All About Spike - Blood Rites by Nan Dibble

Blood Rites
By Nan Dibble

Sequel to The Blood Is the Life

Chapter 17: Balance

Up in the middle of the night because it was his time to be awake and his time sense was all turned around, because the bed was really too small for two without the distraction of sexual stacking, because he was restless and couldn’t settle, because he’d wakened from a dream of burning, because he was vibrating inside from the permitted quick, charged sips of Slayer blood that were all he allowed himself, and likely for a hundred niggling unexamined reasons, descending the stairs with the vague intention of ducking outside for a smoke, Spike set his bare foot on a magazine. The slick pages slid. A flailing cartwheel punctuated by bumps and bangs landed him in a blinking, startled heap at the bottom.

Gathering himself, he charged back up the stairs, snatching the magazine and rolling it into a tight cylinder as he barged into Dawn’s room. “So what’s this, then?” he barked, shaking the cylinder as evidence. “You got some little navvy I don’t know about, s’posed to trail behind and pick up after you? What if it’d been Red on the stairs? Or you? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Pushing up in bed, knuckling her eyes, Dawn responded indignantly, “What the hell’s the matter with you, Spike? What are you doing in here?”

“Can’t be bothered,” Spike rolled on, “leave your trash any old where--” He could see it so plainly: Dawn or Willow slumped unmoving at the foot of the stairs, gone in an instant: one careless move and gone beyond recovery. They were so fragile, the humans. So easily broken. Couldn’t trust them to protect themselves from the ordinary dangers so how could he expect them to survive actual threats?

They were both yelling, Spike ranting on about carelessness and Dawn demanding why he was blaming her, it could be anybody’s magazine, and Spike flinging it at her because sure, Buffy was real likely to be toting around an issue of Seventeen featuring the vacuous faces of some boy band, when Willow came in a blue robe and fuzzy slippers, hesitantly asking, “Is something wrong?”

“Insane-o Spike’s been sleepwalking--” Dawn accused, pitching the magazine back at him.

Spike slapped it aside. “Have not!”

“--and fell downstairs and somehow it’s all my fault--”

“Is your fault! Have to watch you every fucking minute--!”

“Get out! Get out! Get out!”

That was when Buffy weighed in. Or rather the Slayer, armored in a silky green robe he’d had off her not two hours ago, not letting on she knew she smelled all warm and delicious, not caring to know what had happened, just demanding that they all shut up and settle down and Willow meanwhile protesting that she hadn’t done anything, had just heard the bang and then the yelling, and Spike wasn’t gonna hang around for the Slayer to pass judgment, wasn’t gonna try to explain himself to her because that never worked, total lost cause there.

He spun off, pushed past the Slayer and slammed down the stairs, barefoot and bare-chested, grabbing his duster off a hall peg in passing. Out to his new motorbike and straddling it, getting the engine roaring full-throated before pushing the bike off the kickstand and screeching away. The chill wind felt good in his face as the street lights flashed by overhead, switching between bright and dark and then a steady blur.

Noplace left to be that was his, that he had the ordering of. Just out in the nowhere, moving fast and alone in the dark. All wound up inside with fury and dread and the sense that he was crooked, off, unbalanced in some way despite the bike humming along straight and sweet and true, slanting into a curve and straightening again, arrowing ahead as he sent it.

Tired of being slow and careful, examining every detail. Sick to death of it, actually. The headlong motion was good but not enough. Hadn’t dared show his face at Willy’s for a month. All cautious and prudent. Hell with that. Duck in, get a bottle, then out again before any trouble could gather. What was the harm in that?

If he kept moving fast, nobody could catch or confront him. Maybe outrace even the sunrise.

**********

There were advantages to being unemployed, Buffy mused, and one of them was sleeping late. She stretched luxuriously, finding herself just slightly lame and sore in good places. Having lazily dressed and brushed her hair, she mooched downstairs to have breakfast. Or would it be brunch?

Finding Dawn glooming over a bowl of soggy cereal, Buffy did a take and counted back: yup--Monday. “Why aren’t you in school?”

“Didn’t feel like it. You’ll write me a note, right?”

“Are you sick?” Despite Dawn’s ducking, Buffy pressed the back of her hand to Dawn’s forehead. Their mom always did that but hadn’t revealed the mom-secrets behind it. Buffy wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that Dawn’s forehead was cool. Was her nose supposed to be red, or did that just mean she’d been crying?

“Sick of some things,” Dawn grumped, plashing her spoon on the top of the wilted flakes and milk. “Like Spike being all sensible and normal, then blowing up over nothing.”

“At least without furniture breakage this time,” Buffy commented lightly, opening the fridge and checking for eatables. She found some vanilla yogurt and uncapped it, banging the fridge door shut with her hip even though she intended to get some juice, too. She felt guilty at the idea of leaving the fridge open in the meantime. In the kitchen, momrules still prevailed, like a spell.

