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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.
“But the Hellmouth is a badness. Major badness!” protested Willow earnestly, picking pills off her sweater sleeve. Important to do that or you could become all pill-y.
“But think of it,” Amy insisted, sitting even farther forward on the yellow couch, as if she’d launch herself at Willow any minute. For somebody who’d been in frozen flames until half an hour ago, she hadn’t missed a beat in her transparent attempt to drag Willow into the badness too. Willow wasn’t buying it, not a bit. Willow was all about the topic.
“We’re talking about Spike here,” Willow pointed out, as forcefully as she could with her hand full of fuzzy sweater pills.
“Hell with Spike, he doesn’t matter,” Amy came back at once. “What’s one vamp, more or less? You have to screw the spell practically sidewise to get magic to take any notice of vamps at all. They’re nothing. Magic-null. Practically magic sinks, black holes of power suckage. I’m embarrassed every time I have to open the Arcanum, it’s so baby it practically has training wheels, you know? And those terrible invocations! Geez!”
Willow had to smile a little because the invocations in the Arcanum were particularly dumb. Every noun dangling five or six adjectives, practically gasping for breath it was so smothered, like the sort of really hideous, embarrassing romance novels she didn’t read anymore, except on Valentine’s Day, and that was only to give herself a cheap chuckle.
“Somebody who can create a solid stasis, stop Time in its tracks, what does she want with a training-wheels text like the Arcanum?” Amy rolled on like a river in flood, that would terrify all the small furry animals but probably not the birds, that could watch, perfectly safe, from their perches in high trees, except of course if they’d nested too low and they’d be worrying then, all right, all those little downy chicks peeping away for worms and icky stuff like that except there wouldn’t be any, with a flood. Willow wondered if worms could drown. Frogs would probably like it, though--big ol’ flood like that. Willow didn’t like frogs.
And sure it was great to talk magical shop with somebody who really understood, who could make jokes about the stupid, out-of-scale woodcut illustrations in Branham’s Afrits, Imps, and Malign Spirits, like offering a picture of an actual horse to accompany the text on nightmare, at least it was supposed to be a horse but it looked more like a deformed goat and Tara had always giggled over that one when they hit it looking for the footnotes about incubi, succubae, that directed the reader to the really useful sources, but no, no, no, Willow was sticking to the topic here, with no digressions.
“The sparkly powder--”
Amy made a big get-out-of-here brush-away disdainful gesture, like waving off a bad smell. “Vamps won’t believe anything works if they can’t see it working. So you got to build in all these stupid special effects, flash and whistle, or they won’t believe it’s any good. The more flash and noise you give ‘em, the more powerful they’ll think it is. Utter savages. It was a bitty little nothing spell. The deathwish, that was solid and should have got the job done all on its own. So the follow-up, that was nothing because no more should have been needed and wouldn’t have been, if you’d let things run their course. Never thought you’d stoop to defending a vamp against High Magick!”
“Well, he’s my business partner--” Willow began defensively.
“Oh no! The mutt’s got you, too! And here I believed you really were down and sincere with the gayness--”
Really put out, Willow threw a Silence at her with a snapped word and a gesture, and Amy couldn’t break it. Couldn’t say the release-spell because, well, Silenced. Opening and closing her mouth like a guppy. That should teach her better than to question the sincerity of Willow’s gayness! Hadn’t even re-connected with Oz when she’d had the chance, despite Oz being so cute and sweet, but she’d said, “Oh, no, I’m gay through and through and nothing more to do with the likes of you, buster!” Or at least words to that effect. So what, if she’d gotten all upset when Spike had kissed her, right in front of Buffy and everything? Anybody would be upset and all indignant, promiscuous vamp kissage like that, it just wasn’t right and she’d told him so in no uncertain terms, too, once he’d put her down. Spike wasn’t the hulk and hover type: more compact and sinewy, a little like Oz that way, and it was easy to forget how freaking strong he was, lifted her up and twirled her around like she was nothing, a feather, and it was just being so surprised that’d kept her from exerting Force and making him put her down, right that very instant! And she could have, she really truly could have, but Buffy wouldn’t have liked that, nobody allowed to beat up on ol’ Spike but the Slayer, and you always had to keep that in mind.
