Chapter 11: The Leper Prince

It was Video Viewing Night, and getting booted (metaphorically) off the couch Anya and Xander were bookending, the better to trap Willow and Oz in the still vacant middle, Spike settled on the floor with the end of the couch to lean back against. He was rousted from there by Anya, who’d apparently not forgiven either him or Xander for Xander’s intended indiscretion with Bowling-Girl, expressing her displeasure with an actual kick that set off a wisecrack from Harris. Vacating that place too, he hung about in the door arch, defensively hugging himself and waiting for everybody else to arrive and get settled to see what was left on offer. He felt very ill-used.

It seemed as though with the addition of Oz and the absence of the SITs, the Scoobies had regressed to a prior state that required no respect be shown Master Vampires. Master Vampires were to be budged at will and derided as a form of entertainment because it was assumed said Master Vampires wouldn’t dare try to retaliate. Were in fact helpless and defenseless against whatever ill treatment said Scoobies felt like dishing out.

Spike hadn’t liked it before and liked it less now.

He imagined going game-faced and eating Harris for no particular reason except that he’d wanted to for so long. Just habit, really. No reason except now he could. Seeing the highly satisfactory surprise and dismay. The looks on their faces. Not that he really would or anything. Buffy would object. With her fists and possibly weaponry, with the weapons chest so handy and all. Which imagining Spike found very appealing: it’d been a long while, months, since he and the Slayer had had a proper go-round. Maybe just threaten to eat Harris….

Wolfboy drifted in and was bribed onto the couch by Harris with the offer of pork rinds and wide, welcoming gathering-in gestures like aborted hugs. Spike had always had his doubts about Harris and maybe Oz did too because he perched gingerly, equidistant from Harris and Anya, as though prepared to bolt. When Willow came downstairs she was neatly backed into position beside Oz by Dawn, talking fast about some claptrap or other. The minute Willow was down, Dawn forted herself strategically at Willow’s feet over a monster bowl of popcorn she lifted overhead for the couched captives to dip into. Least she could do, considering she was locking them in place unless they were willing to step on her or give her a hearty shove.

As Buffy came in, trying to wrench the rental video box open, Spike slid in quietly next to Dawn, taking a small handful of the bare, non-buttered, non-cheesy popcorn as a pretext. Doing something constructive: adding to the barricade. Assisting the whole Get-Willow-and-Oz-Back-Together thing, wasn’t he?

“What ya got, Buf?” Harris grinned widely as though he thought that was a funny remark. Ponce. Git. Moron.

Wrenching at the pink plastic box, Buffy lifted a distressed face. “It’s a remake of A Tale of Two Cities. Dawn has to do a report on it, and I think I read the Cliff’s Notes Sophomore year, so I thought….” Her voice trailed off and she yanked at the stuck box some more.

“Hand it here, love,” Spike offered, reaching up. Do the boyfriend thing here, right.

But Buffy didn’t want help. Was too stubborn to accept it. The box came suddenly apart, ejecting the cassette on the carpet. Still being helpful even though what’d started as a pleasant smile had gone rigid, Spike picked it up and held it out to her. Automatically he took in the label. Just for a second his eyes widened. He thought, Mis-shelved, most like. Or she didn’t bother actually reading such a long title….

“Thanks.” Shooting him a quick, uncomfortable glance, Buffy laid the offending box aside on the weapons chest, then stooped to insert the video into the player on the shelf underneath the TV and coincidently presenting a great view of her ass. She muttered, “I was afraid I’d break it.”

“Yeah, Slayer strength an’ all. Could happen,” Spike agreed, tossing popcorn and catching it in his mouth. Tasted like styrofoam but made a good crunch. Would be better with garlic or mixed into blood, but this was what was on tap, so he made the best of it for the sake of harmony.

Seemed he did quite a lot of dumb stuff for the sake of harmony. He wondered how that’d got started. Oh: the chip. Chained up to things. Get punched in the gut or the nose whenever he said something a Scooby didn’t fancy. Right. That was how.

Anya was announcing to the air about six foot up that it was good this had been set up for Sunday night because if it’d been set for Saturday, she would have had to ask for a storm check. So predictably you could have set watches by it, Harris corrected her: “Rain check, Ahn.” Anya told even higher air, “Rain, storm, what does it matter? Like any normal human, I had a date last night.”

Harris began to combust. “A date? With who--Clem?”

“No, Clem’s seein’ some bint in Mosley,” Spike supplied helpfully.

“A demon’s a demon,” Harris contended nastily, and Spike looked at him over the tops of imaginary glasses.

“Have you seen Clem lately, Harris? Or have you forgot? On account of the hot sun all day on that piss pot yellow hat of yours?”

Anya screeched, “Not Clem! Who’s a perfect gentleman, unlike some I could name. Took care of removing that stray that had slunk into the basement somehow, no bother, and all of the kittens. No, my date was with Albert Mongohan. President of the Sunnydale Chamber of Commerce.” Anya smacked her hands down on her knees with so there emphasis. “We did not go bowling. Albert has refined tastes.”

So does Clem, Spike thought. Specially when it comes to kittens.

In between the squabbling pair, Willow looked cramped and seemed to be imploring the ceiling for deliverance. Oz stared straight ahead like somebody waiting for root canal. Obviously it was true love.

“Mongo-han?” Harris hooted. “Now you’re dating Ming the Merciless? Always liked his taste in collars, but jeez, Ahn.”

“I’ll have you know--” Anya launched but Spike was distracted by a nudge in the ribs.

Bumping shoulders, Dawn muttered crossly, “Get off, Spike. I’m all bunched in. All day you’ve been crowding me. Clingy. Can’t you just--” She turned her head, still talking, and stopped abruptly, staring at him. “Why are you vamp-eyed?”

Spike tossed popcorn, keeping an eye on Buffy, who was perched unhappily on the weapons chest and playing with the box, trying to get it to close properly. Not watching the video either.

Almost as good as a show, waiting for it. Onscreen, two lesbians were stripping down. They’d got as fair as their half-slips. Considerable eye-contact and lip-licking was going on. Neither looked remotely like Willow. Blonde wasn’t bad, though no way was that her natural equipment.

Oz remarked, “I must have read a different version.”

Following Oz’s rapt stare, Willow wailed, “Oh, my GODDESS!”

Harris looked. And looked.

Finally consenting to lower her chin, Anya frowned. It made her eyes look beady and too close together. She rendered her annoyed verdict: “The blonde’s too well endowed. No one looks like that naturally.”

Dawn Eeked and clapped a hand to her mouth, leaning forward over the bowl as though considering puking into it. Her eyes were enormous. “Spike, what are they do-ing?”

“Revising their dreams of stardom, I expect.”

Puzzled, Buffy said, “What?” and spun to look at the screen just in time to see the blonde start getting busy through her partner’s slip. “What?””

“Think maybe you misread the label, pet. That last word, it’s not ‘Cities.’”

“What?!” Buffy dove to get the video out. Hit eject without hitting stop. The tape jammed, freezing an interesting image on the screen. Lying full length on the floor, Buffy stuck her hand in the slot and opened parts of the player not supposed to be adjusted by the user. The player bulged and yielded to superior force. Buffy’s hand came out with the cassette trailing about six feet of stuck tape. “You knew, you bastard! You knew and you didn’t--”

Getting hit in the face with the cassette made Spike miss the descending popcorn.

**********

The aggrieved males assembled on the front porch with the beer that had never been distributed. Oz brought it and handed Spike’s can to him first. Spike nodded thanks but set it on the step unopened.

Harris was ranting on about demons, how you never could trust them, they’d leech onto you and suck out everything good, all of it they wanted anyway, and leave you with nothing, but it was no use, Spike wasn’t gonna eat him tonight no matter how much of a pillock he made of himself. Spike was saving himself for better things.

Finishing a cigarette, he broke open the beer and drank about half of it. Thin, American. Went without saying. He drank the rest of it.

Willow came out, head low and constrained, and asked Oz hesitantly, “Wanna take a walk?”

Oz said, “Sure.” He set his beer on one of the hip-high brick pillars and he and the witch went off together. Taking the wolf for evening walkies.

Harris stomped back inside. Spike could hear his voice and Anya’s criss-crossing, accusatory and unhappy.

One of the better things ventured onto the porch and sat on the top step behind him, wrapped her thin arms around his chest, and laid her cheek against the back of his head. “I’m a dork,” Dawn murmured contritely. “You were upset and I blew you off.”

Spike held up the empty beer can with two fingers. “Fetch me another, will you, pet?”

“Sure thing.” She collected the empty and scampered off with it.

Spike half rose and reached to snag the can Oz had set aside. He’d put that away by the time Dawn returned and resumed her former position, handing the beer down to him, then hugging him close again. His back absorbed her heat like a liquid. Reminded him of times on his old bike and Dawn at pillion, hanging on, gleeful squeaks in his ear.

As he worked on the beer in more measured swallows, Dawn asked, “When you get all rich and everything, you gonna get a new bike?”

“Might do. Thought about it.”

“Can I help pick it out? Bookmark internet sites to look at? Research?”

“Whatever you please, Bit.”

“You’re still mad,” Dawn observed sadly.

“Don’t take no notice of me. Mostly has nothing to do with you. ‘Snot you. Just sometimes I get fucking sick of being reasonable, is all. Want to want what I want an’ just go after it…. You do something for me: tell your sis, Casa Spike, ten minutes. Tell her, sneakers and workout kit.”

Finishing the beer, he set it on the step and rose out of Dawn’s embrace. Instead of cutting through the yards, he took the longer way: pacing the sidewalks from one streetlight to the next to the corner and making the turn, hands stuffed in pockets and shoulders hunched, a plain target. The sniper didn’t disappoint him. He heard a distant small crack, and an ice-pick of pain jabbed into the back of his left thigh. He whirled to confront the ranked bland houses, the row of anonymous street trees.

“Quit fucking around! Got no time for these bloody pissant games! Do the thing proper or else leave off, moron! Game’s changed. Stakes have changed. So leave off this fucking foolishness!”

There was no second shot, and no use and no need to go haring off trying to catch the wanker. At least a block away and likely up on a rooftop or high in a tree, and by the time Spike could even get near, the sniper would be long gone. Refusing to limp, Spike continued on to Casa Spike. Entering, he was freshly aware of how insecure the place was--without a rightful living resident, without protective spells, the walls and locked door wouldn’t present much of a barrier to any form of attack, physical or magical. But it should do a little longer. He hadn’t claimed but Restfield yet. Only posting his next claim would arouse more than half-hearted, disorganized opposition.

Hearing Buffy come in at the back, he met her in the hall and they went right to it. She grabbed his wrist and swung him into a wall. Rebounding, he dropped into a sweep kick and took her feet out from under her but only momentarily. She rolled, quick and tight, on her back. Instead of flipping up, she set her elbows for leverage and kicked him high in the chest, not as hard as she’d meant to because he faded back ahead of the blow, caught her ankles, and flung her down the basement stairs. He didn’t bother with the steps at all, going down after her in a long jump, demanding, “Come on, come on! You can do better than that, Slayer!” and going at her the second his feet hit. She replied with an elbow to his throat.

They got more into the swing of it then: a continuous weave of strike and counter, neither backing off, presenting biceps or back to absorb the force of a blow while trying to land a good one direct to the belly, diaphragm, throat, or face, the one trying to catch the other on the rebound from walls, cabinets, furniture in the instant before balance was firm.

Buffy tried a series of whip kicks to his head and most of them connected. He spun, fell, tossed a cabinet at her, struck out, leaned aside and dropped into a retreating backward roll, moving nearly the length of the room in the process. As the next kick came at him, instead of ducking, Spike held his stance, took the blow on his shoulder, and launched straight into her while she was still balanced on one leg. They went over a couch into the carpeted pit with her underneath, taking the full force of the landing. He got in two or three good ones to her middle before she could double and kick him off. Enough bloodsmell now to wind things up hot and tight. Both of them breathing audibly. The good all-over ache of muscles banged enough to throw recovery into overdrive with everything running full-out, the real white-hot dance of violence everything in him loved and whose completion she could find nowhere else.

Hitting her, he was glad of her. Loved her ferocity, loved how she came back at him with everything she had. Loved the beautiful economy of her motions, the hair that had escaped its fastening and swung in a golden blur as she moved, slapping across his face when they spun together. Loved each of her fingers and the curl of her fists. Her arms and her sharp daggers of elbows. Loved the heated smell of her, was hard with it and wanted more. Took the front of her grey sweatshirt in two hands and ripped it, collar to waistband. Slammed her against the nearest convenient wall, lifting with hands at her waist so her toes kicked harmlessly against his shins, pinning her there, gnawing and sucking at her breasts with all the good smell there, starved for it and the taste of her skin, all of her flavors. Still pinning her, he shoved her sweatpants down over her hips and then freed himself, ignoring her yanking at his clothes, wanting him likewise bared to her touch. He was too busy and intent to take account of such things. She slid down a little and her legs closed around his waist like a vise as he entered her, clutched tight and hot within her slippery walls.

The pressure driving him and the pressure enclosing him felt fit to crack his spine but it still wasn’t enough. Had to get deeper and she was meeting him, clawing at him and drawing him in, slamming against him at each stroke impossibly agonizingly hard and nearly lost but not enough, still building and the sounds and then it started, like being yanked inside out and the smell of it so wonderful, them together, it hit him even harder at the base of the spine and his convulsing balls, flinging everything completely into her and at last altogether lost, gone into whited-out total ecstatic blank.

