Summary: Spike returns to Sunnydale after a long absence, very uncertain about what he will find there, or the reception he will get - especially since he himself has changed on a fundamental level.

Disclaimer & Notes: See Chapter One.
 
 

Chapter Twenty-two

Something was wrong. Spike knew he'd seen one of the vamps scarper off - up the tunnel to where Dawn and the others were. Giles and Anyanka were waiting for them somewhere on the opposite side. He didn't know which way Buffy had gone.

Would she rush to protect sister or watcher? The choice was obvious - she would have gone to dust the vamp that was a potential danger to Dawn.

Getting to his feet, Spike wiped his hand across his sweating forehead. Panic stole through his heart and he was uncertain as to why it so suddenly clutched at him. But it wasn't Dawn he was worried about, it was Buffy. He hadn't had the slightest bit of concern about Buffy being able to handle herself a few minutes ago - why was he all paranoid now about her chasing down one single vamp?

Whatever it was, the adrenaline still pumping inside him demanded action and he turned and ran towards the entrance in one fluid movement.

Spike was brought up short by Dawn's sudden appearance. She came dashing into the vamp nest and stopped short.

"Willow says she's losing contact with Giles. We need to get to him now." She was breathless and her eyes darted quickly around the cave.

Spike couldn't stop the confusion from reaching his face. "There was a vamp - it got past us--"

"Ja, bro, he's a gonner." Jake appeared behind Dawn, stake in hand and grinning.

Dawn nodded. "Jake's a quick study. The vamp rushed us, but he dusted it - no problem."

Xander and Willow came into view and Jake's white teeth flashed in the light from the torch Xander was holding. "It was nothing, really," Jake said, bashful. "I mean, Dawn completely set it up for me - all I had to do was move in and, bam - it was really cool how he just disintegrated."

"Has Buffy found Giles?" Willow asked tersely, looking pale and worried.

The panic inside Spike made his stomach flip. "I thought she went after that last vamp, but if you haven't seen her, she must of gone to him."
.
Xander's eyes narrowed as he looked across at Spike. He seemed to sense something in the ex-vampire's uneasy stance. "What is it?"

Spike shook his head. "Not sure. Something seems... Off."

"Looks like you made fast work of the vamps," Xander said as he pushed through. He found the other exit to the cave. "Come on, let's get moving."

In mute agreement, they all followed Xander quickly out of the cave. It wasn't long before Spike spotted the shape of the watcher huddled next to the unconscious vengeance demon. Giles had his eyes closed- he looked to be in a very bad state. Anya, who was deathly white, looked worse, but he could hear the faint beating of both their hearts.

"They're alive," Spike said, as they reached them.

Willow knelt down and put a hand on Giles' arm. "He's still conscious," she informed them. "Barely." At the contact, Giles' eyes flickered open and his lips moved in a silent plea. Moving her hand up to cup his head, Willow shushed him. "It's okay, we're here. Everything's gonna be okay - promise."

Xander moved to lean over Anya, a painful look on his face. "Let's get them out of here. She needs a doctor."

With a gentle touch, Willow pulled Giles into a sitting position so that Xander could lift Anya off the ground. She pulled the watcher's arms around her to support him and looked up at the others. "I don't think he can stand - somebody help me get him up?"

"Ah... Yeah." Spike moved to help and noticed the weak flicker in the watcher's eyes as he did so.

"Let him help you, Giles," Willow spoke in soothing tones.

Giles nodded slowly and Spike could feel relief sigh through them both at the acceptance. Up until that moment, he hadn't known that he'd placed that much value on the watcher's opinion of him. He didn't want to think about why he did.

Spike and Willow lifted Giles and held him in an upright position between them, and with Anya lying limp in his arms, Xander began to set off back in the direction they'd come from.

"Wait," Dawn called after him. "Where's Buffy?" She turned to Spike. "I thought you said she came to find Giles. Where is she?"

Giles lifted his eyes to Dawn. "She... I haven't seen her," he croaked out with effort.

The tension that had been a steady knot in the pit of his stomach blossomed and Spike almost dropped the watcher. He looked at Giles and saw his fear mirrored in the other man's eyes.

"What's happened to her?" Spike said, low and deadly.

Giles spoke in a hoarse whisper, "I can't... Willow. You must... Tell them."

Willow's head shot up, her eyes wide open with fear as she seemed to receive a mental note from the watcher. "They were knocked out by a... A sort of shadow. It was kinda hard - like it had substance, though. It brought here. Giles thinks he knows what it was."

Spike nodded and moved in front of Giles as Jake took his place. "I felt the same thing in the vamp-nest. It must of taken Buffy. Where did it take her?" His jaw clenched as he thought about the slayer in any kind of danger. How could she fight a shadow?

"Giles says that if you follow the tunnels to their end, there's a cavern. Oh god..." Willow's face blanched. "It holds the bones of a very ancient vampire. It's trying to resurrect itself - if it can use Buffy's blood..."

"Slayer blood." Spike nodded in grim understanding.

"What's going on?" Dawn said, her voice laced with worry.