“Vamps are not mutts,” Willow declared haughtily, picking sweater pills, “just because other demons look down on them. And the Order of Aurelius is nothing to sneeze at, either: an ancient lineage. And you wouldn’t call him a mutt if you’d ever seen his aura: it’s ginormous. Three times normal size, at least. And he deals with the Powers direct, and is practically an ancient even though he isn’t even 200 yet: he can channel! Yes! It’s how he closed the Hellmouth. Of course the amulet helped, you always have to have a focus, I mean a catalyst, to get things properly started, but he took it from there, burned out practically three whole city blocks and several stories down, huge crater, and now he’s Master of Sunnydale and everything. So he’s a perfectly respectable business partner to have and anybody that says different is just ignorant!”
Willow waited for Amy to admit her mistake, but Amy didn’t say anything, just making those dumb fish faces. Oh. Willow spoke the Release.
Amy made a few experimental noises, like ummm and ah, then said, “Well, no wonder the incendiary spell didn’t set him afire, then, if he can channel. I don’t know what anybody expects if they don’t tell me these things!”
“So it was an incendiary--? You gave a vamp an incendiary spell to throw at another vamp, no gloves or anything, at close quarters? And nobody went up? Flamed out? What kind of incompetent--”
“Oh, no, no,” Amy cut in hastily, “that was just the sparkly flash effect and who knows, it might have caught him, vamps are so freakin’ flammable, after all. But that was just the decoration, the, well, fireworks.” Amy smiled broadly at her play on words, which Willow considered pretty lame and didn’t smile at even a little. So Amy sobered, frowning anxiously, and ran on, “Not the main effect, just the decoration, the delivery packaging, like I said before. And shouldn’t even have been needed, like I said. The deathwish should have been enough, all by itself, and would have been, if you hadn’t interfered. It was never made to stand up against the powers of a witch of your stature. Just one of those silly Keystone vamp feuds, after all, everybody running around, bumping into things, big poof, dust everyplace…. And like that,” Amy concluded meekly, seeing that Willow was not prepared to be amused.
“So what was it?”
Amy knew she wasn’t gonna get away with any more dancing around the topic, going everyplace except to the center. Not around Willow, nosir. Amy hung her head and folded her hands. “Nothing much. I didn’t think it would even be used. A Be as you were, is all.”
“A regression spell?” When Amy bobbed her head affirmatively, Willow asked incredulously, “On a vamp? What were you trying to do: turn him human again?”
“Oh, no, really, I know it would be no use against a major transmogrification, like being a vamp. Can’t undo that. But all vamps start out as fledges, you know? All grrr and uncontrolled and dumb. A fledge could never put together an empire or, well, a town. It’d have trouble stacking two bricks. Never have the patience, and nobody would listen to him anyway. After all, a fledge, for cripe’s sake! And Digger seemed to like it, he’d have no problem putting a fledge in its place, even though with a vamp as old as Spike, it would naturally take a while to unspool and have any effect anybody else could notice. Digger’s patient, for a vamp. Unusual that way. And he pays right up in advance, well, a little held back for completion and satisfaction, but since I’d already quadrupled the price over the cost of the materials, I don’t mind that, you know? Vamps have no idea of what things cost. They make ideal customers that way. Except they don’t much have any money, either. So pretty much a niche market. But with business so bad, and me with start-up costs and all, you have to take some pretty dismal commissions just to get the business off the ground. Like you and this cockamamie smell. Not even remotely worthy of your gifts.”
Although Willow was rather proud of concocting the smell, somebody who didn’t realize how complicated and detailed it was, layering a smell, working out the release, persistence, and sublimation rates, could think it sounded pretty piddly. Learning the basics, and even many of the subtleties, of the perfumer’s art in a couple of weeks when it generally took lifetimes was no small achievement. Even if it didn’t sound like much, viewed from outside.
Willow shrugged. “Like you said: it was a commission. Passes the time between classes. I’m in college now, you know.”
“That’s what I heard. What’s your major?”
“Double major: communications theory and chaos theory. I suppose sometime I’ll have to change schools, study with a major Chaotician, but--”
“Communications theory and chaos theory? But isn’t that the same thing?” Amy waited eagerly for Willow to see her joke. “Like a redundancy?”
“Tautology,” corrected Willow aloofly. Not funny. And Amy was trying too hard.