He was on his back and found her still mounted on him, drawing raking nails down his bared chest and belly slowly and again. Watching him with huge dark eyes and her hair all about her face, all steel and slow and predatory and the smell of them so strong: deep somewhere far below any surface. All dark and growing pressure, rocking into it all slowly with the sense of waves, of being carried without volition, breathing with and becoming the rhythm, slow rocking. He reached up and she bent to him, hot mouth, hot tongue that also moved to the motion, the soft hot wet and the hard teeth that bit, lips swollen and seeking, all the bruises that wanted her, the red wanting that rode on the beat of her blood. He felt that but kept focus on her shadowed face and on her eyes, watching him as she lifted and returned, sensation centered on their joining, her hands heavy on his shoulders, bracing and balancing, pressing and relaxing. He again drew her down, thumbing and tonguing her nipples so that a shuddering current passed through her and returned to him at her core. He felt the circuit complete itself through them, building again with sudden jolts and sparks, breath hitching and held, everything beginning to tighten, heavy with a weight like fire. With crooning exhalations he let himself be quiet and drawn, quiet in his mind, letting it all come in as it would without conditions, waiting and empty to whatever chose to come, however she touched him and moved, all soft, all rocking. No harm would come that way. No hurting of her. The red heat was hers to do with as she pleased. No sharpness, no edges anywhere. When he came it was drawn from him like breath, nothing he forced, just taken and engulfed, so warm, so quiet. And again gone into the whiteness and what perhaps was sleep.

They were tangled together, peaceably stroking in the dark, everything touch and warm and soft. Her hand thoughtfully kneading his thigh roused a small twinge of pain her hand detected and faithfully reported. “Sniper. Again,” she commented disgustedly.

“Love. Gonna have to leave you for awhile. Bit of a lightning rod here. Have to keep clear.”

“Damn sniper.”

“That’s nothing. Doesn’t signify. Remember the Order of Taraka, that I set on you and your chums one time?”

“Mmmm. Bugman and Madame Kicky Knife Shoes.”

“Ahuh. Something like that. Can’t let nothing get past me. Nobody else to get hurt.” He laid his arm over his eyes, feeling it as a barrier, a defense. Nothing to get out, get past except what was needful for her to let him go.

She tugged at his wrist with a couple of fingers. “Who’s gonna send something like that against you?”

“Dunno. Find out maybe after it comes. Got a little time to get set before that. Need to get right with you so you don’t come into it.”

“Vamp stuff,” she deduced sourly, her mouth against his shoulder, blowing and sliding the syllables against his skin.

“Yeah. Started it. Now got to go on, get to the end of it.”

“Like the Hellmouth: when you tossed me out on my tail. Still don’t like that, Spike.” They fell into kissing for awhile but he could feel her thinking. Presently she said, “Let Restfield go. Stay.”

“Can’t, love.”

“You need us.”

“I’ll still turn out for patrol,” he offered. “But gonna be running my own sweeps soon. There’ll be edges that still touch.” He laced fingers through hers, tapped her lightly on the head with the joined fists. “Where I can. We can cog ourselves to it, love. Long while yet.”

She patted anxiously at his face. “Don’t want anything to get at you.”

“Nothing to get past me to harm you. Have to stand clear, love.”

“No.” But it was a protest, not a refusal. They both heard that.

“However it seems, I’m going where I have to. An’ love you just the same. Love you always. Treasure. Dear heart. Wouldn’t leave you except to come together again. However it looks, don’t turn loose or lose hope of me. Come through for you on the far side. I will. But for now, can’t stay close no more. Need your blessing: that you can be easy with it.”

“No. You need us. Just vanish and I’d never know, can’t--”

“Hush now. Won’t be that way. I promise.” He pulled her hand in and kissed it. “If it comes to that, Michael, he’ll come an’ tell you. I promise.”

She was still distressed, shaking her head. “I dream that sometimes, you’re just gone--”

“Won’t happen. Michael would tell you. And Bit would know. Long as neither of those things comes, I’m still on my feet and fighting. I know: I’ll give Red somewhat, and she can spell it an’ mark me on a map anytime. Hey? See you nearly every day. Though not like this, not as often, but we done that too, remember? Don’t like it much but can abide it, not like you’re gonna go all pruny with neglect, get old and forget how it’s been with us. An’ I’ll be good: take the fucking cell phone, not drop it off towers or nothing, yeah?”

She cried, and he held her, talked quiet reassurances to her until she slept, soft and still unreconciled in his arms. No need to take his leave of the Slayer: it was only Buffy that concerned him, that he’d hoped could be reconciled to it. But he couldn’t turn aside for that.

When everything in her went to sleeping rhythms he carried her to the bed and tucked her up cozy there, all as it should be. Then he dressed and put some things in a carryall and left, locking everything behind him.

**********

Monday morning, Dawn saw that Buffy’s bedroom door was open. By itself, that wasn’t definitive. Spike might be asleep, all shagged out, over at Casa Spike: Dawn had long since deciphered the code about wearing sweats, that were never seen again, followed by conspicuously lame mornings and the otherwise unaccounted-for bruises Buffy tried to cover with makeup and Spike only grinned when asked about.

Dashing downstairs, Dawn found Buffy listlessly pottering in the kitchen in a thick blue chenille robe, clutching a mug of coffee. Grabbing PopTarts from the cupboard and inserting them in the toaster, Dawn asked, “Where’s Spike?”

Buffy pushed at her face with the side of her hand--an odd gesture, as though she wanted to smear the flesh off the bones. “Gone.”

“Gone…as in what?”

“Gone as in moved out. Left. He’ll be in and out now. He says.”

Dawn grabbed juice and poured it into a paper cup. “Big fight over the video, huh?”

While Dawn gulped juice, Buffy stood suspended, mug halfway to her mouth. “You know, that never came up. That was so excessively dumb. Makes me all itchy, thinking about it.” The mug resumed its journey.

“Now see, if Spike had picked up the video, everybody would have thought he did it on purpose. Since it was you, all clear, honest mistake.”

Dawn was trying to cheer Buffy up. Dawn figured she knew what was what: with the claiming of Restfield, things had developed to the point that Spike figured he needed a separate base of operations, further distancing himself from the Slayer. Also, Buffy was less likely to object to what she didn’t know about. Dawn was a bit annoyed, since he hadn’t said a word to her beforehand, but in retrospect it was plain. All that hanging close and clinginess yesterday, that had been Spike saying goodbye without, you know, actually having to say anything. Spike liked goodbyes but hated scenes, so he did sneaky goodbyes and then ran and hid. Like he had with the SITs.

The PopTarts leaped and Dawn collected them gingerly, dropping them on the counter to cool. “So where’s he gone?”

Buffy only shook her head. She faced away, apparently looking out the window over the sink. Dawn leaned and saw what she’d suspected: Buffy’s face all clenched up, fighting tears. Dawn hugged her carefully. “Hey! He’s not gonna leave leave! It’s not like Dad, or Angel!”

“Or Riley Finn, or Giles, or…nope, not gonna think about that.” Buffy’s eyes got the bladed-hand treatment. “He took the cell. I’ll be better when I’ve talked to him. He said he’d turn out for patrol, just like normal. I’ll be better when I see that’s a fact, not just one of those guy blow-offs, like ‘I’ll call you,’ or ‘Let’s do this again sometime except I’m all booked up for every day with a Y in it for the next gazillion years and by the way, I’ve lost my soul and, hey--murdering your friends? I’ll get right on it!’”

Dawn found the PopTarts cooled enough for consumption and bit into the first one, noting the absence of the hospital cooler by the refrigerator. No great hoo-hah, then: she’d find out from Rona, who’d known enough not to make a delivery this morning. None here, anyway. Therefore, someplace else. Rona would know.

Poor Buffy. She had abandonment issues. Notwithstanding that she hadn’t been able to beat Spike off with a stick for years, and not for lack of trying, the minute a guy left her it was Dad, all over again, and she went all paralyzed, miserable, and closed in. It had been about the same when Spike established Casa Spike as an answer to the question, “What do we do with all these SITs?” Buffy moping around, obviously feeling rejected and deserted. And that had been only next door!

Dawn was glad the divorce hadn’t traumatized her like that. Well, yes, there was the fact that at the time of the divorce, Dawn hadn’t existed. She remembered it, all the same.

Phoning Rona after school wasn’t as helpful as Dawn had expected. She found out only that Spike figured to be moving around and had told Rona he’d phone in the mark every day, where he’d meet her to take delivery. No help there. So Dawn was driven to do the flamingly obvious: call Spike himself. At a time of day when he was probably sleeping. But her first try was answered on the second ring and got Spike’s voice demanding, “What?” in no friendly tone.

“Spike, it’s me. Dawn.” She waited to hear a more moderate greeting.

She got: “So?”

So he was in a mood, too. Dawn sighed.

“Just tell me where you are, OK?”

Long silence except for banging noises in the background. Then, “Yeah, all right. 2073 McFarland.”

“Right, thanks.”

That address was way off at the west edge of town, among decomposing, mostly windowless ex-factories. It took Dawn two busses to get there, and then a fairish walk. 2073 proved to be a long, two story representative of the grey cinderblock and mesh-covered-windows school of design. Two rows of windows: tall ones below, and a line of narrow, horizontal ones just under the wavy galvanized roof. A faded sign proclaimed it the corpse of Miller Manufacturing. Its parking lot had been colonized by sumac saplings. The rest of the lot, like those around it, was covered by a sepia assortment of weeds.

Walking up the potholed drive, Dawn could hear hammering.

The first two doors she tried didn’t budge, and her pounding knocks roused no reply. Then she saw an “Office” sign on an annex poked out from the rest of the structure, and the door there gave. Inside was a fair-sized room, dim because all its outside windows had been spray-painted black. Four big old steel kneehole desks piled with junk. At a fifth desk near the far wall, in front of a line of empty office-green file cabinets interrupted by a door, a vamp she didn’t know had set down a magazine to look at her. Big vamp. Big sword on the desk.

Rising lazily, smiling, the vamp remarked, “Well, what do we have here?”

Clutching her taser, Dawn backed into the low afternoon sunlight, yelling, “Spike!”

Continuing to advance, the vamp picked up from one of the other desks a coil of rope with what looked like two big fish hooks on the end. He also collected a gun.

Dawn backed farther, bumping into a sumac tree, fumbling to get into her Hello Kitty backpack for her cell, then hitting the speed dial. When she got the same bored, annoyed, “What?” she blurted, “I’m outside, and some big goon of a vamp wants to shoot me or rope me inside or some--”

The call was cut off. About a minute later, she heard Spike cussing out the goon who’d turned back into the office while deflating by about a third. Then the goon guard got out of the way and it was Spike standing there, thumbs stuck in belt-loops, about an inch short of where the sunlight fell: all black and silver and peeved. Vamp-faced.

Dawn hustled, responding to his come-on gesture. Spike turned aside to let her by, cutting off the vamp guard’s excuses with, “Get a brain, or at least learn to pretend you have one.” Escorting her to the farther door, Spike mentioned to her, “Forgot to put on your smell, kitten. He didn’t know you without.”

“Oh.” Now it was Dawn who deflated. “I didn’t know I was supposed to. But you’d think he--”

“Food all looks alike. Got to keep things simple here. Next time, wear the smell.” As they passed through the door into the big, dim interior space, a spray can fell onto the concrete floor and cracked open enough to sneeze its contents out in a fan of black. Vamp quick, Spike jumped to avoid it, then spun, looking up, to yell, “Oi: watch that!”

A vamp with one foot in the loop end of a rope descending from a girder above made an apologetic noise. Down the length of the wall, two other suspended vamps were spraying east-facing windows. The west-facing windows, Dawn saw, had already been blacked out, presumably this morning. Most of the girders had ropes hanging from them. Dawn saw a female vamp--Mary, she thought--go up one, lickety-split, then sashay along the girder, casual and confident as a cat on a railing, to talk with a vamp working on something high on the far wall. Looking around as she followed Spike toward the back, Dawn saw other work in progress: the other doors were being fortified with 2 x 4’s fastened across, to leave just the single entry; some big fixtures were being removed and added to a line at the back--open space and barricaded space. Four vamps heaved up what looked like a stamping press and just walked away with it, to set it in the line. Dawn was freshly impressed with vamps’ strength and agility and saw they were being used as a work force to renovate the factory shell in a way unaided humans couldn’t have accomplished. She counted fifteen vamps before passing through the barrier. On the other side, a glassed-in foreman’s enclosure was having its windows washed. A substantial mound of junk, including several file cabinets, rolled ragged carpeting, and a couple of really old monitors, keyboards, and CPU’s, was piled outside. Inside was a bare cot, a table with a lantern on it and some mismatched chairs pulled up around it. Kennedy sat in one, writing in a blue spiral notebook.

Spike’s features had smoothed back into human, although Dawn hadn’t noticed when he’d changed. “Good sewer access,” he mentioned, waving at a large uncovered drain hole to the right, overhung by big wall-mounted bins that made Dawn think of moats and holes to rain molten lead down on attackers. Waving toward the other wall, he added, “Ain’t got the electric hitched up yet, but it should be, by tomorrow.”

Up on the girder, the vamp working on a big wall box waved, and Dawn realized it was Mike. She waved back.

Spike was continuing, “Have to ask Red about what will be needed to hitch up a computer here. If we’re gonna need phone lines or what. Don’t know my way around them well enough yet. Don’t want to get the city involved if I can help it. Started, anyways.” He shrugged, looking for her reaction.

