Old Blood

by Nan Dibble

Disclaimer: Effulgent Spike (and Buffy, and Dawn, and everybody) belongs to Mutant Enemy and Joss Whedon, to whom be all praise. I promise to return him in chains and only slightly damaged. No infringement nor profit intended, only more SpikeJoy for everyone.

ONE

He was there but his eyes had gone away, and only Dawn noticed because she was the only one watching. And Dawn didn't say anything because she was still officially angry, furiousfuckingmad, at him even though Buffy apparently had decided trying to rape her wasn't such a big deal after all and had collected him like a bloody carved souvenir of the Hellmouth as soon as the Uber-vamp was garroted and dusted, three nights ago.

Dawn had heard them come in, past midnight. Nothing was right on its hinges anymore: everything had to be pushed. Preferably slammed, to be sure the latch caught. Hearing the scrape of the front door opening, then shutting, she'd clambered over five sleeping Potentials, slid silently to the head of the stairs, and peered down, thinking what would be most hateful to say if Buffy had the unmitigated gall to try to bring him upstairs where actual people lived. Close enough to hear whatever they said, if they said anything. But they didn't. And Buffy didn't try to bring him upstairs, so that was wasted, too.

She was just about dragging him. He looked awful, which served him absolutely right. Hanging, leaned crookedly against her, inert and ungainly as a rolled-up carpet, bare feet mostly dragging. Dawn wondered why Buffy didn't just carry him, Slayer strength and all (how Spike would hate that), and Buffy should just pick him up and pitch him as hard and as far as she could instead of supporting in half-steps, awkward pivots and shrugging adjustments, the pretence he was doing anything like walking on his own.

Except for the silence, the stillness, they looked like a pair of drunks seeing each other home.

Before Dawn had thought of a hateful downstairs thing to say, they'd passed below, out of sight. The basement door creaked.

Nothing happened after that, so eventually Dawn stepped high over the Potentials sleeping on the floor and edged back into bed, nudging Rona and Cho Anh away from her allotted eight inches, sullenly collecting her share of the covers and jerking them as far as she could over her shoulder.

The next morning, foamy toothbrush alternately in hand and in mouth, Amanda excitedly reported that there was a vampire in the basement! The Slayer had said so. The basement was now officially off limits 24/7 to all but authorized personnel, namely her Slayer self, but no one should worry because the Slayer said he wasn't that kind of vampire. What other kind was there? Amanda wanted to know, looking for a place to spit. Dawn did a big yawn and dragged the pillow over her head. It wasn't as if it was a school day, after all. And she was certain he'd lied about the soul.

Later bouncing down the stairs, Dawn found Buffy in chore-face with a bucket, a brush, and a rag, trying to soak marks out of the hall runner. Dawn told her they'd never come out: they'd set overnight. Buffy rubbed a wrist across her forehead and said, "Thank you, Bob Vila," as Dawn went by. Dawn didn't deign to reply, partly because she wasn't sure who Bob Vila was. Trading Spaces, maybe, but she'd never seen anybody trying to get blood out of a rug on that show, so maybe not.

The SITs who'd seen Spike before were nervous. Amanda and the others who hadn't were alternately curious and terrified. Big honkin' deal, Dawn thought, discovering plastic jugs of pigs' blood behind the orange juice. Again. She must have missed the morning delivery. She imagined a white truck, big Red Cross on the side, arriving with a jingling bell: four of the usual, giant gallon economy size, for Revello Drive.

A discovery greeted with even more unanimous yuk was wads and mounds of bloody gauze in the kitchen trash. Dawn made the world safe for digestion by carrying the tied bag at arm's length to the can in the back yard.

Sunday, more nothing, except more yucky congealed gauze before breakfast. Lots of it. Half a trashbag full. Before completing her stiff-armed ritual of disposal, Dawn swiped a piece in case she could talk Willow into doing some blood magic. Willow kept away from the bad stuff now, the things Dawn knew enough to know were powerful, but you never could tell: Willow had been known to slip. At least dis-invite him. The whole house was charmed within an inch of its life, charms thicker than the paint, layers and layers of barrier spells that would need renewing because insane-o Buffy had brought the unwanted, unholy stray through all the protections. Maybe Willow could just eliminate the flaw, the exception, make the spells seamless. Or at last resort, the gauze would be handy for a locator spell if he got snatched again. So much blood....

Monday there was school, although only she and Amanda had to go, being local, and afterward it was Xander's turn to make supper, which meant stacked pizza boxes in the living room, everybody trying to do the most disgusting thing with the rubbery, stringy cheese and it didn't matter, the whole house was trashed anyway. Then Buffy delegated Xander to count heads, then take them on practice patrol, just the old graveyards where nobody had been buried in the last century, where they were unlikely to run into anything interesting but maybe could polish their stalking skills and learn more about the Greek phalanx formation that Dawn thought of as "synchronized staking." Since none of that had anything to do with Dawn anymore, it wasn't hard to slide into the hall closet in the confusion of leaving. Wasn't as if anybody was actually looking for her.

Dawn stayed behind the half-ajar closet door until she heard what she'd expected: the creak of the cellar door.

The murmur of Buffy's voice: "Careful. The table."

His voice, even quieter, hardly even breath, "'S'not gonna attack me, pet. It leaves me alone, I leave it-- Bloody hell. No. All right. Never...never mind. Down now, all right, will you leave me bloody be?"

He must be feeling better: he was swearing. And bonus points for alliteration. It took energy to be irritated or even pretend to be. Took even more energy to be furiousfuckingmad, but that was a small price to pay for something so important.

She leaned out of the closet half an eye's worth, holding the door's edge steady with careful fingertips.

Buffy, still in chore-face, fetchingly attired in frayed jeans and a wrinkled blue-check shirt like a Dolly-Parton castoff, was straightening from the crooked couch. Spike sat stiffly, head tipped back and eyes shut, waiting for something internal to change, ease. Then he slowly folded forward until his arms rested on his knees, head bent and back bowed, stiff and careful. Left hand swathed in bandages up past the wrist. Right hand unbandaged but red, raw looking, like the Sunnydale sunburn champion. The inevitable black T-shirt over what Dawn recognized as a pair of Xander's grey sweatpants at least two sizes too large, shapeless and baggy on him as elephant's legs. No pockets, but he made the absent gesture anyway, reaching wrong-handed across himself: searching for his cigarettes. Then he let the hand fall. Shook his head slightly to something Buffy said, Dawn couldn't make it out. Certainly not an offer of a cigarette, not in the house, not in the fucking living room. Mom had strict rules about that. And the ratty couch might be perched on a chunk of wood in one corner and the front window boarded up and the hall runner marked with four bloody footprints, but Mom's rules still held. It was still home.

"No, pet," he said, "you go ahead and tell me what-all I've been missing around here. Got to get myself caught up again, don't I, if I'm to be of any use. Fit enough to listen." He made the effort of lifting his head. Both eyes still swollen and a purple bruise fading diagonally across his forehead and down one cheek, half his face, but eyes clear and steady sapphire.

Rather than make him look up any higher, Buffy upended a wallpaper paste bucket to sit on and launched into one of The Briefings, that everybody generally had to sit through on Fridays after supper, only Spike had missed six of them now (not that Dawn had bothered to count), so he got the personalized one-time-only special extended edition of Buffy interrupting herself, stopping in mid-sentence to add something she'd skipped over or forgotten, or had happened someplace else and so didn't fit a Buffy-centric narrative with everybody else as afterthoughts, footnotes, and spear-carriers. Dawn had told her she had a bright future as a motivational speaker at the Helen Keller Institute, but then Kennedy had laughed and Dawn had to remember not to belt her because Kennedy could actually hit, which was more than most of the SITs could do, and that had sort of taken the general joy out of it all. Teasing her chore-faced, barely-combed older sister was hardly ever any fun anymore.

But you had to give the demon his due: he was real good at listening. Buffy was sitting on the bucket at an angle, mostly addressing herself to the corner with the broken molding, occasionally making spread-handed up and down gestures like abortive pokes at a volleyball. And Spike with that preternatural stillness he could put on when he chose, or something like it--not just listening, not just looking, but watching: the way he watched TV, some godawful soap or The Iron Chef or Man U, like the fate of the world depended on his not missing a twitch or a line of lame dialogue or another spastic hand lift and fall. One thing Spike had, was focus.

Sometimes, having nothing better to do since it was now quite clear she was the Un-Chosen One, Dawn had tried to practice the focus she'd learned from him watching summer, last year, when things had gone from unspeakably awful to unspeakably joyous to unspeakably awful again and she'd hated herself for not realizing, not being in any way braced, not in the least expecting that the one thing she'd come to rely upon could vanish and be gone as instantaneously as though he'd been dusted, which he should have been. She'd known after Xander had told her and she'd then dragged grudging, constipated confirmation out of Buffy.

At first Dawn had persuaded herself it must be the fault of the Awful Dream, and Spike shouldn't be blamed for coming a bit unglued, doing something off. But to have just vanished without even having told her why, or goodbye, or anything, that was past forgiving.

She'd stayed in her room for four entire days (not counting meals), being distraught, staring at things and not seeing them at all, unable to take a whole breath, as if she'd been punched right where the breath was and couldn't get it back.

He breathed, when he thought about it. Or, weirdly, when he forgot about it, humming under his breath sometimes when the clever hands were busy with something, breath enough for humming. And he snored. Never would admit to it but he did, she'd heard him. Watched him do it. Specially when he was completely plastered, legless, AWOL nobody-home drunk. No breath, no motion for five minutes at a time by her watch, and then maybe one noisy intake of breath and settle his shoulder a different way and inert again, not even faking living chest action.

Now, since she wasn't a Potential but only the Slayer's kid sister and therefore not worth anybody's notice except, disconcertingly, icky Andrew's and sometimes Xander's, lounging lanky at the back of the room while Buffy had another attack of speechifying or Rona had a story, chewing on a hangnail, Dawn sometimes tried to focus on the whole room and everybody in it and all the motions and everything said, absorb it all in one grand gestalt, grok the fucking totality and therefore all of the meanings interlaced and poised just so. And sometimes she almost thought she could. For a second, all the motions would balance into a sort of equation, clear focus she could feel but not quite make full sense of.

As she now realized Buffy's jerky gestures were how hard she was trying not to actually set her hand on Spike's knee.

And Spike realized it at just the same instant because he slid his bandaged left hand into the reserved vertical gesturing space, and Buffy jerked and sorried and asked if she'd hurt him, and he didn't say anything but set his right hand on top, hand sandwich, and Buffy looked down on it and lost the thread of The Briefing and apologized for that, coming unstrung wire by wire. Slowly, like balancing a cup, he surrendered her hand to the pedestal of her own knee and then took his hands away, not smirking or even smiling, not even his eyes, withdrawing and letting the interruption go and still attending the same way for as long as it took Buffy to find her thread and go on again.

Dawn hadn't been listening to The Briefing because it had been tedious and depressing the first eighteen times she'd heard it, or at least all its disconnected parts, and it hadn't improved. But she must have taken it in on some level because she felt like a prompter in the wings when an actress had gone up in her lines, barely resisting calling out the cue. Dawn had seen Mom; Willow had seen Cassie, and maybe even Tara: Willow's Briefing, when they'd compared Sightings, had been short and unsatisfying, being all with the crying and the Kleenex and everything, and Dawn had dutifully reported the fact because otherwise, what explanation for the axe-victim living room and microwave, but not what Mom had come to tell her. Unsatisfying, maybe, all around. But of course Buffy didn't mention that. That had been only Willow. Only Dawn. It was some vamp she'd run into on patrol, nice little social chat with the Evil Undead, that was the interesting part that Buffy had momentarily lost and cued herself back into without prompting.

And Spike's eyes went away. Not like Bringers, nothing like that. Like he'd heard something and had disconnected from vision, letting his eyes drift, unneeded, untended. Still focused, oh yeah...but not on anything anybody else could hear or see.

Maybe babbling, hallucinating crazy again, holding conversations with people who weren't there, like before, entombed unalive in the high school basement, hear him through the air vents especially just off the girls' locker room where the echo was so bad on account of the tile. Nobody admitted to hearing it, of course--this was Sunnydale, after all, wellspring of DeNile--but the post-gym shower contingent dropped off something amazing.

Except silent now. No babbling: that was Buffy, still rattling on. So maybe not....

Into one of Buffy's frequent pauses, Spike said, "Dusted him finally, did you, Slayer? Or did you two just hang about chattin' each other up on some gravestone till it got too near to sunup and he had to beg your--"

"Well, of course I dusted him," Buffy responded, somewhere between puzzled and indignant. "But...I remembered him. Not from before, from college, not that. I had to dust him. But...he wasn't a thing, Spike. He was a person. A vampire-person who was trying to kill me.... But not a thing. Somebody. Holden Webster. Do you see?"

"'Course I do, pet. Did you do him backhand or forehand?"

Even chore-face could fall. "I don't remember. Is it important?"

"Might be. Never can tell what's going to be important, some times." Spike's eyes rebooted then. They warmed, the way he could make them do, and the focus recentered itself on Buffy. Or seemed to. Because he was still sitting wrong. Not even quiet but still. The way he was never still unless he slept. Or when he was hunting. He could go still then. Dawn had seen it, lots of times.

Maybe he was just hurt that bad, or wishing Buffy would let him smoke in the living room, or that he had something to smoke. Or something else altogether.

His head turned, just a flick of the eyes and then away, and he rubbed the bandaged hand with the other one, not letting on, but Dawn wasn't fooled: he'd seen her, smelled her, something. She pushed the closet door away, braced her long legs, and gave him the most fierce-eyed, deathray hateful stare in her entire repertoire, count of a hundred. He wasn't looking toward her, and of course Buffy didn't see, but she knew he saw, just the same. Buffy, and the semi-destroyed room in all its nicked detail, and Dawn standing in the hallway, one foot planted on one of his bloody footprints, hating him like Hannibal hating Rome, he saw it all and bent his head a little more, picking at the bandage.

He was ashamed. Afraid to face her or deny what they both knew about him now. Didn't dare look up. Good!

Dawn took the stairs three at a time and reached her bed in a flying dive, astonishing sole occupant. She bit the corner of the pillow and then covered her whole face with it so there could be no least atomic fragment of a chance anybody she refused to name or even think about might be able to hear her crying her guts out.

TWO

With anybody else, it would have been easy. But Oooooh No, Mr. Bill, this was Spike, so it was freakin' impossible.

He was up and about now, whole minutes at a time, sometimes appearing during catch-as-catch-can schoolday breakfast pillaging, threading among the abruptly silent and wide-eyed SITs, daylight out the windows but no sun yet on this side of the house, pouring glugging blood into the blue mug everybody else now left strictly alone, impassively waiting out the microwave and then gone again, ungreeted unless Buffy happened to be there: standing to listen if Buffy said anything to him, eyes averted to the floor, silent or monosyllabic even then, calling her only Slayer; or after sundown, sometimes out on the back porch, standing likely because if he got down he couldn't yet get up again, smoke drifting because some idiot had pitied him enough to smuggle cigarettes in for him, mayonnaise jar lid for an ashtray, just long enough to finish unless Buffy went out and kept him awhile. Either way, a few minutes' Sighting and then gone again past the basement door Xander had put a big steel deadbolt on. On the outside. Dawn took a certain pleasure shoving the bolt home anytime she was in the vicinity unless she found it already bolted. Once, she tried the doorknob and was surprised and vaguely indignant to realize there must be a bolt on the inside, too.

Present in the house but absent even when you saw him, haunting the corners and staircases like the unwelcome ghost of himself. No window of opportunity for Dawn to deliver her bomb. It was very frustrating.

Then Thursday evening, as Buffy was rounding up the troops for patrol, Dawn onlooking from the stairs, he ghosted up beside Kennedy, who recoiled, and that caught Buffy's eye. Buffy leaned back against the door, going to parade rest with the battleaxe.

"No," Buffy told him, and his head jerked up, finally meeting somebody's eyes.

"Yes," he said. "Got your back--"

"No," Buffy said again, in the "Not discussing this" tone Dawn had come to hate.

Spike edged past Kennedy, and the other SITs backed away, leaving a tablecloth-worth of hallway open between him and Buffy. He shoved both hands through his scruffy two-toned hair and took one "Getting ready to talk now" breath. "I'm fit enough. I can--"

"No. Downstairs. Now," Buffy said, pushing off the shut door and advancing on him. "I mean it, Spike."

He backed a step, then sort of folded in on himself, turning. Retreating down the hall, he quit trying to hide the limp, with Buffy implacably following, battleaxe propped on one shoulder. He shut the door behind him and Buffy set the bolt.

Surveying the SITs, Buffy said, "He's going to be helping you train. Soon. When he's better. Just not yet. He's a member of this team." Having waited the allotted 10 seconds for argument or objection to be ignored or steamrollered, Buffy went through them and led the team out.

Nobody left still home but Willow, making magical stinks upstairs with her door shut. Time for the bomb. Dawn dashed to the kitchen and grabbed the package from its hiding place behind the least-liked soup cans, then back into the hall. After a second to stand and compose, she pushed the bolt.

Dark, below: she flicked the switch, then cautiously descended.

He was pulling himself into two-handed chin-ups on a water pipe or anyway trying to, more hanging than chinning. Spotting Dawn, looking past her, he dropped a little wonky, caught his balance, and came barging right past her, through the kitchen and out the back door. When Dawn got there, he was halfway to the sidewalk.

Dawn took a second to shove the bomb back into concealment, grabbed the spare stake bag kept handy by the door, and went in leisurely pursuit.

The first block, he was limping. By the second, he couldn't hold a straight line but kept going. Third block was it, tipped against a streetlight just to stay upright, looking out into the dark.

"Just resting," he announced, when Dawn came within what would otherwise have been striking distance.

"Yeah, sure." She folded her arms.

He rested some more. His left hand, no longer bandaged, spread against the streetlight pillar: taking a better grip.

"Not interfering," Dawn commented, as a couple of cars went by.

He hung his head. "You should get home. Nasties afoot an' all."

"I'm good." Lifting the bag, she shook it to clatter the stakes, demonstrating. "Just waiting to watch you fall down."

"Got a bet on it, pet?"

No Pet, she shrieked in her mind. No Bit, no Niblet, no nothing, you worthless freaking undead asshole! You left me and didn't even say goodbye!

Failing to get a rise out of her, he revolved enough to free both hands to get a cigarette out and then lit. The lighter took him four tries. But he got it back into his jeans pocket without dropping it, so extra points for accuracy.

And she got extra points for not budging, letting the standoff build. If he let go the lamp post, he'd go down, and they both knew that. She'd let him. And he wasn't about to move, couldn't move, stuck for forward or backward as surely as a cat too far up a tree and they both knew that too. Her treasured rage became something like serenity as she waited for him to ask for her help, so she could turn him down. She'd wait for daylight, if need be. He got the cigarette to his mouth without quite dropping it and breathed out smoke. He shut his eyes.

"And this was the wrong way, anyway," she informed him, resuming the spoken conversation. The unspoken one of course continued.

"That a fact."

"Yeah. Thursday patrol pattern is the other way, toward Shadygrove. Maybe they forgot to tell you. New rules. While you were...gone. Being crazy. Being tortured. Whatever it is you do for fun these days."

"And that could be, too. Why aren't you with them, then?"

"Oh, I'm useless too, didn't anybody bother telling you that either? Only the freakin' Slayers-In-Training get to go patrolling now. No use wasting training on humans and no need to practice screaming and running away, Xander's got that all covered."

He nodded and didn't say anything, which made her want to hit him. But there was no need for that. He'd fall down in his own good time, and she'd watch. Better without forcing the inevitable. Better enjoying the whole anticipating thing. Let it play out.

Motion, down by the corner. Dawn stuck a hand in the bag, and Spike straightened slightly against the post, both watching. Only a guy in a striped shirt, walking a shaggy little mutt that ignored Spike to growl at Dawn, dragged past on a shortened leash in otherwise silence that might have been embarrassed or indifferent. Hard to tell, with silence.

"'S'not worth it," Spike decided, addressing the cigarette. "Go on home."

"No, I'm good."

If the next something that moved furtively by the corner or emerged from the bushes was a cruising vamp, there was nothing he was going to do about it and Dawn was iffy, merely a human teenager, after all: no kind of Slayer, not even potentially, not the crumb of a chance.

Dawn took a stake out of the bag and flipped it for a proper underhanded grip. Whatever the next interruption was, if it came at her, she'd try to take it down.

She wasn't leaving while he stayed. She was her own hostage. Extra points for that, certain sure.

That he wasn't going to get whatever he'd come out here for wasn't her doing. He wasn't her responsibility. He'd once claimed she was his and she'd believed him. They were going to see about that now.

It felt like poker. She'd seen him and raised.

He folded.

"All right." Spike pitched the cigarette and set a boot on the coal. "Give us a bit of a hand, then."

"In your dreams, Spike. How about I go home and bring some handcuffs? Leave you decorating the curbside? Only two and a half blocks: maybe somebody might notice, coming back from patrol. Not Buffy, though. She wouldn't notice. Wouldn't miss you. Nobody misses you, Spike. Nobody cares. Why did you even bother coming back?"

"Been wondering that myself. On and off. Not like it was up to me, after all. Just go where I'm put, stop until called for....You got it, Dawn: you win. You're right, and she's right, and all of us are bloody right and give us a goddam hand here, you stupid bint."

Dawn smiled like a steel trap. "Oh how can I possibly refuse when you ask so nice? But you didn't say the magic word." She was happy to realize she'd grown while he'd been gone. Taller than Buffy, now. She could look him straight in the eyes, and smile, and then be startled as his eyes shone golden as he let his demon out to play.

She didn't think the demon was going to say "please."

"Have it your own way, then," Spike said: glum demon, barely giving her a flash of fangs.

There were last dregs of strength available to him through his demon. He pushed away from the post, stuck both hands in his jeans pockets, and started slowly back. Shoulders hunched as if against an expected blow, a stake just to the left of center from behind; steps as even as though measured out with leg irons.

As he passed beneath the next streetlight Dawn noticed shiny patches on the back of his black T-shirt. A loose spotted circle, an irregular rosette. Black on black. Invisible again as he crossed the street and she drifted along behind. Chin-ups had been really dumb, then: he'd broken something open. Dawn didn't walk much faster but didn't need to, to catch up, half a block from the house. He was resting again, swaying slightly, unsupported in the middle of the stretch between sentinel street lights. He'd lost game face. In the lights of a passing car, he looked like what he was: a walking corpse. You could see the shadow of the half-face bruise again. He'd shut his eyes.

"You go on. I'll be along," he said. Then his knees gave out.

Juggling bag and stake, Dawn wasn't quite slow enough to let his head hit the pavement. Dammit, she thought, her own knees folding, flinging the stake wide and out of the way, dammit all to hell! She was as big a total hopeless loser as he was. Couldn't do it. Couldn't just watch. Kneeling on the sidewalk with a hundred and sixty maybe pounds of unconscious vampire sprawled, head and shoulders, across her lap. Maybe less. He'd dropped a lot of weight, she saw now, since last summer. Bones showing clear, as if he hadn't fed properly in months. Thought pig's blood was just about as disgusting as she did. Drank it anyway because it was that or starve.

Stupid hopeless helpless useless vampire!

Only about a minute before his eyes fluttered open, vague at first, then focusing. "Well, that was educational."

Dawn was vibrating with fury at him, at herself. She was not going to cry. Not going to cry.

"Time you found out," he murmured, "you got limits. Same as everybody else. Same as me. Some things, you just can't make yourself do, no matter how you want to. Might as well learn on me as anybody." After a few seconds he added, "At least there's that: I can serve as a bad example. So not a total waste."

"Get off me. You're bleeding on my second-best slacks."

"Oh, can't have that, send you Anne Klein ripoff hell for that, certain sure." He got himself as far as sitting, so she could scramble to her feet. "Give us a hand, then," he said again, not looking at her, arm lifted, calmly waiting.

She could leave him there. Leave him for the returning patrol to find, they'd never miss him, so close. Get him in all kinds of trouble with Buffy. Except that she couldn't.

"I hate limits," she shouted, hands fisted at her sides. "I hate souls." She felt as if she were about to explode. Then she felt better, remembering the bomb.

"No argument here on that. Just how it is."

"Shut up. Just shut up." Grabbing his extended arm at the elbow, she hauled, and he came, and she was remembering how Buffy had brought him home not quite a week ago. She ducked and pulled his arm across her shoulders, no point anymore pretending she wasn't going to do this, so no point doing it badly. She put her other arm around his back below the wet, seeping patches and latched her thumb into one of the belt loops. She waited for him to contribute some wiseass remark but he didn't, just took one crosswise schottische step trying to correct the lean, so she braced and shoved them both forward, going with the stumbling schottische steps when she had to, straightening when she could, zig-zagging slo-mo between the lane markers of curb and hedge.

She hated it that he'd asked her help and hated that he accepted it. This was so not right. He wasn't supposed to let her treat him like this, not that he didn't have it coming, but he always, always went down fighting, what'd goddam happened to him to make him like this?

Passing the last hedge, they hit grass: home stretch. She demanded, "What is it, the frelling soul that makes you so goddam pitiful even I can't stand it? Is it?"

"Like as not." She felt him shrug. "When you suss it all out, you tell me. Don't have a clue, personally."

Approaching the back of the house, he pulled away a bit, and she let him sag down onto the porch steps.

"Go inside now, there's a good girl."

"Make me."

In the middle of lighting another cigarette, he cocked an eye at her. "Go inside, Dawn. You're not to be out here with me."

"So what are you gonna do: faint on me? Been there, y'know. So non-scary."

He got the cigarette lit and the lighter stowed away. "Not safe. Can't help it. Need a minder, every minute. You stay wide of me, Bit. I mean it. After awhile I'll get myself downstairs, all chained up proper again. That'll be all right then. Safe as houses. Talk then, if you want."

"What makes you think I want to talk to you?"

"Or not. Just saying. Just get yourself inside where you belong. Where nothing can get at you."

"I'm not scared of you!"

"Well, I know that, don't I? Never have been, never will be. But what you haven't yet thought out is that don't make me safe, Dawn. I would be for you if I could. Never hurt you if I could stop myself. But sometimes I can't. Don't know what-all I do then. Still trying to recall. Got a few pieces but not enough, not all. Holden Webster. Silly git. Never did know his name. He's accounted for. Slayer did for him. Don't know the other names. No proper introductions, visiting cards, tear out the throat then open someplace handy, wrist, arm, no matter, hold 'em breathing long enough to get it down them. Not exactly social, that."

Dawn sank down on the step too. "You've been killing."

He was looking out into the back yard, that seeming safe edge of the night, past where the light of the windows fell. There were crickets. "That I have, pet. And that's not all I've been doing."

"But the soul-- So you did lie about it! I--"

"Didn't lie. Wouldn't lie, anything else but not about that. Soul makes no difference, seems like. Soul has a nap and things proceed. Chip, that makes no difference neither. No impediment. I don't have a good handle on it yet but something's got its hooks in me deeper than I can figure, deeper than I know how to change. Not my own dog anymore, Niblet. Maybe never was, but I thought I was.... Guess I know whose, but haven't yet found a way to slip the leash. Don't know how to go about it. Need somebody to watch, be a minder, keep an eye on me, see I don't do something I'd...regret. Till that's different, you stay clear of me, all right? Cause if I ever hurt either one of you again...."

He didn't say what he'd do, but Dawn knew. From that summer. Before. When they'd each been pretty much all the other had and both fairly desperate-crazy a good part of the time. Remembered talking about it, talking him out of it, hitting him hard, crying or hurting herself until he had to give it up and tend to her. Dancing him away from it any way she could, any way she had to, because the alternative would be beyond bearing. It was understood now between them, no discussion needed. He'd take a walk in the sunshine. A little way. And then be gone.

Time, thought Dawn, suddenly remembering, for the bomb.

She went into the kitchen and was groping behind the cereal boxes when the back door squeaked and he passed behind her, leaning on the countertops: headed toward the basement. Limping so bad now his whole body hitched, skewed, and hesitated with each step. Her hand found what she wanted. She called, "Don't bolt it."

"All right."

She waited a minute for the noise that would mean he'd fallen down the stairs, but it seemed that had gone all right. As an afterthought, she poured a mug of blood, heated it in the microwave, then stuck the package under her arm and carried the mug downstairs. He'd put the light on for her and was settling onto the cot, awkwardly reaching around for the second manacle. Chains in the wall behind him. Dawn blinked, watching him fasten the second cuff around his wrist, then ease back, let go of something he'd been holding tightly.

She hadn't believed him about the chains. She didn't like watching him lock himself into them so matter-of-factly, with not just resignation but relief.

So he'd meant it, about not being safe. She could do anything to him now and there'd be nothing he could do about it. And he couldn't do anything to her, and was uneasy until he'd made himself sure of that. Not right. Couldn't be right.

She held the mug out and he said "Ta," and took it with both hands, spilling only a little with the shaking and on the cement it didn't matter. Didn't even bother to make a face, drinking. Not worth the trouble. His hair was in the bad stage between short and long. Only the ragged ends were white. The rest was a lighter, sandier color than she would have expected. Slightly curly at that length and untended. He'd always cared how he looked. Vainest guy she'd ever known, every detail considered and chosen to make exactly the impression he wanted. Now he didn't. Not worth the trouble. Now he lived someplace way back behind his eyes and didn't give a damn what the neighbors thought. If he even noticed that the neighbors were there.

Beaten down, quiet, no bounce left to him, so different. Give us a hand, then.

But with all the flash discarded, more simply himself: realer than she remembered or would ever have thought he'd be. She'd never thought of him as a thing, never once; but neither was he a man. A person, though: absolutely. Vampire person. Vivid alert blue or fulvous, dangerous golden, a person lived behind those changing eyes. And was himself changed practically beyond all recognition.

The realization that she no longer knew him was both disquieting and also like something still, spinning, balanced like a top. She wondered if the quiet she felt coming off him was something to do with the soul or was only another side effect of giving up.

"So what's that, then?" he asked presently.

"What's what?" she retorted, knowing he'd notice, waiting for him to ask.

"Whatever you got so unsuccessfully hid behind your back, pet: that what."

She whipped it out of its sheath, its bag, and presented it within six inches of his nose. Then she watched his face click through the layered realizations.

Click: pint bottle of liquor.

Click: full pint bottle of liquor.

Bottle of liquor underage Dawn had somehow finagled for him. Click.

Bottle of cheap-ass horrible freaking peach schnapps. Click.

Bottle of cheap-ass horrible freaking peach schnapps with metal cap unsealed, then retightened: it had been opened. Click.

He set the bottle on his knee and considered her, and Dawn was positive he was wondering if maybe she'd put something in it. Vomiting spell with ingredients from Anya, maybe. Or just enough rat poison.

"I spit in it," Dawn informed him blandly.

"Oh, if that's all." He unscrewed the cap and warily smelled the contents.

They both waited to find out if he was going to taste it. Horrible cheap-ass fucking peach schnapps.

"Right, then," he said, and upended the bottle and didn't stop or set it down until he'd finished it all. It wasn't like he had to breathe or anything. After the last swallow he made the face he wouldn't waste on the disgusting pig's blood. "You know what that is?" He gestured with the bottle. "That's horrible cheap-ass fucking peach schnapps, that's what that is. God, that's awful. Pinch me something decent next time, pet. Jesus God, that's appalling." He made a different face.

"Drank it, didn't you?"