“And here I am still working on my GED. I really missed out, all that time as a rat.”
“Well, the mayor’s commencement speech would have been a happy miss,” Willow reflected. “And I could have done without the time I tried to destroy the world. But overall--”
“You did?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
"Of course. I understand. Tell me about that girl you had with you before, then. The tall one with no shape and the mop on her head. How could you pull all that power out of her? I mean, I assume she's a virgin, but geez!"
Amy’s nose was twitching. Habit, probably.
**********
Sunday mornings were generally a good time to get hold of people, have meetings. If they were churchgoers, they likely weren’t the sort of people Spike would be dealing with anyway. Those accustomed to late rising would have to learn to adapt to his schedule.
Sunday’s agenda was packed to bursting, if Spike was to get to sleep at a decent hour in the afternoon. The first appointment was shortly after the sunrise delivery of the tribute blood ration. Spike made a point of being extra polite to his visitor, thanking him for coming out so early and offering him morning food, coffee and pastries, that humans seemed to find suitable, before going to the gap and yelling for Huey. Needed some sort of paging system, intercom, something like that, he thought, walking back.
When Huey came in, Spike introduced them. “Huey, this is Rudolph Murchison. He’s a lawyer, represented that nest of Harnish by the bowling alley on that trespassing and unlawful deprivation of enjoyment and what-all case a couple of years back. Unlike most people in Sunnydale, he pretty much knows what’s what, has no problem dealing with demons.”
Huey nodded. When the human set down his cup, stood, and offered his hand, Huey shook it, faintly surprised but agreeable. Then they both sat down.
Spike went on, “He’s agreed to act as my agent for daytime things. Mr. Murchison, Huey’s my castellan. Would translate as something like major domo. Takes care of internal arrangements, procurement, personnel maintenance, that sort of thing. Anything Huey says will already have been cleared with me, so you won’t need a separate go-ahead. You’ll be dealing mostly with him. Want you two to get acquainted, rough out what we’re gonna need done in the next few months, what contacts need to be set up, and like that. A reliable car is first, to start the airport pick-up. Huey, Mr. Murchison will arrange for that today, till we get a regular courier who can move around in the daytime. Not gonna lumber Rona with that. All right?” When both nodded and made noises of agreement, Spike left them to it.
In the southwest corner of the factory, there was a hatch in the floor. Pulled open, it revealed a descending stairwell where Spike understood the cheerleader, that Cordelia, had contrived to fall and get herself impaled on a piece of rebar one time. All cleared out and fixed since then, of course. The steel staircase led to a large, windowless open space: once the factory receiving/shipping area, now designated as the dormitory. The space was completely dark: Spike had to change aspect to see.
On a cluster of mattresses laid on the floor, about two dozen vamps slept, mostly in tangles of two or three, completely motionless. Predictably, the new fledges had bedded down together toward the rear, feeling more secure that way, with the mature vamps between them and any intrusion.
It took awhile--the advent of daylight took fledges down like a hammer-blow--but Spike managed to get Sue something like awake and led her to the empty freight elevator shaft, where three picnic tables, the sort with built-in benches, had been put. Yawning, she braced her elbows on the table and sagged against Spike’s arm, saying blurrily, “My hero. You came for me.”
Shaking her arm made her chin fall off her fists. “Wake up, Sue. Listen here.”
“Yeah. Listening.”
“Can’t take credit for you getting picked up in the sweep. You hear me?”
“Yeah…. All right. Glad all the same. That place, it’s a hell-hole.”
She’d never seen a hell-hole. But no use to tell her that. And no good telling her she’d only been picked up because Mike had made a point of collecting her, whereas Spike had left it to her whether she’d stay down or stupidly stand and be returned to Digger. She’d want to think it was rescue and meant something, some special favor and concern, and it was no good giving a fledge notions of her own importance. Only meant trouble, and fledges were enough trouble as it was.
She was filthy. She stank. Her hair hung in dull, matted tangles. Exposed skin was livid with bruises. Have to do something about getting shower facilities set up. Had water, though only cold; had drains. Spike made a mental note to have Huey see to it. Friday night, he’d showered at vacant Casa Mike, but that was hardly convenient. And the condition of his people reflected on him.
“Since you’re here,” Spike went on, “there’s something I want you to do. Wake up when I’m talking to you.”
