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Kantayra
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy, Spike, Dawn, or Anya. They're all Joss'. Everyone else, though - those're mine. ~_^ I'd also like to credit the movies 'The Shinning' and 'Clue', as well as two episodes of Star Trek TOS that helped inspire this plot. (Don't ask. ^_^)
Summary: Seven years ago, Spike fled Sunnydale and his abusive relationship with Buffy. Now, he and still-best-friend Dawn are working together in their own demon hunting agency. However, everything changes when they're called out to investigate a chain of supernatural murders at Cascade Mountain Lodge and discover that Buffy's on the case as well. Will they be able to solve the mystery before they become the next casualties? And what does the solution have to do with the events of seven years ago?
Author's Note: Hey, it's the beginning of a new Spuffy saga! Yes, this one will be rated NC17 eventually. (Aren't they all?) And, yes, I am doing the infamous 'Buffy and Spike in a haunted house' theme, but I'm hoping it will be quite different from all the others out there. However, I do want to warn people that some parts of this will be a bit darker than some of my other sagas. This story assumes that everything through the S6 episode 'Dead Things' occurred, and it deals heavily with the events of that episode - hence, the darkness. Just wait it out, don't trust anything you see, and trust me that things will turn out all right in the end. ~_^
Dawn flicked on the turn signal in her beaten old Chevy and turned off of the highway at the exit to Black Hills Falls. The head that lay beside her on the seat stirred in response, and the deathly still body of her partner finally showed signs of life.
With a lion-sized yawn, Spike finally fully returned to the land of the unliving. He smacked his lips a couple of times, ran a hand through his spiky platinum hair, and wearily sat up once more.
“Are we there yet?” he asked for the umpteenth time, sounding for all the world like an impatient six-year-old on his way to Disneyland.
Dawn grinned at the image that thought invoked. “We’re at the town,” she agreed. “I wanna stop for gas before we head up to the lodge, though.” She cast a sly look Spike’s way. “Y’know, if you hadn’t made us take this gas-guzzler, we’d be there already.”
Spike’s eyes widened in horror. “My Baby will never be driven in snow!” he said, terrified for the health of the ’91 BMW he’d managed to acquire in mint condition at dirt-cheap price.
Dawn merely chuckled and rolled her eyes. She could still remember the evening when Spike had excitedly dragged her out of the office, puffed up as proudly as a peacock, and patted the black hood of his recent acquisition. Dawn acknowledged that it was a nice car, but Spike’s pampering of it verged on comical at times. Although, given that the New York winters had rusted out her own car to the point where she was afraid to wash it lest the body fall apart, maybe he did have a point.
“Don’t worry,” she assured him, patting his hand condescendingly. “Your Baby’s safe in the garage where I can’t get my evil hands on it.”
Spike humphed at her casual disregard for such a lovely vehicle and sulked even more when the gas station they pulled into didn’t have opaque overhead protection that would allow him to leave the vehicle. A bit of magic added to the tinted windows made the Chevy itself safe for flammable vamps while looking perfectly normal.
“You want anything?” Dawn inquired, getting out of the car.
“Coffee,” Spike groaned, “and those chips that have all the different flavors mixed together.”
“Excess caffeine and combo snack foods for the vamp who can’t decide,” Dawn grinned. “Got it. Try not to burn up in the sun.” With that, she slammed the door and moved to pump the gas.
Spike shifted about in the front seat uncomfortably. Long car trips always made him edgy. He needed room to stretch out and some way to release all the pent up energy that accumulated within him during the day. He greatly pitied Dawn for the ultra-hyperactive vampire she was going to have to put up with that evening.
He heard the sound of the gas pump shutting off outside and impatiently watched Dawn head for the building. His foot was tapping out a rapid staccato on the floor, and his fingers were twitching, and…dammit. He couldn’t do a sodding thing about it. There was only one solution for this type of problem – try to sleep some more and hope that it’d be sunset by the time he woke up.
