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Barb
"There are seven."
Tanner flinched and froze in the
middle of the sidewalk, nearly dropping the filthy mesh bag he was carrying over
one shoulder. He looked up. There was one modest patch of winter rye
amidst the water-conscious landscaping in front of the Wells Fargo Bank, a pool
of smooth, perfect, luscious emerald green surrounded by gravel and the pale,
serrated leaves of succulents. The guy with no eyes was standing in the
middle of it, and around his feet the grass had turned brown and dry as the
winter-killed Bermuda it was supposed to be hiding.
From the moans and whimpers
behind him some of the others saw the guy and some didn't. Dana, Jim and
Ramon stumbled to a halt and clung to one another, staring about them with wide
fearful eyes, while Lizzie, Blue, Matches and Carmel kept walking, straggling
halfway down the block before they realized they'd been abandoned. Dana
turned uncertainly back and waved. Tanner felt an internal lurch and
looked down at his feet. The toe of his right shoe had slipped over the
crack between one block of cement and the next. Shit, shit, shit.
Reality yawed, ley lines crossed, worlds spun out of kilter... Trying to control
his panicky breathing, he slid his foot back ever so carefully, and slowly,
slowly the universe around him swung back into balance. He could hear the
ponderous groan of the heavens realigning themselves overhead, the metallic
screech of the stars sliding back into place. "Don't!" he hissed at the
eyeless man.
Who ignored
him, and repeated, "There are seven surrounding the Slayer. The Key.
The Watcher. The Vampire. The Witches. The Demon. The
Man. When the Balance is disturbed the pattern is always fragile.
Pull upon the correct thread and the pattern unravels."
Tanner shifted
impatiently. The names dropped into his mind, stones into a dark pool,
leaving interference patterns of ripples behind. He would have known any
of them in an instant now: the dark-haired girl, the bespectacled man, the
peroxide-blond vampire from the poolhouse, the small redhead and the taller
blond college girls, the girl with the sharp inquisitive face who ran the Magic
Box, the dark-haired youth with the silly grin. "What do you want me to
do?"
"Take my hand," the
eyeless man said, voice as sere as the dead grass. Tanner hesitated for a
second, but he'd promised. He stretched out his hand and the eyeless man
grasped it. It was cold, cold and dry and withered. Not a dead
thing, no, worse, a thing whose life had been stretched beyond endurance until
existence became meaningless. He could feel the pulse beating in it, slow
and awful, twitching against his palm, and then his own heart was pounding in
rhythm, matching that feeble sickening twitch beat for beat. The eyeless
man began to chant. Where thou walkest, there we follow
Where thou bitest, there we swallow
Where thou
breathest, take we life
Where thou strikest, cause we strife
Where thou speakest, weave our lies
Servant of
the Bringers, rise!" Twinned
heartbeats throbbed in his ears, nausea built in his too-empty stomach.
With each pulse dark energy flowed from the eyeless man, black, viscous, and
chill, sinking into his bones and congealing within his flesh. Tanner
yanked his hand away and stood shivering, clutching it to his breast and flexing
fingers stiff and stinging with cold. His heart beat of its own accord
again, hammering against its cage of bone, but the mad rush of blood through his
veins did not warm him. "What...?"
"You are our
instrument. Your touch shall open the gates of their hearts and they shall
walk through the door into shadow."
Tanner licked his lips,
tasting a residue of salt and bile. "Listen," he said, "We gotta hunt."
"Hunt then, but remember
your promise. There are lives reserved for oathbreakers far worse than the
one you lead."
Tanner
hunched his shoulders, brows dipping in a sullen frown. "I keep my
promises." There was no answer; the eyeless man was gone again, but the
circle of dead grass where he'd stood remained, an urban crop circle to mystify
the arriving bank tellers the next morning. Tanner pulled his jacket more
closely around his shoulders, feeling the draft where the cool night air seeped
in through the torn place in the armhole. He massaged the palm of his
right hand with the thumb of his left, trying to work some feeling back into the
numb flesh. "Dana!" he called. "Get back."
He waited while Dana herded
the others back to the group. Eight. Eight of fourteen.
Blondie out of commission because of her hands, and four more too far out of it
to be of any help. Ronnie stuck back at the camp to look after them--and
that would cost him dearly in the weeks to come, since Ronnie would miss out on
tonight's hunt and would soon be in no condition to play backup. "Dirty,"
he whispered. "All torn and dirty." Couldn't be helped.