As Buffy spooned up yogurt and reached down a glass from a cupboard, Dawn continued moodily, “He didn’t come home last night. Why is he back, when he’s not back? When he doesn’t stay?”

“I guess he has a lot going on right now,” Buffy replied vaguely, untroubled. “It’s sort of like he’s out of work, too: doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.”

“Yeah: going on in his head!” Dawn sneered and irritably brushed hair back from her face. “It’s like…he’s been pulling away, and pulling away, and now he can’t stop. Can’t be close without getting all fidgety and weird. I thought we were good. Yesterday we had toe-bonding and everything, and then the mall, and racing Mike home and beating us even though he had to run red lights and cut over onto the sidewalk to do it. Then one lousy fucking magazine slides off the pile I was taking up to my room, and I was gonna go back for it but there was this song came on the radio and--”

“Watch the French,” Buffy cut in coldly.

“Why? How come Spike can get away with twenty synonyms for ‘fuck’ and crude body parts and insane-o British swear-words, and I say ‘drat’ and you’re all over me?”

“Because he’s a century-plus older than me, and it’s how he thinks, and I don’t expect ever to change how he thinks. It’s taken him….” She counted on her fingers. “…six years to quit smoking in the house. Whereas you are a growing girl and there’s time to stop the bad habits before they get locked in and automatic. Girls swearing isn’t attractive, Dawn.”

“Oh, great, attractive. Like I’m ever gonna have a love-life, dates, have to keep myself untouched and pure so I can be a frelling virgin sacrifice-- I’m allowed ‘frelling,’ right?”

Buffy pulled out the bottle of OJ, shut the fridge door, and thoughtfully poured. “What’s that all about? The virgin thing?” Buffy remembered Dawn referring to that yesterday, sounding resentful and frightened.

“Oh, the usual: overprotective vamp, doesn’t want me growing up, changing. Put me in a box if he could,” Dawn replied, but her eyes slid away evasively. “Scared I’ll get hurt in ways he can’t prevent or help. Like the frelling magazine on the stairs. Blew up at me not because I forgot it but because in his head, it was me that had fallen and that scared him. I understand that part. But then why does he….”

As Dawn’s voice trailed off, Buffy put the juice away. “Is this about Mike?”

“Isn’t everything? What is it about Summers women and vamps? I just let him feed from me a few times and he thinks that’s the same as going steady or something. No more mark, look at me, all markless, but here he still is, hanging around, making sad puppy eyes at me, except they’re grey, so it would have to be Alsatian eyes. Wolf eyes, maybe.” Pushing away the bowl, Dawn went to the cabinet above and to the right of the sink and pulled down a box of pop-tarts from the top shelf: the one Buffy couldn’t reach without jumping or kneeling on a chair.

Buffy drank juice cold enough to make her sinuses quiver, considering carefully. Once, she’d have dusted Mike without a second thought. Your basic anonymous vamp. Now, though, she knew he was key to what Spike had been setting up and that he and Spike had connections between them--vamp connections and mostly unaccountable, but connections, all the same. You could see it in the way they danced around each other, suddenly breaking and going head to head, then dancing back again short of finality. Neither wanted the other gone but always testing each other sort of in a guy way, love all mixed up with antagonism, dominance games, and weird vamp one-upmanship according to rules no human could hope to understand.

Looking into her glass, Buffy asked, “Is Mike…pressuring you?”

“God, no!” Dawn blurted, slapping down the toaster lever. “All gentleman-like, treats me like I’m made of spun glass, for all he calls me ‘Dawn Dragonslayer’ and has to know better. He’s barely risked a hug!”

“Then…what’s the problem? The wolf eyes, or that the eyes aren’t wolf enough?”

“Oh, it’s all messed up,” Dawn wailed, face crumpling and the tears starting to flow again though she tried to fist them away. “And it’s gonna be messed up worse when Mike finds out--”

Setting the glass on the countertop, Buffy gathered in her sister, noting absently that Dawn could lower her head and sob directly into Buffy’s shoulder. Might need to kneel on a chair for that too, one of these days. Buffy asked, “Finds out what?” and alarms went off in her head as Dawn went all stiff and pulled away, ripping off a paper towel to hide her face in.

“Oh, nothing. Well, something but it’s just an idea, not really a plan, Spike doesn’t do plans anymore, all retired or something. I know where I stand, it’s not that, it’s just that I’m not all that keen on standing there. I’m sure Spike will talk to you about it too. Eventually.” Dawn crumpled up the paper towel, disclosing an anxious Oops: have I blown it? face.

As the toaster went off like a gunshot, Buffy replied calmly, "I'm sure he will." And she was really, really sure he would--the second she could get her hands on him.