He flopped back down lengthwise across the front seat just as a blue SUV pulled up to the pump across from him…
* * *
Buffy let out a sigh of irritation as she pulled the blue SUV she’d rented into the gas station. She didn’t need the gas – although she undoubtedly would if she didn’t stop winding through all those mountain roads, lost – but there was nowhere else at the station to park.
Angrily, she slammed door of her vehicle shut and stalked into the building. “Cascade Mountain Lodge,” she asked the young Asian woman at the cash register. “Where is it?”
“You just have to take 35 straight down to Highway E,” she began. “Then—”
“June?” the voice of one of the other station attendants shouted out.
“Just a second,” she gave Buffy an apologetic smile. “I’m with a customer, Stan!” she called out to the back of the store in irritation.
“Are we out of those combo chip bags?” Stan called back.
“If there aren’t any on the shelf, then, yes, we’re out!” She rolled her eyes at her coworker’s incompetence.
Buffy gave her a sympathetic smile.
“You turn right and take Highway E north for about a mile,” she continued her directions, “and then you turn left onto Cascade Mountain road. It’ll be the first left turn, but you’ll have to watch out for it because the sign’s down.”
“Hence, why I could find it,” Buffy said in realization. “Thanks,” she added with a smile. “And, where’s your bathroom?”
The cashier dug around in a drawer behind the counter and pulled out a wooden block with ‘WOMEN’ written on it in blue permanent marker, a shiny gold key attached to the end. “It’s right at the end of the beverage aisle,” she pointed.
“Thanks,” Buffy repeated, taking the key and heading for the restroom.
* * *
A Key of a different sort stood one aisle over, debating her purchase. Spike may have been a hundred-year-old immortal being, but he was mighty particular about his snack foods.
What the hell? Dawn shrugged, picking up a bag of each of the individual components of Spike’s favorite junky combo. We’ll probably need some extra munchies in the hotel room, anyway… She drew the line at mixing them all together for him, though. After all, she wasn’t his mommy.
She turned into the beverage aisle just as the door to the women’s room shut in front of her. Paying it no mind, she quickly picked up a bottle of Evian water for herself and poured a cup of decaf – Spike was hyper enough as it was, and while he claimed that he could taste the difference between decaf and normal coffee, his taste buds weren’t actually sensitive enough to tell the difference, and Dawn knew it.
Satisfied with her purchases, Dawn approached the counter.
“This it?” June asked.
“And pump number six,” Dawn agreed. “By the way, do you know the route to Cascade Mountain Lodge?”
June wondered if they should just hand out little instruction placards…
* * *
Buffy shuddered as she wiped her hands dry on a course white paper towel. Gas station restrooms were always the nastiest places. This one had at least been roach-free, but the powdery cracks in the walls left little doubt that the persistent buggers inhabited the room when no one was looking.
The message written on the door of the stall in the precise black ink of the true graffiti artist, proclaiming ‘The rat queen lives!’ was even less encouraging. She once again cursed the elusive lodge whose restrooms would undoubtedly have been much cleaner.
She approached the counter just as a woman, clad all in black and hefting a rather large brown bag stepped out the door. “Thanks a lot,” Buffy said once more to the cashier as the other woman’s exit set off the tinkling of the door chimes.
“Don’t mention it,” June agreed with a smile, returning the key to its drawer.
Buffy escaped the gloomy little station and headed back to her rental vehicle, pausing only briefly to shake her head at the rusted out Chevy parked across from her. At least I’m not stuck driving that, she consoled herself before hopping into the blue SUV and driving off.
* * *
“Dammit, Spike!” Dawn exclaimed in irritation, searching around on the floor of the vehicle together with her frustrating friend. “How do you ‘lose’ a lit cigarette?”
“You threw the pretzels right at my head!” Spike retorted, feeling around under his seat.
“Only because you were smoking with the window closed,” Dawn defended herself.