Jostled, she yanked her head up, staring wildly. “Listening. Really.”
“All right. Want you to chat up the new fledges, see what you can find out about who turned ‘em. Any description, any detail. Smell, approach, where they were taken, anything. Gonna get that fucker. You hear me?”
“Yeah. Got it. Hungry,” she whined.
All the fledges were in desperate need of feeding up. Enough that they’d always feel hungry, even after a full feeding. Be awhile before that would let up.
“That’s being seen to. But you’ll all have to earn your way. Lose half the day to sleep, then eat the other half, if you could. Bunch of babies.”
“Yeah. Babies,” she said with a drowsy, dopy smile. She leaned, her cheek tipping onto his shoulder. Like she trusted him or something. Didn’t mean anything, except she couldn’t stay awake two minutes at a time.
Spike sat a minute or two, deciding what to do. No harm to just leave her to have her sleep out where she was. Vamps could and did sleep anyplace they’d fit, so long as it was away from the light. He’d slept on a bare sarcophagus for years. But she hadn’t. Didn’t yet know the half of her strengths or vulnerabilities. Didn’t begin to understand what she truly needed, beyond the impulses of the moment.
So he sighed and gathered her up and replaced her among her moveless fellows. With a fledge, some allowances had to be made.
Then he went back up to check in with Buffy by phone, at the start of her day, then catch up with e-mail, deal with responses to certain recruitment initiatives, until it was time to leave for his next appointment, out at the mall. He'd already missed and rescheduled it three or four times. Putting it off, he admitted. So past time to finally get it seen to.
**********
Willow spent the rest of the morning researching spells, then phoned a very annoyed Anya to open the Magic Box so Willow could pick up the needed materials.
Groping in boxes and canisters, Willow remarked snappishly, “I don’t know why your nose is all out of joint, since you were here anyway.”
She’d found Anya in overalls, her hair wrapped up in a scarf, diligently sweeping the floor of the annex around display cases relocated there with the clear intention of exploiting for retail purposes the space freed by its being vacated as Buffy’s training room. Shelves, in different stages of construction, were being built to line the walls. With the appropriation of the annex, the shop had nearly doubled in size. Chivying the dust and scraps from various angles and herding the pile toward some designated point known only to herself, frowning intently, Anya replied, “It’s a distraction, and I don’t need distractions. I have all of one day to prepare this area and set out the stock attractively.”
Separating a tangle of dried asters on a countertop, Willow said over her shoulder, “I’ll come back and help, after I’m done at the factory. And maybe Buffy could put in an hour or two. She has no plans today, at least that she’s told me.” Getting no reply, she looked around. “You did ask Buffy if it was all right to coopt this space, didn’t you?” Her question grew softer and more uncertain as it progressed, and she suddenly knew Anya had done no such thing. “Or even Giles?” she added hopefully.
“Giles sold his interest to me before he left. Since he’s resident abroad now, it’s much simpler that way: with any degree of foreign ownership, the paperwork is appalling.” Grabbing a pump bottle, Anya crouched down to spray the front glass of a display case with the same intent vigor as she’d attacked the floor. “I’m the sole proprietress. Why should I ask anybody how to set up my displays?”
Not wanting to get in a brangle with Anya, especially when they both knew she’d been high-handed and wasn’t going to admit it, Willow said brightly, “Here’s a list of what I’ve taken. Do you want to ring it up now, or wait till I--”
Anya swooped past, collecting the list on the way to the register. So Willow muttered, “Guess deferred payment is not an option here.”
Making grudged change of a twenty, Anya asked tartly, “And how is the Power settling in?”
“I don’t know,” Willow admitted. “I mostly don’t see her much.”
“You mean you avoid her,” Anya corrected. “Wise choice.”
“It makes me a little nervous trying to research how to get her to leave,” Willow admitted, putting the change and the materials away in her tote.
“Don’t,” advised Anya, passing by to resume her cleaning. “She’ll leave when she’s good and ready and not before. Try to interfere with her, you’re liable to end up in the cornfield. Like in that story?”
Willow shivered and took her leave.