"We're going to split up,"
he said as Dana and the others shuffled back into line. "Like we did that
time in July, right? Dana, you take Matches and head out for the
park. Set up the circle behind the bandshell." He took the bag off
his shoulder and handed it to her. "You remember how to do that, right?"
"Bright and rapture we see
the coming day," Dana said. She couldn't talk worth crap, but like silent
Ronnie, she still understood pretty well, even on bad days. She was
fortunate that way.
"Yeah. Ramon, you take everyone else and find us a new friend."
Stunned silence. At
last Ramon ventured, "Tanner... you always..."
"Tonight I can't." He
tried to keep his voice calm and level. "I'll meet you at the park
later." Tanner started off down the sidewalk, paused, and looked back;
Ramon's face was sickly with apprehension in the yellow light of the street
lamps. "Don't worry. I know you'll pick someone good."
The
bar-cum-mediocre-restaurant was called Benders this year. It wasn't a
dive, but it wasn't too classy, either--one of those establishments you found in
every college town where any lack in the quality of the food and drink was made
up by the variety of farm implements and old road signs tacked up on the
walls. The patrons were mainly students from the nearby UC Sunnydale
campus, along with a sprinkling of locals and the occasional high school senior
trying out a fake ID.
Pro to hanging out with Spike, Xander thought as the waitress filled
their glasses and set down the pitcher: Spike is old enough to buy beer.
It was difficult to tell
how old Spike had been when he was turned; late twenties, probably, but he had
one of those lean, ageless faces that looked more or less the same from
twenty-five to fifty. The salient point was that he didn't immediately
inspire waitresses to ask for his driver's licence, which was lucky as he didn't
have one. Xander passed the vampire a twenty under the table and Spike
handed it to the waitress with that half-smile and sideways, heavy-lidded glance
which for some inexplicable reason made waitresses go all gooey. "Keep the
change, luv."
Con: Spike
requires my money to do so.
Spike reached for his glass
and returned to his seeming perusal of the copy of the L.A. New Times he'd
grabbed from the free bin inside the lobby. In actuality he was watching
the crowd around the pool tables like... well, like a vampire intent on his next
meal. He took a swallow and grimaced. "Lovely. The horse must
feel much better now."
"Nothing like good ol' Guinness, huh? Cool. I had this weird urge
for beer instead of warm, flat sludge."
"Remind me again why I
stopped pinching your wallet?"
"Possibly because I haven't
been in arm's reach?"
"I
was saving you from yourself, you ask me. Yank blasphemer." Spike
squinted at the paper and leaned back in his chair. "And would it be too
much to ask for these wankers to hire a music critic who doesn't think he's the
second bloody coming of Lester Bangs and just reviews the bloody albums?"
Xander considered asking
who the hell Lester Bangs was and decided against it, since that would only
provoke Spike to tell him. "So what exactly is our purpose here, besides
inducing me to waste more of my hard-earned paycheck entertaining a cranky
vampire?"
"Enabling me to
collect my hard-earned paycheck." Spike scanned the little clumps of
people gathered round the pool tables again, visibly sizing up and discarding
prospects. "All you need to do when we get a table is pretend to give me a
few pointers, show me the ropes like, and then stand back and let me work.
In consideration of your delicate sensibilities, Harris, we're not going to skin
anyone who doesn't roll up begging to be skint. Hah, there's one coming
open. Come on."
Spike
got up and headed for the pool tables. Half-way across the crowded floor
the vampire stopped, a puzzled light in his pale eyes, and inhaled deeply.
Xander, trying to juggle both glasses and the pitcher behind him, made an
inquiring noise. Spike stood motionless for a moment longer, then
exhaled. "Thought I recognized... nah, it's gone. Losing the plot, I
am." He shook his head and set off for the pool tables again. Xander
looked around, seeing nothing unusual in the crowd, then shrugged and followed
him. They claimed the middle of the three tables before the previous
players had finished hanging up their cues.
"Here we observe the wily
vampire in his natural habitat, the pool hall," Xander intoned as he racked up
the balls. "Note the exotic coloring of the pelt, designed by nature--or
possibly Miss Clairol--to blend in with the cue ball and..."