“You want me to burn alive?”
“You couldn’t wait five minutes?”
“’ll have you know that—ow!” Spike whapped his smoking hand against the seat several times, extinguishing the flame that had singed it.
Dawn calmly reached down, found the cigarette, and tossed it out the door. “You are so hopeless,” she announced, turning her keys in the ignition.
Just as her car started, there was a huge squeal of tires on slick pavement.
“I didn’t do it!” Dawn leapt back from the steering wheel as it had just sprouted eyeballs.
“No, genius up there did it,” Spike commented, sipping his coffee. “’ave I lectured you lately about SUVs?” he inquired innocently.
Dawn merely groaned. “Only about a thousand times,” she whined, heading out of the parking lot.
“Well, ‘s true,” Spike countered. “I mean, look at the size ‘f that thing.” He gestured to the blue vehicle in front of them. “The only reason anythin’ needs to be that big ‘s to run other innocent drivers off the road. And for what? To protect some yuppie rugrats who’re prob’ly better off as lunch. An’ the bint obviously ‘as no clue how to drive.”
“As opposed to you,” Dawn teased, “who would never get caught in a police chase because you were going fifty the wrong way down a one-way street.”
“I was chasin’ a were-cheetah!” Spike insisted, wide-eyed. “An’ there was no danger. I have excellent reflexes.”
Dawn merely rolled her eyes.
* * *
Buffy glanced back in the rear-view mirror to see a woman with brown hair and dark sunglasses who seemed to be arguing with the thin air beside her.
Crazies, Buffy her head. And from New York, too. She checked the license plate. No wonder…
For a moment, a second alternative crossed her mind, but she shook her head. “Nah…”
* * *
“Call Siggy,” Dawn ordered, “and see if she’s gotten any info from the Council yet.”
“’m not your bleedin’ secretary,” Spike crossed his arms over his chest defiantly. “You do it.”
“Hello, I’m driving,” Dawn pointed out.
“That’s never stopped you before,” Spike grumbled under his breath.
Dawn sighed. A day cramped up in a vehicle with Spike. It had to be somewhere on her list of top-ten most infuriating things to do. “Just do it,” she said wearily.
“Who d’you think you are, orderin’ me around?” Spike sulked.
“Your boss, for one,” Dawn felt obliged to point out.
Spike muttered a bit but picked up the cell-phone and dialed Siggy’s number. “Hey, li’l lamb,” he said in a husky voice into the receiver. “’S the big bad wolf.”
Dawn snickered.
Spike cast her a dirty look before something Siggy said caught his attention. “Uh-huh,” he nodded. “Uh-huh…Uh-huh…I see…Uh-huh…”
Dawn was convinced he was making his end of the conversation as cryptic as possible just to tick her off. That was the part of the Spike-as-brother analogy that always worked best – he was damn good at annoying her.
She continued to listen to Spike’s vague affirmatives and occasional bizarre pet names, heading down the highway in search of their turn-off. There was a brief incident where the blue SUV in front of them suddenly hit the brakes before diving down a side road, but Dawn merely cursed and swerved before continuing on their way.
“Ta then, luv.” Spike blew a kiss into the phone before he hung up.
“Well?” Dawn asked curiously.
“She’s still searchin’ for a lonely, horny British male to get her into the Watcher’s archives,” Spike explained.
“Huh,” Dawn said with a wicked grin. “I guess you don’t fit the ‘get into the archives’ part. Too bad, ‘cause otherwise it’s a perfect description of you.”
Spike merely huffed and frowned at the highway intersection up ahead. “Oi, you’ve gone too far,” he pointed out. “The turn-off’s s’posed to back that way.”
Dawn frowned. “I didn’t see any…” She remembered where the other vehicle had turned in front of her and sighed. “Right,” she agreed, making a screeching U-turn at the intersection to go down Highway E in the other direction.