She went back upstairs for her cell phone and punched the #1 speed dial. She made a face when Spike’s new phone obediently rang…from the top of the chest to the right of the bed.

The way he’d barged out at 3:12 in the morning, it was lucky he’d had his bike keys and cigarettes.

The soul was back. Buffy was trying to stay in patient, good-girlfriend mode. But there were limits.

**********

Returning from her last class of the day, Willow turned from shutting the door to find Spike standing in the front room.

In the full glare of sunlight.

Through the new window.

Besides the natural startlement and successive self-remindings that, though odd, this was not a suicide in progress, he was an arresting sight: he shone--as though the window were a large rectangular spotlight trained on him. All stark toner black and chalk white, every detail blazing and vivid. But it was an illusion. Invoking mystical sight with a blink and a gesture, she found his aura damped down to nearly nothing, not flared into immense wings of sparkling energies. About vamp normal. Which in turn meant just a hair above what an actual dead body would generate. The signature of the animating animus (she’d given up calling it a demon as imprecise, superstitious, and prejudicial).

When she went in and bent to lay her bookbag and purse on the couch, he greeted her absently, “’Lo, Red,” without turning.

“Spike, I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but there’s been no chance. About a lot of things. Mostly what happened in the alley, but there’s other stuff, too. I have a list.”

Glancing around, he quirked an eyebrow. “Don’t doubt it in the slightest.” Facing the window again, he added, “Slayer’s out, an’ Bit’s at school, I expect.”

Willow knew different but didn’t want to get into that now. “You shouldn’t depend on me,” she announced bluntly. “I never faced an experienced mage before, and every shield I threw up, he knocked down. Easily. As though it was just nothing.” She sat on the couch, working her hands together. “Giles says I shouldn’t be upset about it because a chaos mage can call on and use forces an earth mage won’t touch. He said those forces gradually eat out and randomize anybody who attunes themselves to them, and the effects are short term, dissipating into the normal order of things. But I am. Upset.” Looking up anxiously, she realized what she hadn’t noticed before: Spike’s eyes were unblinking, blank, and unfocused. Not following or watching whatever was passing on the street. The blue irises huge and whited out by the steady blaze of sunlight, and the pupils contracted to pinprick points. She wondered if he was on something.

“Can see it but not go out into it,” Spike remarked quietly, as though he hadn’t heard what she’d been saying. “Sends my demon gibbering terrified, for all it feels good. Bright, warm. Doesn’t connect up, like.”

“Enjoying a panic attack?” Willow inquired wryly.

“Trying to make the demon accept that what I know doesn’t match up with what is.”

“And how’s that working for you?”

Finally, Spike blinked. “Not so well,” he admitted, turning, leaving the light. He settled on the stairs, a few steps up, and leaned against the wall with his eyes shut. He reported, “Got all sorts of red and black smears swimming around. Can’t see a thing, with them between. That the way it’s s’posed to be?”

He’d been looking straight into the late afternoon sun, Willow realized, and had another set of layered reactions. (1) That was an insane thing to do, everybody knew better. (2) He was a vampire and therefore (3) all damage healed so (4) it probably meant nothing at all, except as an idle experiment deliberately freaking out his demon (animus) which (5) was strange but probably only idiotic, not insane. About on a par with sticking your finger in a candle flame to see what would happen.

Leaning on the flat-topped newel post, Willow replied tartly, “If you haven’t burnt out your retinas, it will pass. You still busy freaking out, or can you listen now?”

“Heard you: feel you failed, can’t be depended on. Wound up about that and wondering what use you are, if your magic’s not enough. Feel you let everybody down an’ they’re disappointed and don’t think so much of you as they did. Feel like you ought to have LOSER tattooed across your forehead and worried it might already be there, plain to everybody but you. Feel obliged to warn everybody not to trust you--me, for example. Something along about like that, yeah?”

“I didn’t say all that,” Willow responded in a small voice.

“That’s what I heard. Sounds real familiar, if you hadn’t guessed. Got to learn your limits all over again. Accept what you can’t do…and what you can. Bit of technological hocus-pocus, I can stand in the light. But that’s a lie, an’ I know it’s a lie, and have to keep knowing it’s a lie because the truth would turn me into cinders in a second. Because of what I am. You’d think I’d have that all settled by now, no surprises.”

“Always surprises. Just…not always good ones. So all right: you understand.” There was no sting in his accurately quoting chapter and verse about her uncertainties because he was stating his own. Willow relaxed marginally, knowing he wasn’t going to be horrible to her about her failures and misgivings.

“Been thinking about it. Amongst other things….” He rubbed at his eyes, then opened them--locating her face, doing slow, cartoon blinks. “So what else is on your list?”

“The smell. Is it really doing any good? Is it worth making more, since it doesn’t really do anything, mean anything, except for you enforcing it?”

