All About Spike - Plain Version
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Journeys
By Mary
Part of Journeys Series
Chapter Five
“I wasn’t sure if you’d
come,” Giles admitted. “You’ve been pretty reclusive since, er, well, since –“
“Dawn told me you wanted to
talk, Watcher,” Spike interrupted. “She asked me to come.” His tone strongly
suggested no other incentive could have brought him to this meeting.
“Yes. I shall have to thank
her then.” Giles didn’t bother to mention that, to his knowledge, this was the
first time Spike had spoken to anyone other than Dawn since he’d left the
hospital the morning after Buffy’s death.
Giles was seated behind his
desk in his small office just off the training room at the Magic Box , while
Spike leaned with seeming negligence against the closed door, his hands buried
in the pockets of his duster. The blond’s eyes seemed fixed on some spot on the
floor just in front of his feet.
Giles studied him for a
moment. “You seem to be regaining your health,” he offered. It had been close
to a month since Spike had been back among the living, as Willow had rather
oddly phrased it.
Spike shifted uncomfortably,
before raising his head, and just for a moment, meeting the other man’s eyes.
“Haven’t thanked any of you
lot for lookin’ out for me,” he acknowledged. “Bit told me ‘bout the research
and the offers of blood.” He glanced at Giles’ arm as the Watcher’s hand went
to his left wrist instinctively. Spike looked away. “’ppreciate it,” he
muttered.
“Yes, er, well,” Giles was
stammering a bit as he often did when he felt out of his element. “You were
very helpful to us when we were on the run from Glory, and I felt – we all felt
that Buffy would have wanted us to try to help you.”
Even though his head was
bent downward again, Giles could see the strong line of Spike’s jaw tighten.
“I’ve been curious about the
condition we found you in. Do you have any explanation? Do you know what caused
the problem with your inability to –er, eat? Or, for that matter, what caused
things to go back to normal?”
Spike looked over Giles’
shoulder at the shelves of books lining the back wall of the office. “That what
you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked after a moment.
“I am interested in that,
yes. But there are some other things of greater importance right now.”
“Let’s get straight to the
good stuff then, shall we?”
Spike remained in his
slouched position, but his shoulders tightened a little as he braced himself
for the Watcher’s words. He was expecting it, after all. No way the blasted
Scoobies were gonna let the bit keep spending so much time with him. After all,
evil, right? He hoped that if he played it cool and kept the
temper Angelus had always chided him for under control, he might be able to
salvage a couple of nights a week with his girl.
“Right then,” Giles sighed.
“I will admit, it pains me to have come to this conclusion. But what it is –
what I need – oh bugger it.” He gathered himself. “Actually, I was hoping I
could persuade you to help out with some problems that have arisen.”
Spike’s head came up in
surprise, and he allowed a small smile to soften the curve of his mouth
briefly. “Oooh. That hurt, didn’t it, Rupert?”
It was the nearest Giles had
seen to the old Spike since Buffy’s loss nearly two months ago. There was even
the faintest trace of a smirk on the vampire’s lips. But it was quickly gone,
and when he spoke again, his tone was serious.
“What’s the problem,
Watcher?”
Giles briefly explained how
demon activity seemed to have fallen off both before and after Glory’s
destruction but now appeared to be on the rise again, and about the
difficulties they would have in fighting new threats without Buffy.
“You’re lookin’ for muscle,
then,” Spike summed up.
“I guess it could be put
that way, yes.”
“I’m in.” The words were
stark, spoken without hesitation.
”I can only offer to pay you
a small amount, I’m afraid,” Giles added, and the blond frowned.
“You can keep your bleedin’
money, Watcher.” Spike’s voice was tight. “I said I’m in.”
The Watcher studied Spike
openly, trying to read him. The vampire looked older somehow, he realized.
Weary, worn, angry. And hurting. He kept to himself so much now, coldly
refusing – ignoring – what few overtures they extended. At one time, not so
very many months ago, he had sought out their company, had at times, seemed to
almost crave it, to be a part of their group. Now, though, he seemed not only
disinterested, but almost hostile to the idea of being with any of them.
Buffy’s gone, Giles told himself. Spike no longer needs to seek our company to
be near her. That was logical, right? So why, then, didn’t Giles himself buy
that explanation?