It was what vamps might consider a nice day, Willow thought, looking up through the windshield: solid overcast sliding in from the west, threatening rain. No sun to be seen anywhere. The factory, on its desolate rise, looked particularly unwelcoming against the gunmetal sky. Mostly, Willow admitted, the place gave her the creeps, though short of a full wiggins, since she knew any vamp attacking her would be severely disciplined. Afterward. Which wasn’t all that reassuring, now that she thought about it….
Bustling up to the sentry room, she was disappointed that the vamp wasn’t anybody she knew. “I’m here to see Spike. I’m his business--”
“He ain’t here.”
“Oh.” Willow looked at her watch, confirming that it was past noon. “When is he coming back?”
“Didn’t say.”
Willow started to ask if she could wait here, then thought better of it. The vamp didn’t seem much for small talk, and she hadn’t brought a book. Backing out, she said nervously, gesturing, “I’ll just wait in my car. Over there. Would you let me know when he gets back?”
The vamp just looked at her.
Returning to her car and locking all the doors made her feel marginally more secure, even though with the overcast, any vamp could walk right up and rip off a door. She reviewed spells, trying to choose which would be best to try in that scenario. Or the other six she promptly came up with.
When half an hour had passed, she dug out her cell phone and punched in Spike’s number. Half the time he had it turned off and the other half it was dead because he’d forgotten to recharge it, but he was getting better about that, she thought contritely. On only the eighteenth ring, the connection was made, and she had Spike’s voice in her ear, demanding, “What?”
“Spike, it’s me, Willow. I’m up at the factory. Where are you?”
“What’s up?”
“I found out what the sparkly dust was. A regression spell. I’ve brought what I’ll need to dispel it.”
Silence.
Willow offered, “Would it be better if I met you someplace?”
More silence. Then, “No. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes. If you can’t wait--”
“Oh, no, I’ll wait,” Willow assured him. She was quite willing to help out Anya but certainly wasn’t in any hurry about it.
“Oh. All right, then.” With his usual abruptness, he ended the call.
After half an hour fiddling with her radio, trying to find anything but sermons or bluegrass, Willow hoped she’d waited long enough and made another try at the sentry post. The vamp opened the inner door for her without comment, so she concluded he’d had fresh instructions. She hustled through the factory, which seemed utterly empty and deserted until something made her look up and she saw a vamp perched on a cross-girder, looking down at her like a gargoyle. That spooked her. Clutching her tote against her breasts, she hustled a little faster--back to the barricade and through. The office was as dark as the surrounding space. As she approached cautiously, the desk light was turned on, and Spike straightened, looking toward her. That was much better.
Plunking her tote down on a chair, she started getting the materials out, commenting, “It’s an insidious thing. Slow and insidious. Pushing you back to earlier and earlier mind-sets, and--”
“Appreciate your concern,” Spike broke in, leaning against the back wall, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not.”
“Excuse me?”
“To be blunt, let it alone, Red. Keep your stuff. Maybe later. Some other day.”
“You don’t want me to lift it? But why?”
Spike took his time lighting a cigarette. “I know what a regression does. How it acts. Nothing like fatal. A nuisance, at best. But…I been finding it handy, like. Things clearer for me.” He smiled at her ruefully. “Maybe I used to be smarter than I am now. Dunno. Just not in any rush to get it lifted. No harm in waiting, is there?”
“Well, probably not for a day or two, I guess. I wouldn’t put it off longer, though. Spike, it’s influencing you: how you think, how you react to things. It wasn’t made for your benefit, you know.”
“That Amy, she make it?”
“Yeah. She admitted it.”
“So she’s out of the stasis?”
“Yeah.”
“On fire, you said. Burned real bad, was she?”
“Well, no. Not even singed.” That was odd, now that Willow stopped to think about it. An effect of the stasis?
“Ahuh. What’s her last name?”
Willow stared at him, puzzled. “Madison. Amy Madison.”
“An’ am I recalling right, she was one of your old chums? High school? Pre rat?”
“Well, not so much chums, but we knew each other, yes. Traded spells, talked about what we’d managed to accomplish. Just starting out then. Part of the time I knew her, she was her mother. It’s complicated.”
“Ahuh. And she’s been de-ratted, what--about a year?”
“A little more, but about,” Willow agreed.
“Come on fast, then, hasn’t she. Considering all that time she missed. Went right for the strong stuff, didn’t mess about with levitating pencils and such. Adapting spells an’ all, casting a deathwish…that worked.”