“And I’m not in a position to enforce anything anymore.” Again, Spike put words to what she’d thought but not said. “Dunno how Michael looks at it--if he’s gonna stay with that or let it go. Likely he hasn’t thought about it either. One more detail to take account of…. I’ll ask him. Tonight.”

“Monday: patrol night.”

“Yeah. He’s tagging along, get some things settled, him and the Slayer. And me.” Changing the subject, he went on, “Thing you could do, that would be useful. There’s better times to open portals, and worse times. Could be Rayne has enough power to grab it and tune it any time. But chances are, he’ll go for the optimal time--when the dimensional folds are at their thinnest and most strained. Less work to it. Be a real help if you could figure out when that would be.”

I can do that! Willow reflected happily, though it was about like being asked to cut out paper dolls, compared to wielding the lightnings of real magic. A task for beginners. Mostly research. But it really, truly needed to be done, and she could do it. Spike still considered her as part of the team…that it sounded like he wasn’t altogether sure he still belonged to.

She repeated, “‘Optimal?’” in a challenging, teasing voice.

Spike sighed and leaned his head on the wall again. “Too much translation. Gets to you, it does. Which reminds me: trying to work out an arrangement with the new Dalton for the translation. Can I use your laptop, nights when you don’t need it, of course? And is there a way we could both be working on the same thing, same time, and talk back and forth about it?”

“Sure: it’s called a telephone.” As Spike rolled his eyes, either at her snark or his missing the obvious, Willow went on, “There’s probably a way of multi-tasking with the word-processing program and a live chat on the same screen, but truly, it would be easier to just talk. And sure, you can use the laptop. I know finances are a bit strained until the next batch of translation gets turned in, so you don’t want to invest in another desktop right now.”

“All right. Thanks. Anything else on your list?”

“Yeah,” said Willow, considering him warmly and a little shyly. She knew it was personal, and touchy. “How are you? Since the tribute blood’s been stopped, are you getting enough to eat? There’s nothing, no blood, in the refrigerator….”

Spike was silent a long minute, obviously deciding whether to say anything or shut her out. “I’ve been better,” he admitted finally. “As to that other, that’s no problem. Or not much. And no, I’m not goin’ back to pig’s blood out of a jug. Haven’t been knocked back so far as that…. Rayne, he’s pretty much walked over the both of us. An’ first you get mad, then you get discouraged. Just how it goes,” Spike said soberly, regarding his hands, fisted together on a knee. Looking up, he continued, “Thing is, to get past all that crap and start thinking, if one thing doesn’t work, what’s left, that might? Rupert’s beat him at least once, and Rupert can’t call on anything like the power you can. Talk it out with him. And find us that date. I’m figuring to have a meeting with Digger in a few days. Michael, he’s setting it up. Be good to know before then.”

“I’ll get right on it,” said Willow, and started to edge up the stairs past him. Spike clasped her wrist, halting her.

“Two things I’ve always trusted you for: always saying the truth, and never quitting. Still do.”

Meeting his calm gaze, Willow felt herself blushing extravagantly. Finding nothing to say, she gave him a quick jerk of a smile, then hustled on upstairs, reflecting that what he’d said was nice but didn’t depend in any way, shape, or form, on her doing magic. Since magic was the thing in her life that she felt was most important, that defined her, she tried to decide if that was a good thing or a bad one.

**********

While Buffy and Mike talked patrol routes, Spike leaned over the open weapons chest as though deciding what to choose for himself. Actually resisting the impulse to barge right between them. Name the mark, make them take notice. Declare and decide something, not merely tag along.

He’d never had any problem with Buffy leading out. On patrols, she called the tune. She was the Slayer.

But with Mike added to the equation it was different, and Spike minded it more than he’d expected.

He shut his eyes, trying to achieve balance, focus. Like he’d been trying all day and having shit luck doing it, too. Stare at the fucking sun--as if the sun cared. No kind of contest there, just dumbass tricks trying to make himself back off, settle.

He thought, Did it in the fucking wheelchair and took everything that bloody bastard Angelus threw at me when I was an idiot fledge, about a decade of it before he got the soul pushed into him and went all to broody shards and cat scraps. Well, nearly everything, there was that time in Paris… Never mind, fuck Paris. Endured the Supplice. Can do it now.

But those things had been forced on him. This abdication, he was forcing on himself. Because it was necessary, and he knew it, even though it had about the appeal of cutting his balls off with blunt scissors and his demon wild with indignation over being told to back off, sing small, not challenge the new order of things in which Spike didn’t count for much of anything.

Soul was no bloody help at all. Hadn’t an instinct for surrender like the instinct the demon had for dominance, and Mike’s choosing a fucking big battle-axe for the patrol wasn’t really rubbing it in, Mike wasn’t much for edged weapons and had used that sort of axe against the Turok-han so it would be the most familiar of what was on offer. Demon took it as provocation but it took Mike’s simple presence as provocation, itching for a fight, for putting the lad down and restoring the rightful balance of things with Spike his own master and answerable to none except as he chose. Which would make everything go smash, but the demon didn’t care about that, even liked the notion of everything coming loose and falling into jagged chaos.