"I'll pelt you if you don't
shut your gob," Spike said, without much rancor. "Now teach me to play
pool." He picked up the chalk as if he'd never seen one before and applied
it tentatively to the tip of his cue. "Looks like jolly fun," he said in a
spot-on imitation of Giles' cultured accent. All traces of North London
vanished from his speech, the blue of his eyes went from icy and knowing to soft
and luminous, and his body language from predatory to puppyish. "Fill my
eager mind with knowledge."
"Uh... fine."
Xander picked up a cue and looked nervously around. "Does this make me a
shill?"
"Apparently it
makes you unnecessarily talkative."
"OK, OK, just
asking." This was probably a bad idea, he thought. But it was a
couple of steps up from Spike's other methods of getting ready cash, most of
which involved out and out larceny, and how many more chances was he going to
get to be irresponsible and stupid with a reasonably clear conscience? He
was getting married in... oh, God, only a month, and Anya would probably skin
him if she found out about this--if only because he hadn't demanded that Spike
give him a cut of the profits. Spike was eyeing him impatiently, drumming
his fingers on the side of the table. Xander cleared his throat
loudly. "The idea is to use the cueball--that's the white one--to knock
the other balls into..."
Spike nodded, hanging raptly on his every word. In fact, ultra-cool
vampire-guy Spike seemed to have completely disappeared, replaced by an earnest
and slightly clumsy young man who'd had a bit more to drink than was good for
him. He looked a great deal like Spike, and sounded a great deal as Spike
might have sounded had he gone to Oxford instead of wherever the hell he'd
misspent his youth, and played pool about as well as Spike might have if he
hadn't had a century-plus of practice, reflexes Minnesota Fats would have killed
his mother for, and a tolerance for alcohol bordering on the phenomenal even for
a vampire.
Exactly the sort
of fellow, in other words, that you wanted to get into a friendly wager with.
Spike set the stage
carefully, Xander had to admit. He lost several games against Xander, but
not too badly, and won once or twice, but not too well. He killed the
first pitcher without much help from Xander, played another couple of games
against a giggly redhead who only wanted to play for points, lost the first by
one ball and the second by three, and made serious inroads on a second
pitcher. He sulked vocally about how much better he'd do with a real wager
on the line, but kept allowing Xander to talk him out of playing for
money. At some point during the evening, the guys at the next table, a
large, aggressively wholesome pair in letter jackets who'd been flashing a lot
of cash earlier, began paying attention. By now, they were hard pressed to
keep from snickering at the show.
"Look, Harris," Spike said,
leaning forward and poking a finger at Xander's chest. "I've got the hang
of it now. What I need is a little com-competitive edge." He was
swaying a little and enunciating every word just a little too clearly; Xander,
who'd seen Spike really drunk on more than one occasion and knew that it took
considerably more than a couple of pitchers of American beer for the vampire to
achieve this level of impairment, wasn't fooled, but it was a fairly convincing
display for the lay observer.
"Yeah, you've got an edge
all right." Xander removed the finger from just below his third shirt
button, wondering if Spike expected him to start an argument or back down.
"Let's go get you some coffee or something before you cut yourself on it."
A large hand clapped him on
the shoulder. "Hey, there, don't be so hard on your friend there," Frat
Guy Number One said, displaying lots of large white teeth in what was probably a
winning smile, if one happened to be a shark. "If he wants a real game,
we'll play. I'm David and this is Shaun." He jerked a thumb at his
slightly smaller and darker compatriot.
"William." Spike
shook the offered hand enthusiastically and pretended to wince at the
pressure. "Ever so pleased to meet you."
The ivory ball careened
across the green felt and struck its target a glancing blow. For a long
breathless moment the red ball teetered on the edge of the pocket, and then,
bowing to the inevitable, tipped over and dropped in. Spike straightened,
beaming at Shaun with a wide-eyed and slightly tipsy smile, stunned and
delighted with his own good fortune. "I say!" he cried. "That was a
lucky one, wasn't it?"
Theoretically they were playing doubles, but so far Xander hadn't had much to do
except sit back, try not to screw up when his turn rolled around, and watch as
‘William', after a shaky start, wiped the table with their opponents.
