thousand dollars. Would go maybe halfway toward the first
batch of the smell, not including Willow’s consultant’s fee. Not counting payment
to the bloke at Oxford whose hobby was Droit, an extinct demon language, except
that the bloke mistakenly thought it was a variant of Chaldean. He’d done an
article on his hobby, which was how Spike had turned him up. A few of the translation
passages had Droit cognates in them, and Spike only knew enough to identify
the source language, not enough to read the bloody stuff. And the context had
been completely mystifying without them.
Turned out, one had been local slang equating whores with pomegranates: a compliment,
if you please; another had been a cognate implying a rival was full of shit.
All so very edifying.
Anyway, that bit was finally done.
Eyes shut, Spike slumped in his chair for a few minutes, vaguely hoping something
might lift or change. When it didn’t, he leaned to pull a half empty bottle
of JD out of a bottom drawer and washed down some painkillers from a top drawer.
Smoked about half a pack of cigs waiting for the pills to douse the headache
or the liquor to allow him not to care.
Pills finally took effect. He’d only been working four hours or so--not enough
for the headache to crank itself into an all-nighter.
Checking his watch, he figured it was time to put tonight’s sweep together and
returned to the main area, calling, “Here!”
When his crew had gathered, he started naming off those he’d take with him.
He was astonished when they started refusing. The reason? It was Halloween,
and vamps didn’t hunt on Halloween. Not even other vamps.
“It’s traditional,” Emil protested.
“And that’s when the really big fuckers are out,” skinny, be-pinned Stait put
in nervously. “Stuff that could make a mouthful of a vamp and not even chew.”
Spike didn’t appreciate being reminded that vamps were the red-headed stepchildren
of the demon world: regarded as impure halfbreeds, barely to be distinguished
from the humans most demons preyed upon. And he certainly didn’t appreciate
the suggestion there existed monsters that vamps should rightly be afraid of.
He appreciated least of all being refused.
He broke Emil up considerable and dusted Strait, who hadn’t really been working
out anyway, and it wasn’t as if there weren’t a dozen more queued up to fill
any vacancy, showing up in the sentry anteroom each evening snarling at each
other, putting on a huge show of how fierce they were, hardly any of ‘em able
to shed game face ten minutes at a time, damn fledges, but there was no lack
of volunteers eager to be accepted to the top of the current local food chain
and who the hell cared anyway. But it didn’t do any good: the rest were as adamant
as before. Spike reluctantly realized he could dust them all and still not get
his way.
They wouldn’t see that it was vital that the sweeps happen, and be seen to happen,
each of the four nights each week that the downtown was interdicted to vamps
from all other territories. To them, it was just another hunting night, except
that the designated prey was inedible vamps, not humans. That far, he could
push them. But not beyond.
And if he wiped out this current batch, he’d only have a new and even less experienced
batch to train up afterward so there was no point in it whatever.
“Fine!” he shouted. “The hell with the lot of you!” and tramped back to the
office to stock up on weapons. Hell with it: he’d go it alone, then. He really
really felt like killing something. For a long time and messily.
Some son of a bitch was still turning out fledges, against the new orders, given
the rate at which they continued to pop up. Some maybe were out of towners,
like Sue. Certainly not all of them. And the penalty for unauthorized turning
was protracted torture: demonstrations of technique for the edification of current
legitimate fledges. Spike wished he had the fucker trussed up and ready to start
on right now: might have been able to get a good hour in before he had to turn
the doings over to somebody else, and that was another thing his court lacked--an
expert torturer. Because beyond a certain point, Spike got bored and itchy inflicting
pain on a helpless victim. No contest in it. No satisfaction. And, if he admitted
it, a significant amount of ewww. Anyway, that was Angelus’ thing, not Spike’s.
Never had been, never would be.
And Buffy expected him to take that on with a soul, that'd want to sick up or
faint at the first smell of burnt flesh. Want him to nag Michael to cut loose,
once and for all, from that wily old wanker Digger: force Michael to choose
and maybe lose him, and for what--so they could be friends?When Michael
was so useful just the way he was and maintaining some kind of watch over Digger
was so important? Want Spike to give up blood altogether, fucking starve, on
account of the soul didn't think feeding was nice?
Soul had no more notion of vampire realities than Buffy did, and with less excuse.
Be disastrous to have the fucking thing stuffed back in him now, and he’d damn
well skin Red if she tried it, Spike thought, having a final few gulps of whiskey
to see him through the sweep.
But, he thought, after he’d dropped through the floor hole in the back corner
and started trudging through the main storm drain toward downtown, none of that
changed what he felt for Buffy or for Dawn. Gave him hellishly bad judgment
what he did about it, how he read or misread their signals. But didn’t
change the feeling at all. Doing without was already like trying to do without….