“It’s so…organized.”

“Yeah.” He laughed with no amusement. “Don’t let appearances deceive you, pet. But a bit better than last time, I guess.”

“Last time?”

Kennedy leaned out the office door, calling, “Spike, I think I found another problem with the floor plan.”

Spike waved her back dismissively. “In a minute.” Then he said to Dawn, “So, you had the grand tour. You happy now?”

From beyond the barrier, there was a big crash. Spike frowned in that direction, took a step, then stopped, again looking at her as though waiting, none too patiently, for her to leave.

Dawn clutched her backpack to her chest. “Spike, why are you mad at me?”

He shut his eyes and sighed, making a random gesture. “Bit, you’re gonna have to cut me some slack here. Not really into people mode at the moment. An’ too tired to take that on. Been at this all day. Need to get the place at least defensible by nightfall, and getting vamps to turn out, much less work, in daylight means keeping after ‘em every second. Then I have to turn out for patrol tonight. So don’t expect too much from me just now. Maybe I’m gonna seem to you like I’m pissed off because most of the time, I am. This is hard, pet. And very no fun at all. No matter how it seems, it’s…. Here, now.” He suddenly swung around and hugged her--hard enough to make her Eek, squishing pointy and corner-y things in the backpack into her front.

Dawn understood: he’d run out of words. Had to fall back on simple doing.

When he released her, setting his hands on her shoulders and looking her in the eyes, Dawn twitched a smile and said, “OK, I’m cool with that. I can deal with vamp mode, you know that. Just so long as I understand, I don’t expect you to go all polite with me, babysit every minute. I just need to know. Wanted to know you were OK, where you were so I could see it in my mind when I think about you. Maybe start to figure how I can help.”

“All right,” he said dubiously, without conspicuous enthusiasm. He glanced around at Kennedy frowning over the notebook, then back at Dawn, and jerked a thumb. “That what’s got your nose out of joint? Her playing second?”

Dawn hitched a shoulder dismissively. “I’ve seen things that thrilled me more,” she admitted.

“Fucking hell, Bit.”

“Guess you got to go to people mode after all. Sorry.”

“Yeah. Well. She’s better at it than I would’ve thought. Seen some dumb fuck-up stuff I hadn’t thought all the way through. Like the smell--the perfume. A good percentage of the idiots that get eaten by vamps are blokes, and they’re not gonna be real crazy about goin’ around smelling like lilies. Just picked the stuff because it’s cheap. Didn’t think about the human guy side of it. And now it’s too late to change. Gonna need some heavy-duty mojo from the witch to take the curse off before we start pushing samples. But there’s still time….” He rubbed his eyes, asking, “What was I talking about?”

“Kennedy,” Dawn said tightly.

“Yeah. Well, so she volunteered, didn’t she? An’ she’s got a better head for it than I do, truth be told. And she’s thinking about dropping that class at the college she was sitting in on, that Red was wound up so tight about. If she’s here, she’s not pestering Willow. And you got your school to see to, and homework to do and all. So, good all around, yeah?”

“Sure, Spike. Good all around,” Dawn lied bravely, because he was so obviously frazzled with the impossibility of satisfying everybody, doing the alien people thing without the soul’s guidance and empathy to steer by. She’d figure out for herself how she was to watch for blind spots and warn him in time.

**********

Because the days were shortening toward Halloween, Dawn knew she’d never make it home before dark, not with two transfers on the bus line. As she stood in the open area considering the long isolated walk to the bus stop and debating the advantages and humiliations of asking Kennedy for a ride, a vamp dropped from the girder to her right and landed impossibly light, almost soundless, folding into a show-off crouch right beside her.

“You jumped about ten feet,” Mike declared delightedly.

“Is that what you’re gonna do now--scary stuff, and then brag about it?” Dawn retorted tartly, trying to press her thumping heart back where it belonged. Anyway, even three feet would be an exaggeration. Probably.

“No harm, Dawn,” said Mike gently, rising to stroke a big hand down her hair a couple of times. “None meant, none done. Just thought, it being so late, maybe you’d like a ride back to Casa Summers. Have to wait here still awhile, but I’ll be off work at sundown and we can go, if you want.”

Presented with another option, Dawn considered it far superior. But as it didn’t do to give Mike too much encouragement, she shrugged and said, “Maybe. If I’m still here.”

“All right, then.”

He joined a bunch of vamps heaving at the last piece of big machinery still on the open floor. As Dawn watched, quite aware she was still being shown off to, Mike walked slowly around the machine, peering into crevices, trying to wedge his shoulders into places those shoulders were definitely not going. Then, without any preparation, he sprang to the top of the machine, at least ten feet straight up, paced around there for a while, then made an aha noise and waggled a hand, calling for a monkey wrench, whatever that was. When the tool was pitched up to him, he found a way to lie flat without falling off, working at something nearly flush with the metal that didn’t want to budge. Then he got onto his knees and started pulling it out, hand over hand: a thick metal rod that plainly had gone clear through the machine, top to bottom, and into the flooring.

Dawn didn’t notice Spike until he started clapping, congratulating Mike on having had such an enormous screw. Mike looked nearly as embarrassed as Dawn felt, pitching the long bolt aside and dropping down, pretending to take no notice of Spike’s continued remarks that the other vamps seemed to find funny, probably because the rough kidding was at someone else’s expense.

When the machinery came right up this time and was carried away, Mike returned, wiping his hands on a rag he pitched before reaching for Dawn’s arm. He didn’t say anything, leading her out to where the motorcycle was parked--almost invisible among the weeds until they were right on top of it.

“I’ve never seen Spike like that, exactly,” Dawn commented quietly. “I’ve seen him when he was drinking, he’d do stuff then, mostly fight. But this…is different from what I expected.”

Mike pushed in the ignition key, then stopped, leaning on the saddle, his back to her. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just how he does. On account of I’m the baby of the bunch. I see he gets some of it back, now and again. Don’t like it much, but I’ve had far worse hazing, some places I’ve been.”

“So you’re the goat?”

“Pretty much, I guess. Designated goat. Have to change that myself, if it’s to change. I get the chance Saturday.” He tapped the saddle thoughtfully with a fist a few times. “Probably jumps the betting some, too. Hadn’t thought of that before, but I expect Spike has. He thinks of stuff like that.”

“Yeah, he’s a superior planner. For a vamp.”

He looked around at her then, pale eyes shining in the last of the light. “He’s doing it, you know? Gonna claim the whole town. And oh, won’t there be howling and misery when the cousins find out about that! I’m not s’posed to say, of course. Except it’s you, and all….”

Mike looked hesitant, as if he worried that Dawn would tell on him, get him in trouble. “I know,” Dawn assured him. “Spike told me. The what, but not the how. And it’s been hard to get him to sit still any length of time lately, since he borrowed your bike that time….” Dawn decided Mike didn’t need to know about the displaced soul. Besides, Spike had told her specifically not to tell him. So that was that. “Has he seemed…different to you, since?”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know. I just wondered.”

“Pretty much the same, riding my back all the time. But I don’t mind, truly. I get my own back, like I said. Except for you: watchdogging us like he’s been doing…. In case you wondered, I did ask him if it was all right, me taking you home. And he said go ahead.”

Dawn nodded, somehow not feeling much flattered but impressed with Mike’s earnestness. “Tell me about what’s happening. This is the base, I can see that.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, looking around at the dark roofline against the still-bright sky, “seems like he used it as a lair awhile ago, figured it would serve now. With some work. But we’d best get going, get you home before full dark.”

“Since I’m not wearing the right smell,” Dawn agreed rather sourly.

“Smell fine to me,” Mike offered, grinning and leaning quite close to her neck for a second, then swinging his leg over the saddle and starting the bike up. Dawn wasn’t really dressed for it, wearing her school skirt and all, but she tucked the plaid folds under her knees as best she could and then slid her arms around Mike’s waist to signify she was ready.

They bumped down the drive to the road. Then Mike opened up the throttle and they flew.

**********

You got to a certain speed and a certain level of complexity, add sleeplessness and drugs and endless details rolling in, each item requiring full focus and a decision, and presently it all came together and you had liftoff. Skimming.

Spike remembered a couple of months like that in Paris in the 1890s sometime, didn’t recall the details anymore but remembered the feeling. Like a hovercraft, he thought now: get everything right and it just lifted off, nothing of the doings even touching the water, the whole hull aloft, gliding along on its own breath and the skirts just there to contain it. Going fast because it stood to reason: no friction. Everything slid by, slid off. Not touching anywhere.

Too many jerks and starts, after clearing Restfield, to properly get off on it. And he wasn’t there yet, still bangs and bumps throwing him off. Needed to focus better, clearer, get slippery enough somehow to brush the distractions aside without substantial contact, and it would all become magically simple in a way you’d never expect unless you’d done it, knew it could happen. And of course hit a wave wrong or a rock, break the seal, and you’d have a huge fucking crash, everything tumbling totally out of control, that was part of the fun of it: knowing there could be a smash, the knowledge electric on your skin every second, tight in your belly: utter fucking insanity and he knew that well enough.

This time, he knew what he’d taken and why, and he’d taken it on purpose. Never get through the night otherwise. And might achieve liftoff velocity if he could keep the pace, not go headlong into something that didn’t budge. Buffy, for instance.

That was the poetry of it: thinking in images, analogies, metaphors when what he was actually doing was running through a sewer under downtown Sunnydale, trying to get hold of Rona about the blood. Tension between fact and meaning, interpenetrant, like fucking Chagall.

Couldn’t get through, no answer, so he hit a speed dial number and got the machine at the lab. “Can’t make the mark at the time I said, sorry. Just take it home with you. I’ll collect it later.” He put the phone away, running steadily.

A couple of his crew had something resembling a car, but he’d wanted to reacquaint himself with the warren of lines in the industrial park. Since he’d be back and forth there every day from now on, he’d need to know where each diversion led, whether it had open access or dead-ended, what side lines handled overflow and connected farther on and could be used to dodge an ambush. Crew should know, too: he put on his mental list a rule against cars. Make ‘em know where they were, how they could go, the way he did. At the same time he knew he was afoot so Mike could get Bit home on the bike before dark. Had to keep track of all the pieces in play and most especially the two he couldn’t help but be connected with. They wouldn’t know how strong the pull of that connection was, all the rest superficial and manipulative but not those, could make him stop in his tracks or turn aside and pull everything into disaster but he’d cope with that, take it in stride somehow and keep moving as he had to, to stay just a bit ahead of converging events.

Making the turn, he reviewed his list, the agenda for tonight, confirming the order so he wouldn’t have to think about it, just go straight into the doing. Having done that, he blanked out and moved. Almost restful: he hauled out of the sewer on Revello, right by Casa Summers, and replaced the cover with the sense of shutting away a blurred interlude. Like you forgot the commercials when the program started up again.

This was real. This was home.

He immediately sought out Buffy, finding her in the kitchen, doing dishes at the sink. He went right up behind her and grabbed, lifting her off her feet, renewing contact like a magnet locking on. No surprise or stiffness: she knew him instantly, the same as he did her: by touch and ambience. “You washed,” he murmured into her hair, vaguely disappointed.

“A habit I got into. At about the age of three.” She pushed to be set down. “What did you expect?”

He spun her around and kissed her as thoroughly as she’d let him with other things on her mind, until Dawn came in and interrupted with a pained, “Please!”

He let Buffy retreat to arm’s length, considering her, seeing that all the bruises were gone except one at the side of her chin, that he kissed, quick and away, as recognition. “I know. The whole desertion scenario, right? An’ all the times you thought about calling today and didn’t. And all--”

She set her hands on his arms, disengaging. “Stop. Just stop.”

“Best get used to it, pet: you’ve not got rid of me. Have to try harder than that.” But he saw she’d have to have her fuss out before she’d be ready to hear such things, so he said over his shoulder to Dawn, “All well here? Got home all right?”

“Perfect,” Dawn replied flatly, and left.

Spike put his hands on the island behind him and bounced/slid to seat himself there. “So--where are we headed tonight, love?” He banged a short riff with his heels.

She gave him a really huffy look. “Get off!” When he didn’t move, she added, “We eat there!”

Spike smiled at her pleasantly, asking, “And…?”

For a second he thought she might do it, come fling him off into something, but she made a sour face and marched away. Upstairs, his ears told him. To get her patrolling kit, then, most likely. He wondered if she’d like help getting into it but then reflected that patrolling was Slayer business and the Slayer didn’t like that sort of play much and when she did, it tended to get bloody. Which would have delayed the patrol considerably and therefore throw the rest of the schedule off and that wouldn’t have done, oh, no. So instead, he went looking for the witch because that was several agenda items.

Not in the front room or the den by the computer. Upstairs, yes: sitting crosslegged on her bed with her laptop open before her but not tapping away on it, only looking out rather forlornly into space.

Spike slid to a quick seat on the throw rug there and popped her prezzie: the news about Kennedy, how she was helping coordinate and plan, and how that connected with the class.

Willow seemed both pleased and alarmed, looking down into his face, both of them with their heads appealingly tilted. “I haven’t seen that eager puppy look on you in way long. Is it an anniversary of something?”

“Have to keep in practice, sweet. A lot of expressions you haven’t popped out of your trunk in considerable. Might like to try one on, see if it fits. Smile, maybe?”

And she understood, she did smile, and almost reached out and petted him on the head. He wished she would, that would have been nice.

“Splendid!” he told her. “Takes positive years off, you have no idea.”