Only Dawn seemed capable of
touching him on any level at all now. And Giles had to admit he was somewhat
impressed with the devotion the blond was showing the young girl. Several times
in the last week he’d overheard Dawn giggling as she shared with Anya something
Spike had said or done. There had been so little laughter in her life for so
long…
Giles straightened in his
chair, and got down to business.
“Apparently, we have a
dragon in the area.”
Spike cocked a brow. “I
remember seeing a dragon or two when the portal opened.” He’d been lying uselessly
on the ground where Doc had thrown him, helpless to get back up the tower to
Buffy and Dawn, helpless to protect them, to save them. Helpless to stop
Buffy’s descent as she jumped and he watched her fall. Falling, falling.
Helpless, useless, as he watched her body slam into the ground only a dozen
feet from his own. Useless as he watched her die.
He squeezed his eyes shut
for a moment, and swallowed, attempting to force away the visions of his
failure.
Failing, as always. They
never left him.
“In monitoring police
records, Willow has come across half a dozen reports of a dragon in flight over
the last few nights.”
Giles spread a map of the
area out on his desk, and Spike pulled up a chair, turning it around to
straddle it as he leaned over the desk to watch as Giles indicated the places
the dragon had been spotted.
“There aren’t any reports
yet of it landing in populated areas, or attacking people, but we can surmise
that such an occurrence will come about. And I hope we can act before it does.”
“What’s the plan, then?”
Giles allowed himself a
faint smile. “We’re still working on the details, of course. But a dragon is
quite large, or at least reports indicate this one is. There aren’t that many
places it can be concealing itself. And since we stand little chance of
bringing it down while it’s in flight, we need to find its lair.”
Spike didn’t hesitate. “The
caves, here,” He indicated the area just outside Sunnydale where there was a
large network of caves. “Some of the caverns are quite large. Plenty of room
for a dragon – or several, for that matter. Any idea if there’s more than one?”
“No. You just said you
thought you remembered seeing a dragon or two. How certain are you that you saw
more than one?”
Spike tried to remember. Had
he seen more than one dragon, or had he only seen the same one circling? He
wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to spend any more time visualizing that night. It
filled his dreams and nightmares enough as it was.
“Sorry,” he said. “’m not
sure.”
“One will be problem
enough,” Giles cautioned. “More than one…” he let his voice trail off.
“Or a breeding pair,” Spike
added.
Giles’ mind had played with
that idea with a sense of dread, and he tried to ignore the fact that there
seemed to be a bit of anticipation in Spike’s voice.
“Tara has a lot of knowledge
of dragon lore. We’re not sure if any of that will be of use to us, but since
we seem to be without the latest edition of ‘Dragon Hunting Made Easy’,” his
dryly sarcastic tone made Spike’s lips curve again briefly as the other man continued,
“we’ll be taking a hard look at what she knows. Weaknesses. Strengths. Things
we need to prepare for.”
“Don’t know how likely it
is, but if it can breathe fire like in legends, that’ll be a problem for me,”
Spike reminded him. “For you, too, I’m sure, but, still, I’m more flammable
than you lot.”
He stood, moving his chair
back to its original position.
“I’ll go have a look around
the caves tomorrow,” he told Giles. “See if anything looks promising.”
“Can you get there safely
during the day?”
“Can always find ways to get
about,” Spike assured him. “Hellmouth,” he added as if that explained
everything. Which, in a way, it did.
“But I thought – er, I mean.
I understood vampires slept during the day. That they had little control over
that need.”
Spike eyed him solemnly as
he lit a cigarette. “Sleep is highly overrated, mate.” He took a long,
satisfying drag on his cigarette, ignoring Giles’ disparaging looks at the
curling smoke.
“I’d be terribly interested
in learning...” Giles broke off abruptly, realizing it wasn’t really the
appropriate time to ask Spike to tutor him in vampiric habits and culture, even
if he would dearly love to access his first hand knowledge. If Spike continued
to work with them, perhaps he could persuade the blond to provide him with
information currently unavailable to the Council. Anya’s words about ‘knowing
thine enemy’ had rankled. How accurate were the Council’s texts? he wondered.
Were there inaccuracies that needed correcting? The next Slayer, whoever she
was, may be in need of more complete information, and he felt it was his duty
as a Watcher to do everything in his power to gain that knowledge.