Willow didn’t see what he was getting at. Awkwardly, twisting the tote handles, she admitted, “She introduced me to Rack.”
“Oh: Rack! Big time power-sucker. I’m all sorts of impressed,” Spike commented sardonically.
“Yeah, well, he’s dead.”
“Ahuh,” Spike said, as if he knew she’d killed him. “But before that, Rack introduced her around, I think. Made herself some connections, back when the power was free for the taking. When the Hellmouth was still blaring at 2,000 decibels on the dark mojo scale.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Just curious, is all. I got a witch, Digger’s got a witch. Trying to size up the opposition. She got more power than you, Red?”
“No way!”
“You sure of that?”
“Absolutely positive!”
“She got more usable magic than you? ‘Cause a lot of things, you won’t do. You hang back from the strong stuff. Probably sensible. But if she uses all she has, and we’re always playing catch-up, reacting to something she’s already done, and you’re being dainty about what you’ll touch or catch hold of….”
Willow felt wounded. “Don’t you have confidence in me, Spike?”
“Don’t like magic,” he said abruptly, frowning toward the cot. “Don’t like messing with it. Don’t even like thinking about it, though that’s mostly what I do, nowadays…. With the translation, an’ all. Like to get the magic out of the equation altogether. Keep things to what I have good hold of, myself. What I know.” He looked up, straight at her. “I know my limits. Don’t know yours. Don’t want to catch you in an awkward spot, where you’d have to go past what you’re willing to do, what you think is right, to get the job done. You have scruples, and I respect that. Don’t believe this Amy puts quite the same restrictions on herself. Catch up with her eventually…but maybe not soon enough to do me any good.
“Have to think it out a bit more, Red, before I decide how to play this part of it. The magic part. No criticism of you. None whatever. But I knew this was gonna get ugly sooner or later. Why I thought it’d be a real bad idea to have the soul along. Built-in limits, y’see. I’m more of Amy’s cast of mind, now, than I am yours. So I need to think it out some more. Sorry I made you wait. Had something to see to. And to me, now, it’s like three in the morning would be to you. Not a real great time for deciding things.” Stubbing out the cigarette in an ashtray on the desk, he came and tucked back into her tote the few things she’d gotten out of it, then took her arm and started steering her toward the exit. “I’ll think about it and let you know. I’ve put it on the agenda.”
Just past the barricade, Willow spun and threatened, “I’ll tell Buffy!”
“You do that, if that’s what you think is right.”
“No,” Willow admitted, deflating. “But Spike--”
“It will all be fine. Just clears the air, clears the decks a little further. Don’t you worry about it.” Turning, he started back toward the office, adding over his shoulder, “’F Rubio--that’s who’s on the door, Rubio: means ‘red’ in Spanish--if he gives you the least lip, you have my permission to turn him into a porcupine. Gerbil. Whatever you please.” A wave of his hand dismissed the matter.
Since he’d refused, there was nothing Willow could do. But she wasn’t happy about it. Decidedly not happy.
**********
By Spike’s watch, it was 2:03 in the morning. Looking at the dark window from the sidewalk, he pushed the #2 speed dial. After two rings, he got a cautious, “Who’s there?”
He said, “Come down to the porch. Bring a coat, it’s nippy,” and ended the call.
A light came on.
She’d come, he thought, because she was curious. Like tying a bit of rag to your rifle’s reamer, poking the reamer upright in the ground, and retreating back behind a rise to wait for the pronghorn to come investigate the flutter. Or so Digger, who should know, had told him, upon a time. When Spike had first come to Sunnydale, there’d been no pronghorn in the folds of its land, only a Slayer who used much more direct methods.
He put down his bag of doings and settled on the glider. Before a cigarette’s worth of time, she came tip-toeing out, bundled up good and warm in her borrowed body. Spike didn’t say anything, just pitched the remainder of the cigarette and took from his bag the knife and the length of branch that were the beginning of it.
Opening the knife, he started. Green wood, but winter wood: it had left off growing for the season. The bark was stripped off easily by the sharp blade. Then he set about working on the bulges, to smooth them out, gradually sharpen the angle from butt to tip. Never make a perfect round but didn’t need to. In the past year, he’d cut thousands of stakes. His hands knew their work without need of eyes.