Spike was truly helpless if he couldn’t even keep his own demon in line, make it obey. And feeling helpless was what the demon raged against.

Blinking at the weapons chest, Spike angrily grabbed up the usual weapon, a smallish hand axe, then slammed the lid down and went out on the front porch to have a cigarette and pace, pinballing off the railings.

He barely noticed Dawn slipping outside and seating herself neatly on the front steps until she announced, “I’m waiting for the speech.”

He gave her a favorless look. She had her chin lifted, looking straight ahead, plainly in a pissy mood.

She went on, “Aren’t you gonna ask me what speech?”

Spike made a derisive noise and wheeled into another circuit of the porch. No need to ask: plainly she was gonna tell him, asked or unasked.

“‘I’m sorry I yelled at you, Dawn,’” she coached. “‘Sorry I behaved like an insane-o parental unit over a little innocent oops with a magazine and barged into your own personal bedroom and woke you up in the middle of the fucking night.’ That speech. I’m waiting.”

Buffy and Mike came out then, so Spike didn’t have to answer. When Dawn skipped down the steps and joined the formation at Spike’s right, hustling along with her head down and her arms tucked tight to her sides, Buffy registered the addition with a glance at Spike that was a silent demand for an explanation, then asked Dawn, “What, precisely, do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m coming. Spike said,” Dawn replied in a mulish whine. “I’m the stake-carrier.” She shook the bag over her shoulder, sounding the wooden clunk of a couple dozen freshly cut stakes.

When Buffy looked to him again, Spike admitted, “Told her she could. I’ll look after her.”

Dawn had been whinging on about not being allowed to patrol for years, so likely Buffy would think there was no more to it than that. And as Spike had expected, she wasn’t about to get into a jurisdictional brangle with him in front of Mike. Frowning, Buffy said only, “You better,” and faced front, picking up the pace.

Although Dawn lacked the endurance and native athleticism of the Potentials, she was an experienced runner and knew her place: to Spike’s right and no more than a pace behind. In Spike’s time with the SITs, she’d run with the pack as Spike’s adjutant, a role both useful and familiar.

The fact that they were currently annoyed with each other had no effect on the deep compact between them. Dawn was here because Mike was here, and tonight, Spike was gonna tell them his intention about the pax bond.

His awareness of Dawn loping at his shoulder--her warmth, the beat of her heart, the pull of her breath, the long-legged strides that steadily matched his yet still had something of a coltish scamper, nervous energy rather than Buffy’s determined striding-out--was comfortable, companionable. He’d missed it. Missed her. They were sufficiently in synch that as he turned his head, Dawn glanced around and was suddenly grinning, exhilarated with the motion and the night. Spike couldn’t help it: he offered his right hand, and Dawn clasped it, and there was no trouble between them anymore.

It almost made up for it being Mike--quiet, for all his size; unbreathing; silent and steady as black nemesis--pacing at Buffy’s left, a decent distance away, allowing for the swing-radius of the battle-axe. Lead (the Slayer) and second (his place! his role!) with secondary support and ammunition trailing behind. All in good order and understood, and hateful to his demon, which wanted to overtake and give Mike a hearty shove, enforce his rightful prerogatives.

By how the street lights flared and brightened, he realized he’d changed aspect and with an effort damped the demon down. Jealousy was colossally stupid, he told himself: not as if she fancied the chap, after all. Buffy’s attitude toward Mike had never warmed beyond wary acceptance, and she’d stake him in a second if he set a wrong hand on Bit or marked her again. And yet somehow Spike had to open his hand and loose Dawn toward his enemies, risk her as he’d risk himself, and how could he imagine that, let alone do it?

“Ow,” Dawn complained, twisting her hand in his punishing clasp until Spike realized and let go.

Which was pretty much the shape of it, right there.

**********

Mike had turned out for the patrol in a fairly good mood since he had a secret and was itching to tell it. But it would have to be brought out right, in a way that would let it seem casual, not just to be showing off, bragging in front of Dawn, that he hadn’t expected to be along anyway. Had expected it to be just the Slayer and likely Spike, not Dawn along too. That bothered him. Wasn’t right, her being exposed to the same risks as the rest of them, just a human girl, after all. Hadn’t liked finding her at the theater, neither, and had words with Spike about it afterward. Thought it was settled because he’d made himself real clear about not liking it. But here she was again, and on Spike’s invite, too. So Spike as usual was doing whatever he pleased, taking no account of anybody else. Arrogant high-handed bastard, same as always, and no point expecting sense from such.