“There are other matters
that we’ll need to look at once the dragon has been taken care of,” Giles
changed the subject. “Glory’s minions, for instance –”
“—are not a problem.” Spike
finished for him.
Giles raised a brow in
question.
“Not a problem, Watcher.”
Spike didn’t elaborate, but
Giles didn’t need him to. Spike had been hunting.
“They’re all taken
care of?” he asked.
“Near as I can tell.”
“Very well, then,” Giles
said by way of thanks. “And Doc?”
Spike’s entire body went
rigid, and Giles hoped he’d never see the expression on his face directed at
himself or at anyone he cared about. The smooth, chiseled, lines of Spike’s
still too thin face twisted into a mask of fury infinitely more frightening
than his vampiric features.
“Not. Yet.” Spike gritted
out, voice icy with hatred. And determination.
Giles felt a shudder go
through his body. He could almost pity Doc when Spike at last found the little
demon. Almost. But not quite. He’d cut Dawn. Opened the portal. Forced the
death of his surrogate daughter. Ripper peeked through.
“When you find him, I’d like
to be there for the finish,” he told Spike. “If I can’t be there – well, then,
my shout at the pub afterward.”
Spike nodded. “I plan to
make it painful,” he warned. “Blood. Gore. Screams of agony.”
Giles met his eyes steadily,
and repeated Spike’s words from earlier. “I’m in.”
The two stared at each other
in complete understanding.
~*~
She was touching him, her
hands moving over his back with long, soft strokes. Spike moaned as she leaned
down to whisper into his ear, and he felt the warm caress of her breasts
against the cool skin of his back.
Buffy.
Even distracted by the brush
of her flesh against his, he kept listening closely, trying to understand what
she was saying.
He never could.
~*~
The caves just outside
Sunnydale were familiar, and easily accessible, territory for Spike. Apparently
some former mayor of good old Sunnyhell had been very demon friendly, and had
had city engineers connect the city’s elaborate underground tunnel system
directly to the caverns in several places. Why did that not surprise him? He’d
stayed in them during his search for the Gem of Amarra, and later, Harmony’s
little gang had made it their headquarters during her brief and rather
endearing attempt at a reign of terror. Adam had housed himself here. He’d even
stayed somewhere in their vast depths with Dawn while Buffy ran off to keep
Willow from getting killed by that bitch hell god, Glory.
The caves were complicated,
huge, and largely unexplored by the human populace. Perhaps the humans were
smarter that they generally behaved, he thought. The underground labyrinth was
usually infested with examples of half the demon species currently inhabiting
the earth. The Hellmouth was a powerful draw to many demons, usually the worst
types, and then the worst individuals of each type. The legendary power of the
Hellmouth, the hundreds of prophecies that seemed intertwined with it acted
like a magnet to those who loved chaos and destruction.
But not today.
The unusual emptiness of the
caverns told Spike something big was up. Big enough to be a dragon?
And if it was a dragon doing
such a good job making the other demons scarce – just how powerful was it?
He explored with care,
taking his time to be thorough. The caves could be very confusing, and he was
glad he was familiar with them. Wouldn’t pay to stumble into a mess and not be
able to find his way out, would it? Though he had to admit, a bit of a set to
would be nice, and he certainly hoped to come across at least one demon today
capable of giving him a bit of a challenge before he killed it.
Spike wasn’t quite sure how
he felt about the Watcher’s request for his help. He liked killing things. He
was good at it. If he couldn’t kill to feed, as he hadn’t been able to since
the Initiative had performed its little unauthorized medical experimentation on
him, then killing demons was an alternate outlet for him that he enjoyed. It
served to soothe the demon within, and his vampiric need for bloodletting. So,
for those reasons, he supposed he was glad the Watcher had approached him.
He wasn’t sure he understood
why he’d been asked though. Hadn’t the Slayer’s death proved his
incompetence? Why would any of the bleedin’ Slayerettes think he was capable of
coming through on something important? He hadn’t that night, had he?
The night at the tower.
None of them had actually
come out and blamed him out loud, but he knew they were aware of just whose
fault it was his Slayer was dead. He couldn’t even look into their eyes;
couldn’t bring himself to face the accusation he knew he would find there. He
supposed they were just looking for muscle, maybe even expendable muscle, and he
fit the bill more that anyone else who happened to be available right now.