He told her about the winter wood, how it wasn’t seasoned and would warp with time, but that was no problem if not given time to do so. She settled warily on the far end of the glider, watching his hands.
“The tricky part,” he continued, “is finding the right tree. The right age. Sunnydale has a gardening club, plants a few trees each Arbor Day. That’s a holiday they have here, out of guilt for so many forests leveled, trees cut, so the erosion sets in. And not a proper holiday, just one of those made-up ones, like Secretary’s Day. Anyway, they’re a proud bunch: got their own website and put their back records on there. What tree planted where in what year. Each a year-old sapling. So wasn’t hard at all to find the right one. Had the choice of a Bradford pear, a pin oak, and a maple. Oak is always good, strong wood, so I picked that and took this bit, clean against the trunk, not leave an unsightly nub. A tree of her years.”
“They don’t talk to me,” said Lady Gates in a sudden burst. “They’re afraid of me. Even without looking into their minds, I know. They’re also angry.”
Steadily working, Spike responded, “Well, that’s not to be wondered at. You’re powerful and unknown. That pretty well kills casual conversation. And you’re keeping shut away someone they know and love and feel protective toward. Imprisoned, like. I’m a bit angry with you on that account myself.”
“You don’t fear me. Why not?”
Spike hitched a shoulder. “What difference would it make? You’ll do what you please, regardless. An’ you’ve known what I was from the beginning, yet considered I’d make a useful instrument. Smooth to the hand. Like this instrument here. ‘F you meant to end me, you’d have done it long since.”
Having finished the preliminary rounding, he passed the stake across for her inspection.
“It feels slippery,” she mentioned, touching it with a cautious fingertip.
“That’s because it’s green wood, love.” The endearment slipped out reflexively. “Only a couple of hours from living. Hold it. Test it out. Tell me what you think.”
She closed her hand around the thick end and made a couple awkward stabbing motions. Then she went away within herself a moment and changed her grip: underhanded, stabbing up. More confident. Drawing on what her other, smaller self knew.
Though he couldn’t smell or feel her, Bit was here. An onlooker.
Passing the stake back, she touched one place with a fingertip. “It’s weak there. A lump, deep inside. Too deep to be cut out.”
“I’ll allow for that. Thanks.” He got a marker out of the bag and began the sigils, the stake braced against his knee.
Lady Gates watched him inscribe it around and down its length. She asked quietly, “Do you imagine this to be a weapon against me?”
Spike laughed. “Didn’t even occur to me you’d think that. No, ‘course not. Bit of a problem here, you see: I can’t get in ‘less I’m invited. And she, having half a brain, won’t invite me. So she has to be brought out to where I can get at her.”
“Wood from a tree of her years. Yes. I see now. But you’re no mage: how will you power it?”
Spike finished the markings and lifted the stake by the tip so the writing could dry completely. “All I’ve ever had is myself. Red, she tells me now that I contain magic--silly little regression spell I been hexed with. This will give some teeth to it. One tooth, anyways. Bite deep, this will. Trick is getting it from me out into this.”
Laying the stake aside on the glider seat, he pulled from the bag a small brass bowl into which he poured the ingredients he’d swiped from the Magic Box. Not hard: he had a key to the back door. Demon Girl had asked for it back, but Spike wasn’t yet ready to give up that access. If she noticed her stock was down, he’d pay her full value.
“Has to burn hot,” he explained, “to make up for the green wood, that will want to smoke and smolder, not burn.” Setting the bowl on the metal glider seat, he dug out his lighter and lit its contents. It sprang up into white, intense flame. When he was sure it was well caught, he quickly dropped the bark and shavings from the stake on top. The flame hesitated a second, then accepted the fresh fuel.
As he applied the knife to the thick of his right palm, below the thumb, she reached out reflexively, crying, “No. Don’t!”
“Power’s in the blood, love. Has to come from someplace. Won’t come out of the air, except for those made a study of it.” When the flame accepted the blood, too, Spike stuck his bleeding hand into it.
It was painful, of course. Waves of pain running up his arm, old impulses making him want to flinch away. But that didn’t signify. He’d closed that hand around molten metal and burned it to the bone. A little pain was no deterrent. His hand obeyed him, not the pain. Felt a little strange, but he’d expected that.