“You think?” Willow scrambled off the bed and went to inspect herself in the mirror because she could do that whereas all he had for mirrors were other faces. She looked at herself so hopefully, face and reflection, but that was an anxious expression, which rather defeated the purpose.

Spike told her that as she looked around, disappointed, so she tried again but it was no better. “Now you’re all self-conscious and that never works, that’s the problem. Try again after we’re gone an’ maybe get Dogboy to coach you if you can’t find better.”

She trailed back, lagging steps, and thumped down on the edge of the bed, commenting, “The magic there is gone. Poof.”

“Nonsense. Just ain’t looked hard enough yet. He’s a good enough lad and gender’s mostly forgivable among friends.”

“Now I know you’re off the map and into the clouds someplace. What are you on and can you get me some?”

“Maybe could be arranged. I’ll consult about it. Meantime. The invoice.”

“Oh! Yes, and it’s been wired in. Paid. You’re an undead person of means. I’ll show you. Or would you prefer ‘formerly living person?’” she asked over her shoulder, sprinting down the stairs with him right behind.

Firing up the computer, she showed him how to reach the account and see the balance, both total and broken down. She set bookmarks and, in an encrypted note, put the login and password to get there himself. Then she pulled out of a drawer the debit card tied to the account that he could buy things with, online and everything, adding sternly, “Remember, don’t lose it and if you do, tell me right away. And all it is, is the money in the account. Not the Federal Reserve. Blow it on an Aston Martin, which you’re not within light years of the bracket of yet anyway, and it’s gone, capice?”

“Asunto. That’s Pylean. Other card, that’s for Buffy, and half of what’s there.”

“Half the present total. And your half less my sixty dollars,” said Willow firmly, and with rapid keying transferred that amount to her own account. Spike watched hard but couldn’t see the money move. “It’s not instantaneous,” Willow explained patiently, amused, “but it’s done, we’re all square now. And why is your chin on my shoulder?”

“Comfy,” Spike explained, but straightened since it seemed he wasn’t to get to see the money moving. He slid the card into his pocket, made sure it was down there all the way. “Can a consultant have a consultant?”

“Now you’re talking taxable income, mister. You watch out or you’ll be all respectable, won’t be able to frighten small children anymore.”

“No fear there, sweet. Need advice. Need magic.”

“Who doesn’t? What, specifically?”

So he explained about the perfume and the gender problem, which should be something she’d see right off, as he hadn’t. “Now I got the dosh, I’ll order in bulk, but I’m starting wrong-footed here, if you see where I’m going.”

“I think I do. Coded protective smell, not an actual repellant, right? Doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it’s highly distinctive.”

“Emphasis on the stink,” he confirmed. “But that’s what I started with, with my crew. Don’t want to change now, confuse ‘em. They’re moderately stupid, you know how that goes.”

“I figure. Don’t order, Spike. Give me a sample and I’ll work with it. What’s your timetable here?”

“Saturday. Has to be in place Saturday.”

“OK, order a little. But for mass production, we’ll do designer. I’ll make you something as pungent that genders process differently. Aromatherapy. Pheromones. Give you the lily undertones, that vamps will pick up on, but something more musk-based for the human olfactory system, that will smell different on guys than on gals. Layered. That sound about right?”

“Lost me at aromatherapy,” Spike responded cheerfully. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t care. Don’t need to understand it, just have it, in bottles, to pass it around.”

“Are we talking lifetime supply, every human in Sunnydale?”

“Pretty much. Ain’t figured how to do the kiddies yet, but that can follow.”

Willow tapped her teeth thoughtfully with the stylus. “Got the concept. Have to put together manufacture and delivery, after I figure out the formula. I’m thinking different delivery system: won’t sublime so fast. A patch, maybe. Talking major moolah here, long-term and short-term, to get it up and running. You better hit those books big-time to roll up those numbers. You gonna be up to that?”

“Have to be, don’t I? You gonna be able to take this on and deliver?”

Willow shrugged and smiled--eyes, nose, and mouth all crinkly and just right. Perfect. “I didn’t have much of a life anyway. I mean, who needs it? Practicing sorcery consultant--Spells & Smells. Sounds like a career goal to me! So stick with the ill lily for now. If that gets the guys eaten, tough. Thin ‘em out a little. Mostly jerks anyway, right? This is a start-up operation, gotta expect some lag in a few components. I’ll have a base supply, low volume, ready in two weeks. And then…. What?”

“Good omen, Red: a real smile. You keep practicing, you’ll get it. All right, that’s sorted. You can get a sample from Bit. Now the second thing is the computer. Connecting it up, where I am now.”

Spike explained a little, what was in place and what would be in place, until Willow interrupted him, “Have to look at it for myself. Where is it?”

Spike hung his head and looked at her sideways. “You’ll know it.”

“What? You mean the factory? You’ve gone back to the factory?”

“Well, yeah. ‘Cause I know how it connects. That much less to learn. Gonna be a problem? In case I never said, sorry about that other. Didn’t know you then. Not really. Still all evil and everything, didn’t know no better. Didn’t truly mean you any harm. Just preoccupied with Dru and all. Used to get distracted like that. Now it’s Buffy, I keep it all real clear,” Spike assured her earnestly.

“Sure you do, Skipper.” Willow absently gave him a hand pat, which wasn’t as good as a head pat, but nearly since it was kindly meant. “That was a long time ago,” she decided slowly, “and we both were different people then. And Xander…. No, no problemo. Need a password, something, to get in? Oh: smell, right?”

He gave her a Got it thumbs-up.

She said, “OK, tomorrow, after French, I’ll come out. I like French. All romantical and everything.”

“Certenment. Comment?”

“Ooh, that’s good. I can practice! And of course you’d know French, if you know Pylean and Ancient Whatsis. Maybe someday, a long time from now, I’ll let you turn me after all: all that time to learn all that great stuff! What?”

“Never happen, pet. That franchise has been closed.”

“Only joking,” Willow protested.

“Not a thing to joke about.”

“Well, all right, Mister Righteous Boots. See if you get any cookies next time! OK then: tomorrow afternoon, with smell. What’s next?”

“That’s all that’s on the agenda for now.” Spike planted a kiss on her hair, that smelled all good and Willow-y, then retreated before her startled look. “Necessary, pet: not official, without.”

He had a flashing image of canting his head and biting down into her neck. Didn’t mean anything, just part of the mental landscape, automatic reaction of the equipment, was all. Like catching sight of a prime fuckable girl, getting hard. Just what happened, no harm, no blame. Just the awareness that he could. Not like before, when he’d thought of hardly anything else, because he couldn’t.

“New rules,” Willow said firmly, and stuck out her hand. “Total business here. No hanky-panky. None whatever. I have to live here, you know.”

“Don’t have to. Do,” he conceded, and shook her offered hand on the sub-consultancy, at least until she snatched her hand back. So he’d added a thumb-rub to the back of it. Had to be something special, something personal.

“What is with you?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “Still evil, pet. Have to take me how I am.”

“No I don’t! And how’s your locket?”

Buffy was in the hallway, smacking a sword against her leg impatiently. Turning to join her, Spike said, “Not an issue anymore. Except you keep yours, all right? That’s important.”

Then he collected his usual axe and followed the Slayer out on patrol.

**********

Buffy watched him, trying to figure him out. Before they’d left, Willow had made a wide-eyed silent Oooh and finger-spinning-by-temple sign behind his back, and Buffy figured that was pretty much right. Wired to the max and loopy with it. Like the night he’d gone out on the roof, wouldn’t play at all, and next night sent her the sweats-and-no-underwear message (via Dawn no less) and totally all over her from the get-go. Not that it hadn’t been nice, they needed a total blowout now and again, her as much as him. But completely Looney-Tunes, no question.

Something different. But also something familiar. The two of them out patrolling together, no SITs, no Scoobies, wide open to everything, aware in three dimensions and he just loved this, you couldn’t help but see, feel, know. This was real old times only better because they were totally a team here like one nervous system, one set of reflexes, knowing exactly how he’d move or hold back, giving her the option, and it all was dancing just like he’d told her a few times but she hadn’t believed him then. Hadn’t been willing to listen because that would have meant taking in all the other crap he said and she couldn’t afford that then, couldn’t afford to let it in. Let him in. Now she had, and now she knew. He was right: at its best, it was all dancing. And she loved it as much as he did.

Loved him, too, when she set aside the whole desertion scenario, a little regretfully. It was an old friend, after all--far older than BuffyLovesSpike--and she knew its ways and was oddly comfortable with it. Happy as he was now, in balanced intent motion as he was now, he was just so gorgeous she felt her heart wasn’t big enough to contain it all. He’d always been beautiful in motion, there’d never been a time she hadn’t admitted that, even when she was denying everything else. And now there was the themness factor: the fact that she completely knew he wouldn’t be moving like this with anybody else, he could try but it wouldn’t be the Slayer and her Vampire. Never before and never again, afterward.

Whenever it was that she was to die, the best would be if it was like this. Be caught up suddenly in the perfection of herself, that she couldn’t be without him either. Nobody to match herself against then. Or be matched to, strength for strength, never having to hold back. Or any other kind of matching.

His attention switched and she saw it, felt it, turning with him without a missed beat, and there were three vamps pursuing a lone jogger. They hadn’t caught her yet, all of them running full tilt along the sidewalk at the edge of Morris Park where they’d probably picked her up and gone into hunt mode after her. Stepping out, accelerating, Buffy saw two were in game face, and the leader not, yet. A would-be Master Vamp, that would be, and two fledges. A training hunt.

Spike tapped her arm and gave a Go-ahead point, himself veering into the street, conspicuous standing there in the open space between the lines of street lights and parked cars. He whistled a high, piercing note. The leader glanced back and said something to the pair. Then the three of them turned, all game-faced now, and were coming full tilt back at Spike, leaving the jogger to escape. As Buffy and the three came together, she lunged to engage but was just shoved off, spinning a second on one foot because she hadn’t expected to be brushed aside, ignored.

The clang was Spike tossing the axe aside on the pavement. He was crouched a little, balanced, grinning and doing fingertip come-on motions, both hands, in the second before they all slammed together. One was tossed, upside down, into a parked car, setting off its alarm. One dusted. Casting the stake away, Spike reached to grab the third vamp’s head, practically chinning himself on it, legs and feet swinging up and around into a headlock. Continuing the same motion, Spike flung himself backward, sending Third Vamp flying full-length until checked by the grip of Spike’s knees. Bone cracked. Buffy punched her stake into the fledge rebounding from the car. She turned just in time to see Spike follow up the broken neck with a head twist that dispersed the final vamp of the trio into the air.

Dusting his hands together, Spike walked backward from his disappearing handiwork, showing one of those ultra-pleased grins that curled his tongue against his top teeth as though the satisfaction were a taste. He leaned, a downward swoop, to collect the axe, then caught Buffy’s eye and strolled on, heading back for the sidewalk, as the porch light of the nearest house went on and the owner (presumably) of the yelling car came outside, shaking his fist and hollering after them, “Damn kids!”

Not bothering to turn, Spike replied with a rude gesture, of which he had many.

“And what was that about?” Buffy asked, falling in beside him. “Somebody…you knew?” She hated having to ask that kind of thing. It didn’t matter to him, but it did to her.

“Nope. Never saw the bugger before, that I know of. Or his get.”

“He knew you, though. They let that girl get away to come at you!”

“Yeah. Did, didn’t they?” He was doing ultra-smug.

“So why?”

“Beats me, except that you’re traveling with the semi-famous, here.”

“Compared to the Slayer?”

“Don’t be jealous, love. We move in different circles. ‘M sure the next one will be all properly terrified of you an’ all. For about three seconds. Maybe three an’ a half. You were slow engaging there, you know.”

“Well, I didn’t expect they’d run right past me!”

He gave her a level, sober look. “Since when do you have the luxury of expecting, love?”

He was right, which always made her grumpy.

As they came to the park boundary, with a cemetery beyond the cross street, he tapped her arm, again pointing. “Off there’s the nest we found empty, that patrol when we came on the fire, afterward. When we took the van. Likely those three came from there.”

By way of answer, she turned, they turned together, to enter the cemetery and check on the nest. This time, four of the residents were home….for a minute or two after Buffy and Spike arrived. They each accounted for two--all easy kills. Buffy was even able to get in quippage.

In lunge position, making figure eights loops in the air with her sword tip, Buffy challenged,. “Wanna critique that?”

Spike was leaning back against a tombstone, axe head on the ground and the haft leaned comfortably back too. “Good enough, pet. Passable. But…when’s the last time you had a proper workout?”

“Not counting…?”

“Not counting that, no, nor patrols, neither. Workout. Training session. How’s your one-footed balance?” Strolling to her, he gave her a sudden shove, and she was on her butt, gaping at him. She grabbed the hand he held down and was lifted up again neatly, leaving the sword still on the ground. “Like that. Or--”

She held up both hands, palm-out. “No more demonstrations--I get it! There’s no time, Spike. I’m sitting on my butt all day, and then--”

Ambling away to collect the axe, he looked back over his shoulder. “Got time to get dead, do you?” Leading off, just a walking pace, back toward the street, he continued, “I’m fixing up my old factory. You know it. Gonna have the doings for a good training area, couple more days. Specially if you’ll let me borrow--borrow!--some of the gear from the Magic Box annex for a couple weeks. You come there after work regular, could speed you up a bit. Give you a nice workout. Vamps there that are not me. You know all my tricks, or at least most of ‘em.” He cocked the scarred eyebrow at her. “Don’t know theirs, though. Give ‘em a little respect for the Slayer, give you a good workout, nobody dead, nobody eaten. What d’you say?”