"Might as well, why not? Better than nothing. Besides, you took all the trouble to spit in it, least I could--"

Their eyes met, and they both started laughing and couldn't stop. Dawn had to sit on the floor, convulsing and choking, slapping the cement. She wet herself, and of course he knew she had and that set him off even worse. He couldn't find anything to do with his hands until he settled for yanking at the chains, howling his head off. But that wasn't enough. Bending, he curled himself into a ball, the chains curved around him, as tight as he could, head bent against knees and arms wrapped behind his head, and it wasn't laughter anymore.

Dawn started to lean up, levering herself to reach, and just like that he was staring at her and she'd never seen his eyes do that, wide and golden and stark in his human face, tears still running down his cheeks.

"Don't," he said. "Don't you come near me."

She sat back, obedient: out of reach. Because he meant it. It was important to him.

If he could tolerate and enforce the limits upon himself, so could she.

He rolled onto his back, gradually unclenching, letting his knees unbend and stretch flat. His harsh gasps of breathing softened into hiccupping clicky spasms, then into silence.

"Done me good, that time," he said after awhile, and she had no trouble knowing what he meant. Doing somebody meant something quite different in Brit-speak: anything from murder to sex and everything between that left a victim. "Done me bleedin' marvelous. Gimme time, I'll think of something as nice for you, love. Haven't had--"

His head lifted and he pushed up onto an elbow. After a minute she heard it too: the thundering herd returning, girly screeches and chatter, the bang and clash of mishandled weapons going back into the chest.

"Did you think to bolt the door, love?"

"Exactly how stupid do I look?"

"Best not to say if I want to keep friends with you an' all. Not if I want to ask you a favor."

Looking around, Dawn found the gold gone from his eyes. He was sitting up again on the edge of the cot, his hands neatly folded on his knees. Best behavior pose. Or maybe the schnapps was beginning to get to him.

Terrible stuff: she'd tasted it to make sure. An insult even to offer. And he was desperate enough, and yet calm enough within himself, to take even that. It wasn't possible to humiliate him anymore: they both knew that about him now.

Dawn still hadn't quite made up her mind which of them was the biggest pathetic loser. She thought she still had him on points but it was hard to know how to score intermittent insanity. She wondered what it would take to back him into a place where he'd drink a rat.

"There's a thing," he said. "Have I got it right, you don't go patrolling anymore."

She nodded, then shrugged to say how completely that didn't matter.

"Right, then. What I want.... Listen. Ask. If they staked any vamps tonight, the last few nights, last couple of weeks. If, if any of them had a chat first, like. Like that Holden fucking Webster. Any that seemed to have the least sodding clue what they're bloody well doing, idiot fledglings, just come blundering at you without a thought in their cement fucking heads, all fangs and Rrrr, it's a pure mercy staking that lot, you see? Any not like that."

Dawn nodded again to show she was listening, but what she was actually doing was watching his hands. They were moving again, dancing to his voice the way they always had and were supposed to, making shapes and punctuation in the air, precise visual counterpoint to the swoops and stops of phrasing.

"Fledges, mind." His leveled finger instructed her. "Not some clapped-out sodding relic like me or Peaches. Not like that. The new ones, that's all. Last month or I s'pose six weeks, at the longest. They may not know the difference, those chits, but you do, love. Find out for me. Any like that. Can't look for myself: she's right, I got to get a whole lot better before I'm fit to set foot outside without a keeper, I'd only be in the way. A distraction.... So you find out for me, will you? And if they did, if there were any, get me the best description you can. Will you do that?"

Dawn thought about it. "Names?"

"Don't care about the names. No use to that. Never knew 'em, wouldn't know 'em now, and they don't come at you with labels. Unless you catch one fresh-risen and the gravestone handy and all. Don't care about the names."

She thought about asking, Spike, why did you go out tonight?

But she didn't. She figured that she knew.

So instead, she inquired carefully, watching to read his signs, "Can I ask Buffy?"

"No need of that. They'll say, and you'll know, and no need to bother the Slayer about it." The hands were back on his knees, demurely folded.

Dawn understood: No telling Buffy. Check.

No problem there: it wasn't as if they were apt to have anything resembling a conversation in the next thousand years.

I want to show you the world!

Yeah, sure.

THREE

Spike couldn't recall ever having been so happy.

Well, there was the first early sunlight, wasn't it? out the kitchen window and back door panel, all laid so soft across the grass and the upright bounding hedges: Turner light, Watteau light, and like that. He barely noticed the bloodsmell children twisting past, behind and around him, always so careful not to touch him, flowing out to the yard to start their morning jerks with the brat, that Kennedy-girl--yeah: a few names he had that he could put, that lot, he had her number right enough for all she thought she had his--calling them to it, and the light like silk over them all, so soft, and the clear greens and browns and smooth sliding pink-beiges, red of a car going by out on the road and another blue almost to black, every color a little, like he'd almost forgotten....

The blatbuzz of the microwave recalled him and he retrieved the mug, slowly drank and refilled it, put it back in the microwave and set the blood to heating because that's what was to be done now. Terrible swill but that's what there was, what he had to get as much down as he could every few hours until he was fed up something like proper again and not just a waste of the space and the feed.

Watching a squirrel doing a neat, twisty traverse across the slack of a roof-high cable, he started checking the inner inventory. Amazingly, nothing actually hurt. So long as he just stood there, no pain anywhere. He tried to absorb that unaccustomed benediction until the microwave box said it was time again and he collected the mug.

He was still playing audience for the squirrel that'd almost made it safe home to the big maple in the corner of the lot which Spike considered he had a claim on, all those nights standing under it, good view of the Slayer's window from that one and pity about the elm blight, so many grand old trees gone, when he felt Buffy come in behind him. Click of cabinet opening and shutting, various slides and bangs. Not real coordinated of a morning, his girl. Well, there were worse things.

Still a schoolday, today, he knew that: she'd have to be going, off in a tick, always running two steps late. He'd learned the drill on that, this past week. He set the other mug he'd fixed, terrible kack passed itself off as coffee around here, in the microwave box and pushed the right buttons in the right order and the wonder was he knew how to do that, who recalled when electrical lighting was a nine days' wonder and locomotives, too, and people died of the soot and the clap and consumption, died of a thousand other things nobody died of anymore and hardly worth mention in the morning Times.

Her arms folded across his shoulders: pillowed, no weight, warm. Clean girlsmell, too many mints: toothpaste, mouthwash, and the faintly metallic undertone that was the muscle ointment. She breathed, "Wha'cha watching?" in his ear.

The squirrel had reached the tree and vanished. At the announcing buzz, he took out the mug of coffee and held it for her to take.

She didn't mind that he hadn't answered her, she was good about things like that: no totting up points, no ceremony. "Mmmm," she said against the back of his neck, breathing coffee that smelled much better on her than in the making or the mug, "you smell good--what'cha been doing?"

He chuckled, looking halfway around. "While you were off doin' your bit for God, puppies, and good ol' Sunnydale, Bit fetched me a pint of peach schnapps."

She smiled back at him and made a wry face, all at the same time. "Peace offering?"

"Dare, more like. Went down all right. Least, didn't come back up. Had a good night out of it, anyways. As to the rest...." He thought a moment. "Well, maybe we've got as far as she won't decide to dust me in my sleep. It'll work its way out. Can't take back what's done. She's entitled, and I can take the punishment."

"Good enough, then." Warm hand stroking down his spine--warm, even through the shirt. "How's the back today?"

It took a little to get under his steady refusal to notice, but the hand that had settled on his ass was way past that. Way past noticing. No use talking, saying she wasn't to do that, it could only make them sad: she knew. Some things, knowing didn't help and you lived with them how you could. Bit couldn't help it either and it was much the same thing, he thought: pretty much the same. But he couldn't be what they wanted and likely never had been and there was no use either of them, any of them, pretending different. Besides that, he didn't want either of them to get too attached to him as it would only grieve them the worse when he was gone.

He took it up to the point where he couldn't and beyond that, they had to let him be. That wasn't what he was for.

He loved them both like a fever he'd caught and would likely die of, and that was all right. He could remember being otherwise but not why.

He moved away and reached to put his mug under running water in the sink so none of the children would have reason to complain of him on that account, scraping a thumb along the rim to dislodge a crust dried against it. His back and other things cooled and didn't like it but that was their problem, not his.

Nothing like a month, six weeks of unremitting, educated torture to help you separate out what was what, sort out the confusion about most things. Wouldn't recommend it but he'd take from it what he could, what he could use.

"Sorry," she said to him. "Sorry."

"No harm, love. Not gonna do you like that anymore."

"I know. I don't mean to. Just kinda sneaks up on me, too."

Best he thought, not to say anything. Best not to begin.

"Back's some better," he reported, setting the mug at the side of the sink, "all the little nobbly bits settlin' down to their job. No outright gaps I can feel. Should start stirrin' 'em around, they've got lazy. Train a little with you, if you like? Should be able to stand a bounce or two. Then you could judge how the rest of it has got on. After the school lets out? 'Bout ha'past three?"

"Oh god, what's the time?"

Spike stood aside so she could do the usual dash of grabbing herself a couple of those anemic revolting fake pastries out of a box and gulping the last of the coffee, poking her hair for stray wisps except of course the ones she'd put there on purpose, and making a general kerfluffle of herself. Deep turquoise skirt today, an almost Aegean blue; white silk shield-front shirt with brass shoulder buttons; ballet-style pumps, white, because it'd be impossible to exactly match the blue and near wouldn't have done at all.

Catching his eyes regarding her, she stilled, almost on tiptoe, then started nervously patting folds. "All shipshape--?" she asked.

"--and Bristol bloody fashion. Never better. Get on with you." Following as she sprinted for the front because he always followed because she always liked it when he did, he called, "Oi! Training, then?"

"If I can, sure, and if I can't I'll cell you, is--" Her eyes followed his pointing finger to the hall table, saw the cellphone standing there in its charger base. She grabbed the phone, waggling it by way of thanks, then hauled the front door open and was gone.

He wandered back to the kitchen. The light had begun slanting in, casting an oblong brilliant rectangle across the front of the refrigerator. More spilled in when one of the children whose name he hadn't yet got down burst in and sprinted for the upstairs bathroom, throwing him a wide, spooked glance in passing even though he'd left her plenty of space to get safely by. Outside kitchen door still standing agape as she'd left it. Likely set her elbows on the table and talked with her mouth full, too. Raised in a barn, the lot of them.

Even though the strengthening light lifted all the colors into something incredible (like the contact high when you'd just eaten a flower person, his mind sardonically supplied), the kitchen had become what in law was called an attractive nuisance--beautiful and deadly. He turned away. He knew his limits. And what he was for.

While Spike stood irresolute in the hallway, considering which would be the best thing to start with, Harris barged through the front door in his work kit, maneuvering an armload of 2 x 4s and carrying a bucket.

"Hey: Evil Undead!" Harris said, letting the bucket thump down. "As long as you're upright, lend a hand with this."

Spike glanced at the timber, estimating weight, then leaned aside and shouted loud enough to carry through the gaping kitchen door, "You: pup. Get yourself in here."

Harris' turn would have to wait. Spike wasn't going to jeopardize a chance at a training session, let alone tonight's patrol, for the likes of that.

Within a minute, the pup came trotting in, all puppy sweat from the session of jerks with all the girls and nice as a peach underneath, which Spike had no intention of telling anybody. Spike spread a hand and rotated the puppy's hopeful head in the correct direction, then gave him just enough of a push. "Don't want you. Harris does. Go make yourself useful."

Dru would have liked the puppy. She'd have had him for dessert.

For pudding, Dru's voice in his mind corrected and Spike checked around himself a second to make sure everything was as it should be, no phantom Drusilla seated on the steps for instance, all crazy, luscious, and savage, needing to be seen to. Not this time. Not with all the wards in place. So no present problem on that score....

Having juggled and then dropped the load of boards because the puppy hadn't the sense to catch hold as it tipped, Harris stood with hands on his hips, gazing murder at Spike, which bothered Spike not at all, but he didn't have to let Harris catch him smiling so he turned away first. Be awhile, he expected, before the whelp was going to let done be done in respect to Spike's having had his woman: only natural, wasn't it. But no need to get the whelp's back farther up about it than it was. He'd see to Harris in due course. No use bolloxing it up in advance just because he could.

I learn by going where I have to go.

The line of verse singing itself in his head reminded him. He climbed the stairs, aware of the laxity of muscles too long unused, taking his time. He was past the worst of it: all the major bones had healed. The injuries merely to flesh had already sealed themselves. That was how it always was: heal from the outside in. It was disuse, as much as anything, slowing him now. Needed to get himself stirring, make some use of the daylight hours. As good a chance as any, he thought, to start seeing to the witch, without the brat drooling all over her.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

He had a healthy respect for the witch but none whatever for the brat and truth be told, he thought the less of Willow's taste, not to mention her good sense, for taking up with the bint, considering that Tara had been one fine, choice lady. Never would have said no to that.

He tapped on the door. Could have walked right in: once he was into a house he had the whole of it, attic to basement; but he wasn't inclined, out of respect for Tara. And even respect for Joyce, Buffy's mom, whose room it had been until she'd had no more need of it. Always knocked. And knocked again when he got no response, warily judging the likelihood of a big patch of sun about three feet off making a sudden jump at him.

"Red, it's me. All right if I come in?"

He heard her voice but not the words and decided to take it as permission.

He had about eighteen inches of clear floor before the sunspace started. Dust motes shone in the air. All the windows were shut. The witch, in a nubby grey robe and thick white socks, sat cross-legged on the bed, tapping away at the laptop. Her rich auburn hair stuck up in stiff tufts in all directions like a really cheap wig.

"What," she said.

Spike made the experiment of sitting back on his heels in the clear space. Nothing gave way. "Wonder if you might have such a thing as a spare notebook I could have."

She reached into a nearby bookcase, grabbed a green notebook, and held it at arm's length, all without removing her attention from the screen.

Spike looked at the notebook, looked at the sunspace, and stayed put.

Eventually the witch noticed she was still holding the notebook, glanced around, saw the problem, and pitched the notebook to flop and slide far enough that he could set cautious fingertips to the spiral spine and draw it in.

Spike continued to stay put. After a time the witch noticed that too and lifted her head, frowning a question. Give her another year and she'd have permanent lines bracketing her mouth and that same crease stuck between her eyebrows.

"Pen," Spike mentioned.

"Oh!" Tipping far forward, face nearly to the mattress and ass in the air, she rooted in the folds of a blanket and produced one and flipped it in his direction. He caught it on the fly, which was pretty good, considering, but she'd flopped back and was staring at the screen the instant the pen left her hand.

"Red," he drawled, choosing the tone very carefully, and got a flashing What now? glance he immediately disengaged from. "Have I done something to piss you off?"

"What? Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that, I never--" Her whole face collapsed and she started babbling, waving like a disjointed maniac at the screen, him, the window, the middle of the air, blah, blah, blah bad search results, blah, blah, blah indeterminate parameters, blah, blah, blah search criteria, Spike nodding just like he caught more than one word in ten.

Good to know the girl he'd known and mostly liked was still someplace within that brittle shell.

When the words ran dry and she sat gaping at him blankly, he asked, "You got a library card?"

She took up about two feet of slack in her jaw. All the features readjusted, just like that, just like magic, and he was facing a redheaded gamine barely older than the Bit, endearingly awkward except for the shrewd eyes that finally were seeing him. "Why: you wanna borrow it?"

The bright skepticism he put down to habit, didn't take it personally. He wrote a line on the pad and thought a moment. Writing another, he said, "Had some things running through my head. Know what they are but can't sort the order--"

"I know, I know! Happens all the time, me, I mean, and don't you just hate it when that happens?"

Upon consideration he added a third line, then tore the page off along the perforation and held it out. "I'd bring it to you, but...." He nodded toward the drifting dust motes hanging in the sunshine.

"Oh, sure, right, no problem!" She hopped off the bed and skidded in her socks to scoop the page from his hand. Bright in the sunlight, she stood reading it. Lost into attention and her own head, utterly forgetful of the vampire at her knees.

She had no physical fear of him. None at all. Nobody else except Buffy herself and the Bit, of course, had such an absolute lack of wariness of him.

Disengaging from the scan, she cocked her head at him. "They're all poetry," she mentioned as if happily surprised the puppy had done a trick.

Spike could put up with being considered cute. "Well, yeah. They are. Not real heavy to carry" (his hands described minute dimensions) "except for that one anthology, there," he said, as though that were an important argument. "Can't very well stroll in there, get 'em my--"

"Yeah, excess flaminess factor, I get that. Sure, Spike, I'll get 'em for you. But if there are any fines, you know, I'm way no with the fines--" She emphatically waved the no with both hands, smearing it out of the air.

"Understood. Thanks." He concentrated on getting up without using his hands: should be a doable trick. Pretty much made it, except for dropping the pen. And bending straight down to get it wasn't likely a trick he could yet do. But there was no need: it sprang up from the floor and Willow was holding it out to him, blink and there.

Spike considered it, suddenly a good deal warier of the witch than she was of him. She just kept smiling. And it was a good smile--not like she had a clear picture in her head of how he'd look without his skin.

"Thought you weren't doing that now."

"Thought you weren't eating people anymore," she riposted calmly. "Sometimes, we surprise ourselves, right? So: books. Poetry books. Cabin fever starting to get to you?"

"No," Spike said, letting the word go long. "When just standing up is the high point of your day, there's still a ways to go before boredom sets in."

"You look better," she offered.

"Can't always go by looks." Spike gently picked a dust bunny off her hair and presented it to her. She swapped it for the pen. Except for making a sour-smiling face, she didn't seem annoyed.

That seemed the best way to leave, so he did, pleased on the whole with the encounter. If you wanted to make a connection with somebody, do them a favor. Failing that, have them do you one.

He'd coaxed several smiles out of the witch, and waked her up a bit, and she hadn't taken his skin off for it. She now had an actual reason to leave the house, which he understood she hadn't done in at least a week. Pry her away from the brat at least for an extra hour or two because he doubted Willow Rosenberg could get within touching distance of a whole bunch of books in bright bindings, solid and satisfactory to the hand, all squared up in rows like a perfect dream of order, pictures and secrets and lies better than truth, and not collect twice as many for herself as the ones she got for him.

He knew that about her because he knew that about himself. So, easy enough to make the jump and figure the best way of seeing to her.

He'd found it absurdly easy to split the Scoobies and set them at each other's throats, some years back. So far, he judged that weaving them together again, patching all the broken places, and linking them as a solid wall around the Slayer shouldn't be all that hard either. Harris, he could handle Harris well enough when all the rest had been attended to....

Besides, he wanted the books.

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Roethke, he knew. But there was a line he couldn't retrieve, that continued to itch at him like the insane zodiac he'd been told was what had been cut into his back, at least the number was right, 12, but no symbols or characters Buffy could recognize, which in itself didn't mean a whole hell of a lot. He doubted she'd cracked a book since her resurrection. More for direct action, his girl. He didn't know if the marks on his back were the same as on his chest and abdomen or different. And no idea what any of them meant, of course--could be anything from the Mark of the Beast to Eat at Joe's. A mirror would obviously be no help; he wasn't real enthusiastic about the idea of stripping down for Willow; Rupert might be tolerable, whenever he happened to show up again. Would not be pleased to find him here again, would Rupert. And there'd be the Leonard Cohen anthology since there was no way for him to get music into the basement, at least not at any kind of volume, and the Cohen should be good, didn't need music if you had that. He'd decided he was off music and back to words. Scraps of things, a couplet or a stanza announcing themselves in his head out of noplace, cadenced and precise, was bloody astonishing and brilliant, he thought. Hell of a lot better than 99% of the crap he'd had erupting in his head lately.

Defend him against not-Dru, maybe. And not-himself, who derided what he'd become and had such a lame line of patter. Worthless lazy git. And the rest of the whole bleeding carnival of persuasive masks he'd refused to put any trust in, any belief, throwing words back at it, any old words, scraps of poetry and song at first while his voice held, then anything that connected and helped shut the voices out because he couldn't move his hands and something had been done to his back, Miss Flyte and the birds, yeah, that's another one that should go on the list: Dickens. Taste of home despite all the silly-buggers melodrama. Bleak House, was it?

And at the foot of the stairs he stopped because the sun was sparking rainbows from a shard of broken glass that'd likely come in with Harris' steel-toed size elevens and the lumber. All quiet inside again, Spike settled between two steps and watched jewels bloom and fade against the wallpaper until the sun lifted higher and the show was done.

He was no longer in that place: she'd come for him. He'd known she would, and she had. This was real, and not that other.

He needed nothing more or different than that. He could barely contain it. It sufficed completely. In proportional response he'd give himself away by handfuls, buckets, or boxes man-sized long and shoulder wide. He was giving himself away already.

Cisterns contain; fountains overflow. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

At least he'd gotten himself a proper soul with no stupid happiness clause.

FOUR

When Buffy got to the training annex of the Magic Box, she found Spike sitting on a bench by the back wall of the big training room scribbling in a notebook: so intent that he didn't seem to notice her arrival, all of which was weird and, though not necessarily of the bad in itself, so damn...un-Spike-like. Like he was channeling Willow or something because that was definitely one of Willow's endless string of color-coded spiral notebooks he was working in. Buffy forgot what green meant, but no way was she not gonna know one of Willow's notebooks. Willow went into research trance, blind and deaf for hours at a stretch, biting the top of pen or stylus, either frowning at the page or screen or else in catatonic thousand-yard-stare mode--not Spike, never Spike!

He was just so weird now. Buffy was puzzled, frustrated, and vaguely annoyed at him. Not an unusual way for her to be feeling about Spike at any time, of course, but not for the current batch of reasons. Yesterday he'd not only volunteered to do laundry, on the grounds that since he was down in the basement from midday on, he might as well get that chore seen to, being so handy to it; but he'd actually done it, which was uber-weirdness of the first magnitude. Unthinkable. And he still hadn't noticed her.

She went behind the screen and changed into training sweatpants and strap-shouldered top. Barefoot and carrying her sneakers, she marched over to the bench and plopped down on it heavily. Incredibly he still didn't look up, just said absently, "Right, in a second...." in the pen-top biting phase.

Spike never didn't notice her!

Stuffing her left foot into the sneaker required Buffy to twist and lean against his arm to reach the laces right.

"Yeah," he said, and smiled at her. Suddenly there, back from wherever he'd been, just as if he hadn't been committing uber-weirdness and she was the crazy one for finding him so off that it didn't compute.

A year ago, something that strange, she would have hurried off to discuss it, poke and wrestle with it--with Spike. Which left her doubly frustrated because that resource had been withdrawn and there was nothing to replace it. Just the fact of him, no more than acknowledgement he existed anywhere within a hundred square miles of the heart of Buffy-dom, was enough to produce frozen-face, eyes that wouldn't meet hers, and unsubtle changes of subject from Willow or Anya, flaming sulks from Dawn, and outright accusations from Xander--no different from a year ago when the unthinkable (secret awful Spike/Buffy sex thing) had been an actual fact, whereas now...it somehow wasn't.

Which was a good thing, Buffy told herself about 2,000 times a day: only whenever the subject happened to pop into her thoughts, not as if she was being all obsesso-girl about it. That was generally Spike's department, except that he'd apparently taken on some new hobby instead of colliding with her at full speed and fucking each other blind and legless four or five times a day, interspersed with a nice savage punch-up as an occasional change of pace.

It had gotten awful before she'd put a stop to it. Good that they weren't doing that anymore. Good that she'd gotten over taking out on him her inarticulate and otherwise unexpressed fury at having to be alive and grown-up, which she'd never asked for and had thrust on her, just like everything else; having to somehow stand under the crushing weight of all her responsibilities, pick them up afresh every day and carry them through to the next collapse into another night's black oblivion and seething with resentment and hopelessness that it would ever be any different. Hitting Spike, punishing him for being the nearest thing to an outlet that she had because the Slayer wasn't allowed outlets, wasn't allowed fun, and certainly wasn't allowed wild destructive liberating sex with a thing like him; hitting him because that was safe, she couldn't break him; hitting him until he hit back, lost what passed for his temper and defended himself. It had been awful. It gave her a sick, shamed feeling whenever she thought about it: roughly 2,000 times a day.

But they were both so over that, and it was a good thing to have nothing to hide or apologize for or explain away to her friends about anything she did in regard to Spike now. A civil friendship, they'd tolerate, and even be (mostly) civil to him in return. He'd won that much acceptance from them, during the summer she'd been...gone. Without Buffy in the equation, Spike was regarded as minimally OK. Not worth the effort of tormenting, rejecting. Easier with him than without him, so might as well let him hang around, help battle the nasties since he volunteered to do it anyway, rather than go to the trouble of, say, chaining him up in a tub. It wasn't, anymore, Spike himself that roused instant and unconditional hostility just by showing up in a room. Only any least suggestion or even suspicion of any connection between him and Buffy different from or deeper than their own would trigger frozen-faced rejection, criticism, and outright condemnation. They'd made it clear that she could have Spike, or she could have them. Not both. And she couldn't possibly defeat the First Evil and its Harbingers, and protect all the Potential Slayers known to exist in all the world, without them. Without them all.

All week, since recovering Spike, Buffy had felt them watching her. Judging her. Timing her visits to the basement to change his goddam bandages or oversee the 2 a.m. feeding. Waiting for their unholiest suspicions to be confirmed. And it was good that there'd been nothing at all to see. And it was just perverse of her to find herself sidling up to him, nudging to see what sort of response she'd get, pushing closer the more he backed away: stupid and perverse and self-destructive and mean, even to him, and she was determined never ever to be mean to him again, he'd never deserved it, nobody deserved that kind of vindictive punishment in the one way they were completely helpless and undefended: as ugly as beating a child or a parent or a spouse just because you could, because they'd let you or couldn't face doing what could force you to stop. Because they loved you. Because you hurt in ways that really had nothing to do with them but you took it out on them anyway. Because their love trapped them and as long as the two of you were in reach of one another, caught in that circle of pain and intimate flailing combat, it was only gonna get worse.

She'd broken out first, because, really, no commitment there. It had been easier for her. And after all, she'd started it.

He'd had to be overtaken by the blind compulsion to connect somehow, anyhow--always more powerful in him than in her because for him, it actually had been love--unable to realize that this once, out of the last 2,000 times, no had actually meant NO, be pushed by it into craziness and intimate attack beyond what even he could tolerate.

So he'd spun off like a spark from a wheel and insanely battled himself a soul, that she'd mercilessly lambasted him for lacking: a soul that made him more whacking insane than ever.

Buffy was coming to the unwelcome conclusion that souls sucked.

Since the soul, he hadn't made one single attempt to come on to her. Didn't get in her face, challenge her, make her life hell. Disengaged from the cycle of abuse as though it'd never been. Was helplessly crazy, or captured, or as helplessly rescued, accepting her half-grudged concern just as though it meant something, so she found herself ratcheting it up into declarations of faith in him, doubting herself instead of him, giving him trust and freedom within her life far beyond what was safe or prudent or asked for, giving him finally a freaking blank check to anything he wanted from her...which he placidly didn't even seem to see and certainly showed no inclination to use.

And it was good that all that was behind them, that they could simply be friends. Her record, in converting ex-lovers to friends, was 0 for three, not counting Spike. He was useful, made himself useful any way she asked and any way he could, even without her asking. Was a hell of a good fighter, the best next to her or, if he was healthy and motivated, possibly the best including her--they'd fought innumerable times to a draw but never to a decision, a death, and he'd left two dead Slayers in his wake before he'd ever collided with her, so somebody betting on the outcome might well consider Spike had the edge, if it ever came to that, which Buffy was determined it never would again. She was gonna abso-freaking-lutely need a fighter like that, and desperately felt the lack of him, battling the Ubervamp Turok-Han, who'd whipped her ass soundly and painfully every time she'd gone up against him, giving ground, counting just escaping as an achievement, until she'd finally come up with the right weapon and dusted him at last, an object lesson to the SITs. Aware every sick, terrified second that she and Spike together could have taken that monster out, no problem, on the very first go-round. Hating her responsibility that required she make protecting the young Slayers In Training her absolute priority and set aside, each second, the desperate need to simply push the Turok-Han aside, duck and dash past him to the prisoner he guarded.

She'd managed to set aside the screeching personal imperative Get Spike the hell out of there, now! for six unspeakably miserable weeks he'd somehow survived more or less intact--at least no physical injury, however gruesome, horribly upsetting, and disabling, that vampire healing wouldn't eventually take care of--no thanks to her.

They'd both been basket cases, the night she'd brought him back.

She'd expected him to say something like What kept you. Instead, he'd said, You came, like that was all that mattered, and enough, and everything.

She did need him and she didn't love him any more than she loved herself. He was a necessary part of her and she no longer denied it to herself, or him, or anybody. It would be some kind of huge insanity to want the madness back. Overturn the first peace they'd ever had between them for nothing she even wanted, nothing he wasn't content to have over, stupid and destructive of everything that actually mattered to her.

But she didn't seem to be able to help herself. She didn't understand why she did it, or why he did freaking anything anymore, and none of it made any sense at all.

Except this wasn't right. He wasn't right. She worried about him and tried to reach him and was calmly rebuffed for reasons she even agreed with, which only made her reach harder, more insistently, and this was not gonna end well either, which awareness made her more and more frantic.

It wasn't the capture or the torture. He'd been like this ever since the soul she'd said she couldn't love him without: evil soulless thing! she'd spat at him, over and over, until he'd believed her.

She'd thought it was safe, that he was indestructible.

She was horribly afraid she'd broken him beyond all mending.

He'd gone back to his damn notebook, perfectly content to wait another hour if that was how long it took her to tie her other sneaker. OK by him: he was occupied. Self-contained and placid and inert.

He asked nothing of her. Expected nothing. Nothing at all.

What she had, she'd come to suspect, was William...or some bastardized half-assed lukewarm approximation of him; what she wanted was Spike. And if she got him, it would almost certainly destroy them both and the world, for lack of their effective intervention.

She could so not do this!

The hardest thing she'd done lately was not kiss him.

"Wha'cha doing?" she asked, trying to shove all the tightness and confusion away, not dump it on him, or at least keep it out of her voice.

"Tryin' to get things sorted. All the pieces flyin' around every which way.... Workin' out a timeline, try to make some sense of it all.... You gonna do your warm-ups, pet?"

"Is Willow helping?"

When he looked around inquiringly, Buffy gestured at the notebook.

"Well, she's the one with the stash of notebooks, isn't she?" He chewed on his lip. "Thought you said she'd gone off magic."

"She has. I think she scared herself. I know she scared me. She's gonna have to face up to it again, though. If she's gonna be any use."

"Ahuh.... Go do your jerks, there's a good girl."

Resisting the impulse to flounce, Buffy put herself through a medium routine of calisthenics and stretches, feeling the muscles loosen and warm, the ligaments extend her range of motion and reach. Ending a leg raise and drop-into-split move, she landed on her butt at catching sight, beginning the drop, of Spike poised in a one-arm handstand, straight up, reading the notebook upside down.

"OK, tiger, you made your point," Buffy commented dryly, collecting herself from the bad landing.

Upside down, he blinked at her with the familiar bland innocence. "Oh, you ready now, are you?" He set the notebook on the bench, then easily leaned out of the handstand in a move like a slow cartwheel.

Buffy couldn't help grinning: happy to see him moving the way he was supposed to again, vivid as a dancer, not above showing off to her. It seemed like forever since she'd seen him move like that, easy, gliding, and predatory, and until she saw it, she hadn't known how intensely she'd missed it.

"Okay," she said, "let's see your moves. Come at me." With hands and arms, she beckoned him in.