Not air, because he didn’t need that. Not even blood, because he could pretty
well ignore that too for quite a long time. He couldn’t think of any lack he
could compare it to. The love and the connection hummed in him every second:
the context that gave his unlife the only meaning that it had for him. Without
that, nothing made sense and everything was dust in his hands, ashes in his
mouth. Denying that, staying away from them, was gonna be the hardest thing
of all to enforce on himself. ‘Cause give him one unguarded moment and he’d
be there, trying to be to them what he couldn’t, not soulless; wanting from
them what they couldn’t give and he had no right to ask. Doing to them things
that would maybe end their answering love for all time. Things they could find
no way to forgive or overlook. Things he no longer knew to guard against or
might do reflexively, with no thought, when he was taken by surprise and simply
reacted; when his familiar demon was running the show.
Like today.
Buffy had good reason to be upset. Spike knew that, in his head. He just couldn’t
feel it because what he’d done was natural to him. He’d had to think and plan
and guess at reactions and impose strict rules on himself to keep from doing
it, over the past months. Since he’d first fed from her with her consent. Because
both impulses, fucking and feeding, arose from the same place and were locked
onto the same mark. It was unnatural to try to hold them separate or to give
in to them only in moderation. They weren’t moderate. They were the sort of
thing you forgot yourself in completely. Done timidly and only within limits,
keeping a watch on yourself every second, they were hardly worth doing at all.
Impossible not to want more. Impossible not to want all.
So he’d make do with nothing. Somehow. Because there was no alternative.
That didn’t mean he had to like it or accept the limits graciously. He’d take
out his fury and frustration on any vamp unlucky enough to cross his path tonight
and enjoy the hell out of doing it.
He found only fledges, and few enough of them, and ripped them apart for not
putting up a proper fight. For being on the wrong ground at the wrong time and
too stupid and new to even know it. He’d stop and shake them and demand, “Who
turned you?” and they’d gawp at him as though he were speaking Demotic Greek,
which he’d actually had to brush up on lately. Fortunately there now were dictionaries
online to refresh coursework done over a century ago. Fortunately Greek didn’t
change much. Dead things normally didn’t.
Vamps didn’t. Only him….
He ran across a Cygnos, a Face-eater, in a parking lot, and it gave him a halfway
decent fight before he got in a fatal axe-swing to the spine. He cleaned the
axe on its belly fur and left it, limping, looking for another good go-round
with something worth the time.
Because things worth fighting were abroad: he could feel them. Sometimes even
smell them. That little skeezicks, Strait, had the right of it: Halloween generally
brought out the biggest of the bads. Spike could feel a charge of extra power
shivering in the air--almost like a dim echo of the Hellmouth. It drew. And
it empowered…at least those able to make use of it. And it seemed a fair number,
human and otherwise, had gathered in Sunnydale tonight to take advantage of
it--nostalgia, maybe. Ignorance, more like. Expecting the Hellmouth to be churning
out disruptive energy full-bore, to assist and power their workings. Instead,
finding a quiet little suburban backwater where the streets were almost safe
after midnight.
Spike cast about in different directions, trying to localize the sensation,
but found nothing more remarkable than a big, bearded biker dealing grass, hash,
and some highly diluted cocaine on a corner. Fairly nice bike. A Honda Shadow,
maybe two years old, screaming red, covered with chrome. Nice detailing of a
fiery skull on the housing, just behind the logo. Saddlebags; LA tag. Spike
circled around and watched and thought for nearly an hour while the customers
came and went. He’d declared dealers fair game until the smell was ready and
available. But he hadn’t decided for himself whether to move beyond demons to
humans. The next step, inevitably, would be hunting, and he hadn’t made up his
mind about that yet.
While he was watching and considering, two scruffy guys passed in a late model
Cadillac, also with LA tags, and blew biker-san into eternity with a double-bore
shotgun out the window.
It was a bit messy retrieving the key, and the wad of small bills would need
washing before they’d pass, but Spike was pleased to have the matter of the
bike resolved so simply. He stowed stakes in the saddlebag and hung the other
weapons from convenient thonging, retaining only the axe, that rested well enough
under his leg, blade braced on a foot peg. Then he turned the key, stamped the
bike into life, and was cruising.
On Wilkins he spotted a fledge doing a bint in an alley and gave chase, but
the fledge skinnied through a break in a fence and Spike couldn’t locate him
afterward. When he swung by to check, bint had scarpered too, so no joy there
either. Nothing much doing anywhere, at least that he could find. All gone to
the mall, maybe--do their big mojo there. Biggest parking lot in town. Lots
of room. Except he wasn’t covering the mall tonight.