"The shadow - it's the spirit of the old vamp. It's been trying to get the slayer because it needs her blood to feed it - to make it whole," Spike explained quickly. "Damn it! I should have felt it! That was what attacked her in her dream. Look, Dawn, you make sure everyone gets out of these caves and into the sunlight. It'll protect you if I can't reach Buffy in time..."

"What are you saying?" Dawn demanded as Spike turned away.

"Just do it, Nibblet. Don't argue with me, now, please..."

"Spike," Giles managed to croak out, imploring the ex-vamp. "You have to help her."

Willow took over, "there's no telling how powerful a vampire this old is - we have to destroy it before it reaches full strength."

"Lemme get Buffy out of there first. Then we'll worry about the rest." Spike took off at a jog, praying that he'd find her, that he wouldn't be too late. He hadn't prayed in a long, long time.

***

His feet slapped rhythmically against the uneven floor of the cave, the sounds echoing in the cold silence that surrounded him. Cold fear made him sweat as he ran, and now he knew its source.

As a human, William had been afraid of many things. Social failure, rejection, humiliation... When he'd become a vampire, all that changed. Spike made a point of fearing nothing, not even the slayer. What had changed inside of him to make him scared of failure again? Why was he so petrified of himself? He wanted to give in to the haunting thoughts that told him he was useless. Just a monster, not even a real one, at that - and it was his fate to bugger things up. Just once, just this one time, Spike wanted to do something right. The slayer needed him. He needed to be the one to save her.

He continued to move further in and further down, still in vamp face so that he could see easily where he was going. The tunnels meandered, twisting back and forth, branching out and coming together, but there was a pattern to them, he discovered. Eventually, they all lead down.

His heart started to pound with the effort of running, and he was forced to breathe faster, the air burning in his lungs. He had to push himself. There was another sensation that began to overwhelm him and he could tell he was getting close to his destination. A creeping tingle ran up his arms and down his spine, and he knew instinctively that he was feeling the presence of the ancient vampire - it had the same weight to it as the darkness in the vamp-nest. He'd felt it before, too, near his crypt in the cemetery, which he guessed would be somewhere overhead. The closer he got, the more he could feel it, until every nerve in his body was on fire with it. There was power there, make no mistake, and a weight of years that Spike, as old as he was, could barely fathom. There was also a total lack of morality, no sense of right or wrong, no feeling or even logic, just a painful, driving need that wrenched at his gut. It brought back feelings of his own bloodlust and made him want to roar, tear and annihilate.

Spike shuddered and tried to force the hunger that had been woken inside him away. He was more than that, more than a thing filled with consuming need. Buffy needed him.

Then, suddenly, he could smell it. Blood. It was so rich that it made him swoon. He stumbled in his stride and fell to his knees. "Oh, god, no... Buffy!"

He could smell it and he knew its signature. He would have been able to pick out the flavours and tones from a million others, it was so unique. Her blood. Precious.

Spike scrambled to his feet and ran on. His senses were reeling, sending him into confusion and his vision blurred into a red haze. What was happening? He was being driven mad and the one corner of his mind capable of analysing the situation told him that he'd done it again. He'd not been quick enough. Buffy was bleeding and he hadn't reached her in time. Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck...

The litany pounded inside his head as he finally stumbled into the deep cavern that Giles had told him about. He saw her immediately, her back to him, her arm out - an odd angle. There was something... Something too grotesque even for him to contemplate. It was surrounded by darkness, and whereas Buffy was standing in bright relief in front of him, he could hardly make out the contours of the thing that was crouched next to her. He tried to look at it, could just see the edges of rotting flesh, matted hair... The glint in a bloodshot eyeball... The flash of an incisor.

Like a scab, it had latched on to her arm and he could see with painful clarity, the blood against the whiteness of her wrist as she stood there. She didn't move. It was clutching at her arm and drinking from her, siphoning the blood from her veins.

The sucking and swallowing noises surrounded Spike and chilled him inside and out. He couldn't move, couldn't do anything as he watched his love being drained by this nightmare. He knew the thing wouldn't let up until it had every last drop of precious slayer blood, and Buffy would fall, left on the cold floor to die while the ancient vampire would rise. He knew, yet he couldn't do a thing about it. Inside, he was yelling, screaming at himself, calling himself a useless git and a bleeding wanker, but he was mesmerised by the sounds and the sight.

He could feel the power sliding off the old one in waves that shivered him and warmed him. There was a recognition in those awful eyes that saw him over his beloved's arm. It knew who he was, what he was. Spike could feel what it wanted and lusted after. Death. Destruction. Carnage. It offered him the same. They were brothers, it said to him, born out of death. They were chaos made into the shape of men. But they were not men. They were terror, fear and pain. They fed off darkness and hatred. It told him that humanity had infected him, made him weak - but he could be strong again, he could discover what kind of power he truly had.

And while the voice inside him that was Spike yelled at him to do something, anything. He was powerless. What was he, after all, but a soulless man? He might have had the will to resist, but he was lacking the ability. Nothing could change what he was on the inside.

The demon that was killing Buffy knew him all too well.

TBC...

A/N: I'd like to apologise to my regular readers, some of whom have been kind enough to email me and ask me where the next chapter is. RL has taken dizzying turns recently (in an all good way) and has left me with little time to write. I hope that I can get the next chapter out to you soon - thanks for reading and thanks for the reveiws!