Immediately she was in the middle of a blindingly fast exchange of blows, counters, spins, jumps, slides. No time to think or prepare, just react and strike, sweep low, kick high, roll off to the left, lean back, push forward.

She came down hard on both heels, abruptly still. Spike froze with a bladed hand about an inch from her neck.

"What?" he asked, dropping the arm and coming to stable rest, facing her.

"What are you playing at?" she demanded in an even, controlled voice.

"Dunno know what you mean, pet."

She set her hands on her hips. "Yeah, you do: five minutes skimming around and you haven't hit me once. What's that supposed to be?"

The floor suddenly became fascinating. He muttered, "Donwanhurtya."

"I didn't hear that."

He squared his balance back into fighting stance, staring her in the eyes, and shouted, "All right, I don't bloody well want to hurt you, all right?"

"You think that's what I'm looking for, Spike? You think pat and duck is gonna get the job done? What the hell do you think you're doing?"

He was breathing, which meant he was angry. "Getting. Better."

"Not better enough, if all you can show me is the moves, not the guts to actually hit something. You think I'm gonna take you out on patrol, entrust the troops to you, let you demonstrate how a vampire can come at them, so you can show off your repertoire of neat handstands and cartwheels?"

He breathed some more, centering, making up his mind. "Again."

"You got something to show me? Something more or something else? Because otherwise, we're both wasting our time here."

"Again."

"This time," Buffy said, "I'll come at you." Then she did, like one two three BLAM.

Reflex kept him out of the way of the blur of her punches and kicks in the first lightning exchange. The speed was there, she'd give him that. And he once caught her wrong-footed and jabbed an elbow jam to the side of her head. She stopped, surprising him, letting the elbow hit her right where it should, in the temple. No more force to it than being lightly whacked with a rolled newspaper.

She said nothing, just folded her arms and gave him steady, grim attention.

He stood furiously breathing, jaw and fists working, then wheeled for the alley door. Halfway, he remembered the notebook and leaned, snatched it up. Then on and out, slamming the door resoundingly behind him.

What did he think he was damn well playing at?

Having unlaced one sneaker, Buffy flung it into the far wall. The smack did nothing to relieve her ferocious disappointment.

Maybe Dawn'd had the right idea: get him a quart of scotch and then see if she could push him beyond his self-drawn limits.

Because he sure was no damn use to her the way he was.

FIVE

Stalking along the sewer conduit considerately prepared for vampires who needed to get crosstown at inconvenient hours, Spike performed furious dialogues in his head and sometimes aloud. He hurt about 30% of what he had, but that was nothing, that just fed into the blazing frustration.

"What do you want from me, woman?" he demanded of the Buffy in his mind, waving both arms. "You agreed: got to start over, different. That other, that was no good for anybody. So what do you goddam expect--I'm gonna hammer you into the fucking floor, when I--"

He hauled off and punched the wall a few times, which broke some knuckles and bloodied his hand, and whatthehell difference did it make, turn himself inside out, do anything except the one thing she required of him--to strike out at her, full-force.

Which he would never do. No matter what hung by it. Never once, made him dizzysick even to think about it. No, no, no, not gonna do that anymore, and you agreed to it, you damn stupid bint! It's all one thing, can't take the part you want and the rest ain't there too, you want the water except you don't want it wet? Have a clue, at least pretend you got the least scrap of a goddam clue. Let me fucking be, let me take the idiot children out for fucking strolls in the park, let me be what I'm for, don't--

He spun and flung himself to a seat on the walkway that edged the channel, wrists tight against his ears, fingers locked across the back of his head, rocking and breathing himself toward something closer to calm.

"She doesn't want you," he heard his own voice say, and there he was, like a skewed mirror because what he saw was all complete: hair short, curly, and silver, fucking eyeliner he hadn't used since he'd had Dru to put it on for him, sleeveless vest; careless, indifferent, amused, leaning at ease on the far side of the channel. The damn duster, trophy of the New York Slayer, hanging off his shoulders like black wings.

So that was how he'd looked. Not bad.

"Right face," he snarled in reply, "wrong version." He shoved himself up and continued down the edge of the channel.

"What in hell," said his voice, from behind, "does a Slayer need with a vampire?"

Suddenly the image was before him again, standing in slow-flowing shallow water that wasn't deflected around the boots. "A doorstop? A nanny? You're no use to her," his not-self commented. "You're no bloody use to anybody. Why--"

"Get stuffed." Spike set his shoulders and walked directly through the phantom, that scattered and dispersed the second he touched it.

That was when he caught the sound of solid feet, running. Sometimes in water, sometimes on cement. Not close yet but converging on him from two sides: pipes he could see intersecting up ahead. If they were more of those goddam Turok-Han, he was cooked. Not so much as a knife on him.

Glancing over his shoulder, he started back the way he'd come, where he knew there was a grate. It was still light out, but if he circled wide--

What burst into the central channel were two pairs of raggedy vamps, one set from each side, gaping around them like the idiots they were to see where he'd gone. All in game face: fledglings. Spike laid the notebook safely on the ledge. Then he turned on his heel, stuck his hands in his pockets, and grinned, strolling back toward them.

"Well, you're up early," he commented cordially. "Missed your beauty sleep, looks like. Hope you got paid in advance for this because I don't fancy your chances of collecting afterward."

The smaller one on the right said something to his partner. Then they all rushed him: all together, down a channel that would only allow two abreast. Idiot fledges. One stumbled against the walkway, and the one next nearest shoved Stumbles at being bumped, and before they'd invented any more entertaining antics, Spike sprang onto the walkway and twisted Stumbles' head off. That put him in good shape to drop down, light, and punch his bladed hand through Shove's ribcage and pull the heart straight out while Stumbles was still dusting, an image momentarily hanging on the air. Spike hurled the heart splat into the gaping face of the closest of the two that remained, which left that moron pawing at the thick blood in his eyes. Heart and blood delayed-dusted too, of course, but Moron too dimwitted to realize before Spike dropped onto his hands and kicked both boots sideways into Moron's neck. The head came right off with some mess at the chinline there for a second. When the various dust had settled, Spike and the remaining vamp were facing each other, Spike sitting at on the edge of the walkway, hands neatly folded on his knees.

Spike let his demon surface, to give his smile that certain something that said no problem, they were all demons here. Vision sharpened, and he could have heard a rat fart a mile off. It felt good all down his arms, and the pain in his hand faded so he could shake the bones back in place with just a quick a flick of the wrist. The stink was something amazing, but the idiot fledge and grooming had obviously not been introduced and it wouldn't be a problem for long.

"Now, then," Spike said. "How about we talk, or would you sooner fight first? 'Cause if that's how you want it, I'll oblige you, but then we'd miss the chat. Your call, mate. I'm agreeable either way."

When Spike returned to the house, the streetlights were just coming on. He circled to the back door and went in that way, to make less of a noise of himself. Didn't find anybody abroad, which gave him a clear shot at the shower. Children might be upset by him wearing demon guts and liberally coated with blood that tasted even more rancid than pig blood.

Pity vamps couldn't feed on each other. Well, they could but there was no substance to it. Sort of like blooming onions, except for the taste. And the texture. And the lack anything remotely edible.

Catch it fresh enough, though, from one who'd just fed--second-hand, so to speak--not too bad. Except for the taste. No improving that.

He didn't like the bathroom. Kept clear of it mostly. But his good mood of the morning had revived, and once the room was full of steam, it wasn't too bad. Done was done, and they both knew the truth of it, so let it be; let it rest.

Shaking water out of his hair, he thought vaguely about getting it cut. Bet the pup knew how to do that, had that look about him. No need to advertise he'd just come off six weeks of...well, neglect was one word.

Didn't want to scandalize a houseful of little birds, so he wrapped up decently in the biggest towel he could find, then ducked down to the basement and got himself changed. When he climbed back up, Buffy's voice was coming from the front room, and Dawn was hanging about just outside in the hall.

Joining her, still toweling his hair, he asked softly, "So what's this, then?"

"You left your gross, disgusting clothes in the bathroom, you know," she hissed back.

Well, there was always something, he thought.

Dawn added, "So I knew you were back."

"Thought you'd got rid of me, did you? Sorry to disappoint."

Dawn managed to seem as though she was looking down at him. He checked her feet, but no: it was just something she did with her head. "Are you drunk again?"

"Nicely warm, is all. Just nicely warm. So what's this, then?" He gestured at the front room, packed with the Slayers In Training and the Scoobies, the former mostly sitting on the floor or the couch, the latter scattered around the wall where it was harder to escape, since there was only the one door. Spotting Anya, he nodded to her. Her hair was auburn at the moment, so for a second, until she turned her head, he'd taken her for Willow. Anya smiled and nodded enthusiastically back, then flashed solemn and darted her eyes around to check whether Harris had noticed her being in danger of fraternizing. The whelp was being adequately entertained by his third or fourth beer and disapproving of the woodwork. Well, he should know. There was the witch not far off, but still inside the room. Red made a hands-opening gesture like a book and nodded brightly to say she'd gotten his books, and he signaled appreciation.

It was a mercy she so far was keeping out of his head. He'd never liked it and had more company in there than he really wanted anyway. Didn't need the witch poking around besides.

Dawn leaned against him to whisper, "It's Friday."

"And...?"

"The Briefing."

"Oh. Right."

The longer he watched, the more he wondered what it was in aid of. Nobody was listening except one of the rounder and more earnest of the SITs and the tallish lanky homely one: Amanda. Everybody else looked as if they'd sooner be in hell, but didn't dare let Buffy catch them slipping out to go there.

And as he listened, he was further puzzled: if this was supposed to raise morale, all rah rah and Slayers United, he'd seen it done better at funerals.

"She's terrible," Dawn confided.

"Needs practice, maybe."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Every night? Please!"

"Well, there's that. Anything doing, pet? Any news for me?"

Dawn jabbed her pointy little elbow into his ribs and he realized Buffy was staring at them, at him in particular, and looked not at all pleased. He thought about being annoying, it wasn't as if didn't know how, but then again he seemed to be doing that nicely without trying and so might as well leave it. Contented himself with admiring her ferocity. Wasn't altogether sure what she was being fierce about, but at least she didn't seem to be enjoying it too much, which was probably for the best.

Would've been nice to have had her down in the sewer with him, and the two demon bars afterward he'd decided to look in on, since he was out and trolling for information and all, but she probably wouldn't have enjoyed it and the Slayer's presence did have a dampening effect on conversation. And his Slayer was, truth to tell, a mean drunk. Took some people that way. So best that he'd kept his visits solo.

Some other night, maybe. Go to the Bronze, shoot some pool, that'd be nice. Dancing, maybe.

"Yeah," Dawn whispered when Buffy was safely turned away. "Some. Later. If..."

He found Dawn looking at him like he was the pup.

Didn't take much thought to figure what she'd choked up on. "No, seems not. Didn't pass muster, quite."

"But you're OK?"

"Except for the being dead, yeah...."

She gave him the elbow again. Little bit of a thing, he...didn't want to think about things he'd done to girls about the same size and shape as her. Done was done. Had nothing to do with him and the Bit. He set a hand on her shoulder and she kicked his ankle but let the hand stay, which was probably progress.

That was when he decided to patrol on his own after everything settled down.

The night was young.

SIX

Dawn had retreated to the basement and shot the bolt, figuring that was the best she could do. She'd brought a magazine and her headphone set, and flopped on her stomach on the disordered cot, ankles crossed behind her and swinging, listening to a tape. When the banging started and Buffy's voice got louder, Dawn turned up the volume and continued flipping through the pictures. She scrunched her forearms up against her ears.

La, la, la, not listening, so not listening....

One side of the door cracked off and sent the remainder of the door slamming into the wall. Descending like a big round rolling Indiana Jones rock, Buffy flung the magazine away, then took possession of Dawn's headphones despite a snatching grabfest over the cord.

Holding up the micro-player in one hand and the headphones in the other with an implicit threat to squeeze them to powder, Buffy demanded, "Where's Spike?"

"How should I know, what makes you think I have nothing better to do than--"

It was an ex-micro-player. Oh, Buffy was so gonna pay for that, destroying Dawn's property!

"Where's Spike, Dawn? I saw you two talking. You do not want to get me angry!"

"Fine, this is the non-angry that's soooo much better?"

Oh, no! Headphones mangled, twisted apart, wrecked, displayed. However, the up side was that Buffy had just run out of hostages.

Or maybe not: Buffy raised a hand. Dawn pointed at it accusingly: "Guilty! Guilty of intent to slap! You're gonna owe me the national debt and two hours in the Gap. You're--"

The threatening hand was reluctantly lowered, so Dawn withdrew her point. The sisters glared at each other. Buffy blinked first. "Dawn, he can't be out there on his own. It's not safe. For anybody."

Dawn shrugged and flipped her hair for good measure. "I said I'd go with, but he wouldn't let me."

Buffy lifted her face to the ceiling in Thank-heaven-for-small-mercies! unspeakably overburdened mode which she actually did quite well.

Willow came ker-thumping down the stairs and started to say something to Buffy, but Buffy cut her off at "I can't--" with a hand-slice, her eyes never leaving Dawn.

"He said," Dawn quoted precisely, "I should say, 'Out for a walk.' He said you'd know the rest."

Spike knew how to push Buffy's buttons better than anybody: Buffy reacted as though she actually had been pushed, rocking back on a heel, looking not just angry but alarmed.

"OK, Dawn, you're thirty seconds from full DefCon One at ground zero. You will not go to the Freshman mixer and Ice-Capades is history. Where did he go?"

"Buffy," Willow interjected hesitantly but firmly, "I could scry him. Or sorta scry him, not with actual water or anything, just have a look--" At Buffy's surprised expression, Willow's face firmed into something almost sullen. "I can do that without burning anybody's brain out or anything, you know."

"All right: do it."

Willow faced away from the naked overhead bulb and let her eyelids droop and flutter. The fingers of her right hand assumed an uncomfortable, stiff alignment and performed a looping gesture at her side like scooping up icing. Her eyes shot open and she rocked back a pace, suddenly pale. "No need to get like that about it," she exclaimed huffily. To Buffy, she added, "He really hates that. Really hates that! It's either the Bronze or Willie's. And with the mayhem, yelling, broken glass and overall level of let's-break-it-up-and-see-what-will-burn, I'd go with Willie's, personally." Willow nodded judicious approval of her conclusion.

Bar fight, thought Dawn. No wonder he'd refused her company. Nobody ever let her have any fun.

Then Dawn remembered the other part of what she was supposed to say. She jumped up and clasped both hands around Buffy's arm. "And, and I was to tell you you weren't to get yourself all in a twist about it because he was taking a minder, everything looked after."

"Buffy," said Willow said, "that's the other thing. I can't find Xander."

Dawn added helpfully, "He also took the handcuffs."

Willie's was a demon bar off past the high school: basking in the emanations of the Hellmouth. The three of them--Dawn, Willow, and Buffy--piled into the front of the SUV. Dawn got to go along by making it too difficult and complicated to leave her behind, short of knocking her unconscious. As the Royal Possessor of the (Car) Key, Buffy drove and didn't actually hit anything if you didn't count the big sack of trash or the mailbox lurking among some bushes, that leaped out into the headlights, then crunch and gone.

Willow seemed willing to agree with Buffy's contention that the mailbox had been possessed.

When the car bounced over the train tracks at Wilkins, Dawn's head hit the roof and she was certain Buffy had done it on purpose, the Revenge of the Short and Vindictive.

"I'll show you vindictive," Buffy threatened, but since she failed to follow it up with a specific example, Dawn considered it an empty threat.

Dawn had expected to hear noise, shouting. But when the SUV rolled up to the front of Willie's and ground to a halt in a stretch of weeds--Buffy did not do parallel parking--all was quiet. However the burning car that compensated for the lack of streetlights seemed like a bad sign.

Buffy and Willow shot out, and Dawn clambered out behind them, cracking her forehead on the edge of the door frame. Rubbing the spot, she hurried after and ran into their backs just inside the door. Right in front of them was a hip-high non-humanoid demon carcass--whether one or more Dawn wasn't in a position to judge. Its skin was an otherwise pleasant mint-green. Its white blood made a broad pool on the floor. It appeared to have been carved extensively. The empty bar was to the left. To the right, Xander sat on the floor holding the jagged remains of a beer mug by the handle. All the sharp edges were coated in white goo. So was Xander. Noticing them, Xander waved hesitantly. His left wrist was braceleted in half of a set of handcuffs.

Past Xander, five or six vampires were crowded around the juke box laying on its side. The vamps weren't doing anything but standing very quiet. Following the direction they all were looking in, Dawn found Spike in the shadows by the far wall. His back was turned. He was kissing a guy.

Well, not exactly a guy: it exploded into dust.

And not exactly kissing. Turning, Spike was wiping blood off his mouth. He was in game face and looked extremely pleased with himself. Righting a chair, he set it by one of the few intact tables. As he folded into the chair, he slapped a dripping hand axe onto the table top. The axe was followed by his boot heels. Tipping the chair back, Spike cocked a finger at the small huddle of vamps by the jukebox. One advanced, looking extremely unhappy: the manner was exactly that of one of Glory's scabby minions--downcast eyes, wringing hands and all. The instant recognition gave Dawn a chill.

Spike pointed at the bar and the minion obeyed, stepping over another carcass, this one knobby and so red as to look black. More chilling still, Spike then said, "You can play with it later, pet. I need it awhile longer."

Pleasantly addressing empty air.

The minion came back with a bottle and a glass. Spike hurled the glass through the one unbroken window. The motion flashed the circle on his right wrist: the other half of the handcuffs. He then cracked the neck off the bottle and started doing the peach schnapps thing with it.

Somehow Dawn was pretty certain it wasn't peach schnapps.

Willow had gone to skooch down next to Xander and they were muttering together. As Dawn edged closer, Xander was complaining, "Why do I let myself get talked into these things? Did he say he was gonna wreck the place and start killing everything in sight? All of this, by the way, while handcuffed to me?" He held up his wrist and shook it so that the broken chain of the handcuff rattled. "Or most of it, anyhow," Xander added glumly. "About the fourth or fifth vamp, he decided I was getting in his way and cut me loose, for which I am profoundly grateful." He bowed his head twice against hands clasped prayer style. "Even missed all my fingers, I don't know how because he wasn't even looking that way. God! When will I learn!"

"But you're not hurt?" Willow asked anxiously.

"Except for getting scared into a coronary, too much beer applied externally and not enough--"

Willow lunged to block Buffy: until then, standing stone-faced and staring across the room at vamped-out Spike, still chatting happily with his invisible companion. Willow set both hands against Buffy's shoulders. "Not a good idea, Buffy. It does dead people."

"What? I'm not dead-- Oh."

"Yeah," said Willow, wryly apologetic. "You don't want to.... It could be, well, confusing."

Then Willow turned her head and looked at Dawn, and it was all completely plain. Dawn didn't mind at all, and Buffy wasn't quick enough trying to grab her with Willow still hanging on and blocking.

Dawn went slowly closer until she was near enough to see Spike's face. You could generally tell by his face and even in game face, she thought she'd know. He wasn't pale but people-colored: he'd fed. Slightly sleepy-eyed, so he wasn't so drunk he couldn't still take notice, keeping part of his attention on the small crowd of uneasy vamps, eyes flicking to them anytime one moved, whereupon they'd go even more carefully quiet, then returning to a point slightly to his left and about five feet away.

"Oh, I don't know about that," he said, clearly in response to something nobody else could hear.

Dawn stopped about two good paces from the table. Not a good idea to startle him when he was drunk or having nightmares.

"Spike--"

His head rolled around. "Oh, h'lo, Bit. What you doin' down here?" Game face smoothed into his other face, which she took as a good sign.

"Told you I was coming."

He took more notice. "And I said no, didn't I."

"I came," Dawn said, "with Willow. And Buffy." She pointed, and Spike's eyes followed her finger. Then he smiled and his eyes shut a little more--as if he'd thought of something funny but not that funny.

"Who's there, Spike?" Dawn indicated the space he'd been conversing with.

"Well, it's Dru, innit?" His attention swung that way again, as if called. "No, you can't have her, pet. She's mine. I'll get you one of your own tomorrow."

Knowing she wouldn't startle him now if she moved, Dawn circled the table and stood at his side. She set her hand on his shoulder. His head tipped comfortably against her hip. Not his usual room-temperature skin: warm. But no human corpses to be seen at all. She puzzled at it.

"Spike, if I tell you there's nothing there, you gonna believe me?"

"Dunno, Bit. Try it and see."

She could hear the smile in his voice, even though she couldn't see his face from this angle. One of his provoking moods. He took the bottle and lowered its contents by about an inch. The bottle was still about half full, so no immediate chance of his passing out unless this bottle wasn't the first.

Setting the bottle down with a slight thump, Spike said quietly, "So you don't see her: Dru."

"No. I swear."

"Ah hell." He let the bottle go and rubbed his eyes. Then, just like that, he yanked his boots off the table, reached, and hurled the hand-axe through the space. It buried itself in a windowframe. A sharp glance at the vamps settled them again: even without the axe, they weren't budging. "You see to me good, love. I s'pose I just was missing her. Always liked a nice all-out, did Dru."

"Is she still there?"

Spike shook his head. "Nope. All gone. 'T'isn't as though she won't be back." He sounded sad. "Or one of the other lot. Hold on, love."

She thought he meant to do something, move, but realized he was shivering. And caught onto what he was thinking, and did what he'd said: held onto him.

"It's real," she told him. "I'm real. You can feel that. You're really out of there."

"Certain sure, now, are you?"

"Certain sure. Buffy dusted the Turok-Han and came and got you and brought you home, and I brought you horrible cheap-ass fucking peach schnapps."

"Yeah. Yeah." He'd listened. He'd believed her. Presently the deep shuddering steadied. Spike lifted his head. "Harris, you still here?"

"Present, no thanks--"

"Com'ere. Buy you a drink. Give you one, any road. OK, Red, you can have one too. Not you, Bit."

Dawn slapped the side of his head lightly, and he made a soft purring chuckle.

Although he hadn't called or invited her, Buffy came too. While Xander set up a chair for Willow on the opposite side of the table, Spike did the point-point thing and two or three of the vamps hustled around like waiters, and all the while Spike was looking up at Buffy.

When there was a chair, Spike said lazily, "Might as well sit down, Slayer. All friends here." Leaning aside, he muttered, "Bit: she's there, right?"

"Poke her," Dawn advised.

"Yeah." But Spike didn't do that. He laid his hand on the table, palm up. And after a second, Buffy set her hand in it. Fingers tightened. Then Spike knocked their joined hands once on the table and was content at the contact. But Dawn couldn't read Buffy's expression at all. Mostly, she looked tired.

"Red," Spike said, "you're a charmin' lady and I hope you get what's comin' to you one day. But if you ever once get into my head again, you and me are gonna have a discussion and you're not gonna like it. Hard enough as it is."

Willow flushed bright red.

Spike went on, "Harris, you didn't do too bad, considering. You--"

There were vamps all around them, awkwardly doing things with glasses and a fresh bottle, and Spike suddenly half rose in his chair and yelled at them: "All right, you lot--get out, I'm done with you for tonight. Get the fucking hell out! Now!"

The vamps didn't wait to be told twice, and dashed for the door.

Spike settled back, glowering. "That, right there, that's the trouble with minions. Never worth all the bother. Too bloody stupid, or if they're too smart, you got to put 'em down. Well, I'll do this lot, but then no more, I swear. Harris: you were my minder tonight. Noplace I went you didn't go. Is that true or no."

Sourly Xander held up his arm and waggled the handcuff. "Not like you gave me a whole lot of choice, Deadboy."

"You mind your mouth, whelp. Chip don't give you any free ride. I tell one of those minions pull your head off, you're gone and no two hours of blinding pain for yours truly, so you show some manners around me."

"What do you want with minions, anyway?" Xander demanded.

"Well, I'm entitled, ain't I? Sodding Master Vampire of Sunnydale, wasn't I? An' the fact I went off for awhile, to see to Dru and all, don't mean there's been anybody fit to hold the name to claim it since. I'm of the Order of Fucking Aurelius, boy--the Master's get, as far back as anybody cares to go, that parsimonious bat-faced bugger. And that means something, even if you're too dirt-ignorant to know about such things, for all you been living smack on top of the Hellmouth all your life, or 'scuse me, your Daddy's basement."

"Someday," Xander said tightly, "you are gonna get yours, Spike, and I'm gonna be there to see it."

"Yeah, sure. Got nothing against basements. Can be right cozy. Had one m'self once, before some military bloke took a mind to fire-bomb it." He glanced at Buffy, but her expression didn't change. Still just watching him. "Anyway. Harris, you see me do one single human tonight? One?"

"You can't: the chip," Xander floundered, scowling.

"When I'd cleared out the place, down to what gave submission as minions, I could'a done anything I damn well pleased, now couldn't I? Could'a eaten you, or had carry-out fetched off the street, now couldn't I? Don't have to kill 'em to eat 'em. Did you see one breathing human being in here?"

"No," Xander admitted, however grudgingly. "Not one."

"Well, then," said Spike, and again looked to Buffy, who sighed out a long breath and looked as though she was willing to claim her arm as part of her again. And in a different tone altogether, Spike said, "Slayer. Do I pass muster, you figure?"

"Yeah, Spike. All right. You can patrol."

"Good. Long as we're out an' all, how about we take a turn by the Bronze?"

Willow, surveying the destroyed bar, gave one sharp bark of startled laughter, then slapped her hand over her mouth. Spike gave her a tolerant look.

"I won't bust anything," he said, as though that should have been obvious. "Already done that part, haven't I?"

"Only if I can come," Dawn put in.

Spike considered. "Well, not a school day tomorrow.... Don't see any problem, myself. Slayer?"

Buffy said, "I can't imagine anything I'd like better. And isn't that pathetic."

"No, that's fine," said Spike, shaking her hand a little on the table. "That's fine."

SEVEN

At the Bronze, Dawn looked for an opportunity to tell Spike what she'd learned while channeling Harriet the Spy. But she couldn't seem to find a good moment. First Spike and Xander (who couldn't hold a grudge more than an hour if his life depended on it) were playing pool. When one or the other scratched, they started clinking the two halves of handcuffs together before the other one started his turn. She thought Spike began it, since Xander was only a fair pool player and Spike routinely sharked for drinking and cigarette money and therefore hardly ever scratched unless he intended to. But the clink-and-change rotation gradually got more even because Spike had a waaay head start on the drinking and it wasn't too long before he was having trouble finding the table.

If all you were allowed to drink was Cherry Coke, you might as well take mental notes on how the four people you loved most in the world behaved while getting thoroughly plastered.

For one thing, conversation went downhill real fast. Buffy was down to single syllables within an hour, and then intermittent giggling fits. It was about then she decided the great thing would be dancing with Spike. And Dawn had to give him points for restraint, not to mention coordination (which for him was about the last thing to go). Despite Buffy getting allll over him, somehow his staying on his feet and not quite letting anything vital get unbuttoned or unzipped made it still dancing. Although that style of dancing would normally have roused a general shout of "Get a room!" (a tradition at the Bronze, which had no rooms) a special providence seemed to be watching out for Buffy and Spike tonight: when the yell came, it was some other semi-disrobed panting couple who were left standing alone and (probably) embarrassed in the middle of the dance floor, under the swirling prismatic lights from the glitter ball.

The Bronze was, after all, a teen hang-out. Grown-ups handled things with less fuss, more style. And kept dancing.

"C'mon," Dawn said to Willow, who'd been doing her own sidelines note-taking, watching the room wistfully between strawberry daiquiris and trying to look bright and chirpy whenever she remembered or she thought somebody might be looking. "Let's dance."

Willow resisted her pull, surprised, like she'd been caught at something. "No, honey, you don't have to, it's OK--"

Dawn yanked at Willow's arm again. "C'mon. It's in the rules: you gotta have a good time or the Bronze Happiness Police come down on you and make you eat soggy pizza rinds all night. Take it like a woman."

And the Bullying-Dawn Charm worked its magic yet again. They danced. Dawn knew she wasn't what Willow wanted in her arms, but at least she had the right number of Xs and Ys and Willow loved Dawn and Dawn loved Willow, though not that way and anyway Dawn didn't even love any guy that way so it represented excellent practice and a learning experience and gave them both something to do.

When she spotted Spike and Buffy wandering slowly toward the back door, Dawn danced Willow toward the pool table and successfully made the exchange, grabbing Xander's braceleted hand, shoving Willow's into it, and declaring, "Your turn, Xander," leaving them blinking at each other uncertainly because although the Bronze didn't have rooms it did have an alley.

But it was a false alarm. When Dawn banged out the back door maybe three steps behind them, Spike was holding Buffy up and solicitously patting at her shoulder while she threw up.

Noticing Dawn in a kind of dim way, Spike explained, "Your sis had to, come over all unwell y'see, an'--"

"Yeah, I can see that."

Watching Buffy barf seemed to Dawn the cue that the fun part of the evening was over. She went inside and called a cab. No way was she getting into a car driven by any of these people tonight.

They dropped Xander at his apartment. Reaching home, as second-most-sober, Willow volunteered to help Buffy get upstairs and horizontal while Buffy kept insisting she was fine, was fine, and trying to sit on the stairs. That left Dawn to see to Spike, which was OK. It wasn't if she didn't know how.

Drunk, Spike was a long distance away. Light years. He heard you, eventually: it just took awhile for the words to reach him, and anything he said was probably in response to something you'd said five minutes ago.

He didn't need pushing, just maybe steering, and tonight not even that. With Dawn following along, he got as far as the basement door but hung up there immovably: thumbing the raw wood where it was broken.

"Spike, it's OK," Dawn started, but wasn't surprised that didn't get through to him. He continued inspecting the basement door, experimentally pushing so it moved on its hinges. Then suddenly he backed off from it. His head bumped the slanted underside of the upstairs staircase and he went down, straight down, pulled his knees up against his chest, arms wrapped around them, sitting as small as he could. Spooked: frightened.

Dawn sat down next to him and took his arm, patted his hand. "What's the matter?"

After the time lag, he looked around at her, then gestured at the open doorway, the broken door. "'S broken. 'S not safe."

Dawn looked at it and realized he was right. No way to bolt it now from either side or even shut it. If he got downstairs and chained himself up, he'd be entirely defenseless and he wasn't too drunk to know it.

Any vampire who'd survived as long as he had, and got blind drunk as often as he did, must have a kind of instinct to get into a safe place, a place where the sun couldn't find him, before collapsing.

"You're OK here," Dawn tried to reassure him, but he wasn't taking that in, hadn't heard her yet.

"Can't," he muttered, still rigidly distressed, "crypt's broke too, no chains, can't...."

That was when Dawn caught the other horn of his dilemma. He wasn't worried only about being safe himself: he was scared to death he might start hallucinating and hurt someone else. Not just be safe but make himself safe.

Not my own dog anymore, she thought.

He might be crazy, at least part of the time, but he wasn't stupid.

"Spike. Spike, listen. Listen to me now." She tugged at his arm, poked him, until at last his blurred attention came around to her. "Spike, it's OK. I'll see to you. Nobody's gonna get hurt."

"Get the chains, Bit."

"Can't, Spike, they're bolted to the wall, remember? But you're OK. You're OK."

"No," he said, and dropped his face onto his folded arms and started crying.

Although she searched hard, Dawn could think of no answer to the puzzle, nothing that would make it right. He was right to be scared. Remembering invisible Dru chatting with him in that slaughterhouse he'd made of Willy's, she couldn't help being a little scared too.

If things were to suddenly go all pear-shaped and bad, nobody could stop Spike but Spike. And he wasn't sure in his heart anymore he could always do that.