So he turned right onto Main, just a walking pace. Listening to the engine,
feeling out the bike’s balance, checking stability in braking. Getting acquainted.
Flash of metal caught his eye, and there she was: Slayer in patrolling togs,
with the big two-handed broadsword, pacing by the theater. Not clued by the
engine’s throaty purr, didn’t associate that with him anymore.
Spike didn’t question it, didn’t think back or forward. Was simply glad. Cut
the engine and coasted right up to her, within touching distance before she
jumped and spun, saw, and settled back onto her heels with a glare, like she
did when he surprised her, caught her right out.
“Vamps on bikes,” she said. “Is that gonna get to be a thing around here? Am
I gonna need a bike now to chase ‘em?”
“Not while I have one,” Spike said easily, setting a foot on the pavement to
balance the bike steady.
“Had that awhile, have you?” she asked, knowing better.
“Tonight.”
“Sure: lots of motorcycle stores are open after midnight, right?”
Spike bent his head, smiling, getting out a cig. Saying nothing. He knew the
drill.
“Where did you get it, Spike?” she challenged.
“Not where, how. And the answer is, the usual way. An’ before you ask, no. Didn’t
do the chap myself. Some humans drove past, did him for me. Shotgun. Didn’t
stop to collect the motorbike, strange to tell. So I thought I’d try her out,
see if she was worth keeping. Dreadful expensive, these motorbikes. High maintenance
an’ all.”
“Even worse when you actually buy them!”
“Expect so.” He got the cigarette lit, drew in smoke. “Wouldn’t know about that,
myself.”
Slayer, she scuffed her toe on the pavement. Not to actually put marks on the
leather, just one of her ways of showing hesitation, uncertainty. Not gonna
give him more grief about the bike, then. Have to find something else to rag
him about.
“It’s Wednesday,” she said.
“Thursday, actually.”
“Wednesday’s patrolling night. But you didn’t come.”
Spike studied his hands. Said nothing for awhile. Finally, “SITs would turn
out if you asked ‘em.”
“I wasn’t expecting them. I was expecting you.”
“Said I’d keep your back, didn’t I,” Spike reflected.
“Yeah. Often, even.”
“All out of ‘orphan’ jokes.”
A silence.
Suddenly all bright and perky, she asked, “So how’s your sweep going? Where’s
your crew?”
Spike gave her a look and admitted what she’d clearly figured out for herself,
which was more than he would have expected of her. “Yeah,” he said, pitching
the smoke. “Sort of quiet. Didn’t need anybody extra.”
“They wouldn’t come. Because, Halloween. And vamps don’t do Halloween.”
“Yeah. Nothing but fledges abroad. Did a few. And a Face-eater, in a parking
lot on Evans. Don’t know what it was doin’ there. Just the one, though.”
“Earlier, I saw a good couple dozen trick-or-treaters, checked ‘em out. All
genuine, far as I could tell. No present danger, except hyperglycemia. Cavities.”
“Let ‘em pass, did you?”
“Seemed the best thing. Though quite a few wanted to touch my sword.”
“I get that a lot, too,” Spike couldn’t help saying, though he managed to keep
a straight face.
Eyes meeting, they considered the insinuation.
Taking a stance, Buffy said, “You really can’t help it, can you? Give you an
opening, you’ll walk right in, every time.”
“You’re the one started it, Slayer, with the filthy innuendo. ‘Touch my sword.’”
“At least it’s a clean sword!” Then she gazed off down the alley, so as to be
looking in some other direction. “So,” she said. “You gonna patrol with me or
not?”
“Still thinking about it. Might do. Tradition an’ all. Good for your blood pressure.”
“And you gonna come home, sleep in a bed like a normal…person?”
Not looking at her either, Spike shook his head. “Thought that out already.
Doesn’t seem such a good idea right now. Stay to the sewers, the odd dumpster
and such till the factory’s fitted up against flame-throwers, rocket launchers,
cannon. Then I can settle down proper up there. For the duration.”
“And how long is the duration, you think?”
“Couple months. Six at most. Unless it all goes smash first, of course. Then…I
dunno.”
“Can’t you change your major or something? To Landscape Design or Small Pet
Management with a minor in hamsters?”
“Can’t do it, love. Got to see it out. See it through. Take my best try at it,
anyways.”
He waited for the bleat of Why, that he knew he couldn’t answer any way
she’d understand.
What she asked was, “Gerbils? And they say weasels make good pets. If you’re
into weasels.” More boot scraping.
So she was gonna leave him some room, still. Not come down with an ultimatum
or a stake. Bear with him a little longer, even though it was like to tear them
both apart. Accept his word that it was necessary, like he accepted her Slayer’s
necessities.