“You vouch for them?” Buffy asked slowly, not liking that idea, and she was sure he heard that.

He considered, head tilted. “Kill any one of ‘em sets a finger out of line. And they know it. And you know it. So what’s the problem here, love?”

They’d come to the cemetery entrance. Buffy walked a tight, uneasy circle just inside, brushing her hair away from her face with her left hand. In her right hand, the sword swung minimally with her steps. “I make exceptions for you. Mike too, I suppose. Angel. Harmless demons like Clem and a few others. But I’m not gonna get to the point where I have to do a Miranda on vamps, sort out which ones to dust and which to let alone. I’ve stretched the line as far as I’m going to. As far as I can. Me and vamps are not all buddies together, poker pals, training chums. I do not want to know their names, or when they were turned, or their opinions on the pennant race. Not gonna happen, Spike.”

“Yeah.” He kicked at a clump of grass. “Kind of figured you might feel that way. But might be worth a try, and you need the training. Just come once--”

“No. Not discussing this any more.” She spun on her heel and left the cemetery, turning left at the street. Seven vamps was enough. She was declaring this patrol ended.

He fell into step alongside. “Can I borrow--”

“NO, Spike! What are you doing? What are you doing it for anyway? I didn’t understand it when you started taking minions. I didn’t understand it when you dumped them. I don’t know what you want with Michael or why I’m supposed to let him hang around my underage sister, when he’s not safe to invite inside the house. How much safer is he on the porch, Spike? In the yard? On the street? Bringing her home on the motorcycle you gave him? I want this stopped. No matter what Dawn says, no matter what Mike wants. That’s not my concern. I am supposed to be killing vampires to keep them from eating people, not letting one suck on my sister! This isn’t right, Spike, and it has to stop!”

Spike went quite a while without saying anything. Figuring she’d laid it all out on the line, Buffy waited because afterthoughts, nagging the details, would only sound like whining.

Finally he said, “You want to tell Michael, or you want me to do it?”

“I’ll tell Dawn. You tell Michel.”

“That’s fair. All right. I’ll see to it.”

She waited some more, walking along, but it seemed that Mike’s insane semi-courtship of Dawn was the only part of what she’d said he was willing to deal with. So she finally asked, “What about the rest of it? What is it you’re doing here, Spike?”

He delayed, getting a cigarette lit. His face had gone closed: she could read nothing in it. Certainly there was no laughter there anymore.

“Got a mission of my own, seems like. Obliged to it. Like I was obliged about the Hellmouth. Not asking you to help. Not asking you to look away. You do with vamps what you have to. What you’ve always done. Not asking you to change that. Within three months, the vamp population will be half what it is now. Maybe less. Doing your work for you in a way. But it will never be none.” He looked at her steadily for a few paces. “On your own, with your patrols and a few vamps dusted, a few nights a week, you don’t even keep level with the rate they’re turned. I’ll do more to control vamp numbers in Sunnydale than you have since you set foot in this town. But I’m not in competition with you here, Slayer. Got my own thing running now. I was Master Vamp of Sunnydale till you dropped a church organ on me and set off a little intermission. An’ then there was the damn chip. Slowed me down considerable, it did. For awhile…. Now I see a way to it again. And I’m gonna have it. I don’t expect you to like the method, but I swear to you on my mother’s soul you will like the result. And that’s all I’m gonna say about it.”

“That’s quite a statement,” Buffy said after awhile.

“Intend it to be. Not playing games with you. We don’t see alike on this, and that’s just how it’s gonna have to be. I’ll keep it out of your way as best I can. Taking my own place, that’s part of it. Taking my own chances here, too. Not expecting you to cover my back, like I cover yours. Still turn out for patrol with you, like I said I would. Though I’d appreciate a schedule. Know where I’m to be and when, what days. So I can work around it, things I have to be seeing to. Still have to sweep Restfield tonight, for instance. Don’t expect you to come. Don’t even want you there. Like I said before, this is mine to do. That’s not changed.”

“All right,” Buffy said slowly. “I can make you a schedule. Principal Doty approved my self-defense club thing, by the way. So Tuesday and Thursday are taken. I’ll have to work around that… This is so strange,” she reflected. “Like ‘Have my people get together with your people and work out the details.’ Like ‘Let’s do lunch sometime.’”

“All your fault,” Spike remarked. “You were the one insisted I had to have the damn cell phone. Everything follows from that.”

“In a pig’s eye!”

He just gave her the eyebrow twitch again. And she was feeling her way into the strangeness, seeing ways she could adapt to it without outright confrontation, that she knew neither of them wanted. After all, Spike had closed the Hellmouth in particularly spectacular fashion. Until Kim, he’d kept all the SITs alive, although Giles had been dead set against her handing them over to him. And no way was Kim his fault anyway. For all those things he deserved some credit, some credibility. Trust. And she did trust him, just about every way there was for one person to trust another. So what, if he wanted to hang out more with vamps, now that he could, now that the chip didn’t make him an object of ridicule? How was it different from the present regimen of challenge fights and kitten poker? Didn’t she think the soul meant anything, after all the grief she’d given him for lacking one?

Besides, she thought, this was Spike: when had he ever had a plan that wasn’t a ludicrous disaster? When this blew over, she’d patch him up and give him a good push and everything would be the same, only with Dawn taller and older. And Giles gone….

Out of her thoughts, she said, “Next week, Giles is leaving. I don’t know when he’s coming back. Or if he ever is.”

“Oh, he’ll be back, certain sure. Sometime. But there has to be a proper do for sendoff. Maybe Anya--” He read her face. “OK, not Anya. Dawn, then. She could fit up a proper do. I’ll put up the dosh for it. Whatever you want. The invoice for the first lot’s been paid--Red can explain. Half’s yours. And there’s a card.” Fishing in his pocket, he produced a silver plastic card with the American Express logo. Buffy stopped under the next street light to examine it. The name of the card was Spike Enterprises, Inc., followed by William London.. The back was as yet unsigned. “Another one, just like it except for the name, is yours,” Spike explained. “Still a working partnership here, love. For a change, there’s something I can contribute to it. Don’t want to be just leeching off you. Like I have, sometimes. Not because I wanted to, though.”

Buffy found it a great relief to turn and hug him hard, dismissing all the uncomfortable conversation they’d just had.

“Dawn needs somewhat to busy herself with,” Spike commented, rubbing a hand over the back of her head, fingers stroking through her hair. “Keep her mind off…things. Specially now you made up your mind about Michael, and all…. Setting up a sendoff for ol’ Rupert sounds like just the thing, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Just the thing.” She tugged at his wrist and drew him into a jog, handing back the card for him to put away. “Have to get home, get it started, if there’s only a week. I’ll tell her about that first. Leave Mike for later.”

“Yeah, all right.”

“But you tell Mike now. I don’t want him around her. As of now.”

“Same difference, I suppose,” Spike reflected. “He won’t be pleased. Figure it’s my doing. But I’ll manage that….”

When they reached Revello, Buffy’s mind was full of party planning details and she didn’t worry about what was occupying Spike’s thoughts. But when he stopped dead, and she looked where he was looking, she knew what they were both thinking about. From the next block, whirling red lights painted the landscape roundabout and Casa Spike was going up in flames.

She grabbed Spike’s arm. “Order of Taraka?”

“No. Too happenchance. They’d have made sure I was inside first.”

Again, she couldn’t read his face. All closed up like a stone mask.

He added absently, “But this is the first of it. Somebody’s got creative, jumped the gun. Thought this kind of thing would hold off till Saturday. But it’s nothing organized yet. That will be later…” Spike handed the axe off to her and in something of a daze, she took it. “Leave you to tell Bit, then. About Rupert.”

“Rupert. Right.”

“I have to see to Restfield now. Tomorrow, you call me. Not like today.”

“Yeah. Right. Not like today.” Buffy stared at the fire. When she thought to look, Spike was gone.

Chapter 12: The Action of the Tiger

It was the cell phone that woke him and the cell phone that gave him away.

Trying to process the information that Willow and, unexpectedly, Harris were up at the factory, not knowing where he was except it was close and dark and safe, Spike rolled onto his back to put the cell away. Brighter light flooded the space when a curtain was lifted.

“Spike, what the hell you doing under my bed?”

Oh.

Rona backed as Spike put his fingers in the bed spring to shove himself out. He pushed to his feet, feeling creaky and dim. Blinking and rubbing the back of his neck, he asked, “You got any coffee?”

“The hell with coffee, what is this shit? You never named this morning’s mark, I didn’t know where to take nothing, and I hear this phone going off, and here’s a vampire under my bed!”

Spike lifted the bedspread and bent to look. Yeah: the plastic husks of three empty blood bags under there. Well, it had apparently seemed a good idea at the time.

“What’s the time?”

Rona checked her wristwatch. “Going for four thirty.”

"Gonna have to break down and get one of those," Spike reflected. "No coffee, then?" He read her face: puzzled and irritated. Clearly no current prospect of coffee. "Bring the whole day's blood ration up to the factory. Soon as you can collect it and get there."

As he started out of the drab little room, Rona demanded, “I still want to know what you were doing there!”

“Sleeping. All peaceable. And you can count your blessings I didn’t take it into my head to do it the old-fashioned way--top of the bed and a live snack in the bargain.”

“That ain’t funny, Spike!” she shouted after him.

What Rona hadn’t grasped was that it wasn’t meant to be.

Descending the stairs at a loose-kneed arrhythmic shamble, Spike decided he was swearing off amphetamines. Kept you going, as advertised, but the price was too high. Couldn’t recall but snatches of his sweep of Restfield. Coming to the boarding house to get the blood at the end of the sweep had been the last agenda item. Seemed as if that’s what he’d done but he had no memory of it whatever. Totally bugfuck bonkers. Around the bend so far the zipcode had a different prefix. Couldn’t afford that. Things could go irretrievably pear-shaped in record time if he was careless or too blanked out to track.

Probably meant he couldn’t allow himself to get more than a little drunk, either. Pathetic. Couldn’t hunt or have a nice quiet drunk; couldn’t shag till this was done except very circumspectly and all thought out beforehand, and he was pretty certain Buffy wouldn’t be open-minded about the vamp custom of indifferently fucking the nearest available orifice.

Being responsible sucked. Almost worse than the soul.

Nothing left but the cigarettes between him and the compleat bloody nancified prat.

Moodily he went from window to window on the ground floor, cautiously shifting curtains and peering out, to figure the best route to the nearest sewer cover.

When he hauled out of the pipe back by his office at the factory, he saw Willow and Mike inside, and it was bright: the electric was hooked up. Shrugging his clothes straight and trying to slick back his overlong hair with two hands, he faced the belated start of his day. He opened the door and entered the overpowering smell of lilies. “Hullo, Red. Sorry to keep you waiting. Michael been seeing to you all right?”

Smiling wryly, Willow lifted foil from a plate with three cookies on it. “I made sure some were left for you. Crashed?” she asked knowingly.

“Splat,” Spike admitted, around a mouthful of cookie. “Didn’t even bounce. Not gonna do that no more.” He thought a minute, then decided it was a good story even if it was on him. “Woke up under Rona’s bed. Gave her a bit of a turn. Hell, gave me a bit of a turn.”

“You’re not staying here, then?”

Spike shook his head, reaching for another cookie. “Can’t. Moving target’s harder to hit. Won’t be the first time I slept rough. Miss the amenities, though.” He waved the remainder of the cookie.

“If I ask why under Rona’s bed, are we gonna have to do the whole ‘elephant in your pajamas’ routine?” Willow asked, setting the empty plate back on the table.

“No clue, except that’s where the blood is.” He considered, chewing. “That didn’t come out exactly the way I thought. I meant like Willie Sutton and the banks. Rona’s all right--only surprised and not all that pleased.” He caught Mike’s eye. “Got the electric going, and took up the slack with Red and all. Good on you.”

Visibly pleased, Mike ducked his head, smiling small. Would be bad, telling him, Spike thought. He decided to do it while Red was here as a buffer. But not just yet. See to the rest of the agenda first.

“So what’s the bad news about the computer?”

“You’re gonna want it in here?” Willow asked, gesturing at the office.

“By preference, yeah. Not if that’s an issue, though.”

“It should be do-able. Not a cable modem: no lines have been strung out this far. Eventually the best bet should be a satellite phone connection: Ethernet. But for now, dial-up broadband should be good enough. You need the broadband because of the international data exchanges with Watcher Central. Take months, otherwise--uploading, downloading. You still with me?”

“Barely. I got do-able. Go on.”

Willow glanced aside, and through the surrounding windows Spike saw Xander Harris pacing toward the office with Isadora drifting along behind like a hungry kite. Assigned as a minder, Spike figured. Whelp looked in one piece, though, as far as Spike could see, so good enough.

Coming in the door, Xander asked Mike, “Can we lose the hotpants bloodsucker now? It’s like being stalked by Brittany Spears.” As Spike waved Isadora off with a minimal gesture, Xander continued, “Which I wouldn’t actually mind, except for the sucked dry factor. Or…let me rephrase that.”

Before Spike could comment, Willow explained rapidly, “I asked Xander to come with because he’s the practical construction expert. Sub-sub-contractor, all right?”