“And you say my drivin’s dangerous…” Spike grumbled.
* * *
The old woman at the desk looked up to see the peppy blond in a light pink ski jacket with white fake fur trim enter the lodge. Tourists, she sighed inwardly before plastering a smile on her face to greet the young woman. “May I help you?” she asked politely.
Buffy sat her two bags down on the floor and pulled off the thick mittens she was wearing to combat the cold. “My name is Buffy Summers,” she agreed.
The old woman appraised her a second time in surprise. This was a demon hunter? “Yes, I believe I talked to you on the phone,” she nodded. “My name is Ms. Danvers. I own the lodge.”
“Ah, you’re my employer,” Buffy said with a bright grin, shaking the old woman’s hand and studying her more intently. She was frail and hunched over, but Buffy had no doubt that she had once been a tall woman. Her hair was thin and white, her face deeply wrinkled, and her eyes had deep circles beneath them, as if she hadn’t been getting enough sleep. Probably due to the string of deaths. “Has anything else happened since we last talked?” Buffy inquired, signing the guest book.
The old woman nodded. “Everyone’s gathering together for a conference this evening,” she stated. “It meets at eight in the recreation room. Please, be punctual.”
Buffy blinked. “Meeting? Everyone?”
“Everything will be explained then,” Ms. Danvers assured her. She handed Buffy her key card. “Your room is 123.”
“Good, easy to remember,” Buffy smiled, looking at the hotel map the other woman pointed to. “Eight then? In the rec room?” She located that on the map as well.
“Thank you so much for coming, dear,” Ms. Danvers agreed with a slight smile. “You have no idea how much it’s…appreciated…”
Buffy just waved, lugged up her heavy bags without the slightest effort and headed off for her room…
* * *
And Ms. Danvers turned when the door opened once more, ushering in a pair of figures. Now, these were what demon hunters were supposed to look like. The pair was clad from head to toe in black, each sporting black boots, jeans, shirts, and leather jackets. The woman’s clothes were tight and trendy, and her long auburn hair was tied back in a no-nonsense ponytail. The man’s shirt highlighted his defined musculature, and his bleached white hair and scarred eyebrow gave him a dangerous edge. The two moved perfectly in time with each other, obviously from years of fighting in sync.
Ms. Danvers smiled up at them. “Your names?”
“Dawn and William Summers,” Dawn provided, turning back to Spike. “You’re sure?” she asked.
He nodded. “Place looks bloody familiar. Could’ve stopped by durin’ my travels with Dru, I s’pose…” he added thoughtfully.
“Surprisingly few neck trauma reports in the past fifty years,” Dawn shot back, signing the guest book. She turned to Ms. Danvers then. “You got us the two-room suite, right?” she inquired.
The innkeeper nodded. “It’s just the two of you?” she frowned, slightly baffled as to why the couple would need the second room. “Because if you have any children—?”
Spike gulped. “Children?” he repeated in disbelief.
“The hubby’s holding out, huh?” Ms. Danvers gave Dawn a knowing smile. Well, that, and he’s a vampire…
Dawn’s face reddened as well. “Um, Spike’s my brother,” she clarified, embarrassed.
Ms. Danvers blushed at her mistake as well. “Oh, sorry, dear,” she winced apologetically. “I didn’t know.” Especially with him being dead and all…
“Right then,” Spike had the sudden urge to flee.
“Why don’t you go bring our bags in?” Dawn suggested helpfully.
Of course, Spike just had to be difficult about everything. “’m not your bleedin’ valet,” he grumbled under his breath before going off to do just that.
Dawn rolled her eyes before noticing Ms. Danvers’ nametag. “Ah, we talked on the phone,” she shook the other woman’s hand.
“Indeed, we did,” Ms. Danvers agreed.
“So, anything new happened?” Dawn inquired as Spike walked by with an armful of bags, muttering under his breath the whole time.