Like he was a person.
Spike bent his head and breathed. “Suppose you’re gonna want to patrol on my
fine new bike.”
“I thought you’d never ask!” she said, sliding on behind.
**********
The third time Spike slowed the bike to a barely-balanced crawl and went into
search mode--head lifted and turning: looking, listening, smelling, sensing,
with the intent beginnings of a frown or maybe just his forehead slightly thickened
but well short of full game face--Buffy attended too. Came up with nothing.
As he apparently did, rolling the bike a little faster again, with enough momentum
to keep them upright if she moved.
Although Buffy frankly didn’t care if their joint sweep turned up anything fightable--scrunching
up behind him on this bigger bike, arms around his waist, cheek against his
back when they went fast, feeling the easy, automatic balance and motion like
a dime set on edge and rolling, never quite wobbling or falling, was so familiar,
happy, and good--she tapped his shoulder. When he turned to see her out of the
corner of his eye, she leaned out a little and gave him a What? look.
He hitched a shoulder and lifted his chin in unconscious belligerence.
Something, that conveyed to her, that he was picking up on but couldn’t quite
locate or put a name to.
She held up three fingers, pointing out how many times he’d caught that indefinite
signal, whatever it was. He replied with a spread hand: more than three, then.
Something that’d been itching at him awhile.
Leaning close to his ear, she suggested, “School?” In response he bent the bike
around the next corner and opened up, the quiet suburban street smearing by,
streetlights flashing overhead and gone like a heartbeat. Outrunning their own
echo: nothing to hear but wind and the muted growl of the motor.
Bumping across the construction-rutted ground behind the school, weaving among
the tractor-trailers and double-wides doing service as temporary classrooms,
everything starkly lit by high sodium lamps, Spike halted the bike on the concrete
apron that fanned out from the rear door of the gym and cut the engine. Buffy
stepped down, asking, “Warmer?”
“Dead cold,” he responded, automatically fishing for a cigarette. "Nothing."
The high school was always worth checking out: with archeological logic of the
insane-o variety, this third incarnation of Sunnydale High was being constructed
on the rubble of the previous ones. Right on top of the multi-dimension portal,
the Hellmouth--once Sunnydale’s major attraction for tourists of the demonic
sort, now buried and silenced.
Spike had already swept the downtown; the local cemeteries and hot-spots that
usually yielded repeat business Buffy hadn’t checked in her patrol, they’d done
a drive-by on the bike. So if the mystery tingle wasn’t here, it must be someplace
else. And if vamps stayed home and cozy on Halloween, must be somebody else,
too. Or something.
Buffy dug in the drawstring stake bag hitched at her waist, found her cell phone,
and hit the #3 speed dial. After seven rings, the call was answered by a sleepy,
cranky Willow.
Pacing, phone tight to her ear, Buffy reported, “Spike’s picking up on the edge
of something. But we can’t localize it. Can you--”
“Geezul Pete, Buffy, it’s past three o’ clock in the--”
“Now, Will,” Buffy interrupted patiently, “what is the point of having a resident
witch if you don’t consult her? Deep breath. D’you notice anything odd? I mean,
odder than usual?”
“You’re with Spike?”
“Yes, Will, I’m with Spike. He’s got another bike, and we’re trying it out.”
“Neat-o! You two coming home together, then?”
Trust Willow to put a hopeful, romantic spin on anything. “Negotiations are
proceeding,” Buffy reported. “News at six. Meanwhile: this disruption in the
Force?”
“What’s the bike like?”
“Topic, Will.”
“What color is it?” Willow asked, unquenched.
“Well, it’s red. Lots of chrome. Big ol’ flaming skull on the front whatsit.”
“Bigger or smaller than the former breadbox?”
“Not much bigger,” Buffy guessed, eyeing the bike appraisingly. “Heavier, though.
And more back seat room.”
“Seat vinyl or leather?”
“Who can tell, anymore?”
From the bike, idly smoking, Spike supplied, “Leather,” and Buffy dutifully
reported it, reflecting on spooky vamp hearing. She also relayed his answer
to Willow’s next question about the make: Honda. Shadow. By Willow’s appreciative
reaction, a Honda Shadow was evidently a good thing to be. So Spike was a discerning
thief: swiped only the best he could get his hands on. Though to be fair, he’d
been uncomplainingly afoot for over a month. Not like he’d been actively shopping
for a replacement. The new bike was just serendipity in action, supply meets
demand. Abandoned, it’d followed him home.
“Better Spike than the police auto pound,” Buffy conceded, “fondly known to
teens as the Parking Lot of Doom.” Before Willow could ask about the bike’s
miles-per-gallon, Buffy again recalled her to the topic.