Staring at Spike, Xander cut in viciously, “And the memories are so great here. No way was I letting Will come out here alone. We’re not an item anymore and shouldn’t have been then, what with the getting caught in the clinch and kissage and the assorted badness of your kidnapping us and having to listen to you whine about that bitch Drusilla dumping you, which was actually worse than your threats of mayhem to be committed on our tender, semi-innocent young persons.”

“Stick a cork in it, whelp.”

“Fine: then see if you get your phone lines connected!”

“I got people who know things too, you know.”

Xander leveled a finger. “No, you don’t have people, Spike: that’s a delusion. One of many. You have pre-industrial monsters who think the internal combustion engine is run by teeny tiny imps sprinting on treadmills.”

“Boys,” Willow interjected in a quelling voice.

Unquelled, Xander continued with his rant. Spike counted to ten. Then made it twenty before opening his mouth. “Harris. Xander. SHUT THE HELL UP!” The moment of startled silence that followed gave him time to say, “I already apologized to Red for that, and we’re square about it, right?”

“Right,” said Willow, putting on a face of determination.

“So I’ll apologize to you too if that’s what will get you back on track here. Sorry I interrupted your pizza deliveries, or whatever it was you were wasting your life on back then. Sorry the cheerleader got hurt, though that wasn’t none of my doing. Sorry that you got scared--”

“I wasn’t--!”

“Bad choice. Pace, puer.”

Xander asked Willow, “Is that dirty? Is he talking dirty to me in foreign?”

Spike rubbed his forehead. He needed coffee. Badly. “I appreciate your coming out to look over the doings. Even might pay you for it, if my associate approves. Can we get past the sins and stupidities of youth and come back to today?”

Xander glowered. “It wasn’t your youth, Spike. What’s your excuse?”

Spike appealed to Willow, “Do I need one? If so, we’ll never be done here. I was dumb. Also drunk off my ass. It happened. I’m sorry, won’t do it again. Would take it back if I could but life’s not like that. End of story.”

Willow’s eyes were quiet and sympathetic. Looking to Xander, she said, “He’s apologized. What else do you want, Xander?”

“You shouldn’t ask that or we will be here all day. Where’s a Vengeance demon when you need one?”

Spike went halfway through the door, saying over his shoulder, “When he’s done venting, let me know.” He walked as far as the barricade. Leaning against one of the machines, he phoned the Espresso Pump and ordered coffee delivered. Then added donuts and some pastry. Even thought, before he ended the call, to check that he could pay with the plastic. Then he strolled out to the entry and alerted Emil, who was on guard, to expect a delivery in about fifteen minutes and cautioned him that the delivery person was not part of the order regardless of what he/she/it smelled like. He remembered Rona was also due, and warned about that, too.

He felt a headache winding itself up behind his eyes like a snake about to strike.

Heading slowly back toward the barricade, getting a cigarette lit, he saw Willow waiting for him there.

“The bottom line,” she said, “is yes, the existing phone connection can be replaced with a fiber optic line and then run out to the pole at the end of the drive and connected there. Take about two hours. The equipment would run something like a hundred dollars, not counting labor.”

“Thank you.” He meant for giving him the summary version, not requiring him to pry the information out of Harris a detail at a time. He thought she took his meaning. He rubbed his forehead again. “Got any painkillers?”

“Nope, not on me. Sorry.”

“Got a couple bottles of something or other, but I don’t know which is which and I think I’ve done all the experimenting I want to, just now.”

“Headache?”

“Yeah. Coming on.”

Willow held up a hand, silently asking permission. When Spike nodded, she set her palm on his forehead, just across the bridge of his nose, covering his eyes. Felt warm. Felt good. Then there was a whoosh sensation: like a sudden gust of wind that blew the gathering headache away.

“Help any?” Willow asked, lifting her hand.

“You have now convinced me to keep you chained up in the basement.” Spike took a deep drag on the cigarette. “When can he do it?”

“Now. He’ll have to go get the parts first, of course.”

“I got coffee coming. Ten minutes or so. Stick around for that, yeah? Thanks for the cookies, by the way. Expect the crew liked them.”

“I figured it would be a distraction. Throw the lions meat, they’ll leave the Christians alone. Speaking figuratively, of course.”

“You been real good about this, Red. I appreciate it.”

She regarded him soberly. “When you asked for the lockets, I knew something was up. Last night, and burning down Casa Spike, that was a wake-up call.”

“Right. It was.”

“You’re playing with the Powers again. And that’s taking the proverbial tiger by the proverbial tail. All you can do is hang on and hope to survive the ride. And hope the tiger doesn’t turn on you. I know some of what you’re trying to do now. And it seems like a good thing to do.”

“Wish you’d tell Buffy that,” said Spike, and wasn’t able to keep all the sourness out of his voice.

“Buffy’s real good at not hearing what she doesn’t want to hear. If we gang up on her, it will only make her dig her feet in harder. Better if I keep mum.”

“Maybe. I expect you’d know best about that. Appreciate the support, though. Yours, I mean.”

Willow smiled: a good little smile. Friendly. “You’ve learned to ask for help. That’s kind of a big deal for you, I think. You want this, and not for yourself. Also a pretty big deal. So yeah, I guess I’m in. I’ll try real hard not to let you down.”

Willow offered her hand. Spike batted it away. “Already done that part. And you didn’t like how I shake hands: all personal like.”

Hearing his name called, Spike swung around. Emil, and inside the entry were Rona with the cool box and a skinny, scared looking boy wearing an Espresso Pump T-shirt, holding two large sacks.

Fishing for the card, Spike thought that whatever the Powers were, this once he was prepared to be grateful to them for at least small mercies.

**********

After Harris, reduced for some time to muffled monosyllables by donuts and Danish, had left to get the phone line components, Willow said, “Oh!” and pulled a paper from her carryall. When Spike unfolded it, he found a roughly handwritten calendar: the patrol schedule for the next two weeks. Days and locations.

As he thoughtfully refolded it, Willow asked, “Are you gonna do with that what I think you’re gonna do with it?”

Spike put the paper away in his pocket. “Any vamps she finds, she’s welcome to.”

“And your people will keep well clear.”

“If they can remember more than ten minutes at a time, yeah. If they can’t, she’s welcome to them too. I’ll take ‘em out myself if I come across them. Somebody that dumb, I don’t need. Better weeded out.”

“And she just gave it to you?”

Spike shrugged, with a smile that faded fast. “I asked.”

Willow sipped her double mocha, lips pursed around the straw, eyebrows wrinkled and serious. “She’ll go ballistic when she realizes what you’re doing with it. And I can’t believe she didn’t--”

“Slayer’s pretty much like me: doesn’t think past step one unless forced to it. It won’t be for long. City will be divided into districts. And there’ll be a schedule of who’s allowed to hunt on what ground, which nights. Who picks the Queen of Spades, that’ll be just their bad luck. Like it is now.”

“Who makes the divisions, if that’s not one of those ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you’ deals?”

Spike met her eyes calmly. “I do.”

“And who makes the schedule?”

“Me.”

“And who enforces it?” Her eyes said she already knew.

“Yeah. Me and my…people. Who get four days out of the seven in the best hunting district--downtown--as a reward. Any vamps they run into not authorized to be there get dusted. It’ll cut down the poaching real fast. Vamps are stupid but they’re not dumb. Not in that way. Except for fledges, of course. Cut down fledges wherever we find ‘em.”

“That’s gonna be a bloodbath,” said Willow in a low voice.

“Yes. It is. Short, if I can manage that. And as bloody as it comes. Mostly dust, but the principle’s the same.”

Willow glanced up just for a second. “Is this the part where you have to kill me?”

“There’s things you still don’t know. But short of that, whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you. You said you were in. That’s good enough for me.” Spike downed the last of his double espresso, extra sugar, and reached into the bag for another.

“Not sure I want to be that in,” Willow commented shakily, picking up a tall plastic spoon to dab into her drink.

“All right. Won’t tell you unless I need you to do something or it affects you. Safer for you that way. Once it starts, it has to go fast. Won’t be no secrets soon, so no need to find ‘em out.”

“Who knows now?”

“Us three.” Spike nodded at Mike, watching silently, seated a little back from the table. “Dawn, most of it. And that’s all. Except for the Powers, of course. Not blocking ‘em anymore. Whatever they want to know, all they got to do is look. So far, I’m doing what they got laid out.”

“So far,” Willow repeated warily.

“Just so.”

“Ahuh. Goddess, you’re giving me the shivers.”

Spike went on, “Can’t say somebody hasn’t guessed--the shape, if not the details.”

“Torching Casa Spike.”

“Seems likely. There’s a few vamps around who aren’t fools. But before they can organize, they’ll be too busy with internal fights to put much of anything together.”

“You gonna kill ‘em?”

“Hell, no: tie ‘em up with bows, if I could. The ones levelheaded enough to make a good fight of it are the ones who’ll keep to the schedule once things have settled. And see that their people do, too. Any that don’t, yeah, I’ll cut ‘em all down, assign that territory to somebody else who’ll fucking mind.”

“That’s really cold-blooded, Spike,” said Willow, attending to her straw.

“Vamps are cold-blooded, Red. How d’you think the Master sorted this place to begin with?”

“I don’t think I want to know. Can you…can you actually do that?”

Spike understood perfectly. She didn’t mean was it possible; she meant was he capable of going through with it.

He considered telling her about setting the soul aside. But that knowledge would be a daily burden on her, living with Buffy. And she hadn’t asked. So he kept it as it was, only between himself and Bit.

Instead, the next time she raised her eyes, she was looking into his vamp features, that some called “true face.” He said, “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we.”

“And on that note…” she said, setting her cup aside, but settled when he put fingers on her arm, asking her to stay put.

“Michael. Got some bad news for you. Dawn’s off-limits, from now. You don’t go to the house. You don’t slide off and meet her someplace else. You leave her 100% alone.”

Spike took his time lighting a cigarette--ready every second for Mike to come at him.

Mike had gone vamp-faced too, staring at him. Considering. Holding himself in check. Spike hadn’t been sure the lad could. Was prepared for damn near anything. After several minutes, Mike said, “It’s on account of the fight, right? To make me mad.”

Spike shook his head slowly. “Nothing whatever to do with the fight. Only to do with you, and with Dawn. The Slayer will tell Dawn presently, in her own time. I’m telling you now. It’s ended. As of now.”

“It ain’t,” Mike growled. “I won’t. And you can’t make me.”

“Yes. I can. And I will. I got a lot of fondness for you, Michael. Vamps don’t much have friends, but I consider you as one. But if you make me choose between Bit and you, you don’t even come into the account. For awhile, I thought Bit was OK to look after herself. Decide for herself what she wanted and didn’t. And thought you’d abide whatever she decided and not try to force her. Let her be, if that was what she wanted. I changed my mind about that. ‘Snot against you: it’s for Dawn. You don’t begin to know what she is. She looks like a child, but she’s not. She ever tell you how old she is?”

“Sixteen an’ a half!”

“She’s older than the oldest vamp that ever walked. Thousands of years. She’s trimmed herself down to what can be in this space. Be like a person. But she’s not. She’s part of the gate between whole universes, Michael. And she has a choice to make, that you know nothing about. She has to be left clear to make that choice. Nobody putting pressure on her. Not me, and not you. Till she makes it, she’s not for you, lad. And once she chooses, won’t me or anybody else be able to control what she does. Then, it’s up to her. But till then, we both respect her need to decide on her own. Me and you both.”

Flatly, Mike said, “That’s horse shit. That’s a goddam lie.”

“No,” said Willow carefully, not looking at either of them, “it isn’t. So she still has her keyness, Spike?”

“She’s a piece of a Power. I don’t know precisely what that means. No need I should. They took her back. You recall.”

“Well, if that’s the same as saying I remember that I didn’t remember, and still don’t--”

“Yeah. And I made such a nuisance of myself, they gave her back. Because she wanted to come. We made them let her go. But if she hadn’t wanted to come, nothing I could have done would have changed it. She’s still a part of a Power. She can’t be forced. And she’s coming to a point where she’ll have to choose the one side or the other. Change, and mortality…or what she is. And she’s got to be let alone to do that.”

Bolting out of his chair, Mike said, “You two discuss it. Spin your tales. I know what she is. I tasted her. She has my mark. That’s all I need to know about it.”

“Michael. You cross me in this, I will kill you dead.”

“Then you better start practicing. ‘Cause you cross me like this, I can bring this whole thing down on you.”

“See you Saturday, then, Michael. You’re off the rest of the week. If I can’t depend on you, I don’t want you here.”

“Fine,” Mike responded, and stormed out.

Spike sat stirring his coffee. Willow sat very still. After awhile, she said, “Buffy?” Spike nodded. Willow asked, “Does she realize what’s involved?”

“No reason she should. It’s her call to make. Not gonna blame it on her: if Michael has to fly out, better he flies out at me. He goes up against the Slayer, she’ll kill him.” Spike smacked his hand on the table like smacking a fly. “I always got choices, that she don’t--right up to the last, anyways. Can kill him a little, so to speak. Bust him up so bad, he’ll be six months in healing. Like when I got hit with that organ. Time to think over a lot of things, stuck that way. Not that I made any good use of the time.”

“Why’d you want me here?” Willow asked.

“Just made the best use of what was to hand. Boy has good manners. A lot better than mine. T’isn’t good manners to try to rip somebody’s throat out in front of a guest, and a woman at that. I thought maybe he’d come at me and I’d have to kill him on the spot. But you being here, he had to think about it first. So he decided to wait.”