When the blood broke through the surface of the skin, he figured that should be enough. Pulling his hand back without haste, he forced it shut around the stake, methodically coating it. Just enough. Not wet or thick enough to smear the sigils.
“People got this idea,” he said, “that vamps burn real easy. But it’s just the sun, something in the light, that hates us and does us harm. Regular fire, it doesn’t burn us any more than other folk. No less, but no more.”
Holding the stake, he put his hand back into the flame. There was a threshold, he’d found. Had to be at the point of actually kindling to set off the reflex. Couldn’t do it otherwise. As he felt the flex, he took the pain, and whatever might be of magic within him, and pushed.
Fire was gone, just like that. Every spark. Setting the stake aside a bit awkwardly, he drew ointment and a roll of gauze out of the bag with his good hand. Holding them out to her, he commented, “See, that’s what I needed you for. Miserable trying to wrap one hand with the other. And knots are a bitch.”
Slowly and with great care she spread the ointment over his hand, front and back, and then wound it around with the gauze, attending closely that the wrap was even and laid smooth. “I’ve seen mummies wrapped.”
“Have you now.”
“And in other places, other rites. It’s charged,” she reported, with a small nod at the stake.
“Good to know that.” With his good hand, he got out a cigarette. After a tap to settle the tobacco, that cigarettes didn’t need anymore, what with the filters and all, he put the end in his mouth and passed her his lighter. She got it open, consulted within, and got it lit. “Ta,” Spike said, pulling in smoke and accepting the lighter back from her.
“May I have the knife, please.”
He passed that to her and she divided the gauze, to have two ends to wrap in opposite directions and then tie in a neat knot, cutting off the excess afterward.
She asked, “How long will it take to heal?”
“Be fine by morning. Surface, is all. But the salve takes away some of the sting in the meantime. And the wrap holds it there.”
Having slid closer to bandage his hand, she pulled away again and tucked her bent legs up close beside her, sitting as small as she could, as far away as she could get and still be in the glider. “I take your point,” she said abruptly. “You’re not afraid of pain if it serves your purpose. Is that how you think of me? As pain to be endured?”
“Haven’t given me much reason to think of you otherwise. And you’re no good swap for Bit.”
She stood, lanky long-legged and sudden, brushing her hair from her face in a very Dawnlike gesture. “You can’t force me.”
“Know that. Hope you’ll decide you don’t want to keep her much longer. When you done what you came for. Enough, anyway, to begin it. ‘Cause this is not your place. Not what you’re for. And we miss each other, Bit and me. She would have had fun tonight, and wanted to come along to see the end of it. But that’s not what you want at all.”
“No,” Lady Gates said softly, hugging her coat tight against her. “No.”
“Get yourself back to bed then.” He put everything back into the bag. “Shank of the evening, to me: got places to go, people to do. Good night.” Stepping down the stairs, he added, “Good night, Bit.”
“G’night, Spike,” Dawn’s voice responded behind him.
**********
Spike’s right hand was sore and seeping through the gauze when he set the kickstand and left the bike near Amy Madison’s house. Necessary.
With her name, it’d been easy to find her: she was in the phone book, and a simple search had yielded her birth date and her mother’s high school achievements and honors. Amy hadn’t had any of those, though, having been a rat.
The thickened sky was finally delivering its threatened rain in gusts and drifts. No sensible person would want to leave a warm, dry house to stand in it. Spike’s fingers, forced to close around the stake, provided the necessary coercion. Broken blisters and blood freshened the magical affinity between the spelled wood and the witch. She came, dream-eyed, in a long flannel nightgown the rain soaked and weighted against the contours of her body.
He’d slid into his vampire aspect so she’d know him. Holding the stake that in turn held her, he circled her once around, widdershins, then twice more. The stake was eager to get at her, like half of a pair of magnets pulling to unite, but Spike held it fast. It was important that she understand.
“You bespelled me twice now. Not gonna let you do it a third time. I can embed in wood the harm you tried to do me. And deliver it back.”
He plunged the stake deep in her shoulder. She cried out: a wordless, inarticulate noise. Because the regression spell he’d bound to the wood with his blood and pain was no longer gradual. A year’s growth in comprehension was instantly erased; and a rat knew no defensive spell to undo the sorcery or the damage.
Terrified and in pain, glancing about her wildly, the witch dropped to fingers and toes and skittered away into the rainy night.
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