“Can’t tell,” Willow replied, following an audible yawn. “I put the mouth on
automatic ‘cause I was checking. Nothing’s sending up red signals, at least
for me. But, Buffy? That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Aetheric planes
are all roiled up tonight. On account of Halloween. Something ungood would have
to be right in my face before I’d notice. Did you check the school?”
“We’re there now. No joy.” Buffy absently pushed hair off her face. “Well, thanks,
anyway. We’ll probably check around a little more, then call it a night.”
“G’night, then.”
“G’night, Will.”
Stowing the phone, Buffy strolled sideways to the bike, her eyes on the gym
doors. Spike said, “Yeah,” and she looked around at him.
“You’ve gone in for mind reading?”
“You’re not hard to read, love. I cover your back. An’ I show up for your class,
I guess. Have some pattern to the days.”
Buffy made a decision. “And every day after work, I come up to the factory for
an hour or two and train. With anybody there willing to get knocked around a
little.”
Spike said only, “All right,” but she could tell he was pleased. “I’ll send
somebody down to the Magic Box, collect the gear. Might call Demon Girl, tell
her it’s all right.”
“I’ll remind myself.”
“And the weekends?” he asked.
Buffy smiled. “They’re for us. And for resting. Major snog: long and slow. Feed
you up good beforehand, though.”
Spike held out an arm, and Buffy let herself be gathered in. For once, nothing
urgent. Just together and touching, and the quiet happiness of being in each
other’s close company. He bent his forehead against her shoulder--against the
mark--and just stayed like that, and she felt it as the apology he’d seen no
point in making for what’d happened in her bedroom. She rubbed his back to reassure
him it was OK, or not OK but past, anyway, and all still good between them.
Dumb stuff happened sometimes, and if nobody died, then obviously it wasn’t
life or death. Both of them still here, still together.
He was being extra careful, she thought, and extra gentle with her now in compensation.
Holding back. He’d get over it. Below the surface storms and upheavals, down
deep there was an unchanging steadiness she always believed in even when she
couldn’t feel it. She didn’t have to touch it often but whenever she tried,
it was still there, comfortable and serene.
What let them last out the rough times…that always came. And always passed.
They had a joint sigh. Buffy always found that weird when it happened, considering
he didn’t need the air. It was an ending, an unspoken OK.
As she slid in behind, he started the bike. It had a lower, quieter note than
the aggressive blat he’d teased and tinkered out of the other one, that he’d
given to his vamp pal Mike as…leavegeld, she thought, retrieving the alien word
with dutiful effort as Spike heeled the bike sharply around and sent it on a
twisty course back among the double-wides.
It was as hard as…algebra, or some other very hard thing, to hold a place open
in her mind for vamp words, vamp concepts. They didn’t want to stick, or else
she reflexively shut herself against them so they bounced off, gone the next
second, leaving no lasting imprint. It was hard to take in the differences,
his differences, instead of dismissing them and insisting that only the commonalities
were real. An inner gatekeeper was continually on guard against the foreign,
the ambiguous. And especially against the demonic.
A Slayer thing, maybe, she thought sleepily. Should ask Giles….
Whether or not, she was now consciously at war with the gatekeeper: trying to
dismantle it, slay it, beat it down. Revoke its mandate to hold her shut against
Spike and everything associated with him. Everything important to him, that
Willow easily thought to ask him about and Buffy somehow seemed determined to
stay pig-ignorant of, stupidly and willfully blind to. Willow was open and interested;
Dawn was even geekishly avid, spouting Vamplore 101 even when actively discouraged.
So why Buffy had always felt compelled to keep herself pristinely shut, pure,
untouched by such things was a mystery to her. But she at least recognized it
now and wanted consciously to end it. Because however it arose, its effect was
to distance, reject, and refuse Spike. Feeling the distance more keenly in these
days and nights of his absence and in his soullessness, that made everything
more complicated and difficult, Buffy wanted to let him in. Hold him always
as tight as her arms around his waist, never farther than her cheek against
his back in the rush of wind. Always be welcoming him home….
“Slayer.”
Spike’s voice roused her, made her sit straight and realize she’d been drifting.
The bike was halted, softly purring, by the curb in a stretch of darkened fast
food outlets. She recognized the currently empty six-lane thoroughfare as the
Mall Extension: the new road that led to the mall, the airport bypass, and the
interchange to the main north-south highway a little past the west edge of town.
This far from downtown the stars were visible, high and chill, and the breeze
bore the salt tang of the ocean.
A few blocks ahead, slightly uphill and on the right, a bonfire lit the sky.
Large, open bonfires were not common or encouraged in Sunnydale. A definite
clue, Buffy thought.