“You told me once I wasn’t fit for vampire conversations. During the Supplice d’Allégance. Too squeamish, basically. I think you were right.”

“That’s what makes you human, sweet. Be glad of it. It’s a cold, cold place, outside the limits. You don’t want to be there. But it’s where I live. It don’t do to forget that.”

“All right, Spike--you creeped me out enough for one day. I’m going home, unless you need me to stay to keep Xander from going postal on you.”

“Oh, I can handle the whelp. Been meaning to get him sorted a long while now. Maybe now’s a good chance.”

Willow gave him a look. “If you hurt him, I’d be very displeased. Extremely displeased. Furious, in fact.”

“Yeah, I heard something of what you do when you’re furious. Pity I wasn’t here to see it. Sounded to be quite the thing. Busted up whole city blocks, the way I hear it. Really scary.”

They traded impenetrable looks. Then they both broke the stare and laughed together at the posturing.

“Don’t kill him, all right? Not even a little.”

“Intending no such thing. And won’t do no such thing. I know he’s precious to you, Red. An’ I don’t want to be forever on the outs with him, on that account. Time and past time I attended to that lad. Won’t hurt him even a little. Scout’s honor.”

Willow shot back incredulously, “You were never a scout!”

“Now, you don’t know half of what I’ve been. Even patchwork Adam was a scout. At least part of him….” Spike gave her a sly smile. Then he sobered. “You recall I told you never to get in my head no more. I know you do, because you’ve abided by it. If something should come up with Michael, and it’s past what you feel good about handling yourself, or if the Slayer’s not there…anything like that, you tell me right off. And any way you can.”

“Understood.”

“That’s good, then.”

After Willow left, Spike found it a great relief to finally get at the blood. His manners weren’t as good as Michael’s, but he did have some. When he thought about it.

**********

Trailing along behind Harris or roving in front like a ball on a tether, Spike could find nothing that worked. Nothing that would get through or around the settled hostility to common ground. He tried the time he’d spent in the git’s basement, with the parent war raging overhead, sometimes soft, mostly loud and hateful; he tried the time he’d spent, mostly crazy and drifting, in the closet of Harris’ apartment: sleeping small on the floor, wishing to disappear, the soul so heavy in him then it didn’t seem he could contain it. Got him nothing but nasty looks and a few dismissive remarks but mostly silence.

Tried common interests, but that was mostly Scooby-related and Harris grudged that they had those things in common--that Spike had “wormed his way” into Willow’s tolerance, Anya’s pants, Buffy’s bed. Maybe Dawn’s heart, but they somehow avoided mentioning Dawn.

Harris needed to get at the old phone connection that was high on the wall, up by where the power came in; and there was no ladder. Git looked at the rope, then up at the wall, back and forth. Muttering, “Bloody hell,” Spike yanked a loop in the bottom of the rope, swarmed up to the girder, got Harris to step into the loop, and drew him up like Venus rising from the sea. Once standing, Harris could walk the girder competently enough, and the phone box was within his reach. So Spike backed off and sat sullenly on the beam for a minute or so: as long as it took for Harris to drop the first component and direct Spike to fetch it for him. The first three times, Spike went along with it, letting the boy have his fun. Then he whistled and had Isadora take over as minder. Nothing got dropped after that.

Going by smell, heart rate, and breathing, the lad was terrified of Dora. And he fancied her. Maybe fancied her because he was terrified: seemed to take some blokes that way. Spike had seen it happen. Or could be no more than that she had the right number of tits and openings. And was a demon: Harris seemed to have a surprising affinity for demons, given how much and how indiscriminately he claimed to hate them.

Like nearly all vamps, Dora didn’t care two beans what she fucked, or how. Spike gave serious thought to turning her loose on the lad, but that would mean standing right over them to keep her from feeding or others from joining in--not an appealing prospect. Besides, Red didn’t want him broken and at the best, the boy would be wandering around in a daze for a week or worse, hanging around here for more, and that would get awkward real fast. Likely end up getting him dead, since Spike couldn’t always be here to see things didn’t get out of hand. And that would mean losing Dora, who was shaping nicely into a useful second and was getting on really well with Kennedy. So Spike gave that idea a pass.

Hard and frustrating to think everything through to consequences, and more consequences still. Especially with no clear plan to follow at the end of it. Spike wished Bit were here, to put the matter to her and have her advice. He was coming up dry: maybe one of the blind spots he’d figured to run into. Then he accused and convicted himself of nineteenth-century thinking and got out the cell phone. He thought of it readily enough to order coffee or leave instructions, but when it came to making contact with a person, it was the last thing he thought of.

Dawn’s sleepy voice said, “Hello, Janice?”

“No, Bit. Just me.”

“Spike! Is something wrong?”

He slid down the side of the office glass to sit on the floor. Something tight in his chest unwound. “Guess this is like telegrams used to be--never but bad news and emergencies. No, nothing wrong, Bit. Except the usual, of course.”

“You never call!”

“Yeah, well. Calling now.”

“And nothing’s wrong?”

“I’ve waked you up. Sorry. What time’s it got to be?”

He heard what he thought was a yawn, and the sounds of her turning over in bed. “About eleven.”

“Gonna buy me a watch. Bet you thought you’d never hear me say that. Friday, at the mall. Ain’t been out there for awhile, you an’ me. Interested?”

“Oooh! Sure! Willow says you have money now! There’s this top, it’s sort of a buttercup yellow--”

She was certainly all waked up now, with the prospect of a raid on the mall, armed with money. “’Course you can, Bit. Might get myself togged out, too. Most of what I had extra went with Casa Spike. That scare you any? The fire?”

“I knew you were out on patrol. Not there. So no, it was exciting. I never saw anything so big, burning. And all the fire engines and lights and the big hoses….”

Spike chuckled at her enthusiasm. “I think sometimes you’d have made a proper vamp. You like seeing things busted up near as much as I do. Without the downside of it….” He wasn’t gonna mention Michael. It was clear Buffy hadn’t spoken to her about that yet. So he told her instead about Rona and the bed, with a few more details than he’d let out before, and was happy with her giggling through the tale at the other end of the line.

Then she quit giggling and turned serious. “Whatever you’ve been taking to stay awake, I think you should quit. If you’re blanking out, you’re letting the demon steer. Like your demon, mostly. When it’s fed up, it’s no trouble, anyway. But I don’t trust its judgment.”

Spike hadn’t thought about it quite that way and said so. “Got to agree with you there, pet. Willing to try most anything once. Some things, even twice. But those pills don’t help the focus. They only seem to, for a time.”

He paused, changing hands on the phone, and Dawn’s voice in his ear observed, “You’re lighting a cigarette. I can hear you.”

“Right you are, pet.”

“Spike?”

“Yeah?”

“You sound like you again. You didn’t sound like you, yesterday. I…. It was strange. And making fun of Mike, that was just plain mean. I don’t like it when you do that.”

Spike sighed out smoke. “’S a hard time, Bit. Not at my best, trying to do what I have to, be responsible. Gets old real fast. Seems like all I done today is tell people I’m sorry. Don’t like that much.”

“Then quit doing things you have to be sorry for.”

Spike burst out laughing.

Dawn, slightly indignant: “I don’t see what’s so funny about that!”

“Well, if you don’t know, good on you, pet. Expect you’ll learn and be the sadder for it.”

“Spike?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me a story. If I don’t say anything when you finish, I’m asleep, and you can hang up then. All right?”

Leaning his head back against the glass, Spike shut his eyes and tried to think of what might be a good going-to-sleep story. He’d quit telling Bit stories awhile back--at the moment, he forgot why. “All right, this was in Aberdeen, in the winter. That’s in Scotland, love, and winters there are pure misery. Not exactly a pleasure spot the rest of the year, neither. Herself had set her mind on getting into the prison, eating the prisoners there, so we all traipsed up on the railway….”

About halfway through he stopped and thought about what came next, how he’d got his tongue frozen to a lock and Angelus and Herself too busy fucking to take any notice, wondering if this was the best story to be telling, and heard the silence. So Bit was asleep and he didn’t have to decide after all.

He told the phone softly, “G’night, love,” and closed the connection.

When he looked up, there was Harris glaring at him: about five feet away. He’d got so caught up in the story, and feeling connected to Bit, he hadn’t even noticed.

“Were you talking to Buffy?” Harris demanded, both fists clenched.

“No, Bit. Dawn. Not that it’s any of your--”

Harris said, “Oh,” looking suddenly deflated and puzzled, and walked away. Grabbed up a big spool of phone line and kept walking, out past the barricade.

Spike wondered what that’d been about. Then he recalled he’d meant to ask Bit about dealing with the git and had completely forgotten about it. Forgotten to ask how she liked planning the going-away do for the Watcher, too. Had to focus better, keep all the agenda straight, or this would never come out well.

********

When Harris finished running the line, it was about midnight, and the factory was deserted except for Emil and Dora, who had guard duty. The rest were out hunting or doing whatever they pleased. Spike begged a ride in Harris’ truck as far as downtown, to choose a fresh place to lair up.

As word got around, as it inevitably would, that he wasn’t sleeping at any set location, the chances of attack on either Casa Summers or the factory should be minimal for the time being. Since the torching of Casa Spike, Willow had extended the protections around Casa Summers into virtual lockdown, once everybody was home and accounted for: pretty much a force field nothing could get through until she opened it at daybreak, as Spike understood it. Sounded secure enough.

He hadn’t asked any magical protection for the factory. This was still vamp business: he wanted to face the opposition on an even footing, not provoke a standoff between dueling sorcerers with magic he couldn’t control and didn’t understand. Vamps and magic never had mixed well, and he was pretty sure if he didn’t begin it, the opposition wouldn’t resort to it either.

He was thinking about places he could lie up where nobody would be likely to look for him (other than under Rona’s bed), when Harris asked suddenly, fiercely, “So what’s with Dawn? Why do you bother? What’s in it for you?”

Spike clamped down on the first three responses that came to mind. “We get on.”

“Are you into corrupting children now?”

Spike looked around at him, feeling very still and cold. “Let me off here.”

“I want an answer!”

Spike opened the door and dropped, rolling. The truck’s brake lights flashed for a second. Then the truck speeded up without having stopped. Spike rose and brushed himself off. One knee banged. No worse than a spill on the bike.

A good way of being unpredictable, he thought, was to be unpredictable. Retreating to an alley, he looked around, getting his bearings. McFarland and 10th: the west margin of downtown. Good enough. A generalized awareness of vamps in the area, but that would be true anyplace downtown, the favored hunting district.

He was easing down the alley when he heard a whistle pitched at the edge of human hearing. It came from above him: spotters on the roofs. And it was answered. He moved faster, grabbing a broom handle from a trashcan as he passed. It took only another minute for him to reach the nearest sewer lid and slide through, but he didn’t wait to replace the cover. The hunt was up.

He hadn’t expected anything this organized this soon. Michael, he thought grimly. Running his mouth off in some bar, full of his own sense of injury. Had a bad habit of doing that and was all sorry later about the fallout he hadn’t the sense to see coming. Have to lesson the boy about that, Spike thought, and put it on the agenda.

Eastward, this line ran for six blocks before there was an intersection. Back toward the factory, westward, there was also a long uninterrupted stretch. After that, though, it fanned into multiple branches laid to service the whole industrial park, many of them with curved storm drains set high, that looped back into the main pipe and were only filled in times of high runoff. Spike resisted the temptation to head east into the heart of the hunt. Since there were sentries posted here, there’d be more on the line between here and the factory: his known starting point. But he had a better chance of taking them out than facing many opponents at once.

Spike wasn’t interested in escaping. He wanted to decimate the opposition.

When they didn’t find him eastward, they’d mass and come in behind. So he had to move fast to stay ahead of them for the time being. He saw two vamps in the main pipe ahead and went right at them, diving low at the last minute, quicker than they could jump and clear him. Both went down. He dusted one immediately with the broom handle. Jammed the other one in the throat, then did a whip kick to his head that quieted him down nicely, sprawled against the walkway. Since the time of the Turok-Han, Spike had the habit of carrying a length of piano wire in a back pocket. No handles, but it would do. He looped the second vamp’s neck cross-handed, yanked, and that one was gone. He’d noted the faces. One was a fledge: nobody. The other mostly hung around with a loose group that laired in what he now thought of as District 7: next over from Restfield.

He listened, attended. Running, but still far away. Nothing close. Good.

The first vamp he’d taken out had been armed with a nice pool cue. The very thing Spike would have chosen himself. He cracked the broomstick to be handles for the garrote and looped the wire in a half hitch around his right arm. He jumped to the walkway, to be level with or above whatever he ran into next. Still hearing nothing close, he stopped to pull off his boots, then ran on, light-footed and silent.

Through the balance of the straight stretch, he found no one. That likely meant guarded at both ends. Approaching the first junction, he smelled tobacco smoke. Moron. Flat against the wall, he listened. A couple of words: at least two of ‘em unless the moron was in the habit of talking to himself. Figure on two, anyway. He dropped back into the main channel, down on all fours with the pool cue tucked into his armpit. On fingertips and toetips, in a way no human could have moved, he scuttled just far enough to get his eyes past the corner for a second and then back again.

Five.

He choreographed it in his mind, how to take two of them out at once, left and right, and then sweep the legs out from under at least two of those remaining. Because there’d likely be no chance later, he took another quick look, noting faces. Two more District 7’s, a stranger, and two anonymous fledges. Only the fledges in game face because they couldn’t help it. The mature vamps, the stranger-smoker and the two others, standing casually, the smoker even with his back turned. One of the others a woman. Spike rearranged the order and placement, and changed the choreography to take out the two blokes, leaving the bint and the fledges. Ran through the sequence once in his mind. Then he went.