Considering the usual results of their own much lower-stakes games at the
Bronze, Xander wasn't surprised at the wiping the table part, but there was no
way Spike was this good an actor; faking being drunk was one thing, but he'd
never been particularly good at deception in the past. Xander leaned
over and whispered, "Who are you, and what have you done with the real Spike?"
The real Spike made an
immediate reappearance and jabbed him in the stomach with the butt of his pool
cue accidentally-on-purpose, ducking his head to hide the pained expression as
the chip set off. He injected a note of wounded petulance into his voice
for good measure. "Really, Harris, push off--not fair of you to coach,
what?"
Shaun glared and ran
a hand through his short-cropped chestnut hair, something he’d been doing with
increasing frequency and vehemence as the night went on. He might be
smaller than David (who really ought, Xander felt, to have been named Goliath)
but he still had a good two inches on Xander and a good four on Spike, and he
was using them to best advantage. "Yeah, back off. Let Willy-boy
shoot."
Willy-boy graced
him with a smile which came nowhere near his eyes and began lining up his next
shot, screwing his face into a comical expression of concentration. Xander
looked from him up into the blunt-nosed, linebacker's face of David, who was
currently looming beside him with a distinctly unfriendly air, held up both
hands and retreated to the nearest table to nurse his beer. Pro: Watch Spike
take snotty college kids to the cleaners.
The frat guys hadn't
gotten to the point of sounding belligerent yet, but it was beginning to
penetrate that their earlier lucky streak against the supposedly inexperienced
English guy had run out. Hopefully Spike would have the sense to quit
while he was ahead. Sense? Wait, this is Spike. David
folded his arms and watched as Spike prowled his way down the pool table, his
jaw jutting forward. From his vast store of personal encounters with guys
who would just as soon pound you in the teeth as look at you, Xander judged that
David was still a ways from exploding, but he was getting there.
Click.
"I've won again, haven't
I? Fancy!"
Further
pro: I won't have to cover Spike's bets to avoid a serious ass-whooping.
A lighter, feminine voice cut
through the riot of voices in the background. "...told Kevin I liked him,
but that I didn't like him like him..."
Xander frowned. That
sounded like...
David’s
basso rumble overwhelmed it. "...look, one breaking shot, double or
nothing..."
Spike fiddled
with his cue, distressed. "I don't know, chaps, hadn't I better leave
off? Luck can't last forever, you know. Still...not really sporting
of me, is it...?"
"...can't
believe he said that right in the middle of Mrs. Doormann's class, of all
places--"
Xander stiffened
and buried his nose in his beer, shading his face with one hand as Dawn, Lisa,
and a third girl he vaguely recalled as Morgan (or possibly Megan) sashayed by
on their way to the ladies' room, all too-casual hair flips and considerably
more makeup than Xander remembered from having dropped Dawn off at Lisa’s place
earlier. Wait a minute. Why am I hiding from them? He
straightened up and assumed the awful mantle of adult authority--hopefully Dawn
would notice. "Hey! Dawn! Aren’t you out a little late?"
Dawn froze at the sound of
his voice, and a second later the other two girls, realizing something was
amiss, did the same. Her eyes widened in horror. "Xander?" she
squeaked.
"Dawn?"
Spike's white-blond head snapped up and he stopped mid-shot, eyes
narrowing. He set his cue down against the side of the pool table, but he
didn't get more than a half-step away before David's meaty hand clamped down on
his shoulder.
"Hey!
If you think you can walk out now--"
"Sod off." Spike
shrugged the hand off and stalked over to Xander's table. Looked like
‘William' had taken a powder. "Bloody hell, Bit, it's after
midnight. Does Buffy know you're about?"
Dawn grabbed Spike's arm,
all but bouncing up and down in agony. "Oh, God, Spike, you're not gonna
tell her, are you?" she pleaded. "We were just about to head home,
honest! She'll get all freaked out over nothing, you know how she
gets--"
That earned her the
raised eyebrow thing. "Yeh, and you know how I get, so the odds of
my letting you toddle off home through downtown Hellmouth unescorted would
be..?"
Megan's (or possibly
Morgan's) jaw dropped, taking in the vampire's full bleached-blond and
black-denimed glory. Spike, engaged in a heavy-duty glowering match with
Dawn, failed to notice. "That's Spike? Oh. My. GOD. I
thought you said he was, like, a million years old!" She tossed her head,
toying with her streaked hair, and batted her heavily mascara’d lashes at
Xander. "And you're kinda cute too. Geez, Dawn, introduce us!"