So it wasn’t the same situation as he’d had in his mind, to let out, all casual-like, that he’d entertained himself in the course of last night’s sweep by fire-bombing every place he’d identified where Ethan fucking Rayne had laired up in Sunnydale.

He’d saved the big, fancy place on Crawford Street for last, and it had gone up real nice, windows blowing out when the blaze got going good, nearby trees catching and lifting towers of flame that jerked and swayed like dancers, and the huge wash of sparks when part of the roof caved in. Fledges were nervous so he’d let them go on, not yet ready, himself, to stop watching the glorious destruction he’d brought forth. Only thing that would have made it better would have been seeing Rayne’s face when the news got to him, but you couldn’t have everything.

Not as though Rayne owned the places, had anything invested in them. But he’d still know he’d been targeted and hit, even though no damage to him personally. He’d still know there was somebody out there who didn’t like him a whole lot and willing to put him on notice of that fact. Wouldn’t know who, neither, which might make him just the least bit nervous.

Mike smiled to himself, then got down to business.

The Slayer mostly targeted and took out fledges, which Mike had no objection to. Mostly he viewed it pretty much as Digger did: till a fledge could develop some control, it was a danger to itself and all other vamps in the area, since fledges had no sense and no caution and besides getting themselves dusted, they could rouse a general hunt of the villagers-with-pitchforks-and-torches variety and everybody have to lie low and starve for awhile till the hunt died down.

The patrol routes were therefore centered on graveyards, where new-risen, confused fledges were most likely to be found. No surprise, Restfield had been re-colonized since Spike hadn’t been clearing it anything like regular for several months. Two of the mausoleums at the north end, where packs had laired up in the past, were occupied again on account of the convenient location.

First one, Slayer went in and flushed the occupants, and Mike took ‘em down as they tried to escape. Beheaded the first couple as they came, then turned the axe and used the butt-end to punch through the chests of those that came after, all tidy and businesslike if he did say so himself. Checking to see if Spike approved, he found Spike leaning against a tree and smoking, paying no particular attention.

So, fine. Mike had come out because the Slayer had asked him, not to show off his edged weapons skills to his claimed Sire or even to Dawn, for that matter. She was by the tree too, with a stake in either hand, ready to use it or pitch it to whoever wanted one. As the Slayer exited the crypt, Mike wandered over to the tree, figuring a stake or two might be handy for the close work.

“Spare me a couple of those?” Mike asked, axe tipped comfortably over his shoulder, pointing a finger at the sack.

“Sure. You take these, I’ll get more.”

As Dawn passed over the stakes, Spike looked around, eyes greened halfway to gold, remarking, “You let her go in alone.”

Mike held his temper, poking the stakes through belt loops where they’d be handy. “Her call, her choice. How she wanted to play it.”

“You didn’t watch her back.”

“Not a whole lot of room in a crypt to swing an axe. Weapon like this, best to stay back. You standing on some glue or something, kept you from going in, if that’s what you wanted to do?”

“I cleared this crypt single-handed.”

Dawn set both hands on Spike’s arm, pointing out, “He knows you did. He was here. So was I, remember?”

“Point is,” Spike responded, as though through gritted teeth, “s’not about grandstanding now, for the effect. Point is, this is a patrol. Lead and second. Second follows, watches the lead’s back. Or the lead could get hurt, real quick.”

“Well, I wasn’t there,” Mike shot back, “when you were out running with your girls, making all these rules. I’m here because I was asked, fighting the best way I know. You don’t like it, you take it up with the Slayer. Ain’t heard her complain.”

Standing with hands on hips, Buffy called, “What’s the hold-up?”

“No hold up,” Dawn called back quickly, looking from Spike to Mike as though she thought she could impose harmony with her eyes. She smelled nervous. Something going on between her and Spike, something they neither of them had yet put words to but Mike could tell, all the same. So more secrets than his, simmering unsaid. Dawn added, “Just discussing tactics. All done now--right?” Her anxious eyes demanded agreement.

Mike cocked an eyebrow at Spike, silently inquiring if he was done grousing now, if they could get on with it.

Spike said, “Ah, hell,” and pitched the cigarette.

Mike joined the Slayer and they moved out.

**********

Watching Buffy and Mike double-team a large, lumbering beastie a little like a horned hippo and Spike hang back yet again, like he wasn’t interested or didn’t care except for his eyes and his twitchiness, taking a glance and then jerking his eyes away, plainly seething but still doing nothing, so unlike himself, Dawn sidled nearer and muttered, “You’re so off, you’ve earned your own zip code.”

For a few seconds, Spike didn’t react. Then he hitched a shoulder, turning away.

“It’s what I’m out here for,” Dawn persisted in a whisper. “What we came to do. So just do it, already! Tell them! What are you waiting for?”

“’F you’re so fucking eager, you tell ‘em,” Spike rejoined, checking on the fight’s progress with another of those wincing glances.