“Been itching at me all night, no reason,” Spike commented. “So I thought, what
the hell, come take a look. I can feel it plain now: some gits doin’ a Working,
up there. Big enough, they need lots of open space, to duck or deflect any reflux
coming back at ‘em or in case they raise what they can’t handle. Don’t want
to start something like that in your basic closet. Blood magic, most like: dire
stuff--got that feel to it, anyway.”
“Hey, when did you get all expert on matters chanty and spell-casty?”
“Been reading up on it lately. So: how do you want to play it?”
The way he said it meant he already had an opinion. So she responded, “Gee,
I don’t know, Ollie--what d’you think?”
He scratched the scarred eyebrow, which meant he knew she wasn’t gonna like
his suggestion. She could generally read his body language just fine, she thought
smugly; only the peripherals she had problems with. He said, “Well, thought
you might want to stop here while I had a look-see. Has some advantage, bein’
farsighted. Get a bit of a look at what’s up beforehand, not just go barging
in blind….”
Buffy showed him a bright, perky smile. “Barging’s quicker. And has the new
wonder ingredient, Surprise. I like that better.”
“Barge it is, then.”
They unshipped weapons--Spike reversing the axe so it was blade-up, the haft
securely under his knee, Buffy dangling the broadsword low on the right, just
high enough so its tip wouldn’t drag on the pavement.
Spike said, “One pass through, then back, plow into ‘em, ditch the bike, and
go for the center.”
“Definitely hot,” Buffy agreed, and braced as the bike took off.
**********
Slayer wanted sudden, he could give her sudden. But a moment’s longer lead time
would give him a sense of the whole, where to hit first. With Buffy hanging
on with one arm, behind, Spike took the bike to the entrance at the opposite
end of the parking lot, rolling slow and soft, seeing what he could see.
A few hundred feet off, silhouetted against the bonfire, were a bunch of blokes
in monkish garb except colorful, reds and yellows and greens in the flickering
light. Half a dozen or so, gesturing and chanting: their voices reached him
faintly. Bloke toward the front, that would be the head Mage, was in black,
with silver trim: easy to mark him, then. Take him out first, demoralize his
chums, do them after.
Next to the fire, trussed up to poles, were the sacrificial victims. Blood magic:
stood to reason there’d be victims. Two poles were empty, surrounded by heaps
of coals. Two gone, then. Three still alive, all dressed in white ankle-length
tabards or rectangular ponchos or whatever the hell people were calling that
sort of laundry-wear at the moment, except that the head Mage was bending to
light the kindling around one’s feet. Goddam: virgin sacrifices. Spike wouldn’t
have thought it possible to corral five virgins past the age of twelve in any
mid-sized American town, let alone Sunnydale, whose working motto seemed to
be Live fast, before you die young. Not counting Dawn, of course.
Must be a major Working, to require the shedding of five virgin sacrifices.
Spike wondered idly what the spell was intended to accomplish, not that it mattered
since he and the Slayer were gonna bust it up. Five virgins. Even Jem-Har-Reesh,
a pompous arsehole who claimed to have overseen the erection of the Tower of
Babel, hadn’t needed but three to properly anoint the dedicated foundation stone,
if his lackey’s account was to be trusted.
Failing to find any switch to turn the bike’s headlight off, Spike reached with
the butt-end of the axe and smashed the bulb. No need to give more notice than
they had to. Pity to damage the bike so soon and all, but there you were.
Do the Archmage first, he decided, then concentrate the second pass on getting
between the colorful monk Mages, Acolytes, whatever the hell they were, and
the sacrifices. Stop the thing from going forward, and Slayer would likely be
pleased to rescue the remaining virgins, so that was second priority.
Rescuing virgins always sounded good, even though it wasn’t in Spike’s present
job description. He’d even let them go, if he had to: the bike was spoils enough
for one night.
He patted the Slayer’s knee to warn her, unlimbered the axe one-handed, and
let the bike show him what it could do.
Halfway to the target, they were doing sixty and still accelerating. Couldn’t
manage a lot by way of finesse at that speed, but Spike braced the butt of the
axe haft under his right arm, guided it with his left, and took the Archmage
through the face with the blade. Let the haft drop crossways, after, to hold
the bike steady through whatever cleavage Buffy was doing to the right, and
then they were past and he was braking hard, pulling the bike into the tightest
whip-about he could manage, all but standing it on its nose. As the bike straightened
and the rear wheel caught, grabbed, and started to push again, he saw a fireball
coming right at his head.
Bloody hell.