The smoker and one of the male vamps were gone before they’d even seen him. The woman had time to move, so he impaled her shoulder instead of her heart. She started coming up the wood at him as one of the fledges caught him low in the back with a knife before he could fully turn. So much for choreography. Freestyle. He yanked in the fledge with the knife and head-butted him to the face, then followed with a braced elbow to the bridge of his nose, already turned away, knowing that fledge would be down a good minute or two with part of the skull driven into the brain. The bint with the cue was coming at him, and the other fledge was to his right. He drop-kicked the fledge in the ribs, catching the point of the cue on the way down. Sent the thick end back, better aimed. That was the bint, gone. Just the two fledges left, both of them down. And he had the knife, once he’d braced a moment and removed it from his back. Hurt like hell, but a good thin blade: cut would seal reasonably fast. He listened a moment, decided he had time, and decapitated both fledges. A sword would have been better, but a knife was what he had. He made do. Didn't have to get the whole head off, just cut the spinal cord at the neck, separate the brain from the body.

It took him less than an hour to locate and dispatch the other seven vamps posted on this stretch, all spaced at junctions along the main tunnel. They hadn’t bothered covering the branches or didn’t have the numbers available to get them in place fast enough. Or some had simply gotten bored and wandered away, as nothing seemed to be happening. Went like that, a good part of the time. No discipline and hardly any organization.

Total of five District 7’s. Only vamp worth anything he knew of active there was called Digger. Spike filed that. Maybe worth holding onto, or maybe just the quickest to be scared, figuring Spike would move on him next. Might be just another idiot. Leave that as pending. No other districts notable yet as fielding substantial opposition.

Although the knife wound had quit bleeding, it was stiffening up. Lowering himself a bit gingerly to a seat on the walkway, Spike had a cigarette while debating whether to retreat to the factory or lie up in one of the storm drains, wait for the pursuit to pass, then see what kind of wholesale mayhem he could inflict on them. Drive as many as possible into the side-passages, scatter them, then pick them off at leisure. He now had nearly all the weaponry he could want, including two shotguns, four pistols, and sufficient ammunition for one of the shotguns to successfully face a fair number at once. The impact of a .45 could knock a vamp off his feet; but a shotgun blast to the head or chest would blow them utterly away. Although they lacked the up close and personal satisfaction of doing someone with a stake, a pool cue, or a garrote, Spike liked shotguns for their sheer bloody destructiveness combined with noise that would leave your ears ringing for minutes afterward.

True, there was the risk of getting boxed; but he was confident none of the opposition knew this system of drains as well as he did. The idea of none of the vamps who’d come after him reporting back was very tempting. Or maybe one: a witness that he’d done this alone, without any of the crew as backup. That pleased him more.

He threaded all the handguns onto the wire by their trigger guards and attached them to a belt loop. No need to leave useful weaponry to be found. He bent the barrel of the shotgun that had only one shell left and shouldered the other, hiking toward the storm drain he’d chosen.

Most of the day had been a waste, and he’d started late; but he figured by sunup, he’d have accomplished a lot. Pity about the boots, though: he’d send one of the crew to look for them in the morning.

**********

The next evening, it was back to Willy’s--this time in force, with crossbows. Including Rona, Kennedy (she and Dora dressed like improbable twins, like savage Barbie dolls), and Amanda, whom Spike had finagled into attending yet again on the promise that there wouldn’t be any fighting. All three stank of lilies. So did the whole room: Spike had had every table anointed with one of the tiny sample bottles. The smell would last for months. Spike wanted it memorable.

All the crew were well turned out. Spike had paid for all of them to get fresh kit: anything they wanted, so long as the colors were black or red. Spike himself stayed with the black, his feet encased in much-resented new boots, the old ones having gone missing. Pity, that: he’d had the others the best part of thirty years. It annoyed him to think somebody else had a piece of him. No help for it. Nothing he wouldn’t shed at need. No hostages.

He wore every piece of jewelry he owned, collected from Casa Summers in the early evening, when he’d gone with Huey, in Huey’s car, to collect the computer. Red was back at the factory now, hooking it up, making sure it all worked right and could access the online accounts. Huey would take her home when she was done.

For his own people, the only permitted liquor was on Spike’s table, and he doled it out sparingly. None at all for himself. Soda for the children, of course, except he suspected Dora of sharing her ration. Frankly, he didn’t care. Wasn’t gonna try to control things down to the least detail. Knew he hadn’t the inclination or the aptitude and it was probably impossible anyway.

As word got around, vamps drifted in to see what kind of do he was gonna stage. By general agreement, Willy’s bar, human-owned, was neutral ground except for whatever fights erupted privately and were promptly shunted outside and those scheduled by the management: vamps knew they were safe from open, general attack here.

The other demonic breeds, rightly feeling unloved and outnumbered, made themselves scarce. Presently the place was nicely packed (Spike hoped Willy appreciated the custom he’d brought in), and Amanda reported an overflow crowd out in the parking area.

Spike stood up, and no more than that was needed to get silence and attention. He nodded to Kennedy, who began passing out flyers--photocopies of the map and the rules that Spike held a laminated version of. Crossing the room (the crowd cleared away from him), he held the laminated paper up against the wall, under the odds board, with the flat of his hand. Surveying the crowd, he pointed at those nearest the bar, remarking, “You might want to stand clear.” The instant they’d edged away, Amanda and Dora impaled the top corners of the map, above his hand, with impeccably aimed crossbow bolts.

Spike faced around, hands on hips. Separated from his own people by maybe a hundred vamps--few if any of them wishing him well. He let on he hadn’t noticed that, didn’t care. Well, the fact was, he didn’t. And anyway, it was all style, all face--the way it was in most vamp power games. Spectacle and demonstration…backed up with the eager willingness to answer opposition with force.

Behind him, the map had a red circle drawn around the whole of Sunnydale. Fifteen districts were outlined in black and identified by numbers. District 1 enclosed the old industrial park--depopulated and therefore bare of vamp nests until Spike’s renovation of the factory.

To the side of the map was the schedule of which districts were allowed to hunt District 15 (downtown) and District 3 (an area including the mall) between Thursday and Saturday midnight.

Spike knew he couldn’t control hunting over the whole of the town. Let the districts police their Spike-imposed borders from poaching themselves. A whole lot of vamps would get dusted in the process. Fine with Spike. He’d determined to concentrate on the prime hunting areas. Limit the number of vamps allowed there on any given night and he’d have as much control as he thought would be needed to regulate and limit vamp predation in Sunnydale.

Simple was best. Especially when dealing with vampires.

Most of the vamps now had flyers and were frowning at them, trying to make out what they meant. Likely most of them could read, but you never knew. Backed by Dora, Kennedy had gone outside with the rest of the supply, distributing them there.

“Let me tell you what this means,” Spike said casually, making no attempt to raise his voice: they were all vamps here, or all that needed informing. “It means the end of the sloppy, disorganized, confusing mess this town has been since the passing of the Master. If some of you are too young to remember that, ask around. This town used to be run right. You knew where you stood, who you answered to, who you could beat up or dust with impunity. Whose orders you had to take, or take the consequences, and who had no business telling you to do anything. Fledges were made only in reasonable numbers, what the food would support, and only with authorization from the top. Only by Masters capable of siring anything but doomed, stupid animals, few of them lasting out their first week or two, risen. Brought up right, sire and childe, acknowledged. Protected and taught till they were fit to hunt on their own, with some chance of surviving immortality longer than a year. Learning how to do, how to be. Learning the lore of our kind and why we are the way we are.

“That’s all been lost. I’m bringing it back. They were good days, under the Master. Won’t say he kept the peace because what do vamps want with peace? Vamps want stability--not everybody getting in everybody’s way, vamps dusting each other in disputes over the food, raw ignorant fledges blundering around underfoot everywhere you look, ruining the hunt, putting the food on its guard. Vamps want things to make sense.

“The Order of Aurelius has ordered this town for as long as it’s existed. And we were here before, on account of the Hellmouth. Those of you who know me know I’m of that bloodline: sired by Drusilla, who was sired by Angelus, sired by Darla, who was sired by the Master himself. The oldest blood there is and one of the few ancient bloodlines still intact, sire and childe, acknowledged.

“Sunnydale is mine, and I’m claiming it. All of it. Gonna make things work here the way they ought to, and the way they used to, despite the Hellmouth being gone now. That just takes the pressure off. Fewer tourists.

“You look at that map and figure out where you belong on it. Which district. Then you’ll know when your turn is at the best hunting territories. Everybody gets a turn. Not gonna deal with individuals here--just districts. You sort out for yourselves who runs your district and let me know, and I’ll deal with him. Or her. I’ll settle disputes between districts. After this is sorted, no more wholesale feuds that go on for decades. No more poaching: each District Master has the territory intact, nobody lairing or hunting there except with permission, and I’ll help enforce it as needed. I’ll keep order. Won’t say I won’t play favorites: loyalty and obedience deserve rewards, and I’ll see that they get them.

“If you don’t like it, don’t like your District Master’s way of running things, get out. Nobody’s making you stay. In his own territory, a District Master can run things any way he pleases, so long as that doesn’t cross me or my rules. If you’re still here, it’s a sign you agree to abide by the rules, accept the order. Anybody out of order will be summarily dusted as I see fit.

“Starting Sunday midnight, anybody hunting District 3 or District 15, like you see on the map, except my own people, will be dusted on sight. That lasts till Wednesday midnight, when District 4 and 6 have their turns. My people will still be abroad, but only enforcing, not hunting.

“Last of all: you smell what it smells like, in here. That’s what’s mine: my protection. Any food you come on that smells like that, you leave absolutely alone. No matter what night it is or what your hunting rights are. You don’t eat it or touch it. Anybody who does is marked from that moment. Won’t dust ‘em. Keep ‘em for instructing the fledges in torture. Vamp can last nearly indefinitely like that, except the fledges get careless. That smell, it’ll mark you if you touch it, and I’ll know. A few of you will test that out, I know that. Need you for stock. For the fledges, like I said. Weed out the stupidest ones that way: always a good thing. So you go ahead, be dumb. Be on the wrong ground on the wrong day. You’re a waste of the space and the feed, and I’ll see you’re attended to.

“Now get yourselves sorted into your districts, decide who you’re gonna answer to. Sooner this gets organized, the sooner things will go back to making sense around here. That’s all.”

As Spike started back to his people, there was a stir by the doorway that made him stop and turn, ready to dive if he had to. But it was the last thing he expected: the Slayer, in full gear, with her favorite sword and a big department store plastic sack with handles. Kennedy and Dora went ahead, to left and right, clearing the way for her, but she took no notice of them or of the vamps, coming straight to Spike.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she said casually, setting the sack down. Looking him in the eyes all the while. “But it’s starting to get cool, and I was reorganizing the closets, getting the jackets out. I came across this. And I thought you might want it.”

Then she looked down and stooped and drew from the sack his old duster, that he’d thought long gone. Assumed it’d been pitched into the trash, after that night he’d left it at her place, when he’d thought about it at all. Never asked about it, of course. Didn’t want to know. Shied away from anything connected with that night he’d fled and taken himself off to Africa to become something more nearly like a man for her because the alternative was unendurable.

She laid it across her arms and held it out to him.

He was caught totally wrong-footed. Major flabbergast. “Dunno what to say, Slayer.”

“Don’t say anything, Spike. Just take it. It’s yours.”

So he did that: took the familiar weight. Shook it out--all supple, no permanent folds. Leather was like that. Swung it around behind and shrugged into it, the good familiar feel of it. He couldn’t help grinning in plain delight. He felt at least a foot taller, and invincible. Like he’d truly live forever and want to.

No way the Slayer could know it was the trophy of another Slayer, but she knew what it meant, right enough. And her return of it signified her acceptance of that. Not approval, maybe, but understanding and consent that he be what he was.

Except his vampire existence itself, and her love, he didn’t think he’d ever been presented with a greater gift.

His throat was all tight. Took him a minute to pull in enough air, swallowing a few times, to feel it would work right for him. Looking around at the crowd, he said, “This is my Lady--the Slayer. She killed the Master-that-was. But we have an arrangement. She’s got no part in this. You look at her hard, and know her. Stay well clear of her because if she had her way, there’d be no vamps in Sunnydale whatever. Except me, of course. If you don’t answer to me, you’ll answer to her, soon or late. I am, from this night, Master Vampire of Sunnydale. Because I say so, and I’ll make it so, and cut down anybody who disputes it. But she’s Death to our kind, absolute, and always has been, and always will be. So you stay clear of her, and of me, when I’m running with her. Because on such nights as that, there are no exceptions. We see you, you’re gone. Now get out of here.”

The place cleared in record time.

Spike said quietly to Buffy, “You done me proud, love.”

“That was the general effect I had in mind. I heard about last night. You had the cell. You could have called. You didn’t. If you won’t let me back you, if I can’t be there, I want something strong between you and harm.” Her hands, the sword hand and the other, smoothed the front of the duster down his chest. “Everything you’ll let me give you. The Slayer loves the Master Vampire of Sunnydale in all his peroxided glory. Buffy loves Spike. We don’t always agree about everything, but whatever. Some way, we’ll make this work for us.”

For a little while, Spike allowed himself to hope and almost believe that. In this moment, at least, it was true.

Next