As Spike retreated into the deeper dark behind a tall tombstone so old its lettering had weathered away, Dawn pursued, “Sure, fine: I can’t, dumbass--some way, you never got around to telling me the particulars, and isn’t that amazing? Is it that you’re scared to spell it out because even I’m gonna see how lame it is? Is it yet another ingenious way of snatching disaster from the jaws of the merely so-so?”

When his head turned, his eyes glinted golden. Dawn halfway hoped he’d flash out at her: give him something safe to vent at, break the inner paralysis, maybe. But he didn’t, displacing the impulse to actually do anything into lighting about his dozenth cigarette of the evening from the coal of the previous one. “Got to be set up right. Got to keep my head on straight, keep to the point.”

“Oh, so we’re giving ourselves little pep talks now, are we?”

Gazing past, Spike suddenly called, “Oi, Slayer! Watch out!”

Dawn whirled to find out why.

Three game-faced vamps had come out of noplace--probably heard the struggle and came to investigate if there was food in it for them. Since the blatting demonic beastie had just lunged at Mike, separating him from Buffy, the trio closed around Buffy, who had to choose between engaging the vamps and helping Mike finish off the enraged beastie. Had to choose between the sword she’d been using and the two stakes she’d accepted and stuck through her belt loops. She pitched the sword and went for the vamps bare-handed because they were already on her and there was no time.

Spike was up on his toes, miming the fight with ducks and pulled blows but essentially not moving, which Dawn considered insane. Slapping a stake into his hand, she gave him a hearty shove, which seemed to be all he needed. Engaging the largest of the vamps, Spike spun him around, whip-kicked him in the face to push him away from the others, then proceeded to take him apart, joint by joint, in a textbook demonstration of all-out Spike ferocity. The vamp was almost certainly a fledge, to take on the Slayer even three to one. He would have had no chance to get Spike pissed at him in a personal way. But that was how Spike was behaving, systematically breaking bones and ignoring chances to dust the vamp outright. The fledge was being dealt nasty, bloody punishment for somebody else’s sins, Dawn thought.

Maybe it was a good thing Spike hadn’t vented at her after all, if this was what he’d been holding the lid on.

Buffy had pitched one of her pair into the side of a mausoleum. She went after the other with a stake in her fist. In less than a minute, that vamp was dust. The other, belatedly prudent, started running: head down, elbows pumping. Buffy took off after him, both vanishing like squeezed grapefruit seeds into the dark. Spike was still engaged in seeing how many more bones he could break before the fledge became completely helpless. Both the fledge’s arms hung useless and seemed dislocated at the shoulders. He could barely stagger because Spike had stomped his kneecaps. Only when the fledge went down and refused to move did Spike consent to end it. The burst of dust coincided with Buffy reappearing around the mausoleum, trying to recapture hair that had escaped her pony-tail, and with the beastie finally thudding to its knees with Mike’s axe buried in its neck. Spike straightened and stepped back as Mike set a foot on the beastie’s ribs to work the axe free. Buffy looked at them both as though not particularly pleased with either.

Bending to collect the sword, she continued past to a stone bench flanked by two big planters of droopy, desiccated bronze chrysanthemums and plunked herself down there. “Now’s as good a time as any,” she commented, with a glance at Spike. “Enlighten us. About this virgin thing.”

Swinging about, axe freed, Mike enquired flatly, “What virgin thing?” He looked to Spike first, then to Dawn: immediately making that connection.

And though she’d already decided to let Spike make the running on this, since he knew the details she’d only guessed toward, Dawn felt compelled to blurt, “The meeting with Digger. Can’t have a meeting like that without pax bonds in place, naturally. To keep everything civil. Spike thought it would be a good way to get Rayne delivered into our hands. Our custody. If Digger can make him or if he agrees, considering Giles and all. Either way.” Nervously, Dawn spread her hands as though that was all there was to it or the rest should be obvious. Which she was afraid it was. Because Mike immediately said, “No,” in a voice past argument, staring at Spike.

“‘No’ what?” Buffy asked, slower to make the leap because vamp customs took thinking about, weren’t automatic. Having finished refastening her hair, she sat looking up attentively.

Dawn remembered to breathe. Her fingers found the taser in her pocket and made sure the safety was on. Her glance to Spike got no response, the bastard: if she was stupid enough to make the running, Spike wasn’t gonna step in and take the burden from her. “Well, we’ll need somebody as a pax bond from our side, of course. To swap for Rayne, to guarantee the meeting. Just like before. And…I’ll do it. Just like before.”

“No,” said Mike again, grounding the axe head and folding his arms over the haft. “No way.”