He leaned, shouting, “Down!” and laid the bike skidding on its side, Buffy springing
clear and running past, bringing the big sword around to lay into the remaining
rainbow monks. Spike heaved the bike off and started for the sacrifices, gathering
in the axe and choking up the haft, limping pretty bad because his right knee
and leg had been torn up fairly thoroughly in the skid, but he was still on
his feet and moving, so it didn’t matter.
The nearest girl, the one that’d been set alight, was too fully engulfed to
have much hope of, and he’d only catch fire himself if he tried. Went at her
anyway because the other two were safe, just needed cutting free. Squinting
against the heat, he saw a clear spot--rope, post, no flesh--and whacked it
hard. Rope was cut through. The burning girl toppled toward him just as something
hot hit him square in the back.
He did something, bled the heat off somehow. Didn’t think about it, just laid
the horribly injured girl down and limped on to the next, freed her, and likewise
with the third. Then he swung around to find out how Buffy was faring with the
rainbow contingent.
They were all down and Buffy had her phone to her face--calling Emergency Services,
most like, for the burned girl. Looking, all the while, straight at him.
All sorted, then. Bonfire seemed to have gone out some way: big fuming pile.
Odd.
Spike dropped down on the pavement to take a moment’s breather, rest the leg,
have a cig before he had to right the bike and get them gone. No rush: Sunnydale
Emergency Services were not paragons of haste on calls late at night, more’s
the pity.
Ex-virgins…no, ex-sacrifices, they were presumably still virgins--had run to
Buffy and they were all gabbling shrilly together. Fine, so long as it wasn’t
him. He felt strange and couldn’t seem to get his lighter to stay lit. Flame
would take and then immediately snuff out. Healing was kicking in, though: pain
in his knee was abating, and the whole leg felt as though some cool, numbing
salve had been poured over it. Probably do well enough by the time he had to
stand on it again.
He was still working on the lighter when Buffy came up, asking with odd hesitancy,
“Are you all right?”
The lighter chose that moment to quit being balky, and he finally got the cig
lit and took a drag. Needed it, somehow, more than usual. Still felt strange.
At last exhaling, he responded, “Nothing that won’t mend. Hope I’ve not wrecked
the bleeding bike.”
Using the axe haft for support, he stood and went back to the bike, still buzzing
like a toppled locust. Heaved it back upright and got it on its kickstand, to
check it out. Some chrome on the pipes scraped and the right side mirror cracked,
but otherwise no great harm he could see. And it was still running. Good enough.
As he patted it approvingly on the gas tank, his sense of unease flared into
alarm. He finally registered the brightening sky to the east. Bare minutes to
sunrise.
Not enough time to get Buffy home, but enough to reach the factory, he thought.
Swinging onto the bike, he said, “Sun’s coming. Stay, or come with?”
Her answer was to slide onto the bike behind him.
They tore off, racing the deadly light.
**********
When Spike hopped off the bike and dove for the alcove, he’d already started
to smoke. Buffy turned off the bike and took the keys, following more slowly,
trying to think through what had happened, what she’d seen.
Apparently there wasn’t gonna be a repeat of the phenomenon in daylight; but
in daylight, she probably couldn’t have seen it anyway.
The sentry had the sense to move clear, so Buffy barely noticed him, continuing
into the interior of the factory. Spike was headed toward his glassed-in cubicle
in back--no longer smoking and not limping so plainly. Remembering her, he wheeled
and waited for her to catch up, setting his hands on her shoulders when she
did.
“You look to be all in one piece.”
“Yeah. And you’re not all dusty.” She patted his face, unable to shed the anxiety
she’d felt when a red-clad mage had hurled a fireball at his back and there’d
been nothing she could do to prevent it hitting him. Whatever had happened,
it certainly wasn’t her doing.
“’M fine,” he responded predictably, turning with her toward the back, right
arm across her shoulders. “Long night for you, though: want me to send out for
some coffee?”
“No time. I’d accept one of your crazy-making stims, though.”
“Yeah, still got a few.”
While Spike pawed through his desk drawers, Buffy dialed Xander, whom she considered
her best bet at retrieval, construction work apparently being a dawn-to-dark
business. If she hadn’t already missed him….
Xander’s voice greeted her, “I refuse to believe there are now sunrise apocalypses.”
Reading the caller ID first thing, obviously.
Buffy responded, “No apocalypse, just me stuck out at the factory with no transport.
Can you swing by, get me home?”
A thoughtful pause. “Would it be indelicate--”
“Xander,” Buffy said wearily, “don’t be a poop-head. Just come get me, all right?”
“One rescue from sinister factory coming right up. I was just on my way out
the door anyway. Ten minutes.”
As she put the phone back in the stake bag, Spike was out by the gap in the
barricade, shouting for water. In a glass.