Dawn pushed up against the wall, skipped to the kitchen door, then returned and settled beside him again. "Look. Look what I got." When he roused enough to lift his head, she showed it to him: a solid foot of pine sharpened to a needle point. His eyes went large and started to change. Dawn grabbed him around the back and held him hard. "Any dumbass can stake a vamp, Spike. It isn't the strength: it's knowing how. I've done it. You know I've done it. But I won't. Unless you make me. I'll do you if I have to. You listening to me here? I'm your minder tonight. And tomorrow we'll get Xander to come fix the door and it will be OK again."

She kept talking, a steady stream of words, until at last she felt the tension in him slacken and he was leaning bonelessly against her.

"Promise?"

"Certain sure," she said.

Just like that, he was asleep.

Dawn slid a little aside until her back was braced more comfortably in the corner. Spike tilted with her, not stirring, no longer drawn up tight, stretched out on his side. She continued to hold him, feeling his occasional indrawn breath. He did too snore!

Sometime later, she woke up and found Willow, barefoot in a fuzzy robe, regarding them, eyebrows crinkly in concern.

Pushing her hair out of her face, Dawn checked that Spike was still OK and asleep, then explained in a whisper, "He gets terrible nightmares sometimes, sleeping drunk." Which was true: she'd intended to stay with him all night anyway in case of the Awful Dream. And in case he woke up thinking he was still wherever Buffy had brought him back from, with nobody to tell him what was real and make him believe it.

Concern-face fading, Willow said nothing for awhile, considering them. Then she whispered, "I'll get some pillows."

Dawn must have fallen back asleep because the next thing she knew, she had an afghan around her shoulders and a pillow at her back, and Willow was perched opposite on more pillows at the side of the basement door. A tiny magical glow burned in the middle of the air.

Seeing Dawn rouse, Willow held out her hand and whispered, "I can take that now."

Realizing Willow wanted the stake, Dawn blinked muzzily. "No, we're good. I promised."

"All right, baby. Whatever you say."

That was how Buffy found them in the morning. Because when the noise of two or three SITs arguing upstairs over bathroom rights awakened Dawn, she was clasped in Buffy's arms. Clear-eyed and solemn, Buffy squeezed her and kissed her head. Then for a few minutes they all sat in unspoken communion watching over Spike's sleep.

EIGHT

Something was off. Spike felt it when the Bit woke him with collecting pillows and what-all she'd fetched to nest herself comfy. Must have stayed by him all night, he realized. Arms piled full, as she passed by she patted his head--like that's what she did, like he was a pup gonna be desolate left alone.

Not that he minded, but it was off, wasn't it? It had no source but he could smell it, feel it, like coming thunder.

From the noise upstairs, there was no chance getting at the shower anytime before noon. But he could do with a change of clothes. That was when he noticed the broken door again and recalled how it'd given him the trapped-in-the-open horrors. Oh. That was what the head-pat was about then: most likely he'd made a prat of himself about the door.

Well, it wasn't as if it'd been the first time, or the Bit hadn't seen him do worse. Seemed he was forgiven, anyway, which was all that mattered. Never liked to be on the outs with Dawn. Never would be if he could help it.

He enjoyed a bone-popping stretch, then went downstairs and rummaged in the cardboard carton of thrift-shop castoffs Buffy's charity had provided. As he was changing T-shirts, Dawn called from above, "You decent? Never mind." She came barging down. "I paged Xander, then celled him. He was not amused."

"Bouncy little thing today, aren't you?" Having made the final necessary adjustments, Spike turned around.

Dawn made a flopping, impatient gesture with both hands. "Well, he's hung over and if you had an ounce of decency, you would be, too."

Spike pushed both hands through his hair. "Did I make a nuisance of myself, Bit?"

"Of course," she told him, grinning like a furnace. "Didn't you want to?"

"S'pose I did. But I got three of 'em." His grin was smaller, tighter, and felt a bit like fangs.

"Three...of what?"

"Fledges I'd made. Two together, and I followed 'em. Led me to the third. Then I did 'em all. Best I can figure, can't be more than six left. I don't think--" Spike stopped himself because Dawn had backed into the cot and sat abruptly, holding to the edges. Her breathing was off. Spike dropped down onto his heels--close, but not touching. "And now I've upset you. Never thought, you didn't bat an eye at Willie's. Like your Mom, Joyce, when she came after me with that fire-axe. Didn't faze her. Bit, I didn't think. I'm sorry."

Dawn left off clutching the cot edge to flip a hand. "I knew. It's just... I knew."

Carefully, he put fingertips on her arm, and that was all right. So he set his hand there. "Why that, and not the other?"

"Because...if they're yours.... If they were yours, they'd be like you. Not some lame vamp, minion in a bar. Just all fangs and Rrrr," she said, trying to pretend she wasn't still upset. "They'd be like you: people."

He smoothed her hair. Quick as a spark, his Bit. "There's not many would figure that out, Dawn. Or care. But that's why. They're mine. I got to see to 'em. Because there's nobody else who will, except by damn bad luck, runnin' head-on into the Slayer.... But I wasn't thinking, the other night. If you don't want to have a part in this, I understand. 'T'wasn't fair of me to ask you."

She looked level into his eyes. "Tell me why."

Spike rocked back and sighed. "Maybe you don't want to know." He waited, but she only waited too, unchanging. He settled down crosslegged, wishing for a cigarette.

"At the first," he said finally, quietly, "you're dead. Truly dead. No breath, no pulse, no life. You know nothing. Feel nothing. An' all of a sudden...there's everything." His hands exploded, his arms flung wide, to show her. "A pebble drops and it's thunder. A breeze, and you can't hear yourself think for the noise. It's dark, wherever you rise, but you can see each leaf of grass, separate, burning-like...and there are thousands on thousands of 'em, everywhere. An ocean of smells, all different, each clear as a song. You see a house, a building, it's like there was never such a thing, and you could be hours trying to take in how all the pieces fit just so. And you're terrified. And it's all wonderful. Beautiful. Intense. All strange, like nothing you ever dreamed of imagining.... And you want something so bad you can't stand it, and you don't know what it is, that you want. You go searching, trying to sort through all the everything about you, that you don't understand and can't take in except in tiny fragments...and it draws you, and you feel it and smell it and...it's life itself. It's alive." Spike slowly folded his hands, watching himself do it. "It's blood, Dawn. Happens to be in a person, but if you realize that, if you can even know what a person is in all the confusion...it doesn't matter. Because somehow you know they're no kin to you anymore, they don't see what you see or feel what you feel. They smell like food. And...your body is changed, your face is changed...and you have what you need to get what you need. You're strong. You're fast. And then you bite through...and nothing has ever been so wonderful that you ever knew, as that blood is to you now. It's sex and love and home and food and music and God and damn fucking all.... Most like, you spend your whole first night, risen, killing to get more of it. More than you need or can use. Because...you can't help it. And...and whatever you had of love, or cleverness, or kindness, or honor or any good thing...is lost. Into the demon alive in your dead body, that's all the life you have now. And all you know.

"And you're a moron, and an idiot, an' you got no sense, and no caution, and no least notion whatever about how to stay alive, or at least what feels like alive.... The demon is dirt stupid about this world, and you don't know how to set the demon aside. So nine times out of ten, you're caught by the sun without the sense to hide until it starts hurting, and then it's too late. Or some enormous git stakes you with the hind end of a shovel. Or beheads you with a hoe, or throws a lamp at you, and you burn.... Most fledges are vicious, stupid animals, Dawn, and the best thing is to put 'em down right off, quick as you can, because they're torment and misery and...I don't know how to say, to everything and everyone around them. Evil, soulless things...." He felt Dawn's hand on his shoulder and laid his cheek against it. "'S'true, Bit. True as ever she said."

"But you're not. So how come you're different?"

"Well, it's because of the blood, innit? The blood that made me. Old blood. Away back at the beginnings of things, vampires who got through the first confusion maybe made a decade or two. Made more of their kind and some had the tiniest least sense of anything beyond their own hunger, their own pleasure, to protect and teach the new fledges and gather together into a hunting pack. So more survived longer. And the Master of that pack, he might live to see fifty, or a hundred or two hundred. Survive to be powerful and clever. Make their demon submit. And what they are is what they give. It's in the blood. If that vampire lived to a thousand years, his fledges woke smart. The shock of being turned didn't overwhelm who they were before. They kept that. As vampires. They might remember music, and fine clothes, and could shed the face of the demon at will and walk among men and not be known for what we are...."

Dawn prompted, "You were Angelus' fledgling."

"Well, Dru...Dru turned me. But she was made by Angelus, and it was Angelus who gave her leave to turn me, to have a fledge to mind her when she took one of her spells, which was most of the time.... And Angelus was Master and Sire to us both, and a right vicious brute he was, no mistake.... And Angelus was sired by Darla, and Darla was the direct get of the Master himself: the Order of Aurelius, that's the eldest lineage there is. Old blood. We're...the absolute best at being monsters, Dawn. We rise smart and we're not lost in the demon for years or forever. We see to our own: barring mischance or carelessness we're not alone when we rise. We cooperate however much we hate each other. Hate or love, we never can forget what connects us because there's nothing else, nobody else for us.... We plan, though I'm a poor example to go by, never been worth...worth anything at that, as Angelus, Angel, would be the first to tell you.

"And the thing of it is, Dawn, even I don't have it in me to wish otherwise. That, like last night-- You don't need to know what that is to me. Well, it's joy. Pure fucking joy. And it's not in me to regret it. Any more than it's in me to regret...comin' together, like, with your sis. With the Slayer. Nothing could be better than that...."

"Getting back to the point," Dawn said, very cool and dry. She tugged at his hair and made him smile.

"Yeah. Yeah. All right. Won't fret you with the soppy stuff, then.... No credit to me, but whatever I've done, I've never turned anyone. Mostly too lazy. Had enough seein' to Dru an' all, without that. Never wanted the responsibility. Couldn't be bothered. But there was this young chap came to me, some years back...sick, he was: knew he was gonna die--and wanted me to turn him. Idiot, of course, had no notion what that really would mean.... But anyway, I wouldn't. Didn't. Didn't like the idea somehow. Dunno if Dru ate him or what, but anyway I didn't turn him. And I've thought about it, since. Well, not really thought about it, but.... When I came to know I'd been used like a damn animal to do that... Breeding stock for the smartest monsters there are.... I won't do that. I don't...consent to that."

Dawn's touch on his forehead made him realize he'd gone to game face: with an effort, he withdrew his demon and saw Dawn's anxious look likewise retreat. Shouldn't do that around her anyway.

She caught his glance shifting to the manacle cuff and set her long, little girl fingers over it in interdiction. He shouldn't have forgotten, shouldn't have--

In a small overcasual voice, she asked, "When you see me...what do you see?"

At once he said, "I see you, Bit. Fierce an' funny an' fragile and brave as a lion."

"And?"

"And mine. And that's all that signifies. Let me get done now, pet."

Instead she threw her arms around him. He held very still so as not to say or do the wrong thing and spoil it.

"You should get your hair cut," she commented, ever so soft.

"I'll see to it. Soon as I can. I get distracted."

Finally she turned loose of him and sat back, regarding him with everything gentle and kind and approving, that he'd always hoped to see in Buffy and never had and now never would. Wasn't what he was made for, this. But it made him able to bear the rest and be content.

"Let me finish, love, or I'll never get through."

She tossed her head. "So who's stopping you?"

Her eyes at last let him go, and he breathed until he'd steadied himself. Thrown him off, that had. He had to think how to tell her what it was, what it meant.

He recollected, "Somebody--Rupert, I guess it was--asked me once to calculate up how many people I've eaten, or killed, or just bloody well wasted for the hell of it. I couldn't begin to count. Not even begin. Coming to know a bit more now of what I am, and what it means...I think the worst thing a vampire can do is create another vampire. These fledges, now--it's worse than murder: it's murder forever. No end to it."

"Like in Alien," Dawn said. "One egg, and--" She meshed fingers together like huge savage teeth biting down.

"Yeah. Exactly like that. Never could abide that movie though that Ripley, she's a treat, like a Slayer almost. Would have loved to've danced with that one, upon a time.... They're mine. Mine to see to. And I will. At the first, they'll stick to the places they know, like all fledges do. But once they get the wind up, know I'm comin' after them or something is, they'll scatter and then I'll likely never find 'em. I claimed a few minions, set them to looking, asking around. Tonight I'll hunt again. And every night until I do them all. But you don't have to--"

"Two are gone," Dawn said. "Patrols caught them. Not your ordinary fledges, like you said. Willow helped me match up the descriptions with the obituaries and then with ID pictures from news archives, drivers' licenses, military records. So I know when they died. I know their names. I have a good guess on two more I'm still working on. And I know where to look for another."

"Brilliant. Bloody marvelous, pet. Let me get my notebook and we'll check who's been seen to and who's yet to be done."

NINE

Disconsolately slumped in bra and panties at the edge of her bed, Buffy caught sight of her wan, bedraggled reflection in the closet door mirror and pretended she was having a conversation with the Buffy-replica sex toy that represented an all-time low in Spike bad ideas.

BUFFYBOT: (chirpy) Hello, I'm idiotic and cheerful and I look just like the Slayer. In fact I think I am the Slayer, and none of the Slayer's friends can tell the difference until I open my moronic but full and kissable mouth! I am a portrait mannequin of Buffy, a girl, fully functional except that my brain is made of Cheez Wiz. I was constructed by Warren, who hated girls, killed Tara, was skinned by Willow, and is currently featured as a manifestation of the First Evil in Andrew's empty head but soon to appear at a theater near you. I can do sex for days if my gearing doesn't lock up! Thanks to Spike, I am extremely well lubricated! BUFFY: (sour) Hello yourself, you pneumatic bimbo. Gettin' any? BUFFYBOT: (chirpy) No, I'm packed in pieces in a box in the closet under the stairs and communing with the dust bunnies because RealBuffy never cleans. O why doesn't Spike love me anymore? How about you? BUFFY: (sour) Funny that you should ask. In addition to being a rotten housekeeper, RealBuffy is an enormous slut. While extremely well lubricated she snuck downstairs hoping for a rest-of-the-night sexathon and found her intended safely chaperoned between her best friend, a lesbian witch in a perky pink bathrobe and bunny slippers, and her freakin' little sister who used to be a Key of Mystical Energy and now is a reasonable facsimile of a bolted door!

The stake Dawn held had probably been symbolic.

All the tableau had lacked was an apparition of Joyce Summers. Then the chaste rest of Buffy's once-lover would have been guarded by all three Persons of the Triune Goddess, in all Her dread majesty, per innumerable earnest Tara lectures: the Maiden, the Maid, and the Crone.

Guess the Crone had other plans.

Sorry, Tara. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Spike. Sorry, ME.

Then it occurred to her that without hesitation or any vestige of thought, she'd joined the tableau herself and completed it.

The Crone stands alone

The Crone stands alone.

Heigh-ho the merry-O.

The Crone stands alone.

"Gaaaah!" Buffy scrubbed hard at her burning eyes. "What is it with me and cheese? I hate my life!"

She next tried to pretend that Spike's image, sort of vague because no mirror would really reflect it, wearing only jeans, was sitting on the bed next to the Buffybot.

BUFFY: (angrily) Spike, why do you have to be such a freaking Romantic? Just have sex with me four or five times a day. It's not as if it's anything personal. SPIKE: (looking neutrally attentive) BUFFY: (plaintively) It's not as if I don't appreciate your gorgeous cheekbones, magnificently athletic physique when not recuperating from a month of torture, pretty blue eyes, great ass, and growing collage of attractive permanent scarring. Or your non-existent refractory time and century plus of experimentation with mind-bending and physically impossible positions it should take at least four of us to get into. Or your amusing willingness to be hurled into walls and regard a brick as a marital aid. SPIKE: (looking vaguely pained and sexy as hell) BUFFY: (cajoling) I admit that you're a person. I admit that you actually love me. And I know--HOW I know!--you have a freaking soul. I don't mind anymore that you're technically dead. So am I. That's so too last year! Besides, only a minority of my boyfriends have had pulses or measurable brain activity. What else do you want from me? It's not as if I'm discriminating, Spike: I don't warm up to ANYBODY. Ms. Permanent Winter of Sunnydale California, here, behind Door Number Two. Why can't it just be fun and feel good? Except for the blood, broken bones and name-calling? Why does it always have to mean something? SPIKE: (looking straight past her and sexy as hell) BUFFY: (pouting attractively) If you loved me you wouldn't want me to be so miserable. You'd do whatever I want, as often as I want, hanging from the freaking ceiling if I want. It's not as if your feelings matter, after all, supposing you have any. I'm the Slayer: I deserve to be pampered and put to bed with Cherry Garcia ice cream with lots of fudge and Spike on top. You're tough: you can take it! Why won't you take it, Spike? SPIKE: (smiling enigmatically, raising the eyebrow and looking sexy as hell) BUFFY: Oh shit.

Sudden loud knocking at the bedroom door: Kennedy, asking if Buffy was up because Mr. Giles was on the phone from someplace unpronounceable. Buffy hurled a pillow at the mirror while grabbing a robe.

The stairs were crowded. The hall was worse. Giles was on the regular phone, which was in the living room, tethered to a cord. Sitting on the weapons chest, Buffy clenched her left fist against her ear, trying to make out his voice against the transatlantic crackle and the girls' noise. Giles started giving arrival time and flight numbers and she had nothing to write it down on.

"No," Buffy hollered, "take a later flight, Giles. Later! After dark. Wait, I need to get something--"

She dropped the receiver and dashed into the hallway, full of SITs coming and going. Morning light was bright in the kitchen, to the left. At the end of the hall, Xander, looking surly, was working on fitting a whole new basement door, the old one leaned against the wall in the corner. Dawn was jiggling around while Willow showed Spike something in a book, a stack of other books at her feet. Spike was holding the green notebook dangling at his side. Target acquisition was complete and locked. Buffy made a quick lunge and grabbed the notebook, except that Spike grabbed back, yelling indignantly, "Hey!"

Buffy began wrestling him for it, blurting, "Giles is on the phone, I need--" Without thinking about it she shoved him airborne into the wall.

Rebounding, Spike shouted, "And you keep out of it too!" to nobody in particular and reached long to catch Buffy's retreating elbow, whirling her around. Buffy came down strong on her right leg and pulled a head-high roundhouse kick, nearly decking Willow, with her left. Spike leaned back under it and was straightening when Xander caught him in the back of the head with a hammer and Kennedy came up with the stake still lying in the corner. Dawn got between, she and Kennedy smacking wildly back and forth, which brought Willow into it, and Spike, suddenly in game face, went after Xander. Everybody shrieking bloody murder. Then the SITs got into the melee, everybody in everybody's way, getting hit and shoved from every direction, crowded into the small hallspace, and Buffy now throwing people indiscriminately aside to get at Kennedy and the stake, heart clenched and cold. And Spike fighting like a cornered cougar in the middle of it, no howls of punishment from the chip, full-out and unrestrained and overwhelmingly outnumbered. Buffy belted Kennedy and got the stake away from her, then butted straight through Dawn to reach Spike, took him from the side, and threw him down the cellar stairs.

Xander slammed the door and Buffy held it the second it took Xander to drop the top hinge pin and bang it into place. The door thumped once. Buffy held it. Xander got his power drill and started attaching the bolt. Fastening the screws took about a minute. Xander shoved the bolt home.

The screeching had only gotten louder and more confused. Dawn was in a heap, rocking, holding her middle. Willow and Kennedy were having a heated conversation. Xander had started attaching a second bolt vertically to the top corner farthest from the hinges.

Buffy walked slowly back up the hall and the SITs got out of her way. She found the handset dangling on its cord and mechanically took it up. Without waiting to find out if Giles was still on the line, she said, "You'll have to call back. We've had a kind of a thing," and hung up. The whole business couldn't have taken over three minutes.

Rona was helping Amanda clench some cloth around her bleeding wrist. As Buffy passed, Amanda blurted tearfully, "He bit me. Does that mean--?"

"No. I'll talk to everybody about vampires after lunch." Feeling frozen solid, Buffy swung a glance around at the variously frightened, demoralized, and furious SITs. "Anybody else hurt?" She waited a few seconds but no voice claimed injury through the sobbing. And she saw no bodies on the floor. They'd been lucky. "Get your breakfasts then. We'll talk about this after lunch."

As the SITs started to disperse, Buffy went to see that Dawn was all right. On the floor, Dawn jerked away and smacked at Buffy's hand when Buffy patiently reached again. Nothing serious, maybe a black eye, certainly some bruises.

Dawn spat at her, "You started it!"

"I know."

At three o'clock, wearing black slacks and black sleeveless top, golden hair gathered and pinned, Buffy nodded to Xander. He slipped the four bolts now securing the corners of the basement door. There'd been no sound or sign from downstairs that Buffy knew of at all. The door opened onto darkness and silence and descending stairs. Starting down, she switched on the light.

Halfway down, she saw what she'd expected to see: Spike seated crosslegged on the cot in Yogic stillness, manacled wrists on his knees, bare-chested and barefoot. Top-lit by the bulb overhead, the circle of scars on his chest and abdomen was enigmatic and powerful: like warrior markings. There was cigarette smell in the air, but Buffy dismissed that awareness. She stopped at the foot of the stairs.

Spike in chains: slightly battered and sexy as hell.

He said, "Slayer." There was no reading his face.

Buffy raised a hand, and Dawn descended, straight and slim as a high priestess, bearing a blue cup. She crossed the basement floor and sank in a flow of skirts by the side of the cot, offering the cup.

It was a good minute before Spike's unchanging attention left Buffy and acknowledged Dawn there. He said quietly, "Not just now, Bit."

Dawn set the cup down and stayed where she was.

In answer to a second gesture, the SITs were coming down the stairs by twos, silent, like a dance. Willow and Xander came last. The SITs arranged themselves into a semicircle. Willow and Xander took places to either side of Buffy.

Buffy commented, "There wasn't time to get Anya."

Spike said nothing, watching. His left hand rested on Dawn's bowed head, fingering through her hair in minute movements.

Buffy took a long breath and said, "This is Spike and he's a vampire. He also has a soul. He's a good man and I depend on him. He's mine. Nobody else in this house will ever raise a hand against him except in training or by my direction. Or his. Say it: I will never raise a hand against Spike."

Buffy waited out the ragged mutter of repetition. She noticed Dawn repeating it, too.

When it was quiet again, Buffy continued, "What happened this morning was my fault. It was completely wrong every way there is to be wrong. And it was stupid. And we were real lucky it wasn't worse. From today, nobody is to touch any weapon in this house except if I, or Spike, tells you to. Say it."

They said it, Xander's deeper voice audible among all the higher ones.

Buffy said, "We six--me, Xander, Willow, and Anya when I can find her, and Giles when he returns--and Spike, are the bosses here. Any of us can give orders that will not be disobeyed except for good reason. They will be respected and obeyed without argument or reservation. If there's a disagreement among us six, we'll discuss it privately. I know of no such disagreement now. I'm the Slayer--the Chosen One. The responsibility is mine. The choices are mine. Depending on the circumstances, I may designate any of the other five as my second and their authority then is mine. We will keep you all from death with all our strength, in every way we can. And whoever should break this covenant is no longer under the Slayer's protection and lost to our company. I swear I will abide by this. So help me God."

They said it. All of them: even Xander. So help me God. Then Buffy walked forward and put the key into each of the manacles, removing each cuff and laying it aside. She took up Spike's left hand from Dawn's head, turned it, and set the key in his palm. Against momentary resistance, she closed his fingers over it and let his hand go.

Buffy said over her shoulder, "That's all. Go back to what you were doing. Don't ever come down here uninvited. Except Kennedy, who stays." As the girl turned, startled, among the others, Buffy said, "Kennedy, Spike is gonna show you how to stake a vampire in an enclosed space. It's plain you need practice. And expert instruction."

That was a risk: Spike's eyes went wary and surprised. But he at last lowered his gaze and nodded.

Her eyes never leaving Spike, Buffy dropped down on her heels next to Dawn and waited until he looked at her. While most of the SITs were still on the stairs or milling around at the bottom, Buffy held out her arms and waited, and Spike gently leaned into them. His strong arms came around her back. Their heads were tipped together. He was breathing: short shallow breaths Buffy only knew about because she was holding him.

She asked him softly, "Can you be OK with this."

"Didn't leave me a whole lot of choice about it, did you, pet?"

"Give me another six hours and I'll make up a better speech. I did the best I could. It was my fault. I'm sorry." She hugged him tighter, glad for once not to have to meet his eyes.

"Yours, am I?" he murmured against her ear.

"Yes. You are. What the hell that actually means, what we do with it, I don't know. But you got Willow on your side some way, and she'll take care of Xander and his world-famous Silver Hammer. I'll take care of Giles. Eruption at five, news at eleven. I'll take care of it. And I sorta think you can handle Anyanka.... And if you do, I'll kill you, I swear to God." Breathy purr of a chuckle against her cheek. "I need you here and you're with us. They've accepted that. You have to have a place here that everybody recognizes. This morning mustn't ever happen again. God, Spike! I can't manage like this anymore. Can't--"

His torso moved and he was rocking her, holding her solidly. For the first time in months, maybe years, she felt consoled, safe, cherished, protected. "Hush, pet. Hush now. We'll sort it out, clean or messy. It's what I wanted. I can be good for you now. I will."

"I know. Giles is coming in tomorrow sometime, at night I hope, with three more Potentials. When you've taught Kennedy not to come at you with pointy objects, hopefully without damaging her too severely, come find me and we'll figure out how to play it. Willow plans because we both suck at it. Then we execute, at which we're very, very good." She gave him another squeeze, then pushed away. But she stayed another minute, balanced on the balls of her feet, looking him in the eyes. "Nobody ever gets to hurt you except me. Mine, Spike."

"Yours, Slayer. Until I'm dust."

TEN

The sky was still bright, long streaks of pink and yellow, over the treetops when the SITs arranged themselves in the grass in the back yard in front of Spike lounging on the porch steps and smoking, seeming not to notice them at all.

Dawn took a place by the lilac bush, to the side. She clutched the taser Buffy had given her: about the size and shape of a small remote. Buffy herself was conspicuously absent. It was just Spike, Dawn, and the SITs in the darkening yard.

When the whispering and the adjustments all had quieted, Spike looked around, remarking, "Well now. You all know me, know what I do for a livin'." He watched them stir and whisper, then said, "Rona, you know that, don't you, lass."

Rona nodded hesitantly.

"Tell them then, pet."

"Quint's opening line from Jaws."

"Good on you, Rona," Spike commended in his warmest voice, looking straight at the girl: like being drowned in butter and deep-fried. Dawn couldn't help grinning, how good he was at it. Rona couldn't help a shy, uncertain smile, either. Spike said, "I know your names, but not yet how they all connect. And I guess you know mine. Tell me."

From all sides, it came: Spike, ending on a kind of breathless hush.

"And what do I do for a living, my pets?"

Everybody saying something different, confusion, then finally all looking to him warily to find what answer he expected.

Spike said, "I keep you alive. That's what I'm for, pets. That's why I'm here. Oh, and for the Slayer, o'course."

That got startled snorts and giggles fading to a deeper silence. They were settling now, less frightened, listening to him. Andrew had been all freakazoid at not being allowed to even try to videocam this. Dawn found herself agreeing with Andrew. Watching Spike charm about twenty terrified teenagers who, this morning, had been intent, with a Slayer's terrible single-mindedness, on tearing him apart was just awesome.

"I belong to the Slayer. You all heard her say so: I'm her dog now. But what you maybe don't know yet is that you belong to me. She's put you into my hand, to do whatever I please with you." He looked around as if idly. "No Slayer here. Just you, and me, and what a treat this would have been a few years back! Ah, children, I got myself a vampire's dream come true here an' no mistake. I can smell you all, and what you had to eat at your suppers, and who's had sunburn, and who wears what perfume, and who's on the rag.... I can smell your blood, children. I can hear it, the pitty-pats of all your hearts drivin' it around. S'pose I was standin' away off there in the street, in the big shadow of that pear tree, I'd still know it as clear as now. It shouts at me. What am I, children?"

They all knew that answer: Vampire.

"Amanda." Spike pointed, the glowing cigarette tip marking the swing of his hand. "Run to the street, girl--quick as you can."

Startled, Amanda got her feet under her, impeded by the girls sitting around her, and had no more than risen and turned when Spike was already standing where he'd pointed, arms folded, waiting. Dawn hadn't even seen him move and therefore neither had anybody else.

But Dawn didn't need a demonstration of Spike being scary. That was something she felt she'd known forever.

"Well, what's keepin' you, child?" Spike called impatiently. "Did I tell you to stand there like a lump, goin' from foot to foot, need to use the loo, d'you?"

Driven to it, probably angry now, Amanda started moving, head going down, longer strides, until she was charging full-tilt across the dark grass, that always felt like almost-flying, running at night as hard as you could.

Spike picked her up in flight, swung her clear into the air and around, black silhouettes against the brighter street. Setting Amanda on her feet, he pulled her in close, spun her to be before him, and bent his head into her neck. There was no sound anywhere.

"Kim," said Spike, straightening. "Come to me. Quick as you can, girl."

He caught Kim and spun her and bent to her, just the same. Then, with Kim and Amanda still standing there, he somehow was in a different part of the yard, calling Cho Anh to him in unhesitating lilting Mandarin, and the girl was smiling as she rose and began running, to be spun, embraced, and set in place.

Dawn got goosebumps as each of the Potentials was called and gone, the remainder risen and standing now, bent and poised, intent for their turn, to be away instantly at the sound of their names.

When the last Potential was gone, Dawn was unready and surprised to hear Spike call her from over by the big maple in the corner. Jamming the taser into its clip, Dawn bounced up and took off. Before she'd reached the maple, in the middle of the yard, she was caught around the shoulders in mid-stride and flung into the air but not falling, could feel herself held and swinging, tethered, safe, and unafraid. Suddenly on her feet, with no chance to find her balance, she felt Spike's arms come around her from behind. He murmured in her ear, "Dawn, you're mine. I'll keep you from death."

"Dumbass," she whispered back, and he pinched her arm. She felt him flinch when the chip fired.

"Now see what you made me do. Naughty Dawn. C'mon, then."

He took her hand. Arms swinging like children, they strolled among the SITs back into the light from the back porch lantern. Dawn took a step toward the lilac bush, but Spike didn't release her. He sat on the patch of bare ground in front of the steps, and Dawn dropped beside him. He said, "Come to me, children."

From all sides of the yard, the Potentials returned and made a circle about two deep around them. The brightness in the sky was now gone. By the porch light, Dawn could distinguish the lifted faces.

"There's nobody," said Spike, "knows as much about Slayers as I do. Killed two, haven't I? Glorious dances, those were. I'll never forget 'em. But not so fine as the dance I have now. And there's never in the world been such a thing as this. No Slayer has ever been trained by a vampire. Pushed and taught beyond anything she imagined she could do, to be a pack quick and deadly as the first vampire pack that came together and ran their prey down like wolves. School like fish. Fly like birds. Change in a breath, to take down anything that stands before you. Now I've touched you and breathed you. I could find any of you a mile away at midnight. I have a line to you all now. From each of you to my hand." Spike held up his spread left hand, looking around at them, willing them to imagine cords stretching out. Dawn could imagine. "You come and go to my hand. I will never let you fall. I'll keep you from death. I swear it. I will also knock you about, and throw you down, so you'll be creaking and lame and purple in patches for days afterward because none of you is the Chosen and you don't have the healing yet or the strength that's the gift to the Slayer, to do what she must, night after night. To me, you are all Slayers and I'll teach you how to dance with me, with Death, if you will be Slayers to me. Pretend the healing. Pretend the strength. No whining. No complaints. I'll teach you what you were meant for because I know what that is. I'll never hurt you beyond what you can bear.