Dawn's look could have
melted titanium. "Could you possibly be a little more desperate?"
she hissed. "I don't think the entire bar heard you." She waved an
unenthused hand from one side of the group to the other. "Spike, Xander,
jailbait. Megan, Lisa, engaged guy and... uh... Spike."
A Death Star-sized shadow
intervened between them and the nearest overhead light; David and Shaun were
approaching, pool cues in hand, looming with menace aforethought. "Look,
the family reunion's touching," David said, smacking his cue into his
palm. "But there's a little matter of two hundred bucks we need to
settle. NOW."
"Hold
your water, you feeble-minded tossers!" Spike snatched the cue away and shook a
admonitory finger at Dawn. "You budge one inch before I get back and I
swear I'll nail your feet to the floor with tent pegs--gerroff, you!"
Megan, who'd been inching coyly closer with an eye towards some arm-grabbing of
her own, hopped back in a shower of giggles.
David blinked. "When
did he start talking like that?"
"You know, this is a really
good night for me so far," Xander said brightly. Dawn groaned.
Under the watchful eyes of
Shaun and David, Spike strode back to the pool table, all pretense of
amateurishness abandoned. He bent over, took aim, let fly with his
cue in one smooth, economical stroke and stood back with a clinical eye to
observe the balls scattering every which way over the felt. "Four, five,
six..." He turned to David with a lift of his scarred eyebrow and the
patented Spike smirk. "I believe you gents said double or nothing?"
"Fuck!" Shaun
screeched. "There's no fuckin' way you could make that fuckin' shot!
This is fucked, man!"
"Some
of us are," Spike agreed.
"Too fucking right!"
Con: get the shit beat out of you afterwards because Spike can't defend
himself against snotty college boys who want their two hundred dollars back.
Lisa shrieked as Spike
ducked Shaun's wild swing with the pool cue. Xander leaped to his feet;
not only was Spike unable to hurt a human without setting off his chip, the cues
were wood and there was an outside chance that Shaun might accidentally impale
Spike and do some real damage. Not to mention that if Buffy found out
they'd gotten Dawn into a bar fight, there would be no end to the messy painful
death she'd arrange for both of them. He gut-punched a totally
unsuspecting Shaun, who doubled over with a shocked, painful ‘whoof!'--Xander
didn't have super-strength, but he'd been fighting vampires for six years and
working construction for two, and had considerable muscle to show for it.
"RUN!" he yelled, shoving Dawn ahead of him.
Spike shot one gleeful
yellow-eyed look at David, and Xander could all but read his mind. A
second later the vampire had gone all fangs and brow ridges, lunging at David
with a "RRAARRGGGH!" David yelled and fell backwards onto the pool
table. Spike vaulted gracefully over his head and hit the floor at a dead
run, swooping up Megan and Lisa in the process, though it was difficult to tell
if this was out of a sense of responsibility for Dawn's friends or simply
because they happened to be in his way. He caught up to Xander at the door
and all five of them pounded out into the parking lot, the girls squealing and
the men laughing maniacally. Bad Xander! This is not in any way
amusing!
Spike yanked
open the driver's door of the DeSoto, hopped in and gunned the engine.
"Pile in, children!" he caroled as David and Shaun, accompanied by several
equally large and irate friends, appeared silhouetted in the doorway of the
bar. Xander grabbed shotgun by virtue of superior size, and the three
girls crammed themselves into the back seat. “Can't a vamp get a break
around here?" Spike gasped, tears of laughter running down his once-more-human
cheeks as they tore out of the parking lot at indecent speed. "I wasn't
even cheating that time!"
"Someone up there just likes you, I guess," said Xander. “So did they pay
you any of the money before the big fraidy runaway?”
“Not a quid.”
“Figures.”
Something palm-sized and
heavy landed on his lap with a thump. Xander grabbed it
reflexively--leather? Spike was wearing the insane-vamp grin again.
“But I did manage to nick
his wallet on the way out.”
It could have been
worse. It could have been Buffy. It could have been worse...