She’d now seen him as Dawn once had, in the last moments of the Hellmouth: an
Elf lord revealed in his wraith, Dawn had called it afterward. Or less fancifully,
Buffy’d seen what Willow reported seeing when she bothered to look--his aura.
Enormous flaming wings blazing against the dark, sucking in the flung fireball,
sucking every lick of flame out of the bonfire and the burning sacrifice, before
going to a bright shimmering web of spangles, and then vanished, all in maybe
two seconds.
She’d heard it, known it: how he’d survived closing the Hellmouth, after all,
and kept the inferno heat off those there with him, too: Dawn, and Anya, and
Mike. Knowing it was one thing. Seeing it…that was definitely something else.
When he came back with the glass of water and offered her a pill on the flat
of his hand, Buffy asked, taking them, “Do you know what you did, when that
fireball hit?”
"Didn't hit: dodged it."
"No, the other one. Afterward. When you were freeing the burning girl."
“That what it was.” He didn’t seem interested. “Didn’t do nothing. It just went
off, some way. Fizzled.”
“No,” Buffy said, and gulped down the pill, shaking her head. “You did it. I
saw you. Went all blaze-y. Like big wings. You channeled it.”
“Huh. Well, convenient, I guess.”
“Has it ever happened before?”
He got a cigarette out. His lighter, she noted, was now working properly, on
the first flick. “Not that I know of. Except the once, of course. Hellmouth,
and all.”
“You’re still doing it,” Buffy said, wanting a reaction proportionate to the
vision--Spike as an angel of Light. Lacking only a flaming sword.
He was checking his watch and made an annoyed face. “Two hours before Ken shows
up. Want to have her roll the bike inside, so I can look it over proper.”
He just wasn’t getting it at all.
“I can do it,” she offered, puzzled and frustrated by his lack of interest.
“That’d be fine. Ta, then. Give the whelp my love and I’ll see you tonight.
At the gym,” he added, when she continued to stare at him blankly.
“Right. The gym.”
"Skip the training today: you'll need the rest. Don't forget, though, about
calling Demon Girl, that I'm gonna have the gear picked up."
"Right. I'll remember."
His mental checklist complete, Spike dropped onto his cot and was asleep, just
about instantaneously. Buffy took another sip of water, wondering how long it
took the mental-alertness non-sleepy pill to kick in. Leaving the glass on Spike’s
desk, she wandered outside just in time to meet Rona arriving with the morning
delivery of tribute blood. The SIT was annoyed to have again been given no directions
where to bring it. “I mean, he’s all over the frickin’ map, different every
day, and he never bothers to call, and how does he expect me--”
“He has a lot on his mind,” Buffy cut in soothingly, accepting the handles of
the styrofoam cool box and passing the box smoothly off to the sentry, still
taking no note of him except as an anonymous presence to her left. She was trying
to decide whether to ask Rona for a lift home or wait for Xander, since she’d
already called him out here anyway.
Pointing, Buffy said, “Rona, Spike’s got another bike. Give me a hand getting
it inside?”
“That’s Spike’s? Cool! Mike see it yet?”
"Maybe. I don't think so. I don't know." Despite his odd courtship of Dawn,
around in the yard or on the porch every night for months, Buffy wasn't sure
she'd know Mike unless he stood before her with a big sign.
"He'll be green! Maybe they'll have a race."
"Why?" Buffy asked, inserting the key and turning it until the handlebars unlocked.
"Oh, they're always doing stuff like that. Dominance games. Like all vamps do."
"Oh."
The problem wasn’t the weight, it was the balance. With Buffy steering and Rona
pushing, they bumped the motorcycle up the single step into the anteroom. Not
knowing how the kickstand worked, Buffy leaned the bike against a bank of file
cabinets lining the far wall. Spike could have somebody take it from there.
One of his crew. Maybe even this sentry, whom she still hadn’t looked full in
the face.
With a sense of Aha!, she recognized it as an instance of gatekeeper-enforced
selective blindness. Caught herself at it!
She turned and confronted the sentry. In human face, he looked about twenty.
Brown hair, brown eyes, no visible marks or scars; taller than she was, perhaps
5’ 10”, weight maybe 180. Wearing the colors, of course. Buffy demanded, “What’s
your name?”
The vamp gulped, nervous and surprised to be addressed. “Called Deuce, Miss.
Slayer.”
“Get the bike inside where Spike can look at it.”
“Sure, Miss.”
“‘Slayer’ will do,” Buffy responded dryly, then made herself add his name: “Deuce.”
“Right.” He didn’t seem quite sure if he was supposed to salute.
Idiot, Buffy thought, without rancor, and went back down the step into
the sunlight to wait for Xander, since he’d be peeved to arrive and find her
already gone.
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