"Now you all know my Bit: Dawn. Wave to the nice Slayers, Bit. Lately, she's not been trainin' with you lot no more, like she used. That's changed. I need her, and the Slayer says I can have her, so long as I see she keeps her homework caught up. Couldn't manage, without. Dawn, she's my runner and my minder and my recorder--whatever she needs to be. Where we go, she goes. The first rule is, I look after you. The second rule is, You look after Dawn. Anything comes at us from any side, I want you between it and Dawn. Your first job is to mind me, learn what I'm showin' you. Your second job is to see to Dawn, whether I'm there to say or not. You just see it an' do it.

"Now you divide yourselves into two parts--at...Meagan, there. Just as you are. Look who's around you. Remember. You're the two packs. This lot, to the left, they're the lucky ones: they get to stick with me tonight. You other lot, you're the Slayer's, and she'll come for you presently. My pack, onto the porch an' get your weapons."

Dawn handed out weapons laid out ready on the porch: stakes, two apiece. Spike didn't want them all weighted down and fumble-fingered, he said. Simplest was best. If they couldn't handle a stake, he didn't want them whacking about with edge-weapons in the dark. For himself he'd picked his usual favorite, a short-hafted hand axe, this one with a leather thong he could loop around his wrist, leaving both hands free.

He sent them racing for the first mark, the streetlight at the corner of Morris, and was waiting for them when they swept up, all grinning and eager. Dawn, among the last-comers, couldn't help noticing that the first to reach the mark mimicked his arms-folded, hipshot pose, trying to cover that they were breathing hard. He, of course, wasn't breathing at all.

"That's fine, my doves. Now you don't move till I say Ready, go, like Simon says, right? Next mark is Auburn Park, by the swings. By way of Anderson. And this time, it's not a race. You watch to the sides, you move together, and whoever sees anything off, you remember it to tell me at the mark. Anything off, you come straight to me, you don't go look at it, poke it with a sharp stick. Nobody first, nobody left behind. You're boomerangs: I throw you now and you come back to my hand. Haven't yet had reason to choose the goat for this evening. What's the goat?" He looked around, waiting, until Amanda put up a timid hand. "So what is it, then, do you think?"

"The one who messes up?"

"Exactly right. And who wants to be the goat, tell me?"

All hands remained down, with a majority of Aw, come on! expressions.

"Well, somebody does, because she's gonna do it, ain't she? I got something special for the goat, when we get back. For tonight, that's a great (his eyes went golden) big (his face shifted) kiss!" And he was grinning at them in full, fanged game face. Dead silence. Wide-eyed recoil. "Ready, go!"

Watching them go, Spike shed game face, waiting until they rounded the next corner and were gone. Then he called Dawn to him with a tilt of his head. They started off at an easy jog she could maintain, following a shortcut to the next mark.

Dawn spoke the realization that had come to her: "You've done this before. Or something like it. When?"

"Oh, that would be telling." After a few more strides, Spike added, "Bit...don't ask me about such things anymore. All the stories are sad."

And end with "And then we ate them," thought Dawn. She decided not to try out any "Mr. Chips" jokes on him tonight, after all.

Dawn was left sitting on what Spike called the roundabout while he circled back to intercept and pace the pack, watch how they moved, maybe give them a bit of a scare. She made sure she had the remote-sized taser right-way around and the firing button under her thumb.

This unit was one of a pair: a parting gift from Riley Finn, that jackass. One jolt would stop a vampire dead in its tracks and likely drop it--long enough for Dawn to get the stake taped to her back. If she spotted any of the larger non-humanoid demons wandering through the park, she was under strict orders to run and yell, and Spike would be there, quick as that. But that wasn't what the taser was for. It was for Spike. That was the condition he'd required to take the SITs out alone, without the Slayer along to be minder.

Buffy and her group would be taking the SUV to check out the approaches to the airport, where Giles and the new potentials would be arriving sometime tomorrow. The patrol route Spike had chosen for his pack wasn't currently the usual one for Saturdays, but it hadn't been swept in awhile and contained only one active cemetery. Not particularly dangerous, therefore, it would seem. But just north and east of this park, Dawn's research had found a pattern of recent deaths and disappearances over the past month: mostly at the edge of open country beyond the town limits. The deaths, in the usual Sunnydale euphemism, were attributed to animal attack: in other words, they'd been bitten. Foolhardy hikers or backpackers, lone motorists with car problems, people walking dogs: suddenly gone. And then, this last week, no more deaths in that area at all. Five disappearances, total. The pattern of a new vamp nest systematically clearing out the competition from their chosen hunting territory, then collecting enough bloodcows to keep the need for active hunting to a minimum.

Shrewd. Deliberate. Forethoughtful. Quite different from the chaotic rampage of the usual fledgling; and in the unclaimed territory that Sunnydale had become since the Master's death, mature vampires typically hunted alone, far more likely to dispatch any vamp they met than to join forces. Vamps weren't too big on trust or cooperation without being decisively hammered down first.

Dawn thought when she went to college, she'd like to do a study on vampire domination hierarchies. Maybe Giles would help, with the remaining Watcher records.

In the pattern and its interpretation, Dawn thought she'd found one or more of Spike's missing fledges, the clever monsters--possibly with a minion or two, ordinary fledges drawn to any purposeful action that promised food and willing to offer fealty to get it.

No reason not to choose this area to patrol. Only Dawn and Spike knew the reason for singling it out.

She'd been sitting long enough that the crickets had recovered from her intrusion, with Spike, into their range. So she noticed at once when their steady sawing stopped. She and swung her feet as though idly for a second before rising, taking her time. Standing the way she'd been taught: lead foot and back

foot, balanced, ready to move in any direction.

By a picnic table a woman stood watching her.

Dawn's eyes were fully acclimated now, and though nothing like as sharp as vampire vision, she could see the woman quite plainly by the light of the risen moon. Could have been a waitress or a shop clerk, something like that. Vaguely rumpled and just short of dirty: hard to get proper dry-cleaning when you were living in a cave or a crypt or the basement of the sporadic Sunnydale tract housing constantly being started up and then abandoned when the first occupants unaccountably vanished. Otherwise perfectly human looking.

"Hi," Dawn said, wiggling fingers in a small wave. "Waiting for my Dad, when the Little League game lets out." From mapping out the patrol route, she knew there was a lighted ballfield a couple of blocks away, at the other side of the park.

"Hi," said the woman, pushing off the table, sauntering closer. No least resemblance to Spike of course: why would there be? But she sort of fit one of the descriptions in Spike's green notebook. "Always walk my dog here. Surprised me to see anybody out here at night, specially a kid. Your brother playing?"

"Yeah. Johnny." Dawn figured the woman could hear her heart going. Dawn certainly could. "What's your dog's name?" Dawn found herself asking idiotically.

The woman stared at her like she was crazy. Dawn had a second's impression of yellow eyes, then impact and she was down on her back. Dawn jammed the taser right under the woman's jaw and hit the button. The woman spasmed back. Dawn got knees up and kicked her the rest of the way off. Dawn yanked the stake out of the tape but held it, standing over the stunned vampire woman out of reach of a sudden grab.

"Spike!"

It seemed Spike could have been no more than a pace or two away, he was there so fast. But the crickets had said different.

Dawn didn't ask him where the SITs were. She just got out of his way while he knelt and pinned the vamp (still in game face) with a hand on her chest, leaning all his weight on it.

Dawn passed the stake to his free hand, behind his back. No sign of the axe.

"Nasty surprise for you, love." He was talking to the vamp. "This here one's mine. We come to an arrangement. You know how those things go. But there's a whole lot more just off a ways there, and I could be persuaded to share. More'n I need, since I got this one to do me awhile, all friendly-like." He looked around to smile at Dawn, and he'd gone to game face, too.

He'd warned Dawn: it was when his demon surfaced she'd need to watch him specially hard, see if he seemed to be doing anything off and act accordingly. So far, she'd seen nothing she'd classify as off. She was scared she wouldn't know off before it bit her. What scared her was the responsibility to judge and do, all in a second--the fear of judging wrong.

The vampire woman didn't say anything, looking up with a sly, amused expression. Spike suddenly punched out and dusted her, grabbed Dawn's arm, and yanked her into a full-out run back toward the nearest trees. Dawn concentrated on hanging onto the taser but keeping her finger clear of the firing button, so as not to hit him by accident.

"Here!" Spike shouted, and the SITs burst out of the trees. The thing that flashed in the moonlight was the axe, that he caught out of its spin and whirled with, the SITs fanning out to either side, stakes in hand. Spike shoved Dawn behind him. The next instant, they were surrounded by Bringers.

ELEVEN

As much as Spike loved a fight, he hated being lumbered with these children and the responsibility of protecting them. It was too soon: he'd barely had a chance to begin with them. The ambush was an annoying distraction that kept him from finding the nest and dispatching the other fledges.

He couldn't afford to be distracted. He focused on the fight.

As best he could tell, there were about two dozen Bringers against eleven potentials, him, and Dawn. So the first thing to be done was better the odds and trust the children, just for a few moments, to see to themselves and one another.

He went straight into the nearest pair of Bringers and carved them, left and right. Swinging the axe backhand into an attacker, solid contact, he whipped a leg forward and stopped the lunge of another cowled Bringer with a bootheel to the throat that would have taken a vamp's head off but no such luck here, the Bringer just stumbled back into the Bit's taser and went down. Spike dropped into a crouched whirl to choose who to go after next.

Bringers seemed to favor long-bladed daggers: fine against a bunch of human children but wrong weapon entirely against a vampire. They could hurt him, slow him maybe, but not do him any serious harm. All they really had against him was force of numbers: faced only by twos and threes, he was methodically hacking them to pieces. Unless they mobbed him fast, he'd have the most of them and the girls would take the rest.

Then Spike came up under a Bringer, and it vanished--simply melted away--at the instant of contact.

Bloody hell: he could no longer trust his eyes. Do the ones being touched, then. He concentrated on finishing the ones some girl was already engaging and those Bit's taser had put on the ground. Bringers were down to about ten, and if there'd been time, Spike could have done them all. But he could hear a fresh force coming through the woods, off to his right someplace.

He directed, "Get the knives, children. If you see one, take it. Now! Mark is the ballfield. Go!"

That far, he'd taught them: they stooped, and rose, and ran in something like unison and he hoped they all were there, he saw nothing but Bringers' dark robes on the ground, and then there was a girl there, pale limbs sprawled at the edge of the woods. Spike made a sour, incredulous face, thinking Yeah, pull the other one, and collected the Bit, slower than the rest, sticking right to him the same as he'd told her. No Bringer could run as fast as a scared fifteen, sixteen year old girl with Slayer in her blood, and the ballfield would be bright and full of people, confuse things, keep his own lot tight and together, yeah. And it was a new direction, unpredictable (he hoped): there'd have been no chance to set anything up there to bar their retreat (he hoped).

Just have to make do with what he found to hand.

"Bit. They're throwin' ghosts at me. Might be I'll need you to call things, say if you see 'em or not. Keep close. Don't trust the taser past another shot or two, I dunno how much it's good for. Get yourself a knife, a stake, something as fallback."

Dawn squeezed his hand hard for confirmation, saving her breath for running, not looking back because that was his chore, rearguard. As the racing Potentials were silhouetted against the lighted playing field, Spike took quick count and they were all there, all there should be. An anxious knot in his chest let go at the realization. Somebody was hurt, the bloodsmell strong; but nobody hurt to the point she couldn't run, nobody being carried or dragged, so that would have to be good enough.

The Potentials streamed onto the field near third base and veered toward the pitcher's mound. Following, Spike jerked and lost Dawn's hand, momentarily frozen. Entering the floodlit space from darkness threw him: everything in him was shouting daylight! daylight! in instinctive terror. Panic on a cellular level. He drove himself forward, continuing to find the floodlights an unexpectedly powerful distraction, making it hard for him to focus on anything beyond forcing himself deeper into the space his body was convinced meant annihilation.

He must not loose his demon in this place. All the demon would want to do was escape the lights. And where was the Bit?

The intrusion of the SIT pack had turned the game into a chaos of small, uniformed players screeching, wailing, and scattering away from the disruption. The bleachers were emptying. At the sidelines, disorganized crowds of alarmed parents were trying to collect their own, some coming onto the field. Reaching the little group of Potentials gathered at the pitcher's mound, Spike looked around frantically for Dawn. Then he caught sight of her: jogging from the benches beyond the base path, carrying the weapon she'd turned aside to collect as he'd told her to.

A vast sense of yes fell on him like a bucket of water on flames. "Here," he shouted, to call the Potentials' attention to him, then swung his arm down, his whole body thrown into pointing, like an umpire calling strike three. As he had, they saw it at once.

When about eighteen pursuing Bringers erupted into the picnic area and then the outfield, twelve teenaged girls and a savagely grinning vampire awaited them with baseball bats.

The street beyond the ballfield was a cacophony of shouts, car alarms and approaching sirens. Whatever senses Bringers had to compensate for their sewn-shut eyes would be registering hundreds of randomly running forms.

Spike saw the Bringers halt, then retreat back among the trees. At once he named a new mark and sent his pack flying off to reach it.

Starting away, Dawn halted and turned at finding herself alone.

Spike hated the blinding unnatural glare. Wanted to be gone. Yet it galled him to desert the field with any Bringers still unfought and alive. He wanted to do them all. And the chance of locating the nest and slaughtering any of his fledglings stupid enough to still be there was becoming more remote with each passing second. In an hour, it would become no chance at all.

But his pack had performed brilliantly, had fought their first engagement and all survived. They'd now be into the backlash, scared and tired. Some were hurt. They needed to be taken home, into rest and care. If they were his, as he'd claimed, he was also theirs: they had a claim on him now, no matter what he wanted.

Maybe there'd never been a chance. His fledges weren't stupid. The Bringers' ambush made it plain that his fledges had taken alarm from his initial kills. Instead of running, they'd made an alliance of common interest with the First. From the woman fledge's reaction, Spike had known he'd lost the advantage of surprise and instead was facing whatever nasty surprise they'd slapped together to greet him with.

He couldn't go both ways, do both things.

He made himself move and caught Dawn's hand. They escaped the lights just as the first police cars screeched up.

Spike loped down Ravello Drive alone, on the off chance another ambush might have been set along this last, predictable stretch. But the street was all quiet, as far as he could see or sense. He stopped and lifted an arm to Dawn, standing at an intersection three blocks back, to send her to relay the come-along to the pack waiting where he'd put them while he checked that the coast was clear.

The SUV was still gone so Buffy and her lot weren't back from vetting the airport. Spike lit a cigarette and paced the back lawn, violently unsettled, wanting a drink. Wanting to barge into the bloody basement and get himself chained up, collapse into the sleep he'd first had too much of and now wanted desperately. Sleeping in the daytime was more a habit than a need, the body didn't need it to regenerate, but his mind was spinning with impressions and ideas and he wanted them all to shut up, drink himself back to quiet, but couldn't do that till Buffy returned and he'd given her something like a report, which was gonna be a treat and a half, this fiasco.

The SITs started arriving, the first of them putting on a final burst of speed to show off to him, and then they were all over him again, and the bloodsmell bothered him something ferocious. He could feel the chip sizzling in the back of his head, just waiting to fire off searing lightnings if he so much as touched a one of 'em, the way he was feeling, and that kind of unconsciousness he really didn't want to deal with right now. Another minute and he was gonna grab and try to eat somebody, and the chip would fry him blind and senseless, and the children didn't understand.

He seized on Dawn the second he saw her and was able to make something like sense, enough that Dawn took charge of herding them all into the house and the hell away from him! for all that they didn't want to go, wanted to hop like bunnies and yank him into some sort of fucking victory dance, and in another two seconds it was gonna go all pear-shaped and they still didn't understand--

Dawn hauled the last one off him and he managed to stand there, hold his demon from exploding, start pacing again. After awhile an ambulance came and then left, no siren, so maybe it wasn't too bad. He was starting to stiffen up and he knew he'd taken some damage but nothing worth tending, nothing that wouldn't right itself in a few hours.

Dawn came back onto the porch but had the sense to stay there, and he was so grateful to her and loved her so hard it was all he could do to keep away from her. But because she stayed clear, so did he, and he was glad when she put out the light.

Finally he'd settled down enough that he could swing by the porch and ask, "Who's gone to hospital?"

"Rona."

"How bad?"

"Not too bad. She made it home. But she was still bleeding.... I guess you know."

"Yeah. Yeah." He threw himself into another circuit. The tiredness was catching up to him, it was better, he was slowing down. He circled back to the porch and settled there, fishing for another cigarette. "I'm real proud of 'em all. They done fine. I just can't--"

"You have a fan club," Dawn said.

"Bloody hell."

She laughed at him, and it was suddenly better, nearly all right. He tipped his head back and shut his eyes, ready to sleep then right where he was, and the sun be damned.

"An' you done the best of all, Bit. Couldn't have managed without you."

Quick as a shot, Dawn said, "Does that mean you'll take me to the mall, a movie and Buster Crabbe's?"

"Goddam, Bit. Whatever you say. Whatever you want." Spike looked around at her: all long legs and huge eyes and sweet girlsmell. The blood, that was there, but no longer so important. He could set that awareness aside. Food wasn't what she was to him. "Ran you off your feet tonight. Get yourself inside, get to sleep."

She shrugged and flipped her hair. "In a while."

Then he understood: she was staying with him till Buffy got back. That was all right.

Diffidently, Dawn offered, "I'll try to tell them, if you want. How you are. So the next time, they'll know."

"Yeah. That would be good. I wouldn't know how to say. I'd just scare them."

"Maybe not. You don't scare me."

"No: not never you, no, 'course not.... You know when to stay clear of me, Bit. An' I can't tell you...how that helps."

She unfolded and stepped all long-leggedy down the stairs, waited a second to see if he minded, then thumped down next to him and leaned against his shoulder. And that was good, even better: he drew quiet from her and he could feel her smiling.

"You did the best of all," Dawn said in a dreamy, far-off nighttime voice. "I never saw you fight before. Never really. With Glory, too busy being scared and all ME, the glowy Key center of the known universe and all.... You're beautiful and awesome. And you brought everybody home."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess." He supposed he could live with awesome.

The SUV pulled into the driveway.

TWELVE

Buffy hadn't been able to get her mind off Spike all evening because the SITs wouldn't let her. Since his little presentation, four of them had decided he was "totally hot" and wanted to change teams and were speculating about who might be induced to swap. This incensed Kennedy, who was still mad about Spike teaching her the finer points of getting repeatedly smacked while attempting to push a rolled newspaper "stake" at an impassive vampire not occupied with twenty-some other Potentials this time while she did it. Kennedy was not about to admit Spike scared her, so she flailed out with every hateful speculation about him she could think of, ranging from the insane and impossible to the almost-true. This naturally was tantamount to treason to Molly, Chloe, Joanne and Lisa, the would-be defectors to the Hotness party. Meanwhile Gail had been trying to play peacemaker on the way back and naturally, with the insane logic of teenagers, everybody was now mad at her. Gail kept bursting into backseat conversations with, "But I only said--"

It was such a relief to pull into the driveway and see Spike and Dawn on the steps.

Buffy managed not to break the key turning the engine off, nor did she break the SUV's door in shutting it. In fact she felt she shut it with great care. A definitive masterpiece of shutting. She was the Reigning Queen of Shutmanship.

She gave the SITs plenty of time to get inside before starting across the moonlit grass to where Spike stood waiting for her.

"I think," she said, "we have firmly established that there is an airport. It occasionally even has planes. Not on any useful schedule, but there are planes. So I am of the opinion there may actually be a world beyond Sunnydale, hard as that is to believe." Buffy couldn't help noticing that Spike looked particularly delicious tonight: plainly tired, and still willing to find her jokes amusing. What more could any reasonable person ask? She also noticed that he'd come a few paces forward to meet her, and that Dawn had had the uncommon tact to stay on the porch. "I hope you and your team had an exciting outing, since I have been informed by experts that my outing sucked major rocks, in the most boring, mosquito-bitten uber swamp of suckiness ever."

"Hullo, pet. Thought I might report. We ran into Bringers. Five wounded, no dead, one in hospital, our side. There--"

"Let's do this tomorrow morning, when everybody's here to plan our coordinated-to-the-second, clockwork-perfect mission to rescue Giles and three more houseguests," (Buffy stuck out her tongue expressively) "from the utter boredom and disgusting restrooms of Sunnydale airport."

"Whatever you say, Slayer. Rona's not hurt bad, I hear. Just have to get the bleeding stopped. Some stitches, likely."

Buffy felt obscurely criticized for not having immediately demanded the details of Rona's hospitalization. In any case, she had them now, and there was plainly nothing to worry about by his account. And it wasn't his fault if his patrol produced sexy wounds and hers, mosquito bites.

Whatever the Potentials might think, she and Spike were not in competition for the hearts, minds, or trim teenaged limbs of the SITs. It was all one team, she'd said so, and if tonight Buffy had assigned herself the sucky reconnaissance patrol, tomorrow (assuming Giles ever called back) they'd have a patrol in dead earnest, everybody pulling their weight, and it would go well, and Giles would be back (joy unconfined, when he heard about the Declaration of the Teamness of Spike), and the ambient fumes of teenaged hormones would level out again. Eventually.

Buffy put her arm through Spike's and strolled a bit farther from the porch. "Thought you should know: Molly, Chloe, Joanne, and Lisa are really impressed by your total hotness."

The corners of his mouth quirked. "Yeah. Well. Little birds are easy to impress. When they find out they got to actually work, an' sweat, and break nails an' all, they'll cool down soon enough."

"Are you doing some kind of thrall thing?"

"Hell, no! Is that what--?" He clamped down on himself. "Y'don't need to worry about me collecting a bunch of brides like that ol' bugger Drac. Seems like one woman at a time--"

"Brides?" Buffy demanded in something much closer to a horrified squeak than she'd intended.

"Well, what with the total hotness, an' all. Pet, you got me mixed up with Dru. If I could do thrall, I wouldn't'a had to pitch you through a wall to get your attention, now would I?"

Buffy couldn't believe he'd actually said that. From his whacked-from-behind-with-a-brick expression, neither could he.

It seemed that recollection had been mined, and setting so much as a toe back onto the shrieking take-no-prisoners ferocious brass-bound kamikaze fuckfest of their previous relationship was enough to set off the whole assemblage.

Buffy felt as though every cell in her body had flipped and realigned. Maybe werewolf Oz could have described this feeling--how, suddenly, everything turned. As if, at a touch, she'd shatter and reform into an entirely new creature. Or, just as likely, into a puddle of molten goo.

She could see the moon in his eyes. That meant something.

The clack of the back door shutting could equally as well have been the beginning of something or the end of something. Spike apparently took it as a signal of ten seconds left before the countdown hit zero and absolutely everything went irretrievably pear-shaped. He didn't seem all that eager to transform into a new creature or perhaps only regress to the old one who came up with creative uses for handcuffs, toothbrushes, and grape jelly and whose unbroken record was making her come twenty-seven times between four in the afternoon and six the following morning not counting aftershocks.

Spike took a hike and the door clacked again, this time with finality.

Wandering like a dazed survivor, Buffy paced the yard, swinging her arms, blinking. Wowser! Where the hell did that come from? And where the hell is it going? Wowser! Total hotness? They have NO idea!

The following morning, Buffy found that Spike had acquired an entourage: the SITs had decided to take matters into their own hands and cut his hair, assembled in the kitchen, Dawn supervising. Dawn apparently had the final word on how Spike-hair was supposed to look.

Waiting for a call from Giles gave Buffy an unassailable pretext to hang around in the hall, watching. Somehow Willow needed three trips to slop enough milk onto her Grape Nuts to achieve the proper degree of crunchy indestructibility. Willow declared the proceedings "cute," and got a two-finger salute from Spike. Willow laughed and the SITs tittered or snorted, depending on whether they knew that variation or not. Spike looked resigned. He couldn't fool Buffy: he was eating it up.

And it was no accident, she thought, that the chaperonage had become denser by something like a factor of four. Buffy couldn't decide between amusement and annoyance. No reason she couldn't choose both, with a side-dish of vague puzzlement over why he bothered.

When the kitchen got too bright (it was already too crowded), the makeover crew removed itself to the front room to finish, and Dawn pronounced. Then there was the heated discussion of the merits of plain peroxide as opposed to Miss Clairol #17, which eventually produced a mass exodus to the drugstore three blocks down. Without Spike, of course. He shook the catch-towel over the carpet and came into the hall trying to brush cut hair-ends off his neck.

He presented himself before Buffy, giving her sides to look at. "Did they do me bald anyplace?" He didn't seem worried--of course not, not with Dawn, the New Number One, supervising.

Following the thought, Buffy said dryly, "That would be telling."

"So it would. Feels better. Been doin' it like this for forty-some years. Get used to it, a time like that."

With grave deliberation Buffy performed the delicate operation of removing a scrap of cut hair from his left ear. She wanted to see if the Wowser factor was still in effect. Apparently not. But his eyes told her he knew precisely what she was doing and why and didn't, at the moment, mind.

It was an interesting exchange of gazes, and their minds must be running along similar lines, because he remarked, "Educational."

"Very," said Buffy. "We'll have to discuss it sometime."

"I'll consult my social secretary. 'M sure there'll be some afternoon free. This month or next."

"When you grow up, you'll come to appreciate quality over quantity," Buffy said, and he leaned forward and Meeeeow'd in her face. Then he wandered past to where he could look into the kitchen, calling, "Red, could you pour me out a cuppa? Bints wouldn't let me finish my brekker."

After a minute Willow emerged with a mug. "Here you go, Mr. Popular. How does it feel to have groupies?"

"To be frank, damn strange. But better than the alternative, I s'pose. If it's between bein' took for a bloody rock star and getting yanked into cats' meat like sodding Orpheus, I know which one I opt for, no question. An' I expect it's kind of novel for them to be around a bloke they don't have to worry about breaking."

With considerable effort, Buffy suppressed any comment whatsoever. Willow looked at her, and the corners of her mouth twitched, but she also said nothing.

It's not the words, Buffy reflected, it's the subtext that'll get you if you're not careful.

She wondered what further minefields remained to be discovered.

The purchasing expedition returned some ten minutes later, and Spike had to be firm about doing the rest for himself, no little birds gonna help him in the shower, the mere thought scandalized him and shame on their wicked minds for suggesting it. And Buffy noticed that the SITs didn't for a second mean it seriously, only teasing, and that Spike had begun to extend to them the playful, absolute gentleness he'd always shown toward Dawn. Not rock star adoration but something much closer to genuine liking, much more relaxed and knowing on both sides that Buffy had originally thought.

Teasing a vampire: flirting with a kick. Well, she should know.

Blocking the stairs while Spike went up, Dawn wore her new authority with dignity and fizzing happiness, and so far nobody seemed to resent her elevation to Handmaid to the Hotness that was Spike. She called them into conference in the front room, thumping to assorted angular awkwardnesses on and around the couch, beginning, "I asked Spike if it was OK that I explain a few things, about what he's like. Vampire, and all. And maybe there are things you want to know, that you'd feel funny asking him right to his face. So here we go: Basic Vampire 101."

Her audience seemed riveted and she, comfortable, instructing them in Spike lore as the acknowledged expert.

Watching, Buffy thought that in many ways, Dawn had evolved into his go-between, interpreting to him and for him to the human world. Maybe the Potentials were taking their cue from Dawn. Somehow Buffy thought it would never occur to Dawn whether Spike was totally hot, one way or another. They were long past such things having any meaning at all.

It was sad that her own relationship with Spike had to be so jagged and problematical. She wondered if being a grown-up was ultimately worth what it cost.

Buffy hung around by the doorway, listening. She figured she might well learn something.

Dawn was in the middle of the Tale of the Chip, and how it worked, and what it meant, when the phone rang. Since she happened to be loitering nearby, Buffy grabbed it on the second ring.

THIRTEEN

When the Scooby council convened (Harris had brought Danish) a little before noon, Spike found a place for himself in the armchair back in the corner, legs stretched out long, ankles crossed, arms folded, and tried to pay attention. Buffy would want him to take part, look sensible, say something from time to time. But he'd never been much for that, and no use pretending otherwise. He preferred Peaches' style of management: aim him at something and he'd go kill it. Not real great for planning. That was his Sire's department.

Besides, his focus was blown all to hell. Too much afoot and then the Never dream on top of it.

He'd gone out again last night, alone, and located the vamp nest off past the park: in the cavity dug for gasoline storage tanks at a burned-out service station. Caught one minion dumb enough to still be hanging about there and got out of him that there'd been three of 'em, three preternaturally composed fledges: two women and a man. Fucking each other blind and the minions not getting any, in the usual incestuous tangle of vampire relationships. One of the women, Julia, he'd done in the park: the one Bit had taken down with the taser. So that left two. They'd drunk up the bloodcows, collected whatever emergency stash they'd had time to put together, and scarpered.

Maria and Bob.

Maria would look about thirty, long dark hair and dark eyes, roundish squinched-up face like a pug dog. Tiny Betty Boop mouth. Chicano bint, fireplug design: short and squat. Maybe 150, 160 pounds. He thought he remembered picking her up at an all-night carry-out place. All he had were wisps of impressions, fragments, left from those nights when his demon had overcome him and hunted at will....

Bob had been a cop moonlighting as night security for a factory site under construction. Spike could recall the lights and jackstraw scaffolding and the big huddled earth-moving six- and eight-wheelers parked like sleeping black Ashokta demons. Bob was Caucasian, about six foot, maybe 210, bit of a beer gut on him, apparent age something like 40. Brown and brown.

Unremarkable people. Pass 'em on the street and never spare a second glance. Remarkable vampires, cunning and ruthless from their orphaned rising, able to recognize one another by how they stood apart from the rest: the Order of Aurelius come into yet another generation. Spike listlessly did the Alien jaws-snapping thing with his hands. Dawn must have noticed because she came over and perched on the chair arm, and he told her to go, this wasn't her place, and she protested that she lived there, for crap sake, and Willow let Kennedy come, and Spike said that didn't signify, and Buffy just about glared holes in them both, and the Bit went off sulky, threatening unspecified doom. Everybody else carried on talking about something or other.

When he'd got out of the minion all there was likely to be, Spike had dusted him and stood awhile trying to memorize what scent traces were left in the nest, of who had been there. He'd boosted some kerosene and torched the nest, then circled back to Willie's to connect with his minions, who'd about given up on him but not enough to actually leave. Willie'd been pissed off, of course, but admitted Spike had done good by him, tossed him safely outside before getting down to work, spared the bar mirror and all, and word of a really good fight attracted custom for weeks on the chance it might be repeated. That and the promise of $40 in cash or kittens, depending on which Spike could lay his hands on first, and some bartending on Saturdays (always a rowdy night) was enough to square him with Willie, at least enough that Willie wouldn't cancel his privilege, as a regular, of running up a tab.

Spike had drilled his minions on the names and descriptions, that they'd probably retained for at least 10 seconds after he left, sprinting against the coming sunrise back to Revello Drive.

In the basement, he'd added the details to the profiles in his notebook knowing it was no good, no use. Maria and Bob were gone. Then he'd put his arms up behind his head and lain there waiting for the first sounds of the household waking.

He couldn't have slept anyway. Didn't want to. Because as soon as his head had hit the pillow, after parting with Buffy and locking up, he'd been attacked by the Never dream with its portent of devastating calamity; and of course he couldn't sleep after that.