Dawn kept repeating her new
mantra as the DeSoto roared along the dark streets, despite scant hope that it
would bring inner peace any time soon. It had all seemed like such a
foolproof plan when Lisa had suggested it. Lisa’s dad was out of town, and
her mother slept with earplugs because of her insomnia, so arranging a sleepover
at her place and using it as a cover for a night on the town was easy.
Catching the late bus over to the college was equally simple. Buffy
sometimes patrolled near the college, but if she wanted a break she always went
to the Bronze, or more rarely, to Willy’s. No one she knew ever
went to Benders.
Which was
probably why Spike had picked it to hustle pool in. Life just wasn’t fair.
Despite the embarrassment
of being caught, Dawn had to admit to a smidgen of relief, since while getting
to Benders had been easy, the buses stopped running at midnight, and their plans
for getting back home had been a little shaky. Neither Spike nor Xander
seemed too upset with her, outside Spike’s usual outrageous threats of bodily
harm; in fact, their victory over the forces of the Letter Jacket Brigade had
left them both bouncing off the walls. Spike was steering with one hand
and extracting David’s cash from the purloined wallet with the other, while
Xander rummaged through the vampire’s CDs making gagging noises.
“Devo, crap. Sex
Pistols, crap. Butthole Surfers, crap... don’t you have anything less than
twenty years old in here?--hey! This is mine!” Xander shook
Murder in front of Spike’s nose.
“What can I say? The
title speaks to me. There’s a Linkin Park in there somewhere.”
Xander gave up and slapped
a random CD into the machine and the dulcet strains of “Why Don’t We Do It In
The Road?” blasted out into the night. He eyed the wallet-excavating
process. “You’re only gonna take as much as they owed you, right?”
“Uh... yeah.
‘Course. Bugger all, I have to--double or nothing would have made four
hundred, and there’s not three hundred here.” Spike tossed Xander two
twenties. “Here’s your beer money, shill. How d’you fancy pool
sharking as an occupation?”
“I’m not quitting my day job.” Xander tucked the money into his shirt
pocket behind his rescued CD as Spike rolled down the window and made to chuck
the wallet out. “Hey, hold on to that! There’s got to be ID in
there, we can mail it back to him tomorrow or something.”
Spike slouched down in the
driver’s seat, lit a cigarette and draped his arm out the window, trailing
smoke. “Altogether too much work being a white hat if you ask me,” he
grumbled, but tossed Xander the wallet again.
Dawn chewed on
a lock of her hair. “Are you guys gonna tell...” she asked apprehensively.
Xander looked up from his
examination of the wallet; he was apparently scrupulous enough to want to give
it back, but not scrupulous enough to refrain from poking through David’s
stuff. “Well--”
“Your
sis has enough on her mind right now,” Spike interrupted. “No need to add
to her worries, eh?” Dawn slumped back in the seat, relief flooding over
her; of course Spike would come through. “If I catch you out running
around without your leash again, mind, I’ll be taking you home in a plastic
baggie.” He threw Lisa a look over the back of the seat. “Where’s
your place again?”
Once out
of immediate danger, Lisa had lapsed into temporary shell shock, and was
currently staring fixedly at the place in the rear-view mirror where Spike’s
reflection wasn’t. “Twenty-fourth and Ramada,” she got out in a subdued
squeak. “You can take Wilkins south.”
Spike pursed his lips,
figuring out trajectories. “Right then. I’ve got a stop or two to
make and you’ll be home by two.”
“He’s not gonna kill us?”
Lisa whispered.
“He can’t
hurt you,” Dawn whispered back. “He’s got this chip--”
“And very good ears,” Spike
interrupted. “And I could so kill you if I really wanted. Just so
happens I don’t want to. Nyah.”
Dawn kicked the back of the
seat. “Stop it! You’re gonna make Lisa pee her pants!”
“Not in my bloody
car. And put your damned seatbelt on, it’s down in there somewhere.”
The first stop was Kohlermann’s Fine
Meats, very likely the world’s only twenty-four hour butcher’s shop. Spike
picked up two pounds of raw liver and several gallons of pig’s blood in quart
containers, and spent a quarter-hour chatting up Benny Kohlermann, who worked
the night shift. Back at the car, he stuck a straw through the lid of one
of the blood containers and wedged it into the plastic drink holder up front
like a Big Gulp, which didn’t help Lisa’s mental state any. Dawn
accrued major unflapability points by nonchalantly helping pack the rest of the
blood into the cooler in the DeSoto’s trunk. The second stop was the
twenty-four hour Safeway on Wilkins, where Lisa thawed slightly, though she kept
giving Spike’s lack of reflection in the store security mirrors surreptitious
glances, and she’d tugged her cross necklace to the outside of her blouse.