Harris was probably laying his hopes on the ‘expendable’ part, hoping for a way
to be rid of him without having to wield the stake himself.
Wanker.
He was a Master Vampire from
the most elite and powerful line of vampires ever to exist. Aurelius. A weasely
little demon like Doc should have proven no problem for him, and for the ten
thousandth time, he tried to understand just where and how he had failed so
tragically. Had he simply been unprepared for Doc’s tricks? Had he been too
cocky, too sure of his own prowess as a warrior? Or had the fact that it had
mattered more than ever before been his downfall? His reckless disregard for
his own safety and well being had usually served him well in battle. Only when
protecting another – usually Drusilla, or in the case in question, Dawn – had
he acted with hesitation that had led or contributed to defeat.
Spike felt a sudden stark
fear run through him. What if Dawn was endangered again, and he failed again,
this time leading to her death?
Dawn. Dead.
Failing her. Again.
Failing his Slayer. Again.
He put a hand against the
wall of the cave momentarily, enduring the wave of sickness he felt. Sod it all
anyway. Caring about people was damned inconvenient. Not to mention truly
terrifying. And fear was not a sensation he was accustomed to feeling or
dealing with.
Caring about Dawn, a girl so
unable to protect or defend herself, was even worse than caring about Dru or
Buffy. At least they’d had the natural weapons of strength and power at their
disposal.
Things Dawn was without. The
fear of failing her rocked him, and the nausea increased. He swallowed.
Sonofabloodybitch.
He wasn’t going to fall back
into the state he’d apparently descended to just after his Slayer’s death. He
damn well couldn’t. He had responsibilities, sod it all.
How unbloodybelievable
was that? Bleedin’ tragic, it was.
Gathering himself, he went
on.
The smell of rotting human
flesh assaulted him just around the next curve in the passage he was following.
Well, that didn’t help the nausea, he thought in disgust. The lack of sanitary
measures by some demons was appalling. Didn’t they have a care for others?
Especially for demons such as vampires who had a highly developed sense of
smell?
The smell led him into a
large cavern, currently empty of anything living. Spike took in the pile of
human and animal body parts, some of which had been gnawed on, and most of
which appeared to have been torn painfully from their host. Something fairly
large, then, he’d wager, if it could tear a person apart limb from limb. Or
something extremely powerful. Or both. Vampires could tear the heads off of
humans or off of several other varieties of demons, but only when fully vamped
and in the midst of blood lust. He’d never known vamps to tear off arms and
legs and pile them up. Not to mention the vast amounts of blood covering lots
of the bits in the pile. No vampire worthy of the name would let that amount of
blood go to waste.
He ran his mind over the
demons he could think of whose behavior and feeding habits fit this scenario.
Half a dozen came to mind off the top of his head. Two could be safely ruled
out, he felt. Emg Demons and the Nepthys had never made their way out of the
jungles of South America. They were closely related, both pretty noticeable and
always traveled in groups of at least a dozen. He was sure he’d have heard
something if any of their kind had been spotted anywhere in the vicinity. And
Sangga Demons, though they loved stockpiling their meat in just such a fashion,
had little taste for human flesh, so he could probably cross them off the list
too.
He raised the torch he was
carrying, exploring the rest of the chamber. There were some very large, very
deep and very fresh claw marks in the stone floor in several places. Balls.
Some of those gouges were nearly five inches deep. In his experience, something
that could claw that deeply into solid rock should, if at all possible, be
avoided. And if the claw marks had been made by the same creature that was
responsible for the pile of half eaten limbs and the occasional torso, he could
cross two more possible demons species off his mental list. That left Geks.
Or something he had no
previous knowledge of. Which would include dragons.
After another hour of
examining the chamber and the adjacent passageways, Spike decided to go back to
the Watcher with his information. The Scoobies could organize one of their all
night research sessions. They pulled them often enough. They must enjoy them.
While they cracked the
books, he thought he might work out for a bit in the training room of the Magic
Box. Bloke should never get too complaisant. Maybe it was time to start
training in earnest.
A little stronger. A little
faster.
A little more likely to be able
to protect Dawn against any threat to her that might arise.
~*~
Continued in Chapter Six