He thought he was covering decently: even the Bit didn't seem to have noticed anything off, except for him flapping his hands about like a git. Got through the hair business OK. So good enough, then. Maybe he could get in a few hours, since he understood Rupert had managed to change a connecting flight to arrive with the new children about eleven, after dark anyway, so Spike could lend a hand in collecting them. Departure point someplace near Pesht, the usual zig-zag route through Heathrow (where Giles had called from the first time) and then on, changeover at LaGuardia and another at O'Hare, then back to LAX and the shuttle to home sweet bloody Hellmouth and the newest pending apocalypse. Spike wondered what Prague was like now. He had the vague unexamined sense that the chair behind and beneath him was Dru, holding him, talking beloved nonsense in his ear about some dog and pony show she'd seen on the telly and decided was something else, animals being dissected and shown that way or who the hell knew what....

He startled at a touch on his arm and found the room empty and Buffy sitting on her heels in front of him.

"Wasn't," he said, straightening. "Just resting my eyes."

Buffy didn't buy that but didn't argue. "We're leaving at nine, both cars. You're driving the SUV. You, me, and Xander, who's driving his truck. We're taking Kennedy, Amanda, Meagan, and Kim. They're with you. I'm inside, to meet Giles and the three Potentials. You and the SITs cover the landing area, the service road, and the drop-off pick-up area, in that order. Xander's on the parking lot. Willow stays by the phone and I have the cellphone. Willow monitors the police and emergency bands and checks that they're listed as boarding and that the arrival time hasn't changed up until the shuttle is on the ground. Anya might teleport some Potentials in if we end up needing more bodies on the ground. If she feels like it. I couldn't quite pin her down about that."

Spike tried to shake some more alertness into himself. "Right. Sounds like a plan, then."

Buffy was still looking at him. "Your hair looks good. Everybody agreed. You look like the real, old you. Genuine Big Bad, accept no substitutes. And we all know you're not.... You miss Dru, don't you."

That told him he'd been babbling, which annoyed him. "Sometimes. I also miss the Great War and smallpox." Catching her startled, injured look, Spike said wearily, "Pay me no mind, love. I'm just off, a bit. Nothing to do with you lot. Just something of my own. So no matter. If you got the dosh, I'll see to it the car's filled up, come last light."

"Dosh?"

"Money, love. It's--" She knew, she was just having him on. He was really off, not to catch that. He rubbed at his eyes. "What cheer with Rona?"

"Xander's going to pick her up now."

"Gimme a yell when they get back."

"All right. Then get some rest.... Dawn says you have nightmares."

He shrugged. "Yeah. Sometimes." He'd have to have a talk with Dawn.

Dawn knew about the Never dream, no way to keep it from her, the fact of it, anyway. It'd started about the same time she'd got into the habit of climbing out her window and coming to his crypt, most nights, playing cards or watching Man U humiliate themselves yet again, tethering him down with looking after her, her seeing to him, and no way for her not to know: wake bolt upright in tears, crazy with grief, go on a three, four day bender until he could settle himself down again. On the conspicuous side. But he'd never told her what the dream consisted of, that much he'd been able to keep to himself, and he wasn't pleased, her running off and blatting it to the Slayer. All well and good, the Bit giving the children a bit of a clue, so he and they wouldn't rub at each other's raw edges so hard. But that didn't include tattling to big sis about things that were private.

He thought he knew what it was now, and how he'd meet it. That was settled and sure. So he could contain it, not come all apart like he used to, until he'd swallowed it down again. He could keep on keeping on. About the airport and all, and whatever else the Slayer wanted to throw him at.

Buffy waited in case he wanted to talk about it, which he didn't. So she eased back, left him alone.

Spike rubbed his eyes. No point moving, if Rona was due back in a few minutes. Might as well just wait. No point to any of it. Maria and Bob were gone.

Kennedy had been issued one of the tasers. Amanda had the other. That was a reasonable distribution: of the SITs, they'd shown the most natural weapons aptitude. All the same, having Kennedy at his back with a taser made Spike edgy. Finishing the sweep of the single landing strip and finding nothing of note, Spike set Kennedy at point and Amanda at rearguard to do a slow sweep of the service road connecting the landing strip with the baggage and maintenance area of the terminal. Again, a reasonable assignment: put the best fighters first and last, with the less dependable between to assist as needed. But that wasn't why Spike did it.

He wanted to keep her under his eye.

Having by far the best night-sight, Spike ranged around the squad of four, pacing them on one side, then crossing their course to the other side to investigate anything that could conceal attackers--the standing fixtures and gear of a fueling station, a parked emergency vehicle, an empty three-car baggage truck, a small private jet near the shut maintenance bay.

The whole landing area, naturally flat, was spongy-swampy at its edges: host to clouds of mosquitoes the children were beginning to find annoying despite being liberally smeared with stinking repellant that certainly would make any vampire want to keep his distance. Certainly had it all over garlic as far as Spike was concerned; but then again, he liked garlic. He wondered how Bringers reacted to appalling smells and to mosquitoes. The mosquitoes bypassed Spike for the tastier SITs, which was fine with him.

Most of the landing area was well lighted: around the periphery by highstanding sodium lights like skinny giants with bright, protuberant noses, and down both sides of the angled runway bisecting the space by rectangular light plates embedded in the ground. Good visibility. Few obstructions or places to hide. Near the top of the service road, Spike stood upwind of the squad, shut his eyes, and concentrated on sounds, smells, and that unnamed sense attuned to the body warmth of creatures that could bleed. Away off to his right, a human wandered seemingly at random. A visual check identified a uniformed groundskeeper or maintenance worker collecting debris into a sack. Nothing else bigger than a rat, of which there was a fair abundance. From time to time, Spike caught the quick small shine of their eyes as they scavenged the area by twos and threes. Since there were rats, there were almost certainly cats, foxes, and coyotes, but he didn't sense any. Maybe they were wary of the lights and didn't converge to hunt until the airport closed for the night.

Where there was prey, there would always be predators whether you spotted them or not, Spike reflected with a certain wryness.

Satisfied that the area was clear and couldn't be invaded except in a way that would rouse his attention from a considerable distance, he walked back to the waiting squad. "Settle here until the plane comes in. Then we'll flank passengers into the terminal and move on to the pick-up place in front."

"What if something's already in the terminal?" Kennedy demanded.

For about the fifth time since setting out, Spike reminded himself of the unpleasant consequences of tearing her face off, among them that Buffy wouldn't like it. "Kind of think the Slayer might have noticed, if there was, don't you?"

"There's probably lots more places to hide in there," Kennedy persisted. "And we're all stuck out here."

"And the minute the passengers get inside, Slayer'll have three of your lot and a Watcher with her, makes five. And I count five of us here. Sort of balances out, now doesn't it? Just how would you like it organized, pet?"

"If there's fighting, I want to be where it is, that's all." Kennedy shifted and gripped her upper arms with the opposite hands.

"Oh, you'll get over that," drawled Kim, about the first thing she'd said all night. Having, like Amanda, taken part in the park patrol last night, Kim apparently now fancied herself a veteran, but mostly good-natured about it, with a slightly sardonic edge.

Spike kept his smile to himself. Settling into a comfortable crouch, he listened to the night and reminded himself four or five times why the coal of a lit cigarette was not a good idea when you were trying to remain unseen in a big flat open space with fine visibility.

"Never have liked open country," he remarked quietly, passing the time. "Take a nice slum over any patch of green you care to name. Parks are nice, though: good hunting in parks."

Kim stifled a burst of what she tried to make sound like coughing.

"Vampire humor," said Kennedy sourly. "Just what we needed."

"Now, you never know what you'll need, pet."

"I am not your pet!"

Meagan started, "Ken, put a sock--" and then hushed, seemingly alert enough to spot the slight change in Spike's pose as he caught a faint whine pitched lower than the drone of mosquitoes.

"Down, children," Spike advised, with no change of tone. "Don't skyline yourselves, that's the way. Best if you don't fall down, Kim."

"Yeah," whispered Kim, recovering noisily. "Got that."

Spike thought of mentioning that snakes were among the predators drawn to open places with abundant rats, but the cool air would have them torpid by now, not actively hunting and slithering around; and no purpose, beyond amusement, in making the children any more nervous than they already were. Still, he thought about it.

Wingtip lights blinking, the LA shuttle circled once high overhead before descending and tilting into its landing approach. Propeller craft, by the sound: twin engine, a stuttered double vibration not precisely synchronous. Didn't see them much anymore, it'd all gone private jets except for starvation suburban runs like Sunnydale, where any old crate that could get itself up would do.

A pair of uniformed workers came out of the terminal and laid hands on a tall triangle of boarding steps on wheels, walking it slowly away from the wall as the plane's fore wheels hit and complained loudly at being forced into a fast spin on contact. Then the tail wheel was down, slight bump and shudder. The propellers slowed a bit, brakes catching hold, flaps already down and changing how the air moved past. The plane nosed toward the terminal at no more than a walking pace, toward where the stair crew waited.

They'd chosen the correct side, Spike noted, spotting the outline of the recessed door hatch. They'd see the passengers coming out. A plane that size, couldn't be but seven or eight people inside, total. He doubted they'd have been served snacks.

Still nothing stirring on the field except the trash collector, far distant now, and the rats.

The propellers thwopped a few last times, then stilled. The stair was rolled into place against the plane. The hatch swung up. Behind the patrol, one of the maintenance bay doors rattled up and a tanker truck ground slowly out, dwarfed by the large opening. Spike returned his attention to the hatch.

An unfamiliar face, then another--flight crew, most likely, something of that sort. Then Rupert himself, halting and looking around before consenting to budge, typically wary, and well he should be. Following Rupert tight, two girls in similar blue dresses, good for keeping track of who was on whose side. Have to hand it to Rupert, he had this business of collecting Potentials down to a bloody science. No, there was the third, in the middle: so tiny only the top of her head was visible past the side of the stair.

You had your look, Rupert, now move the feet, get off the steps, you great git, you're a bloody standing target, Spike thought. Aloud, he murmured, "Kim, watch the side, that's the girl. Mistress Kennedy, if you'd be so kind.... The idea is not to be noticed, pet. Stoop down, you'll find you can still walk if you really try. Just quietly now."

A distant escort, the squad moved from the vicinity of the plane to where Spike gestured them to a halt, watching Rupert and the Potentials pass into the terminal. A motor starting was the baggage truck, whose trailing carts then rattled into motion.

The last Potential was inside. "Three quarters to gone, children. Around front now. Kennedy, swing by the car park, say hullo to Harris."

"That's not what--"

"Off you go, then. I don't like Harris so long on his own, he's apt to get into mischief. Or fall asleep. Tell him get the engine going, our birds have landed."

"He has the pager--"

"I'll go, Spike," put in Amanda: poised, waiting.

At least somebody knew how to mind. Spike nodded, and Amanda dashed away, keeping beyond where the terminal lights extended onto the macadam.

With Kennedy leading off, the patrol ran toward the terminal's front doorway and drop-off pick-up circle. There should be time to check the immediate area before baggage collection was complete and the passengers reached the same mark from the inside.

That was when Spike noticed the red brake lights of the vehicle disappearing, ahead, around the corner of the building, belonged to the tanker truck. Which had no business being headed toward the front entrance.

"Nasties in the truck, children. Go."

When Spike rounded the corner several yards ahead of Kennedy, he found the tanker slowly approaching Xander's parked truck nose-to-nose, blocking the truck's passage. Stood to reason something else would be coming in behind, then, to block off the circular drive on the other side. He waved the squad to see to the tanker and kept moving, surprised to find Rupert and the new children in blue already standing by the truck and Buffy handing out weapons from the back. Then he spotted Amanda coming from the parking area, across the circle. He dug for the van keys. Seeing Amanda had already spotted him, he mimed once, then threw the keys high and hard, bright in the tall area lights. She didn't quite catch them but had grabbed them up in a second. Straightening, she jerked her head questioningly toward the parking area. He pointed, confirming her guess, and she turned and sped off the way she'd come. Spike headed in the other direction.

"Leave that, Slayer. Amanda's gone for the van. They'll be coming from the back now. Hullo, Rupert."

Off the startled flash of Giles' glasses, Spike kept moving. The baggage truck was coming around the far corner of the terminal. The following carts were full of Bringers. Thirty or more. But only one driver.

Make it a foot race, maybe.

Worth the chance, Spike thought, flicked the axe up on its loop into his hand, and stepped into a flying dive at the open cab. Did the driver quick, grabbed the ignition key, rolled off and whacked two tires flat with the axe before the bringers piled off the carts and were upon him. A burning pain in his shoulder told him at least one had swapped his knife for a stake. He cut low, trying for legs, but with the robes that was chancy and a couple had nearly got a solid grip on him. And he was only holding a dozen or so. The rest were past, almost to the truck. Harris had tried to turn it across the circle but only succeeded in hanging up the undercarriage on the curb. Buffy and the rest had made it to the far side of the circle, and here came Amanda with the SUV, gonna be like a circus, that lot all trying to pile into the one van, but they should have the van before the Bringers had them, so time to depart.

Spike rolled and slashed until he could get his feet under him, then sprinted to the truck, that Harris was still trying to rock over the obstruction, grinding through the gears.

"Harris, you git, go! They don't want your bloody truck now it's empty, leave it!"

"Then they won't want my bloody truck with just me in it, either." Spike was hauling at the door to yank Harris out, and Harris hit the button to lock it, continuing, "First rule of construction: don't lose the truck."

That was when the tanker blew up.

Not airline fuel, not that kind of explosion. More WHUMP. Slow-motion splash. Burn. Some kind of lubricant, maybe, that didn't catch fire all at once but splattered out as airborne debris, beginning to ignite in long thick gobs almost like tar. Liquid asphalt, maybe: for patching the runway.

Spike hung onto the door as the truck rocked and the thick, burning stuff started raining down. Harris just about knocked him over, shoving the door open. Staggering back, Spike went down on one stiff arm braced behind him, a bad position to rise quickly from. He flipped onto his knees and then up, in time to see the wildly overburdened SUV, several pairs of waving legs out the back hatch, Harris half in and half out the swinging left rear door, and Kim scrabbling around on top, pull away and start rolling, a whole pack of Bringers not quite in grabbing distance. None left near him--all in flailing pursuit across the circle and into the road.

Well, that had been interesting, Spike thought, dusting his hands together, backing a few paces.

He didn't know what brought his attention around.

It was a very simple image. Burning sludge was cascading slowly over the tanker cab and behind the windshield, Kennedy was struggling and screaming without sound.

Ah, hell.

Moving, accelerating, Spike considered. Nothing to hand to break the windshield and it would take too long to kick it in. Done it before, Spike thought, I can do it again. And closed both hands onto and through the burning sludge on the passenger side door handle. He ripped the door off and flung it wide. Most of the flesh of his hands went with it. It'd been worse. He'd had worse pain than this. Lots of times.

Focus.

The child was struggling to get out but had got hung up on the gear shift. Not a whole lot of good choices left. Spike tried to grab at the shoulder, where there was something to hold onto and her sleeve would keep some of what was on his hands from transferring to her skin. Couldn't be sure if he had good hold or not, but he hauled backward as hard as he could.

Spike wasn't sure how that came out.

FOURTEEN

Although it was late, going for midnight, Dawn didn't think anybody had gone to bed--or to sleep, more accurately, because it was sleeping bags on the floor all over the house every night, there didn't begin to be enough beds, and the new SITs were going to have to move in with Xander, which Xander had been making eyebrow-waggling jokes about for days, big hairy deal, who cared.

Everybody was gathered in the front room, Command Central, with Fort-Holding Commander Willow, waiting for everybody else to get back from the airport. Rona, who had trouble sitting for any length of time because of her embarrassing injury she was so proud of, was wandering around sucking ginger ale through a straw and kibitzing on the Monopoly game Anya had started with five of the others, all laid out on the floor. Anya, intent, already had two hotels on Park Place and was gleeful that Chloe had landed there and had to pay her a fortune in fake money as rent. Anya also had the bank: pastel stacks of fake money in front of her, neatly sorted by denomination.

Dawn wouldn't play Monopoly with Anya anymore: Anya enjoyed it too much, and always won. The SITs would play because they were "fish": new gullible victims to be fleeced. Fish fleece: funny. OK, a little funny. OK: lame. Dawn thought she'd ask Spike how you went about cheating at Monopoly. When she saw him again. Maybe.

Dawn was glum because they'd both been off today and snapped at each other. Then he'd gone downstairs and slept till dark--so weird: like a normal vampire--and there'd been no chance to make it right before the airport expedition left. Not that he hadn't been unreasonable: Willow did let Kennedy sit in on the Scooby sessions when none of the other SITs were allowed, and that wasn't fair, everybody knew it; and it was Dawn's house too and Dawn therefore had a right to be wherever she was; but Spike was often or even mostly unreasonable and if she was going to get mad at him for that, she'd be mad all the time and she didn't like how that felt. Her stomach all twisted up and everything tasted like pennies.

She thought he'd had the Awful Dream again that he would never talk about: he was like that afterward when he wasn't worse. He'd managed all right through the haircut and all, but he still didn't like the bathroom and no wonder it put him right off, and after that he'd just gotten more and more off and couldn't pretend properly anymore. It was best to leave him alone then, but Dawn hadn't noticed until too late, he'd been faking too well, and then she'd been off too for not having noticed and then getting thrown out when if she'd just kept still, she could have stayed.

If she understood the Awful Dream she'd know better what to do, but he'd never told her the truly awful stuff: the merely gross and disgusting stuff, he hadn't known was awful when he'd told it to her. Now he wouldn't even tell her that, because he knew now. The soul had cost him his demonic innocence.

Dawn wasn't sure the soul was a good thing. She had the right to be skeptical because as an ex-Mystical-Key-thingy, like Anya was an ex-Vengeance (excuuuse me: Justice!) Demon, Dawn wasn't sure she herself had one and maybe it was all over-rated, you could be people without it, there'd never been a time when Spike wasn't people.

After Buffy and the airport team left, Dawn had slunk downstairs and snuck his notebook, to see if he'd written anything about the AD there, but she'd leafed through it now and found it wasn't like a diary. Maybe vampires didn't do diaries, that was a long time to keep up a habit. Nothing there but the stuff about the fledges and some of it new, so she realized he'd gone back and found the nest all by himself, without her, last night.

And after the new notes about Bob (Bob, the Vampire: how excessively dorky!), in Spike's odd lovely precise old-fashioned handwriting, that wasn't at all like how you'd think he would write, there was: they're gone what the hell what the hell

That made her feel even worse, knowing how much it meant to him, Order of Aurelius an' all, vague despairing Alien gestures with his hands when he thought nobody was looking, when he wasn't looking, all off, careless, and unfocused: figuring it didn't matter because nobody would see or, seeing, understand....

Dawn wondered if that's what people meant when they said something was enough to break your heart. She wondered if that's what this feeling was, a heart breaking. It should make some kind of a noise, so you'd know and could tell it right away from a stomach ache or cramps.

All at once, she thought, It's all in the blood, like my Keyness. The blood that made them. The blood they share. The Blood of Aurelius, down from forever. What about a locator spell? and was all excited and about to ask Willow when Willow yelled really loud and scared everybody practically out of their skins.

Anya hopped up and darted among SITs to the big chair where Willow sat with the laptop and maps and notes and everything deployed on a small folding table in front of her, and the phone right beside her on the weapons chest, demanding sharply, "What is it? You made me spill my money!"

Willow's eyes hadn't gone all black or anything, but she looked as though they could, any second. She was locked, clenched, staring straight up, as though she was either having a seizure or seconds from exploding. Without looking Willow grabbed Anya's wrist and still without looking slammed Anya's hand down on the diagram of the airport laid out flat on the little table. "He's there. Go get him. Now!"

"Xander?" shrieked Anya, already yanking her wrist free, whirling away.

"Spike! Now, Anya!"

Anya vanished.

Dawn was frantic. It was so hard to find out what had happened or was happening. When Kennedy showed up, moving crooked and sobbing with a dislocated shoulder and bad burns too on that shoulder and upper arm, encrusted with something black and tarry, and on the whole side of her left leg below the knee, Dawn didn't understand how Kennedy had been injured or where she'd come from. The airport of course, but it was too hard with everybody flocking around and getting Kennedy laid down on the couch and Willow sternly naming off the spell ingredients she needed from upstairs with tears steadily rolling down her face, to understand anything and where was Spike? Where was he?

Everybody running in forty directions, Kennedy wailing insanely, "He didn't change! He didn't change!" like that was the worst thing in the world or an insult, flailing around and not letting anybody try to lock her shoulder and pull it straight, screaming while Willow cleared them all away from the couch and set out the ingredients and made the spell, Sumerian by the sound, babbling, "It will be OK, baby, just be quiet, baby," in between as though it was part of the spell, and Dawn clutching the notebook tight against her chest and backed against the wall, getting more and more scared and at the same time more and more quiet until people's mouths were moving but there was nothing and no spell either, no sound at all. Just a sort of vibrating high-pitched whine that went on and on.

And then somehow Amanda was in front of her, frowning, and more people, Buffy, barging in and adding to the confusion, Xander and Anya hugging hard out in the hall, so some way Anya was there again, and nobody would tell her where Spike was, nobody was making any sound or any sense, just the lone white keening in her head.

Amanda jerked at her until she unlocked, and Dawn stumbled and moved where Amanda pulled her and made her go, and now Kim had her arm around Dawn's back and was helping Amanda steer her into the kitchen. While Amanda made Dawn sit on one of the tall chairs, Kim shut the hall door.

Amanda was saying something to her, frowning, very serious, but Dawn still couldn't hear her and she wasn't breathing, she'd forgotten how.

Then suddenly all the sounds rushed back, Amanda's solemn voice saying slowly, "--all right, he'll heal, he's a vampire," and Dawn started choking as she remembered how to breathe. Amanda and Kim hugged her until the choking became breathing and the shaking began, as though she'd frozen solid and was starting to thaw.

"But where is he?" Dawn said in some tiny squeak that didn't sound like her voice at all.

Amanda and Kim exchanged a glance. Kim said, "I'll find out. I'll come right back. Don't be scared, Bit. We'll see to it."

When Kim called her by the name nobody else called her, the thaw ran through her and she was all liquid and hurting, sobbing against Amanda's neck with Amanda hugging her even harder and patting her back.

Kim returned, shutting the door and setting her shoulders against it. "He's downstairs. Anya teleported straight there. Buffy--"

Dawn started fighting to get free, to get down there, but Amanda and Kim wouldn't let her, held tight against her flailing punches and only turned their faces aside when she struck at them, and still hung on, and they were stronger than she was and it wasn't fair.

"He's there?" Dawn asked tremulously. "He's alive?"

As Kim started explaining that nobody was allowed in the basement, Buffy was down there, like before, Dawn heard in her head Spike's voice saying, Wouldn't be there if I'd dusted, pet, now would I? And alive, sure, except for the being dead an' all.

That made sense. She should have known that herself. She was just being stupid. She reached and tore a paper towel from the roll and began scrubbing at her eyes. "I'm sorry I was dumb. I was just so scared." She blew her nose loudly.

"You don't begin to be dumb compared to what Kennedy pulled," Kim said flatly.

Amanda said, "Leave it alone."

"You didn't see it. I did."

"It's not the time, Kim. Let's put it all together another time."

"No," said Kim, and folded her arms. "She should know. Nobody's telling her anything, like when your parents fight, and nobody will say why, and she needs to know something." Short chubby Kim stared down tall skinny Amanda, then turned to Dawn.

"So there's this middle-sized tanker truck. Big, but not like an eighteen-wheeler. All stinky and black, got messy dripped stuff all over it. Bringer driving, OK? And another at shotgun. It was blocking Xander's truck. Spike sent us to deal with it. Me and Meagan take the shotgun guy, Ken takes the driver because she has the taser. So she drags him out and does him, then she gets up behind the wheel and hollers she's gonna back the tanker out, clear the way. Only she's never driven shift, she gets all messed up with the shift lever and she's fighting it, grinding the gears, and the tanker's not moving, and I'm yelling at her to get out, we're going, everybody else is running for the SUV, OK? So she slams both doors, she's gonna get that tanker moving or else because now she's too stubborn to back off. And I'm runnin' for the SUV, everybody piles in and there's no room for me, so I step on the back bumper and I make this terrible leap, sprawl on the top, and I'm tryin' to hang on, and the van's moving, OK? And this whole big mob of Bringers is chasing after us. And back by the terminal there's a Bringer we didn't see, or one new, I dunno, on top of the tanker, got one of the hatches open. And then it blows. Like chucking a big rock into mud. If the mud caught fire and burned. Like what you see about lava. All over the place. And Ken's stuck inside, can't get the doors open now because of the burning crud all running down all over it. And then Spike turns and sees it. And he just went after her, like he goes after everything, headfirst slide only it isn't, not a slide, OK? So he rips the door off, flings Ken the hell way into the air back behind him, just when the SUV makes the turn to the street and I have to hang on and I don't see any more. But here I'm bangin' on the roof, banging like a maniac, and when we get a few blocks off Manda finally stops, and no Bringers, so I can slide down and say we left some behind." The remembered chase suddenly halted, Kim hitched her shoulders uncomfortably, frowning. "But we had the new SITs with, and Mr. Giles, and that was the mission, and I think the Slayer was on the cellphone. To get something done. Send somebody. But I had to get in and we came back. Spike would never do that. No matter who it was, he would'a come for us. If he came for Ken."

"Yeah," said Amanda soberly. She had her arms folded and was looking at the floor. "Yeah, he would."

Maybe not once, Dawn thought, but now he would. He'd do that now, not think twice. You're mine. I'll keep you from death. Even Kennedy, who'd been nothing but spiteful and mean. Probably the soul. Maybe there was some use to it.

Opening the notebook to a clean page, she held it out to Kim. "I want you to write it down. Just what you saw. Just like you said it."

Kim hesitated, then came and took the notebook. "OK. I guess. Put it down while it's fresh. I'll do it."

Dawn went on, "Kennedy was yelling that he didn't change. What does that mean."

Kim made a noise she instantly muffled behind a fist, as if ashamed it was funny, which was stupid. If it was funny, then it was, no matter if awful things were part of it.

Amanda decided to field that one. "It was.... Ken said that if she made him mad enough, he'd turn. She wanted to make him turn. 'Show his true face,' was what she said, which is so uber-dumb because it's not like he made any secret about it. Hello: vampire here! So I guess...he didn't. Even when he went after her."

There was a silence. Then Dawn slid off the chair. "Yeah, that's dumb. It's all Spike. Always."

"Yeah, I guess," Amanda agreed uncertainly.

Dawn told Kim, "Bring me the notebook when you're done."

Then she went to see if Willow needed help, or what else she could do to make herself useful.

FIFTEEN

The next morning Dawn got up, washed her face, and dressed, then went down and ate her breakfast of Pop-Tarts and strawberry yogurt all very calm. She thought the level of blood in the next-to-last plastic jug was about the same as yesterday, but made a tiny dot with a marker so next time she checked, she'd be sure.

After brushing her teeth, she checked Buffy's room and found it empty, the unmade bed no evidence one way or the other of whether Buffy had ever gone there last night, since Buffy only made the bed after she'd washed the sheets. Then Dawn collected one of the couch cushions and used it as a seat in the angled corner under the upstairs staircase facing the basement door. She began her vigil. Either Buffy would come up, or someone else would be going down. All she had to do was wait.

While she waited she reviewed the narratives already in the notebook and wrote herself reminders of the others she wanted to get.

About nine o'clock there were ascending footsteps followed by the clack of one bolt. It was Willow and her hands were empty. As Dawn stood up, Willow was plainly surprised to see her. "Dawnie, shouldn't you be at school?"

"I'm not going to school today. I expect Buffy to write me a note," responded Dawn composedly, and Willow's eyebrows climbed.

"Well, I don't know, you'll--"

"Willow, that's not important. I've been very patient. I've waited all night. Now I want to go down and see him."

Willow finished shutting the door and pushed the top bolt as though Dawn couldn't just as well reach it if Willow could. Turning again, Willow's face lost the comically unsure expression and became merely tired and sober in a way that did not bode well. "You're not going down, Dawn. I'm sorry."

"Why not?"

"Because you're not. I could give you reasons and we could argue about them, but the real reason is that I'm not gonna let you."

Dawn could feel the blood going out of her face. But she held her ground. "How is he, then? Is he awake?"

"No."

"Has he been awake?"

"No. He looks exactly like a dead body, except he's not, because he's still there. And you're not gonna see him looking like that. And you know as well as I do that he wouldn't want you to either."

"It seems he has no choice about anything. And neither do I." Dawn lifted her chin. "What's wrong and how bad is it?"

It didn't seem possible Willow's face could become even more stern. She considered Dawn for a long moment. "His wrists and hands are burned to the bone. The bones are charred. And not all of them are there. If he were human, amputation would have been performed, and wouldn't have helped. He'd be dead by now. But he's a vampire, and vampires don't die of such things. The bone will regenerate. And the flesh will eventually cover the bone. But that hasn't even begun at this point. He's unconscious and has been since Anya brought him home. Whether it's shock or coma or something else, I have no idea. As best I know, he's not in any pain. He's not there at all. It was his pain that told me I had to send Anya. That had ended before Anya reached him."

Willow stopped, and both had the mouth trembles and held still until they went away. Dawn felt each detail like a separate blow but accepted it, noted it as a fact, and noted also that Willow respected her enough to give it to her.

"Are you reading his mind?" Dawn managed to keep her voice steady. "How you knew?"

"No. He told me.... Well, he told me to quit or else, basically. You heard him. So I haven't done that since. But...let me use an example. If that pain had been a noise, there would have been dogs barking from here to Sandy Beach. What the dogs hear, I hear. Because I've made that connection, it's still open even if I'm not listening. Though not really listening: only like listening."

That loud. Dawn shivered, then suppressed it. "What are you doing for him? --is anybody doing for him?" she corrected herself.

"Well, there's no such thing as vampire medicine. There's nothing."

"Giles--"

Willow interrupted, "--has checked what remain of the Watchers' Council records, and there's nothing except powers, and principalities, and ways to kill them as quick as possible. Just what you'd expect. But Giles has contacts, and he's using them. Because I asked him to. Because I know Spike saved Kennedy's life, and I owe him big time for that. Really big time." Willow measured it with spread arms and open hands. "I'd try to help anyway, because...we have history. Not all of it good, but history. And...I guess I'm in no position: glass house, kettle, stones, sin? And I have to admit, he's become a mensch. Not a man, but a mensch."

"Like a person," Dawn suggested.

"Something like that, yeah. So I have my contacts, too. I have calls out. I don't know how much Earth magic is gonna help a vampire. Healing magic: Earth magic. He's not of the Natural order of things, so that limits what I'd even dare to try. I have calls out. I'll do whatever I can."

There was silence while Dawn considered it all. She decided she had no doubts of Willow's sincerity. Only of how much help Willow, and the mild benevolent magics that were all she allowed herself now, were likely to be.

And that wasn't Willow's problem: it was Dawn's.

"All right," Dawn said finally. "Thanks, Willow. Will you tell me when something changes?"

"Sure, Dawnie. I know you're worried. I'll tell you when it starts to get better. And I believe that it will. I just don't know when, or how to help it along."

Willow reached out a hand to stroke Dawn's hair, and Dawn endured it. Inside Dawn's head, the high singing whine that had never really stopped became stronger and then faded as Willow went away.

Dawn went to the front room and announced to the air, and the eight or so SIT's there, "I need to make a phone call. Could you go out in the yard or something for a little while?"