Oddly enough, Dawn couldn’t
remember Buffy having worn her cross necklace since coming back from the dead.
“Are you sure he’s...
safe?” Lisa whispered to Dawn as the stood in the checkout line with Spike’s
several purchases. Dawn shrugged, glancing at the vampire with a
proprietary smile. Spike was the most and the least safe person she
knew. Supposedly you could tell a lot about a person from their
grocery list; what exactly a carton of Marlboro Reds, Nestle’s extra-rich cocoa
mix, a block of extra-sharp cheddar, one bag of yellow apples, a jar of Jiffy
extra-chunky peanut butter, and a random assortment of items from the Dry
Crunchy Things To Dip In Blood food group added up to, Dawn wasn’t sure, unless
it was that Spike was a sucker for anything with ‘extra’ on the label.
“He won’t hurt you, if
that’s what you mean.” She felt a little sorry for Lisa; she’d run into
Spike around the Summers house on several occasions and knew him as a friend of
Buffy’s. Like most people who’d grown up in Sunnydale, Lisa was aware that
there were things that stalked the darkness just outside the circles of
lamplight--but also like most in Sunnydale, Lisa’s family never talked about
them. Seeing Spike go all bumpy in public was a shock. It was tough,
having to learn about vampires on the streets.
Megan was having no such
difficulties. Megan always meant well, but she was blessedly free of the
ravages of intellect, whether by nature or by choice. The fact that the
dreamy blond guy had temporarily grown fangs wasn’t anywhere near enough to
discourage her. She gazed admiringly at the back of Spike’s sleek
head. “How come you never told us you hung out with all these hunky guys,
Dawn?”
“It’s just Spike and
Xander.” Dawn tried to inject the proper note of indifferent disdain as
they followed the grocery-laden guys out to the parking lot. It was true
she’d had a crush on both of them at one time or another, but that had been ages
ago--last year, for crying out loud!--and she was over that now. It
was excruciatingly embarrassing to be reminded of it. She wouldn’t have
minded nursing her Spike-crush for longer, but Dawn was perceptive enough to
know from the moment her sister had gone storming off to Spike’s crypt in the
Lacy Red Blouse of Protesting Too Much to tell him that she had absolutely,
positively no interest in him whatsoever that Spike’s unattached days were
numbered. Of course at the time she’d had no idea that Spike would do
something as colossally stupid as tying Buffy up and threatening to feed her to
his ex, but... there was Spike for you. At least he’d learned his
lesson. Maybe a little too well.
Back in the car, Megan
leaned forward till her pert nose was practically in Spike’s ear, folding her
arms on the back of the front seat. “Ohmigod, you’re totally a vampire, aren’t
you?” she gushed, jiggling up and down on the seat. “Do you know my
sister?” She giggled self-consciously. “That sounds stupid, doesn’t
it? Like, ‘I live in New York’, ‘Do you know my uncle?’ But there’s
not as many vampires as people in New York, otherwise we’d all be, like,
Lunchables by now, right?”
It was probably a good thing, Dawn thought, that Spike’s expression wasn’t
visible in the mirror.
“Actually my sister’s in Acapulco right now--I got a postcard.” Megan
tossed her hair proudly. “She’s doing, like, this self-actualization
thing, y’know, but she might be home for Christmas. Except Mom disinvited
her since last time she stayed at our place she ate the maid, and Mom is
utterly strict about not letting us have food in our rooms, so seeing as
you’re both vampires and all--Hey, could you make me a vampire? Harm said
it was totally intense.”
The toe of Dawn’s Reeboks
bumped into an empty Jack Daniels bottle half-sunk in the sea of fast food
wrappers and empty blood bags littering the floor of the back seat.
Perhaps with enough sincere mental effort, she could shrink herself small enough
to fit inside and free herself from the abomination that was Megan in flirt
mode. What she could see of Spike’s profile was wearing a sort of glazed,
desperate look, as of a man revisiting horrors he’d thought long departed.