He and Spike stared at each other for a strained minute. Spike broke first, turning to Buffy, saying, “It’ll be all right. She wasn’t hurt before an’ won’t be now. Digger’s got no reason whatever to hurt her an’ good reason to keep her safe, if she’s traded for Rayne, that’s his partner now. That he needs. If Rayne won’t stand for swap, then that’s the end of it, right there. But it’s worth trying, to get Rayne into a little sit-down with Rupert and Red. Get some things ironed out there. That’s the meeting, you see? What Digger says or does, that don’t signify.”

“It signifies,” Buffy replied, “if he has Dawn. I don’t like it, Spike. And what’s that got to do with, well, the virgin thing?”

Spike hung his head after shooting Dawn a glance. He ambled closer to the bench: sidling, slump-shouldered, full of jitters and twitches. Utterly unconvincing. Only his killing had been sincere. Because he couldn’t keep his hands still, he lit another cigarette, then gestured with it. “Well, that’d give her value, like. Mage like Rayne, he knows there’s power in such. Make him figure it for an equal swap.”

“Yeah, I saw how mages value virgins,” Buffy shot back, leaned forward with elbows on knees. “Tied up to posts in the mall parking lot. Set afire. If it’s a reason to accept her, it’s also a reason to keep her.”

Dawn put in, “Not unless Rayne’s with you guys, don’t you see? To Digger, I have no special value, except as half of the pax bond. No more than anybody, I mean. I don’t think old frog-face cares much about virgins, the one way or the other.” Or at least Dawn sincerely hoped he didn’t. Spike’s face was uncommunicative.

“I’ll go,” Buffy decided astonishingly, and suddenly Spike had fifty dozen reasons why she shouldn’t, mustn’t, couldn’t. Because Buffy was a player, determining the balance, Digger might risk losing Rayne to kill her. Might even turn her, and where’d they all be then?

When Spike paused, Buffy said, “I was just trying to be helpful,” in a small voice.

“I know that, love, but you can’t--”

Both Spike and Mike froze and turned like twin compasses pointing north. Game-faced, leaned forward, shuddering like struck tuning forks.

“What?” Buffy demanded. “What is it?”

Spike muttered a bad word, wrapping arms around himself, grimly regarding his boots. “Just that Rayne. Playin’ with himself again. With the Stone. Been doing that, lately, on and off….” He dragged himself back to the point. “So, no, love: can’t be you. Has to be Bit, and she’s agreed to it, haven’t you, Bit? Knows it will be all right.”

Dawn, who knew no such thing, was prepared to lie like a trooper when Mike came out of his crouch: still one second, then still the next, but Spike somehow down and getting his knees under him in the interval. As Spike came up, Mike kneed him in the face. Spike came up fast again and barreled straight into him and they went at it, a blur of motion punctuated by the thud of boots and blows. All sudden, before even Buffy could lunge to intervene, Spike went bonelessly backward, and hit, and stayed, arms flung wide, not moving. Glaring down at him, still game-faced, Mike snarled, “Not putting up with your crap no more. Not running your messages. Meeting’s off.” He stuck his hand, and the taser in it, back into his pocket. He gave Dawn an impassive look, then stalked away, leaving the axe as it had fallen.

Dawn was torn between running after him and keeping Buffy from doing the same. Considering that Mike was armed with the unexpected taser, the result wasn’t a foregone conclusion, and the last thing Dawn wanted to see was a serious face-off between Buffy and Mike, explosively wound up as she figured he was from the hellish threnody of the Stone and the Hellmouth singing to one another, that had likely set him and Spike off in the first place. So she dumped herself in front of Buffy and hung on until Buffy quit trying to lunge free or pry her off. They both ended up on their knees next to Spike, still unconscious from the taser charge.

“I tried to support him, I really did,” Buffy wailed, getting Spike tipped up and then leaned back against her, his head lolling loosely in the crook of her arm. She bent to kiss his smoothed features.

Dawn caught up one of Spike’s hands and held it, looking off the way Mike had gone.

How great a disaster she’d just witnessed, all the ramifications, she couldn’t think out. But it was bad, awful, that the jittery alliance had collapsed. That Mike had broken with Spike over her coerced volunteering as a pax bond. Mike couldn’t hold things together on his own and he probably knew that. So he’d have to ally with some other player…which almost certainly meant Digger.

Disaster.

She was upset for them both and with them both--for Mike, departed in a regretful huff, breaking with her and with Spike rather than be a party to risking her, which made her feel at once infuriated, weepily touched, and despairing; and for Spike, finally unable to hold his temper for all his trying to keep himself backed off, cool, and reasonable, trying to get everybody to agree on his insane-o plan. It was just so frickin’ typical. Just so…Spike. She alternated between wanting to hug him and hit him.

Anxiously patting Spike’s hand, waiting and dreading his coming to and realizing how totally messed up things were, Dawn was light-headed with relief: now she wouldn’t have to go.

Continued in Chapter 18: Splints and Patches