They were uncertain, it was an odd thing for Dawn to ask, but nobody objected or refused. As soon as the room cleared, Dawn dialed the memorized number quickly.

"Angel Investigations, good morning."

"You're Fred, right? This is Buffy's sister, Dawn. Maybe you can tell me who I need to talk to. Angel or anybody. I need to find Drusilla."

"As in...Drusilla?" said Fred, in a rising, incredulous, alarmed voice. "As in--"

"Look, Angel knows her. Very well. Extremely well. I need to find her. Is Angel there?"

A hand reached past her and broke the connection. Willow was looking down at her with cold, cold eyes. "Drusilla isn't coming here, Dawn. She can't pass in, she's not invited. I will never invite Dru within reach of anybody I care about. Ever."

"But you have to!"

Buffy came in. She was dressed for work, attaching an earring. "Have to what?"

Willow looked around, still with that deadly impassivity. "Dawn was calling L.A. Trying to contact Dru."

"No, Dawn! Are you out of your--"

"You have to! None of you knows anything about taking care of a vampire. Nothing at all! You admitted it! All you're doing is waiting for him to heal. If he does. You're doing nothing at all. He took care of Dru, and Dru took care of him, for a hundred years. She's the only person he ever loved who loved him back, and she'll take care of him! You have to--"

"Dawn," said Buffy, in what was probably meant to be a sympathetic voice, but all it did was add to the whine.

Dawn rolled on, "OK, not here, he won't be any worse anyplace else if all you're gonna do is wait. Take him to his crypt, leave him there, I'll take care of him! But get Dru to come, that's all. If anybody knows how, she will."

Buffy slowly folded her arms. "Dawn, Dru is insane. And so are you if you think I would allow her back in Sunnydale for--"

"You don't fucking care about him. You just care about the fucking and you don't even have that anymore. You don't care if he hurts. You don't care if he dies. You left him there. If you won't help him, get somebody who will!"

Buffy had gone very still. "Dawn. You don't have my permission not to be in school. I understand that you don't have your homework done. I'll write you a note for that. On the grounds of a family emergency. Because that's what I consider it: a family emergency. We're not, I'm not gonna discuss my relationship with Spike with you. Not now and maybe not ever. But certainly not now. Get whatever you need. I'll give you lunch money. But I don't want you in this house for awhile. Get your things. You have three minutes."

Dawn then knew for the first time what it felt like to be dangerous. That if people were wise, they would leave you alone, stay out of your way. Even the people you loved, that loved you. That you could hurt them, hurt them badly, and not mind at all until maybe later. But right now, not at all.

The icy inner calm deepened, and the white whine strengthened so that it was almost all that she could hear. She collected the notebook. "I don't need anything. I'm ready now."

Dawn walked down the hall to her second period class. She sat through the class in case Buffy, who worked at the high school and had a cubicle next to the principal's office, decided to check on her. She was in no hurry. She showed her note about the missed homework and dutifully wrote down the new assignment.

At the bell to change classes, she sedately passed among the milling students and out the usual convenient door, the way she'd often gone before: a quiet girl with long, straight brown hair, wearing a Puritan grey dress and grey flats that flexed with each step. Speaking to no one, noticed by no one, she took the ways she knew to the Magic Box.

Dawn looked in the front window, knowing there was a chance Giles might be here. She had a story prepared for that. But she saw only Anya leaning by the register, reading a newspaper, which she wouldn't be doing if there were any customers in the store. Anya never missed a chance for a sale.

Dawn went inside, and the bell tinkled above her. Anya looked up and started to greet her, then changed her mind and they just looked at each other measuringly. Anya might be a grasping, tactless annoyance who changed hair colors faster than the moon changed phases, but she was shrewd after her own fashion.

"Are you a Justice Demon at the moment, Anya?"

"Not officially, no. But I'm only under suspension. I haven't been fired. D'Hoffryn is still trying to get me back. If he doesn't decide to kill me first, of course. It varies. Why?"

"Can I make a wish?" Dawn asked steadily.

Anya studied her, evaluated. "Possibly. What kind of wish?"

"Can I wish Spike well?"

"He's not the one who's hurt you. So no. You could wish something against Buffy, if you wanted, you're quite enraged enough, but I wouldn't advise it. Wishes involving the Slayer tend to go real bad, real fast. Conflicting primal forces on the aetheric planes. Unexpected consequences. Highlyunexpected."

Dawn had no intention of wishing against Buffy. Buffy wasn't her concern.

"Obviously," said Dawn, "you can teleport."

"Obviously. Though it takes a lot out of me, and I've had this terrible headache--"

"Anya, I'm trying not to be rude, but you're not helping. You're proud of being a businesswoman. I want to be businesslike."

Anya changed to what she probably thought was a more businesslike pose. "What did you have in mind, Dawn?"

"I want you to teleport me into the basement. You know I'm not gonna hurt anybody. There's no good reason why you shouldn't. That doesn't mean you won't try to find one because nobody is cooperating today."

"You said business," Anya pointed out. "That's an exchange of goods and/or services measured in terms of something of mutually recognized worth, usually money, but it could be shrimp, or candles, or--"

"Anyanka, you're the oldest person I know. A thousand years."

"Actually--"

Dawn completely lost patience with Anya's compulsive babble. She interrupted, "I know what I look like. But you know, and I know, what I am. I'm older than you, Anyanka. By thousands and thousands of years. Before there were such things as spells and maybe even before words. When the magic was direct. When powerful, terrible energy could be alive, and aware, for thousands and thousands of years--a ball of bright green energy that opens things. Portals. Dimensions. Paths. I was here long before you, Anyanka, and I'll be here long after you're gone, one way or another. In one form or another. I won't always be what I am now. If you help me now, I won't forget. I'll owe you a favor, to be claimed whenever you choose. Whatever you choose that's within my power. Even D'Hoffryn can't make you an offer like that. And if you don't help me, I won't forget that either. And you won't like me owing you a punishment. You won't like it at all."

Anya smiled insincerely and fluttered her hands nervously in the air. "You've been playing too much bluff poker."

"Spike and I don't play poker anymore. At least not lately. When he came back, when I talked to him, he said he'd found out what he was for. Today I found out what I'm for, Anyanka. And you sincerely don't want to get in the way of that."

"Actually," said Anya pensively, "I don't believe that I do. And for all I know, it might help Spike. And don't tell Xander, I could be very unpleasant to you now if you told Xander, but...I still have a certain fondness for Spike. Demon solidarity. Also very good sympathy sex."

"Fine," said Dawn, who couldn't have been less interested in demon solidarity or sympathy sex, either one. "I want an hour. An hour with no interruptions. Then bring me back."

"Done," said the ex-demon Anyanka.

Dawn had never been teleported before. It didn't feel any different, except she was suddenly in the dark. She listened hard until the creak and bump of feet overhead supplied directions and bearings. She felt her way slowly forward and left and found the stairs, then darted quickly up far enough to reach the light switch.

Willow had been right: Spike looked exactly like a dead body. Dead by violence: a thick pad of gauze was taped over his collarbone to the left. And his hands, subtly the wrong shape and size, were loosely wrapped in gauze and laid at his sides on top of the blanket. If he'd been bleeding, he wasn't anymore. All the gauze was pristine and white as bedsheets or his flesh.

Dawn ghosted to the side of the cot. She watched for a little while, then confirmed with fingers lightly pressed to his chest: he wasn't breathing. Well, he didn't always. But usually, if irregularly, if he was asleep.

Again, Willow had told her the truth. He wasn't here. Just the body--Spike was elsewhere. Like Mom. But different from Mom, too. He wasn't of the Natural order. It wasn't death, only unlife. Dawn could call him back. But not until she'd determined how to take care of him, once she did.

Focus, she thought.

The blue mug was on the floor, almost full, its contents skinned over and congealed. So they'd tried that and he hadn't taken it. She searched and found the waste paper can. In it was the cut-off top of a hospital unit of blood, A negative. One of the commonest types. They hadn't raided the rare types, which was right. It was all blood alike to him. Vampires couldn't afford incompatibilities of that sort. She didn't find the rest of the blood packet, but the fact that there was the remains of only one told her either they didn't know any better, which was unlikely, or they hadn't been able to get him to take that either.

Dawn expected he had profound inhibitions about taking human blood now. He'd refuse it if he could. Best not to begin, she imagined him saying. And it would be hard to force it on him, unconscious and unwilling. You couldn't just set up a transfusion. Vampires didn't process blood that way. It was a spiritual transaction.

Normally he needed about two quarts a day. Healing, he'd need much more. At least a gallon, and likely more than that. And they'd only opened one packet. And then probably had to discard it into the sink. It didn't keep, once it was opened.

She set the notebook on the floor and toed it under the cot so it would be there, were he to wake and look for it. He'd know it had been moved, but Dawn didn't think he'd mind. Anyway she didn't need it anymore.

She settled carefully on the edge of the cot and just was with him, thinking, rubbing his uninjured shoulder, patting his cool face and newly crisp and bone-white hair that looked like it should again. She got the pen knife out of her pocket. Then she had an instant's vision of his coming up at her in game face, desperate and barely conscious and unheeding. It didn't frighten her, but it could happen. That would upset him so, when he'd tried so hard to be safe. And the chip would punish him terribly. Assuming it read Dawn as human....

Very gently she lifted each manacle and clicked it shut over his forearms well above where the gauze ended. There. He'd feel that, the weight, and know himself not a danger, restrained from the infinite destruction an unguarded moment could be to one incapable of being disarmed or of disarming himself. He was a weapon. That was what he was for. He was the ultimate and absolute defense of the Slayer and her sister, the once-Key. It was very simple, once you knew what you were for.

Then, having thought further, Dawn found the roll of gauze and the tape and the scissors. Having now all needful things at hand, she gritted her teeth and cut carefully: as she'd done once before--then, to see if she'd bleed green. When she'd recovered from forgetting what she was but hadn't yet truly known it or accepted it.

As then, her blood was the same bright red as anybody's blood. Except that it wasn't anybody's. It was Slayer blood: exactly the same. The portal that the Keyness of Dawn's blood had opened, Buffy's blood could close. So no difference. Or a difference that was only magical, not physical. Slayer blood.

To a vampire, the rarest, sweetest blood there could be.

She held some gauze to the small cut for a few minutes, then leaned forward and presented the gauze to his nose, his mouth, the side of her hand resting on his cheek. He hadn't fed now in nearly a day. It would be days yet before he truly began to starve. And nothing would even begin to heal until he started feeding.

He'd just come back to something like his full strength. It had taken a week, and almost hourly feeding. Dawn hadn't seen those injuries when they were fresh, but she thought this was at least as bad if not worse. Deeper. More total. Not just a wound, but loss. He'd have no reserves. The last six months had been for him one terrible injury after another, and still fighting back, and fighting back, to coherence and sanity and health, to be what he must. To swallow down the utter disruption of the soul and make his peace with it. Focus.

She felt it when he breathed.

She leaned farther to kiss his forehead: still smooth, unchanged. He changed only for fighting, and now not always for that. He was of the Order of Aurelius. He controlled his demon.

"It's only me," she whispered. "Don't be scared. You're safe."

She made another shallow cut higher, where her arm rounded, then held it to his lips. "It's OK, you can have this. It's not taken. It's given."

She continued to reassure him with her voice and her presence and her calm and her scent, that nothing of what she was, was withheld from him. So he could know it was permitted and not for pleasure or power or even for food, but for healing, that she required of him by right, and he was therefore granted a special mercy on that account.

When at last his throat worked and he swallowed, Dawn knew what she would do. And thought she truly felt her thousands of years of abiding to open the ways between realities. Willow was wrong: the Earth would not reject him. All of the earths, the dimensions, claimed him as their child, of a lineage nearly as powerful and ancient as her own. Dawn's blood knew connections beyond where Willow had ever ventured.

But Dawn had need of Willow, too; and that would come in its turn.

Now, in whatever remained of her extorted hour, she was with him, and the keening in her mind had all stilled into calm, and she let him feed from her what he could take, quietly stroking his face and content, with a focus so vast she could not touch its limits.

SIXTEEN

Returning from school at the usual time, Dawn drank a glass of milk, then went upstairs and changed into jeans, a blue-and-white striped cotton longsleeved T (covering the taped gauze patch on her right forearm), white socks and Reeboks. Then she knocked at the adjoining bedroom Willow shared with Kennedy and made her request: "I need a locator spell. For Spike."

"We can't find him?" Willow asked, half startled, half joking.

"I need to find something for him."

"You gonna tell me why?"

"No," said Dawn, folding her arms, looking the witch straight in the eye. "I seem to remember the words 'owe him big time' being mentioned."

"C'mon in. No big." Willow hitched a shoulder. "What you got for the focus?" As focus for the spell, Dawn produced a wad of gauze stiff and rusted with Spike's week-old blood.

It was simple sympathetic magic: like calling to like. With minimal preparation, Willow scattered red powder onto the map Dawn had brought, said, "It calls to itself: focus to locus. Mark ye!" in Latin, and touched the focus to the map. Shaken, the powder adhered in points of correspondence like tiny gemstones. The residue was carefully poured back into a shaker and capped.

Four points. Two together, two separate.

One was here: Revello drive--Spike himself.

It was only a moment's work on the laptop to access what Dawn thought of as the Backward Directory to put a name--McDonald--to the other singleton out on Marsh Avenue.

She folded her hands a moment and considered. Then she pushed the chair back from the desk and stood. Willow had already resumed the job of changing the dressings on Kennedy's right shoulder that Dawn's knock had interrupted.

Dawn thought it probably would have been polite to ask either of them how Kennedy was feeling. Since she didn't care, it was probably best not to ask. Collecting the folded map, she ranged the house summoning, one by one, those Potentials who'd taken part in the park patrol. They convened in the yard and gathered in the shade of the big corner maple.

Dawn sat forward intently. "I want you to get in trouble with me. It's something for Spike, and it's important."

She had no doubt whatever that she had everybody's attention.

They were all more or less the same age but they were Potentials and she wasn't, and they were learning to kill things and she wasn't. They surrounded her like a pack of mostly amiable dogs watching the littlest dog bark.

They were in the process of sorting out their pack structure. She'd come on one patrol. Once. And run errands, and made signals, because that's what Spike wanted. Besides running with them, step for step, she'd also played bait for a monster fledge and put it down with a taser, but they didn't know that. They didn't know how she'd figured out for Spike where the new nest was. They didn't have to. Because she did.

She could aim herself like a gun and pull the trigger. And was doing so now.

The littlest dog sat tall and met every eye.

She began, "Because of the ambush in the park, Spike had to choose between bringing us all home safe and taking care of something real important to him. He chose to stay with us. So the other choice was lost. And nobody else knows about it but me. Because it's not about Slayers. It's not even about humans. It's about vampires: separate from us. Kind of a private thing to him."

Then she told them about the Order of Aurelius, and the eldest blood, and the smart, quick, savage fledges, and how Spike had told her he'd come to believe that the worst thing a vampire could do was create another vampire.

Dawn went on, "A little over a month ago, something was done to Spike, he still doesn't know what, that put his demon in control for a few nights. He hunted. He drank people. Just like any vamp, except that he's very, very good at it. And with some of the people he'd drunk nearly to death, he opened his arm and made them drink from him before they died. They were turned, and rose as fledgling vampires. The newest model from the Order of Aurelius.

"At first Spike didn't remember any of it. Then, slowly, he began to piece together what had happened. Know what he'd done. Or really, what he'd been used to do. If you can imagine looking at it his way, it's a kind of rape. It made him sick. And it made him mad. But the next night, the Bringers took him and, and hurt him: during the time of the Turok-Han." Sober nods all around. "There was nothing anybody could do until that was settled. Since Buffy brought him back, he's been trying to locate those fledges. And dust them all."

Dawn saw a chill run through the group. Shivers, unease. A monster story in the warm afternoon sunlight beyond the shade of the sheltering tree.

Amanda raised her hand. "But these fledges...if they're like Spike--"

"There are no other vampires like Spike. He's the only vampire ever to have killed two Slayers. He started out trying to kill Buffy before they went all kissy-face and decided other things were more...interesting." That got a lot of grins. "He's still technically the Master Vampire of Sunnydale, though he thinks the meetings are boring, and minions are boring, and the conversation is appalling, and there's no sodding liquor or dancing." A burst of loud laughter. And Dawn thought very coldly, They don't know. Buffy hasn't told them. Willow hasn't told them. If I hadn't forced it, I wouldn't know either.

For an instant that frightened her: that he could be so hurt, and she cut off from it, separate. No, she thought. I would have found out. Without Willow. Without Buffy. In spite of them. Like I found out I was the Key. What I have to know, I find out.

That steadied her, and the laughter had quieted. They were waiting for her. She went on, "Spike didn't start out as what he is. He's made himself up. Like a story. Tried one thing and then another, then broke himself apart and tried again. It's not just the soul. He's always done it. He tries to be more than he is, better than he can even imagine. He...reaches for things he can't even see. It's who he is, and what he's for, and what's important to him." Then Dawn used the analogy from Alien, about the one surviving monster that could eventually generate thousands, amoral and scary and devouring. Not just murder but murder forever. Murder unending. Amanda's frown smoothed, and other Potentials were nodding.

Kim hadn't seen the movie. Amanda quietly drew her apart to explain. Amanda spontaneously making the finger-fangs-biting gesture caught Dawn's eye because she herself hadn't used it. Maybe it was a newly discovered archetype.

Dawn continued, "One of the fledges, the Slayer dusted. Two were unlucky and ran into your patrols the first night or two after they'd risen. Three more of the fledges, Spike was able to hunt down himself last Friday: just about the first day he was really on his feet more than an hour at a time. As you may have heard, he celebrated afterward. At Willie's." Dawn waited out some of the laughter and comments, then went on, "He wanted to go after them sooner, but his legs pooped out after two and a half blocks." Surprised looks and some laughter, yet some poor baby! expressions of concern. "I know because I'd tagged along to make sure he didn't get himself into trouble." Broad grins, at the concept of Spike in trouble: they'd begun to know him, that much at least. "What I'm trying to say, this is desperately important to him. And because he chose as he did in the park patrol, the last two fledges he knew about got away." Dawn stared slowly around the group, waiting if need be until she'd met every single pair of eyes. "I know where they are. I'm not waiting for sunset. They're pretty much pinned down by daylight. Now is the best chance there'll be, and maybe the last. And Spike's unconscious in the basement because he stayed for Kennedy last night and burned both hands nearly off."

Dead silence. Because they hadn't known. And now they did. The faces Dawn saw were startled and anxious...and also indignant, angry. Because they'd had a right to know: they were Spike's--he'd said so, and kept faith with that claim. And he was therefore theirs.

Buffy's compulsive secretiveness had delivered the pack to Dawn's purpose.

Dawn said, "He can't go, so I will. This isn't Slayer business: it's vampire business. Because it's Spike, and because it's me. Who else wants trouble?"

Rising, Amanda said, "Second rule: we keep between Dawn and trouble. What's the mark?"

And the rest of the pack rose with her, to hear Dawn call it. Most of them were grinning like wolves.

The first mark was a hardware store. With the lunch money Buffy had given her, Dawn bought a cheap, heavy knife and a fistful of inch-thick dowel rods. Back on the street, she passed the dowels out and everybody cracked them into serviceable lengths. Then they passed the knife around, roughly whittling the jagged ends into points.

They'd all sworn to touch no weapon in the house except upon instruction. Fine: they'd made their own.

The map's conjoined dots indicated Third Street Cemetery--one established so long ago, people hadn't even believed graveyards required pretty, soothing names. Old graveyards generally didn't provide much fledge action, but from time to time mature vamps would establish a nest there because of the availability of big hideous mausoleums seldom disturbed during the day.

Dawn had a vague recollection that Harmony's pitiful attempt at gathering minions and clueless fledges and becoming a power in Sunnydale's undead politics had been based here.

The map's scale wasn't large enough to provide an exact location, especially on a green oblong containing no street addresses in tiny type. Dawn could only approximate Maria and Bob's hiding place from which quadrant of the graveyard held the two ruby dots.

She named a mark, a big marble bench, for them all to return to. Then they scattered, sweeping the area to report back on structures large enough to accommodate two or more vampires. There were six. Dawn folded the map and handed it to Rona (who'd insisted on coming, stitched butt gash and all), who had the sack that held spare stakes, the knife, and other things not convenient for pockets. Then Dawn sat on the bench, and the Potentials gathered around the mark.

"I think what they've done is begged lodging in another nest," Dawn commented softly, with due respect to acute vampire hearing. Not all vamps slept during the day. "Besides the fledges, we could be facing up to half a dozen mature vamps. Our Maria and Bob don't like being on their own, and any fight would give them more chance to get away in the confusion than they'd have by themselves. If we can, we'll do them all. But it's Maria and Bob we want. This is what Maria looks like." From memory, Dawn recited the notebook description Spike had so methodically noted down in his elegant old script. And then the same for Bob, the Vampire. "Remember: if you're hurt, get out. They can't chase you into the sunshine. Well, they can, but...." Appreciative soft, grim chuckles. Dawn added, "Do teams of two. One engages, one goes for the stake. If one team's in trouble, the first team that's free doubles with them. So when you dust one, look to see if anybody needs help before you engage again. Choose up your teams. Rona, you're with me. You're strong and mean, and I'm just mean. Should be a good match."

They started with the mausoleum most in the open, bathed in sunshine. Amanda and Kim were point and moved in fast, a quick glance, and out again. Half the possible nests were ruled out in a few minutes. Dawn had the two next least likely silently scouted for footprints, more trash than usual, or any other sign of unnatural habitation. Finding none, the point team cleared them too. The pack gathered before the final target: slate roofed and ornate, about ten feet from the cemetery's high outer wall, large stretches of which were draped in shade from the street trees beyond.

Spike would risk a dash like that, if he had to.

Dawn thought a few minutes, then set Amanda and Kim to catch anything that tried to escape toward the wall.

"Door's on the opposite side," muttered Rona.

"I'd noticed that," Dawn responded calmly. "No harm in taking care."

She indicated a different pair to be point. Then, on a finger count of three, they went in.

About two minutes later, all that was left in the mausoleum was the drifting dust of four vampires spilling out and lifting into the sunshine.

The back had seen action too. Two vampires, one taller, one shorter, had erupted straight through the tile roof. Kim and Amanda had staked the first as he landed, and the other one they tackled and impeded for the extra second needed for her to combust.

Dawn waved the dust away from her face, then held out her hand to Rona and waited until Rona passed back the map.

Only two red jewels remained.

"That one's Spike," commented Rona, kibitzing, and pointed. "What's the other one?"

"Glitch," Dawn lied. "Artifact of the way the spell was done. Anybody hurt? Bloody brilliant, then. I give you the late, late not so great Maria and Bob. I can't wait to see Spike's face when we tell him. Next mark is home. There's another thing to do."

SEVENTEEN

Dawn talked it out with everybody on the walk home, stopping--an unremarkable close huddle of teenaged girls--whenever a point came up that required intense discussion. For most of them, the idea of blood magic started at icky and then sloped downhill to gross. For many, it was outright scary. And some refused to have anything to do with it at all on various grounds-mainly that they'd been brought up good (fill in religion of choice). With blood magic you were into human sacrifice territory.

Those with overwhelming reservations were immediately excused without prejudice and sent directly home, do not pass GO, do not collect $200, under a solemn pledge of secrecy.

And the final condition nearly lost them Rona, in tears at confessing, apparently for the first time, that she'd been molested by an uncle at nine. To be benign, blood magic required purity, quite narrowly defined, in those who called on it. Without that restriction, a different magic could result that Dawn couldn't hope to direct, much less control. She'd be Mickey Mouse contending with forces a lot wilder and more destructive than brooms and water. Assuming, of course, her total inexperience could rouse anything at all....

Everybody hugged Rona and they all sat together for a long time at a bus stop. "It's not your fault," Dawn said again, patting Rona's hand. "It's nothing bad about you, and nothing bad you did. You should talk to...somebody about it." Dawn's mind boggled at the thought of either Buffy, Willow, or Anya giving anything like good advice on such a subject. "We'll think of something. But blood magic, that's ancient and not very...well, bendy. I don't dare take any chances."

"It's like unicorns," Rona snuffled. "I understand. Unicorns don't make exceptions, and you can't explain to them that you didn't like it and will probably never do it again."

Dawn passed her another wad of tissues. "I know: you can hold the dish. Is that OK, Rona?"

Then everybody cried some more, and Rona accepted the compromise, except that she was afraid she might faint.

"You won't faint," said Amanda firmly. "I'll kick you first and make frog faces."

There were four of them left: Dawn, Amanda, Suzanne, and Rona.

Nobody questioned that there'd been no mention of Willow's involvement. It was tacitly understood that the combination of Willow and any kind of heavy-duty magic tended to produce scary phantom monster faces, loud noises, backblasts of rejected power, and generally unsatisfactory results.

As they walked on, Suzanne wondered aloud if a Slayer-in-Training could get suspended. Rona pointed out that since there was no more Watchers' Council, who would do the suspending? And even if she did get suspended, as a non-Potential, her chance of survival would just have gone up about 2,000%

"There's that," Suzanne conceded, kicking a pebble.

Dawn had contrived about ten plans, each with variations to accommodate all possible contingencies, to insure Buffy's absence from the house. Then Amanda remarked casually that it was lucky the faculty in-service was tonight, attendance required of all staff with student contact, and Dawn presented a bland face and agreed that it certainly was lucky. Amanda's remark was even luckier since Dawn had forgotten all about it. She only hoped Buffy hadn't.

Off that thought, Dawn said, "Manda, first time you see Buffy, remind her. In case she's forgotten." Amanda nodded.

Somehow with Bringers, and the First Evil, and Spike, zombies and phantoms in the girls' first floor restroom, the Seal of Danthalzar resting on the Hellmouth, the looming threat of apocalyptic annihilation, and miserably flunking the cheerleader tryouts, Dawn hadn't been able to work up much interest in school activities.

Mondays were Xander's day to arrange supper. He'd brought a grill, charcoal, hotdogs, and buns; Anya contributed a tub of deli potato salad she might even have stirred. Dawn didn't see why they didn't reschedule the wedding: despite sniping at each other all the time, they seemed to be having sex just about as often as before, and theirs was clearly a union made in take-out heaven. And that reflection--whiny, misanthropic, and teenaged--suddenly made Dawn realize she was off: she was losing or maybe had lost her connection with her Keyness that she'd felt all day, that had made everything clear and cool and deliberate.

Omigod. She'd assumed it would be forever, always like this. Then again, she'd assumed her crush on R.J. Brooks would be forever, too, and it hadn't lasted a week. Or what if it hadn't been her Keyness at all: what if she really had been bluffing Anya? What if it was just a glitch, a transitory artifact of being so totally upset about Spike?

Omigod. She had to get the others right now, or she'd never do it! It would never work!

Just about everybody was out in the yard, watching Xander perform the delicate art of hot-dog chefery in his Kiss The Cook Or Suffer The Consequences apron. Bouncing on her toes, Dawn spun until she'd located Buffy (talking to Kennedy, who was seated in one of the folding lawn chairs with an ice pack on her shoulder, and Dawn was never gonna talk to Kennedy again if she lived to be three-thousand-million), then located Amanda and gave her the high sign. Repeatedly. Until Amanda wandered over, trying to balance a collapsing paper plate of baked beans (and Anya was totally responsible for making Dawn's life unbearable tonight, 8 people in a room and baked beans! It was Anya's revenge, that's what it was!) to find out what Dawn was waving about. Dawn explained it wasn't mere waving but The High Sign and Amanda chewed and swallowed, then remarked mildly, "So that's what it looks like. I always wondered."

"Get everybody now!"

"Everybody?!"

"No, no, not that everybody--our everybody! What we talked about on the way home. That. We gotta do it now, or it will be too late!"

Amanda swallowed hard. "I just ate. I don't think it was a good idea to eat. Maybe I should throw up first and get it over with." She did look faintly green. "I thought we were doing it later, and there'd be time to eat. Rona just started on some watermelon. I better tell her."

"Just bring her! I'll get Suzanne."

"Yeah," agreed Amanda vaguely. She wandered off leaving a trail of fallen baked beans as they slid off the collapsing plate.

Focus, Dawn commanded herself, hopping. Focus!

It wasn't helping.

The four of them gathered in the kitchen. Dawn detailed Rona to collect the big oval roasting pan under the sink, a roll of paper towels, a bowl of ice cubes and something, a bucket, in case Amanda barfed. With Suzanne standing watch in the hall, Dawn raced up to the bathroom to secure the most important implement: a pack of straight-edged razor blades from the cabinet over the sink.

She would have bought fresh, but her lunch money would only cover the ugly knife and the dowels, of which a large number were now left over. Well, that was OK because spare stakes never went to waste in this house. But Dawn had the idea that fresh blades would have been more hygienic somehow.

They would probably all come down with lockjaw and nobody would ever speak to her again.

Oh, what's the matter with me? Dawn's mind wailed as she skittered back downstairs, everybody took a stealthy look around and then made a wild break for the basement, only momentarily delayed by the bolts.

The bare-bulb sight of Spike all laid out, immediately suggesting funeral and not hospital, just as Dawn had left him, did a lot to quiet everybody down, Dawn included.

Turning by the cot, Amanda asked shyly over her shoulder, "Can I touch him?"

Dawn felt a sharp little pang of what was probably jealousy. Which was just dumb. "Sure, as long as you don't get, you know, personal. That wouldn't be respectful." Dawn was unloading the bowl and paper towels next to where Rona had set down the huge shallow turkey pan on top of the washer. "It's not as if he's dead or anything. Just...gone."

"Sure looks dead to me," Suzanne commented, all very cool, descending the stairs after shutting the door and bolting it.

"Well, he isn't," Dawn said shortly.

"He's cold," Amanda reported. She sounded uneasy.

Dawn checked, and Amanda wasn't touching anything too personal. Just his shoulder. "He is not cold. He's room temperature. Just like always. Just like all vamps. Didn't you ever notice?"

"Guess I was too busy. Look, Dawn, if you're planning some kind of cockamamie resurrection, you're gonna have to count me out. Because that's too heavy duty for me. I--"

With everything laid out, Dawn swung around, hands on hips. "Don't be dumb, Manda. I don't begin to have the power or the spells--" Dawn stopped herself. She joined Amanda by the cot, Suzanne standing behind them, watching. Dawn reached out and very softly touched each of Spike's shut eyes. She felt the calm coming back. She was starting, quietly, to cry. "All I have is me. And what I am. Whatever that is. And I hope, with you helping, that will be enough."

Rona had collected a candle and was now lighting it. Taking the cue, Sue went back up the stairs far enough to reach the light switch.

That was a good thing, Dawn thought. Better, quieter light, not making a noise about itself. One little wavering, strengthening point, and all around it, the dark. Without anything said, they all gravitated toward the small flame. Dawn rolled and pushed up the right sleeve of her tee until it was bunched near her shoulder. She'd go first: it was only fair. She knew how it was done, had done it before, truly wasn't afraid at all.

Rona had pushed one of the blades out of the case and was offering it diffidently, like Dawn didn't really have to take it, nobody was making her.

Dawn said, "Thanks, Rona," because Rona really was doing fine and it seemed right to say so. They were all doing fine. "Rona, maybe it's a good time for the paper towels. All of them. Around his hands.

"OK," Rona whispered. She picked up the roll and went back to the cot.

Dawn said to Amanda and Sue, "If you want, hold an ice cube here." She touched the gauze on her own arm, then picked at an end of tape. "It doesn't hurt much anyway. But after the ice, you hardly feel it."