“No.” He took a long pull at his pig’s blood Slurpee and ran his tongue over his
teeth, apparently struck by a cheering thought. “But as a special favor I
might be persuaded to drain you dry and leave your shrunken corpse by the
wayside.”
Megan shrieked
with laughter and Xander swivelled round in his seat to gaze upon her with a
look in his dark eyes which approached awe. “Your last name wouldn’t be
Kendall, would it?”
“It
is!” Megan gave him an arch look. “How’d you guess?”
“I went to school with
Harmony.” An evil smile crept across his face; obviously Spike was rubbing
off. “And Spike--”
Spike shuddered. “Tried to kill her once. Didn’t take,
unfortunately.”
Megan
dissolved into giggles again. “You’re funny.”
Dawn scrunched down on the
seat, trying to sink straight through the leather upholstery. That’s it, I’m
in hell.
Lisa’s family
lived on the opposite side of Weatherly Park, and they’d just turned off Wilkins
onto Twenty-Fourth and were cruising down the long stretch of road bordering the
park. A shadow moved on the road ahead, and Spike slammed on the brakes
before Dawn’s brain had time to register it was there. “What was that?”
Xander asked, craning his neck out the window.
Spike frowned, stroking the
steering wheel with his thumbs and staring out into the tangled mass of
trees. The branches overhanging the road were half-bare, and the breeze
chased little drifts of ghost-grey leaves across the black asphalt
ahead. “Some bird over there on the side of the road,” he
said. “Thought for a minute she was going to take a header into traffic
the way old Willy did the other night. She’s just sittin’ there, now--no,
wait, here she comes.”
Amidst the fitful stirring of the leaves a darker patch moved. Dawn
squinted, trying to make out the figure through the DeSoto’s half-blacked-out
windshield, but she couldn’t make out anything more than an indistinct shape
against the trees for several minutes. Then a woman materialized out of
the night, heading for forty, with short flyaway hair which might have been
sandy blonde in daylight. She was wearing a dark jogging suit, making her
even harder to see, and she broke into an awkward, exhausted run when she got
near the car. She flung herself at the DeSoto, clinging to the
handle on the driver’s door with both hands and supporting herself on it.
Up close, it was obvious even in the dim light that her face was smudged and
leaves clung to her clothes in several places. “Oh, God, you stopped!” she
cried. “You’ve got to help him--it’s back there, in the trees--they’ve got
him!”
“They?” Xander
was already getting out of the car. “They who?”
“I don’t--back, by
the--the--” She began to sob, pointing shakily back into the depths of the park.
“You got any weapons back
there?” Xander asked, heading for the trunk.
Spike sighed and got out of
the car. “Bloody hell. Whoever said there was no rest for the wicked
apparently never gave virtue a go. When don’t I?” He took the keys
from the ignition and went round to unlock the trunk; while Xander was pulling
out the implements of destruction, Spike came back up to the front of the car
and handed the keys to Dawn.
“Get up into the front seat
now, Pidge, and lock yourselves in,” he said in the tone that brooked no
argument or wheedling. “If we’re not back in fifteen minutes, take this
lot home and then go get your sister. She should be back from patrol by
now.”
Dawn looked up at the
vampire’s angular face, closed her fist on the car keys and nodded. She
crawled over the back of the front seat and settled into the driver’s seat as
Spike closed the door. She felt for the floor pedals with her feet,
getting used to their positions again. Not too bad. When he’d first
started teaching her to drive (as Spike had neither license, registration, nor
insurance, he’d assured her that her lack of a learner’s permit was no obstacle)
they’d had to adjust the seat for her, but she’d grown over the summer; she
wasn’t that much shorter than Spike now. She heard Xander slam the trunk
closed behind them and looked up at Spike, trying to be mature and capable, and
flashed him a smile full of confidence she didn't feel. “OK. I
can handle it.”
His
expression remained serious, but there was a flash of... pride, maybe? in his
eyes, and his hand, cool and dry and reassuringly large for someone his size,
rested on her shoulder for a moment. “I know.”
Then he was gone in a
flurry of black leather, he and Xander disappearing into the interlacing
darkness of the trees with the sobbing woman tugging them along, and Dawn was
left in the dark with a sinking feeling in her stomach and Megan and Lisa in the
back seat. For several minutes no one spoke.
“You can DRIVE?” Megan
asked.
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