“You’ll get a full report this evening at the meeting,” Ms. Danvers explained. “The recreation room at eight.” She went back to search for the keycard to room 121.
“ ‘Meeting’?” Dawn repeated curiously. “With whom?”
“I’ve brought in several other specialists to help solve the problem,” Ms. Danvers said simply. “It will all be explained at the meeting.”
“Right.” Dawn decided to let it drop. She was tried from the long drive and the aggravating vampire in the car. Investigation could occur after sleep. She took the key from the innkeeper.
“I’ll see you both at eight,” Ms. Danvers said with a smile just as Spike entered with the last of their bags.
Dawn rolled her eyes as he unceremoniously dumped them in the middle of the lobby floor right next to the rest of their stuff. “Think we brought enough weapons?” Dawn couldn’t help but tease.
Spike gave her a mock-offended huff. “No such thing ‘s too many weapons,” he insisted.
“You are aware that, as the woman, it’s my job to pack a ridiculous amount of stuff, not yours?” she inquired sarcastically.
He merely grumbled in response, his body taut with the lack of activity during the last day and his mind obviously just as agitated. “Which room?” he demanded gruffly.
Dawn handed him the key. “121. I’m going to get a quick look at this place before crashing – guarantee that we haven’t actually walked onto the set of ‘The Shinning’.”
Spike chuckled at that. The carpets were a pale blue-gray, instead of that creepy red, but he’d had similar thoughts when he entered the hotel. Too much space, too few people, too fake a pleasant ambience. “’S long as Jack Nicholson doesn’t start chewin’ the scenery,” he agreed, making the first haul down to their room.
Dawn smiled at that before venturing in search of the recreation room…
* * *
Yum, was Buffy’s first thought as she stepped out of her room and caught sight of the sexy, jean-clad ass of the man in the suite next to her just as he closed the door behind them. Spike-quality yum. She hadn’t seen a butt that nice in years; unfortunately, her brief affair with the vamp had left her with impossibly high standards of virtually every sort.
She headed back out to the lobby then, resigning herself to the task of lugging the rest of her luggage back to her room. Hmm, I wonder if that’s why they call it ‘luggage’? She wondered absentmindedly. Something of the lugging. And people mock me for my use of ‘slayage’?
The lobby was conspicuously empty as she went through; even the woman at the front desk was gone. Now, that must be the world’s most boring, sucky job.
Liking the ambience even less when there was no one there – there was something about big, open spaces with suspiciously cheerful ambience that seriously wigged her out – she trotted out to her vehicle, not even noticing the battered Chevy parked beside it.
Of course, she admitted to herself, it could just be because of all the people that have died in this place… But she was used to places where people died a lot. She Who Hangs Out In Cemeteries, right? This place felt different. Pain, anguish, torment… It almost seemed like the walls were whispering to her, calling to her, pleading…
She gave the empty coffee cup in the back seat a suspicious look. That’s what I get for O.D.ing on caffeine, she chided herself before overloading her arms with various suitcases and returning to the building. Stupid tingly senses…
* * *
The small woman carrying so many bags that Spike couldn’t even see her face collided with him, just as he was bending over to move the last of his and Dawn’s things to the common room of their suite. An explosion of suitcases followed as their bags scattered to the four corners of the lobby in a confetti shower of luggage.
“Bloody ‘ell!” Spike groused. “Watch wear you’re goin’, you daft chit!”
Buffy blinked from where she’d landed on her ass right behind a rather large suitcase. No. Way. She shook her head, convinced she was hearing things – maybe this is part of the haunting… – and rose to her feet to see…
There was a moment of complete, beautiful silence.
The two dumbstruck estranged lovers gaped in unison before both simultaneously moved to rub their eyes. When the sight of the other persisted, Buffy cautiously reached out to touch his sleeve and…
The same cool leather she remembered. At the same time, Spike felt the familiar heat of her hand.
There was an awkward pause, and then:
“Spike?”
“Buffy?”
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