Amanda reached for an ice cube from the bowl. Sue didn't, just stared big-eyed at the dark, slightly ragged line the pen knife had left in the thick part of Dawn's forearm.

Dawn carefully picked up the razor blade again and felt to find the right angle, the best way to hold it against her skin. Shallow cuts, she thought. Shallow cuts.

She positioned her arm over the big turkey pan and shut her eyes. Not because she was scared, for she truly wasn't; but because it strengthened the calm. She thought, I'm not off. I'm on.

If there was a ritual you were supposed to do, she had no idea what it was. But this was old, old magic--from before rituals and maybe before words at all. Any words would just be for her, for them: to help focus; to help make the gift worthy.

With the part of her mind not intent on the cutting, Dawn murmured, "The blood is the life. And blood is always holy because life is holy. And the blood of Warriors of the People is the holiest of all because it's always given away. Our Spike, he's also a Warrior of the People--not as we are, but in his own way. Equal and opposite, the light and dark that make a whole. I do this for his healing. I ask nothing for myself, nothing except that he be healed. I hope this gift is found worthy, and blessed by the oldest spirits to its purpose. I am your child and so is he. The oldest blood of all. Life for life, healing for healing. This is to make him be OK and come back to us. Healed. Please."

"That is so gross," Sue whispered, watching fascinated as the blood from Dawn's arm dripped into the pan.

"Do we have to do this by turns?" Amanda asked, face averted: not looking as hard as Sue was looking. "Because I'm not-- I want to get it over with, OK?"

"Do you want me to do you?" Dawn asked kindly. "I can, if you want."

As answer, Amanda blindly stuck her arm out. Up near the elbow, the skin was shiny with wet where the ice cube had been.

Dawn held Amanda's wrist with one hand and found the right position and angle for the blade with the other. Blood from her own cuts was still falling into the pan. As she began, she directed, "Amanda, say why you're doing this."

Staring hard at the ceiling, away from what Dawn was doing, Amanda whispered in a choked, shaky voice, "I want to be brave. I want to know what to do. I want to do what's right even when I'm scared. Spike has started to teach me how to do that. I believe he knows how to do that. I want him better. Healed. So he can teach me how not to be afraid of death. Or afraid of life. Because he knows them both. Please let this be the right thing I'm doing."

The last phrase was rushed and barely audible. Amanda was clenched up so tight her arm was shaking. Dawn gave Amanda's arm back to her and showed her how to hold it, so nothing would be wasted.

Suzanne had pushed out a razor blade for herself. Frowning with concentration, she said, "This is for Spike. To heal him." She cut the first line. She reported, "Doesn't hurt much. Looks worse than it is." She cut a second line and moved her arm so the pan would catch all of it.

When Suzanne had cut six straight, unhesitating parallel lines and the razor blade neared her wrist, Dawn said quietly, "That's enough, Sue."

"Are you sure? Because I can do more, I don't mind."

"It's enough. It doesn't make it stronger if you hurt yourself."

"Oh," said Sue, as though that was a foreign and surprising idea.

Amanda jerked away, thudded onto her knees by the bucket, and began vomiting. Rona came to help her, pushing Amanda's hair back, helping steady her.

The drops from Dawn's cuts had begun to slow. This might be the best of all, Dawn thought: blood with her own healing already in it.

She tried not to let the sound or smell of Amanda's vomiting affect her, but that was getting harder. Her mouth tasted coppery and sour, and her stomach was knotting up in sympathy.

She told Sue, "Hold it as long as you can," then took the roll of gauze and flipped a couple of quick loops around her arm--just enough to minimize the mess--and snipped the end to free the roll. Kneeling next to Amanda, who was sitting crooked, sweating and looking thoroughly wretched, Dawn began a light non-constricting bandage on her forearm, smoothing each spiral layer.

"Is it done?" Amanda gasped. "Do I have to do any more?"

"It's fine," Dawn said, winding gauze. Either it was enough, or more would be no better. This wasn't, after all, either a medical or a scientific procedure. It wasn't the quantity but the intention in the blood that mattered from a magical perspective. If Dawn had truly known what she was doing, a single drop might have been enough.

Passing Amanda a piece of ice to suck on, Dawn looked around asking, "Sue, are you done?"

"I dunno--am I?"

"Rona, take the pan and pour it over his hands. Sue, come and I'll get you bandaged. Leave it overnight, then take it off and wash with cool water and soap. Don't disturb the scabs any more than you can help."

Dawn cut the gauze, divided the end, and was trying to remember whether a square knot started with left-over-right or right-over-left, when Rona gasped, "Manda, do your frog faces. Or kick me, either--"

Dawn jumped and tried to grab as Rona keeled over in a dead faint. Between Rona falling, Dawn grabbing, and Suzanne bumping both of them forward, the pan upended. Its remaining contents, and the three of them, all landed on Spike, and the cot collapsed.

For a second, it felt like weird, horrible wrestling. Then Dawn was pitched away, sprawling, with Rona mostly on top of her.

"WHAT THE BLEEDING HELL!"

Spike: shouting.

Dawn rolled over and peeked. Hair to hips, he was covered in blood, trying to find his balance in the wreckage of the cot, caught crookedly by the manacles and chains.

"You incredibly stupid bints, what've you been doing? What are you doin' down here to begin with? What--"

Running out of breath to shout with, he staggered against the wall and drew air in hard, head thrown back, braced like somebody before a firing squad as the first bullets hit.

"What've you done to me, an' what's wrong with my damn hands, can't--"

Stirring, Rona managed to poke Dawn in the eye. Dawn scrambled away, slapping her poked eye, still trying to see despite her other eye watering and stinging in sympathy.

Still muttering furiously, Spike was shaking off, pulling off, the blood-sodden paper towels and then, awkwardly, the layers of gauze underneath. Working at the fabric with his fingers. Bending wrist and hand, trying to find a knot or an end. With the fingers of his other hand.

Oblivious of the grace that had been granted them all.

Dawn collapsed on the concrete, sobbing in relief.

"Bit? Bit, what's the matter? An' what've you lot been about, down here? It's-- Bit? Dawn?"

What she wanted to do was fling herself at him and hang on. What she did was help muzzy Rona sit up. Sue, her whole front covered in blood, total Carrie, pulled herself to kneeling, facing him.

"Spike," Sue announced, matted head proudly high, "we did 'em for you: Bob and Maria. All of us."

Spike's face went blank. Staring at Sue. Glancing to Dawn for correction or denial. Then back to Sue again.

Then he shut his eyes and just stood there. Breathing. After a moment he said, "You lot get out before I forget myself. See to yourselves, so you don't smell like holiday dinner on a platter. Go on now." His head bent and he put his one freed hand over his face.

Amanda and Sue started helping wavering Rona up the stairs. Following, Dawn was three steps up when she heard Spike call her and turned.

"Bit. Fetch me the key to the cuffs. On a nail by the washer."

When she'd found the key and brought it, he reflected, "Terrible mess. You'll have to do 'em for me. Hands are sore.... Did I get 'em into the sun?" Puzzled, he looked up heavy browed, golden-eyed and fanged and, she was certain, completely unaware of having slid into game face.

Reflexive, probably, with so much blood: the smell and touch and taste of it.

She moved aside the trailing, sopping gauze to find the manacle's lock. "They got hurt," she confirmed vaguely. "They'll be better soon, I think. We'll get it all sorted out." She unlocked the first manacle, slid it off, and reached across for the other.

"And that was so? About the fledges?"

Dawn just nodded.

"How dare you! They were mine!"

"You have no manners," Dawn told him, unlocking the second manacle. "What you're supposed to say is 'Thank you.'"

Then his arms closed around her and he laid his vampire face against her hair. "'M all turned around. Pay me no mind, love. They're truly gone?"

"Certain sure."

"Then it must be so," he said wonderingly.

And Dawn thought they could be both covered in blood and chocolate sauce and him half starved and it still would never for an instant occur to him to regard her as dinner.

They'd become something different from what they'd been.

Being, after his fashion, a gentleman, Spike gave her one of his clean T-shirts and first turn at the laundry tub, so she could at least get upstairs without looking like a walking murder, since Rona, Sue, and Amanda would have the shower upstairs tied up for some time. Dawn was bemused but unsurprised to find, under the gauze on her arm, only a series of pale diagonal lines. The connection was the healing and it healed in both directions. She guessed it made a skewed sort of sense.

All of it very much like life: confused, messy, accidental, well-intentioned, embarrassing, and ultimately successful.

Clutching a towel from the dryer, Dawn got out of the way to give him his turn.

Head under the tap, he called, "We're gonna have to talk about this, right?"

Dawn finished pulling on the T-shirt and bent to poke the towel back in the dryer. "If you want. Or not."

He made a satisfied noise, as though talking about it wasn't high on his list of favorite things either. He'd just been checking.

Holding her wadded, bloody top, Dawn looked dubiously at the washer, then dumped it in the trash basket. "Spike, I need you to cover for me."

He glanced around a second. "About this?"

"No, something else. Sort of...'out for a walk' business."

"Ahuh. Boyfriend, is it?"

"No! How could you think--"

He straightened, mostly clean now, toweling dry. Ivory pale across the room in the dim candlelight. "Well, 'tisn't as if it's impossible, pet. It's just I expect to have right of first approval, rip the heads off any I don't consider suitable. Seen some major mayhem comin' in that direction for some while now. Since RJ, I figured I'd been put on notice."

Dawn shrugged and flipped her hair. That was so not what she wanted to talk about! "Since I'll probably be grounded for the next hundred years, there's something I need to take care of first. There's an in-service at school, so I may be back before Buffy gets home. In case I'm not, just tell her I went out, and I'm in my right mind and don't need to be chased down, and I'll be back in a little while, all right?"

"You gonna take a minder?"

"No."

He thought about it a moment. "Then you'd best get on, hadn't you."

"Yeah. All right."

Spike leveled a finger at her. "No, the proper answer is 'Thanks.'"

"I don't know how anybody puts up with you." Dawn went to the stairs and started up.

Having the last word, his reply caught her near the top: "Too good-lookin' and all-round charming to do otherwise, I expect."

Dawn could think of nothing to top that and contented herself with thumping the door.

Marsh Street was off by the mall, and Dawn knew which bus route ran that way. In her Box of Hidden Things she scraped together enough change for the fare, thought about changing her spattered jeans without actually doing it, then dug her panda backpack from under the bed and stuffed the map and a few other things in it.

Forty-five minutes later, she stood on the sidewalk studying the two-story frame house at 1072 Marsh Avenue. A wood-burned sign attached to the front porch railing read The McDonald Family. The porch light was on but all the windows were dark, although it had just turned 8. Unslinging her backpack from her shoulder, Dawn trudged up the walk onto the porch and pushed the bell.

No response. She pushed the bell again.

"What do you want? Oh. H'lo. Summers. I mean Dawn. Fifth period, right?" The boy was standing in the side yard, just past the edge of the porch.

"Right," said Dawn, swinging her backpack nervously. "You hadn't been to class for a couple weeks now, and my sister--the student advisor?--asked me to stop by, see how you were doing, maybe help you catch up. She said she'd called but hadn't been able to catch anybody home during the day."

"Yeah, well, they work. But it's nice of you to come. It's not like I'm sick or anything, though. It's...my Dad, he's relocating. So I'll have to catch up when I start school there anyway."

"That's hard, moving. I remember when my Mom moved here, with me and my sister, it took--"

He was over the railing and his jaws were closing on her throat when the taser charge took him down, twitching.

Though he hadn't remembered her much, she'd remembered him: Billy McDonald. Somewhere between a nerd and a jock, with a nice, goofy sense of humor. A little like a younger, less insecure Xander. Several girls in History liked him, but so far, he'd never asked any of them out.

Sliding the stake out of her backpack, Dawn said, "I'm sorry for you, Billy. Although you're not Billy anymore. You remember being Billy, but it's not the same. We might have been friends, and you might have lived nearly forever the way you are now. But sometimes things don't happen the way you think or the way they should. The man who made you what you are is sorry, and I'm sorry too." As the fledgling vampire began to struggle, Dawn said, "Goodbye, not-Billy," and staked him.

As the dust dispersed, Dawn took the magicked map out of her backpack and unfolded it. Only one red jewel remained.

She'd broken her word about taking weapons out of the house without permission. She was prepared to live with that and with the consequences, if any.

Some things were just too important.

There'd been two sisters, Dawn recalled: one younger, one older. Dawn had met the older one at cheerleading tryouts. And an intact family, with both mother and father.

She didn't have to see into the dark house to know nobody alive was left inside.

Dusting Bob and Maria, that had been for Spike. But attending to Billy had been a private matter, just for herself. Because there were still distinctions to be made among monsters, and Dawn meant never to forget that.

On her way back to the bus stop, Dawn pitched the map into a trash can.

EIGHTEEN

The in-service had stretched on and on, all stuff about lesson plans, grading curves, "test-based teaching" and "proactive remediation": nothing that connected with Buffy, or her life, or her job, or her calling, or any other damn thing about her whatsoever because she wasn't a teacher. But she'd had to go anyway because she had "student contact."

Pulling into the driveway, Buffy thought savagely that sitting through it better have earned her karma points because otherwise it had been no damn use at all and she just didn't know if she could keep making herself do useless, meaningless things every morning, every day, every night, without respite or hope there'd ever be an end to it short of dying. She was sick, almost literally to death, of duty.

As she turned off the engine, her eyes lifted to the lighted porch. Spike was sitting there, smoking, slowly leafing through his notebook.

It seemed no more than an instant before she was standing by the bottom step: in touching distance but too terrified to reach out and try for fear the one good thing that'd happened in she couldn't remember how long would vanish.

"Hullo, love," he said, and turned a page. He had a pen stuck behind his ear. "How you doing, then?"

Buffy found herself sitting on the very edge of the steps. "How...? Did Willow...?"

"No, it was Bit who put me to rights, seems like. Went all Harry Potter, our Dawn: done a spell with some of the other children. Blood magic--tricky stuff. Went somewhat more wholesale than I imagine she intended. Still, can't complain. What with the chip and the soul and a hundred twenty-odd years of this 'n that, I expect I needed sorting out. So long as the important stuff's still there, no complaint from yours truly." He took a drag on the cigarette, a smooth, reflexive gesture. Natural. Without thought. His hands inexplicably whole again. "Seems like I made myself more of a dog's dinner than I knew, the other night. Sorry, love. That must've given you a nasty turn. And one more helpless git to look after. 'S'not the way I meant it to be. On the positive side, I don't seem to be nearly so crazy, so maybe I can finally be a bit of use."

Buffy sat looking at him. Nothing he'd said made the slightest scrap of sense. She put out trembling fingers and touched his arm. He was here. He was real.

"Yeah," he said, glancing around with the edge of a wry, momentary smile. "Don't blame you. Hard to know what's what anymore. Very strange."

Buffy blurted defensively, "I came back as soon as I could. I had Giles and the new girls, I couldn't just leave them, what I want doesn't matter compared--"

"Who's lit your tail?" Spike interrupted, looking around again: amused, slightly puzzled. "You mean the airport do? That'd be real bright: turn the point back to collect the rearguard, then everybody's in it, nobody gets clear. 'S'not the way to do. Who's got after you, dumb idea like that?"

"But you were hurt!"

"An' now I'm not. So it all worked out fine." He took the pen, wrote something in the margin, then suddenly seemed to notice his restored hand. "I'm still left-handed. Ain't that a thing. They tried to beat that out of you, in school an' all. And to think, that was right all along." He suddenly went to game face and raised a hand, obviously checking. "An' no change there. You'd'a thought that would'a got sorted out. Evil: demon, an' all. But I s'pose that's bedrock now: past undoing. Get rid of that and you've got rid of me. Can't be right. Just unavoidable."

When his face relaxed to human contours, he was still frowning. "I wonder what it's done to the chip. Pity Harris is gone. Nobody else I feel like slugging at the moment..."

"Spike, we're not on the same page here. Not even in the same library. What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean, 'sorted'?"

"You think it's confusing from the outside. You should see what it's like from in here. My mistake, tryin' to come at such a thing sober." He swiped the keys she was still holding, spun her around, and started walking her back to the SUV.

"Spike--!?"

"Not another word."

Claiming the driver's side, he slammed the van into reverse and backed onto the street without checking for traffic.

Neither of them could tolerate the other's driving. Not that Spike wasn't competent: he just wasn't willing to concede that anybody else had a right to be on the road when he was. And Buffy found it such a shock to find him behaving what she considered normally that she didn't dispute the matter.

Leaving the motor running, Spike spent maybe three minutes inside Willie's and then came back with a fifth of something uncapped, already drinking before he opened the door. He didn't offer Buffy any, and she didn't ask.

When they hit the city limits, Spike turned west. He switched on the radio and fiddled with it until he found eighties hard rock. He turned it up so loud Buffy had to open her window; his was already open.

From silent and still, he was visibly building up speed inside, gearing himself up to something. The image came to Buffy of his old motorcycle (she wondered what had become of it), him on it doing laps around a block, checking balance and momentum and how everything was working, and when he was satisfied, when he was ready, he'd go blazing up some ramp and try to jump thirty-seven cars, or a lake of fire, or off a cliff.

Even though he wasn't talking to her, she could tell he wasn't mad--just preoccupied, focused inside on something else. Something, she thought now, he was afraid of but was going to do anyway.

It had been a long time since just being around Spike was a rush: fast, all out, absolutely unpredictable and vaguely scary. But the SITs who'd gone on the park patrol had plainly felt that rush: it had taken them hours to come down, settle. They'd risen the next morning and given him an enforced, adoring haircut to shape him closer to their dream and their desires. And he'd let them. Buffy had been sad and a little jealous that he'd show them what he denied her. But Buffy wasn't sixteen years old anymore, and she'd thought that maybe that's all it had been: that they'd seen for the first time what it seemed she'd known forever and it was only the discovery that had power.

Nothing could have been better refutation or a better antidote to a mind-numbing in-service than feeling Spike build up speed and wondering what the hell he planned to do with it and why he'd required that she come along.

He turned onto the coast highway going north, doing about ninety, drinking steadily.

He got out a cigarette one-handed and lit it, then snapped the radio off. Only the sound of the wind.

"So about the spell," he said abruptly, resuming the conversation just as if there'd been no lapse, which meant he'd been thinking about it the whole time. "Dunno a whole lot about magic, but some. Enough to know nobody--not Red, not fucking Nostradamus--can catch hold of blood magic and have any notion how they'll come out on the other side. Or what they'll turn loose. What it'll do. With the children, a plain case of know nothing, fear nothing. They never should'a tried such a thing an' I'll make sure Bit knows never to do such again. It got away from them. Always does. Meant it as some sort of healing spell, I s'pose. It did that. But then it went on and went through me like some kind of runaway goddam flood: scoured away, changed, healed, whatever it counted as wrong. Sorted me proper. So there'll be no more Dru dropping in for a chat, no more instructive conversations with people who aren't there. No more need of chains or minders. My own damn dog again. Some fucking explosion out of noplace and here's me picking through the wreckage, tryin' to suss out what the hell happened as per usual, but that's what I make of it.

"What with the blood and the magic, that basement's got a half-life of about a thousand years on it now, far's I'm concerned. Toxic. Maybe it can be got out enough for you lot to use again but to me, it'd be like tryin' to have a nap in what's left of a battlefield after the war's moved on plus nuclear crater, watch your fucking bones go luminous. Can't go down there again. Can't be there anymore. Gonna have to move, love."

Buffy simultaneously clenched against the idea of him leaving and felt deeply let down to think he'd been working himself up for no more than this: for facing what he knew would be her opposition.

Before she'd thought of anything to say, Spike jammed on the brakes and spun the SUV into a 180 across the other lane. It came to an abrupt rocking halt at the far edge of a turn-around overlooking the moonsilver sea a couple of hundred feet down.

Turning toward her, his face changed and his grin had fangs.

He tapped her shoulder.

"Tag, love. You're it."

Then he was out the door and gone.

Buffy wasn't dressed for a game of vampire tag up and down a cliff, grabbing hold and spinning off the contorted branches of stunted trees to change direction, out on the beach and racing along the packed sand at the surf line with the cliff high and dark above, Spike a good four paces ahead of her and drawing effortlessly away. On the flat, he outran her easily even after she pitched the shoes and hiked the skirt higher to open her stride.

Outlasting him, tiring him out, wasn't even a remote possibility. She'd never been able to do that. And he had the advantage of not needing to breathe.

He could see better, hear better, smell better. He knew when she got close without having to look and would dive into a roll or a backflip or a side-spinning cartwheel, out of reach again and running, sometimes even insultingly backward, golden eyes shining, still with breath for laughing at her, mocking her as old and slow and plainly past her best, out of fighting trim for lack of anything but children and inept fledges to make her stretch herself, which was infuriating.

But on the cliff they were even, his longer stride no advantage, and a couple of times she nearly caught him there, sudden handholds and angled leaps and drops, measuring out the space and the surfaces like a couple of monkeys, all spring and catch and go and God, she'd missed this!

He pushed away from the rock and dropped, twenty feet or more, and they hit together and not far apart. He was an instant longer changing his balance point, so she was right behind, barely a step off, no time for him to dodge off to the side. She ran him straight down the slope into the water ahead of her, knee-deep and slowed by the breakers that hit him first and harder. Lunging, Buffy slapped his elbow: tag. And Spike spun and slapped her back. They were trading slaps and then elbows and then fists, in and out of the surf, too fast to see anything coming and block, all instinct now and rhythm. Knowing because of how he moved how he could move and where he'd be by the time her fist or foot arrived. No longer striking at him but at where he was going, the instantaneous sense of his movement and momentum and her own, all balanced and perfect without any hesitation at all.

Finally and splendidly dancing together, Slayer and vampire, all-out, nothing held back, pure motion and ferocity and joy and he could have had her then, bitten and drunk her life away and she wouldn't have cared; or she could have staked him and watched him explode into dust and it would have been the same thing, the same exultation of what they were meant to be to one another. But of course they were a different thing, a diminishing spiral, the blows become pats and the pats, embraces, still moving even when they were still. Moving into one another and searching for how they fit and where the best blaze was and doing that, more of that, simultaneous and intense, so attuned to one another that they were one creature immediately from the very start. And everything was moonlight and bright stars.

It took them four times to even begin to slow down and even then they hadn't got back to words, only a different line of motion. Spike hauled her up and they went down into the sea, out into the deep water. Stroking, weightless, in three dimensions, turning and rolling like dolphins or seals, and only afterward did Buffy realize she'd had no problem breathing because before her need for air became acute, she was lifted to graze the surface long enough to take what she needed and then down again, without pause, what she needed always there for her so her body forgot it and concerned itself with other things.

More explosions there, an endless series. When her feet touched bottom her legs wouldn't support her. But there was no need. Spike swung her up into his arms, carrying her easily even losing the water's support so that she felt her own weight again. Too heavy to stir or think. Almost too heavy to breathe. Before she realized Spike was gone he was back and gathering her into the Official Designated Tatty Emergency Blanket from the back of the SUV, he'd gone up for it and brought it back. And the bottle. And his cigarettes.

But she was happy he still had his priorities straight. Once the blanket was

around her he made himself a chair for her back, all four knees lined up together. She rested against him while he played with her hair and kissed her cheek and the back of her neck, not really doing anything, just there.

From his mouth against her, she realized he'd dropped game face but couldn't remember when that had happened. And then she thought it didn't matter. And the following thought of how strange it was, for it not to matter.

There, she thought: that wasn't so scary, was it?

She didn't realize she'd said it aloud until he laughed. "Love, you have no idea."

There was something shaky in his laugh, and in his voice too, that carried the memory of very old hurt. And she remembered they'd never actually done this before--not like this. Not without her savaging him afterward or even during. Hammering him down. Refusing his tenderness or any softness at all.

She said, "Let's not do dumb stuff anymore," and got one of his speaking silences that made her remember he'd always been a lot farther from the dumb stuffthan she had been. But he wasn't going to say that now. Because this was a new thing. All you could do with the dumb stuff was hope to survive it. And they had. And that was enough for him.

Buffy heard all of that in his silence and decided he was right. They didn't have to talk about the dumb stuff. They knew what it was, but they were done with that. They'd begun a new thing and that's what was important.

She told him smugly, "You can't leave now."

He kissed her ear. "Ah, but this is what lets me go. Can stand a little distance now without coming over all anxious. Won't go far, pet--houses goin' empty here and there all over town, had you noticed? 'M sure I can find one within a block or two. Thought of goin' back to my old crypt, but it's all destroyed.... And that way, I can take some of the children off your hands, won't be so crowded for you an' the Bit. Red, if she stays. Be close by if there was need. Can't abide the basement no more and your place...it's your place."

Buffy thought about it. Was prepared to think about it, listen to what he said. But she still didn't like it. "You have minions now. What's next: brides?"

"Those children? You're joking. Couldn't begin to keep up with me, what would I want with that when I got this?" He hugged her with his hands on her breasts. Beginning to stroke there, thumbs skimming the nipples.

That was nice, but Buffy thought about it some more. And thought of a new thing: "Is that what you want?"

Buffy didn't remember ever asking him that before.

When he went quiet, not even breathing, she wanted to see his face. Leaning out of his embrace, she hitched around in the sand to look at him. He'd turned his head and seemed to be considering the cliffside, although she knew he wasn't. Of course he was hard again, that was a given, with practically non-existent vampire recovery time. But at the moment he was paying no attention to that either. He reached out and collected the bottle, and it'd been decent of him to wait this long, and put the contents down another couple of inches, throat working, and there wasn't gonna be any argument about which of them was driving home.

Buffy waited, because she knew he was nervous and upset, and he was going to tell her why just the same. But he needed to settle himself to it before going off that cliff. She'd assumed it was just the sex. But this had been behind it all the while, whatever it was. She'd set it off with her question, but he'd made his mind up to it driving up here and would have found another way to come at it if she hadn't provided one.

"That summer you were gone, I started having a dream," Spike began, not looking at her as though he couldn't do both, look at her and say this. "Not much to it, really. It's just me, I see myself sittin' on a crate or something in an alley. Seems like it's the alley behind the Bronze, but no matter, doesn't matter where the alley is.... An' I'm crying, and I dunno what to do with my hands, like." He began doing it: not showing her, just enacting what he saw in his mind. Strange, stiff gestures. Hands locked behind his head, bent forward. Hands tight around his knees. Hands thrust under opposite armpits. One arm thrown up randomly, fist then slamming back hard into his chest. Compulsive. She could see it: absolute agony.

Once started, he couldn't stop. Even after she grabbed his hands and held them, she felt the muscles still twitching and firing, trying to continue. Tears ran steadily down the planes of his face.

They sat like that for quite a long while before he drew in enough breath to go on, "An' it's just that, seeing that. And some way, I know it's one of you, gone. You or the Bit, doesn't matter, I just know you're gone. An' I'll never find you again. Wherever you've gone, I can't go. And I can't bear it, is all."

Hands still immobilized and jerking, he leaned into her, convulsively sobbing. When she let his hands go to grab him around the back and hold him, the hands couldn't be still or touch her in any purposeful way, contorting aimlessly like muscles of something dead firing off from current in a wire. It was running all through him. The hands were only the way it was coming out.

Whatever had been sorted out of him, this remained. She thought she'd never seen another creature in such all-encompassing agony. There was no possible answer for it except to keep on holding him, move enough to remind him she was there, wait for it to subside of its own accord, however long that took. Because it was plain Spike had no control over it. Could not separate himself from it. Utterly lost in it.

The sorting hadn't touched this as it hadn't touched his being a vampire, or his love for her, or any other deep thing that could not be removed and leave him intact and himself.

When the hands at last collapsed and fell, she knew they must be near the end of it. But it was a long time after that before he was able to quit sobbing or take a breath without it hitching in his chest.

She said to him quietly, "God, Spike!" She carefully let go to reach for the bottle. She had to hold it for him, he still couldn't manage his hands. So she didn't bother trying to get a cigarette for him, that would have to wait. She pulled him over to rest, head and shoulders, in her lap, and kept holding him, waiting for him to settle.

He couldn't do that either and maybe passed out, maybe fell asleep: utterly exhausted by the seizure.

Buffy hoped now that it had broken loose, now that he'd waited to let it out until she was here to receive it, this would be the end of it. An exorcism. But she remembered his saying I started having a dream.

So it hadn't been just the once. And this waking, willing reenactment he'd put them both through therefore might well not be the last. Because he'd told her, he believed it was something she had to know. And she'd set it off by asking him what he wanted.

So there was more yet to come, of which this had been the necessary prologue and context.

Finally he started breathing again. Just every few minutes. And awhile after that, he came back into himself, blinking slowly. "Buffy, love, you still with me?"

"Absolutely. How you doing?"

"Absolutely fucking shattered. As per usual... You?"

"How d'you think?" she responded, but kept her tone light, knowing he was completely raw and without defenses and she wasn't gonna do dumb stuff anymore.

"Yeah.... Any scotch left?"

"Don't think so. Some got spilled."

"Oh." He dredged up enough energy to look up into her face. "There's more."

"I know. Can it wait?"

"Don't think so."

"All right."

He concentrated on getting enough breath. Then he said, "First couple times that happened, I figured it was Glory's tower. Figured it was because I couldn't protect Dawn. Or save you." He waited until he could, then went on, "Then you came back, an' I sort of forgot. Thought I was all done with it, I s'pose. Because you were back. Then...after we started comin' together, the way we did...it started up again. And every few months since. I'd just come off one that night. In your bathroom, an' all. Not fit to be near anybody for awhile after. Even Bit's learned to keep clear of me after. Should never have gone to you, should'a known better--"

"No more dumb stuff," she told him. "We've been through that. But I understand better now."

"All right. Yeah.... Since, I've figured it out: that dream is not about what's been. It's about what's coming. Except that it won't. Next time, it's gonna be me. Gonna do it right. Me instead of you. Or me instead of Dawn. And that's what's gonna happen. So you mustn't get too attached to me, love. Because it can't be you in that alley. That's not a choice I'm gonna give you."

She thumped his forehead, just lightly. "Too late. If you go, we both go."

He shoved and wrestled himself up to sitting. "No! That's not right. You're the Slayer. You gotta--"

"Shut up, Spike."

"No."

"Just shut up. Being the Slayer has already eaten as much of my life as I can stand and sometimes more. It's not gonna eat this. Even when I was coming apart and doing all the dumb stuff, I knew: I need you, to stay alive. To even want to stay alive. This is not negotiable. I have to learn to manage my Slayer like you manage your demon. It's who I am. But it's not all I am."

"And getting between you and death is what I'm for. That's not negotiable neither."

She leaned over and kissed him. "Maybe that next time, maybe that's not gonna be soon. Maybe I have time to make you admit there's always another Slayer but only one William the Bloody and he can't be spared. At any rate, it isn't now. Agreed?" She probably would have described his answering expression as "sulky." She added, "So arguing about it now would just be dumb. Wouldn't it."

"Yeah. I guess. Don't like thinking about it, if you want to know the truth. It comes with extras. Special effects, like."

"Some of the special effects, I think we can both do without. Others, on the other hand...."

"Oh, don't worry. That comes free. Just...not now." With some effort he leaned back to look at the cliff top. "Can you get the van down here, d'you think?"

"Nope."

"Damn. Then find me my pants. Have to be around here someplace. Sun's coming."

While Spike shakily lit a cigarette, Buffy got up and began looking for his pants. Their eyes met, and they both started laughing.

Finis.

Better Buffy Fiction Archive Entry

Old Blood