The Code of the Watchers
Cynthia Martin
YCYMartin@aol.com
PG-13 for cussing
Spike needs a summer job and Giles needs to make amends
Thanks to the cherished betas Miriam and Diane and to the Immortal
Beloved, P.G. Wodehouse

Chapter 6

What on earth, I have often been compelled to wonder, makes people so
bloody thick?  If you were strolling the streets of an evening,
taking the air or whatever it is lures strollers to get out and
about, it stands to reason you might notice your surroundings a bit,
don't you think?  Isn't that why people do it?  Doesn't it seem that
if you were chugging down the avenue and two absurdly good-looking
young persons of the blondish persuasion hove alongside warbling,
smooching or otherwise making their fervent mutual devotion plain,
don't you think you'd notice?

But no one had.  No one I stopped had seen a pair to match the
description.  True, I might have been somewhat affected by the
urgency and stress of the situation and not entirely lucid in my
inquires.  I might possibly have come across as a babbling loon.
Difficult to say: recollection of that desperate search is mercifully
hazy.  In all events I got no aid from keen eyed standers-by and had
to continue the frantic old quest solo.

"Spike!" I shouted, forsaking the low public profile to which a
Watcher clings in all but the direst circs. "Spike!"

It was no good yodeling for Buffy.  Buffy was separated from her
resurrected admirer by half a corn-choked Midwestern state.  And
that, alas, was the best part of the whole balled up mess -- the
blame for which lay smack on the doorstep of R. Giles, sorry excuse
for a Watcher that he was.

Poor Spike.  One had to pity the miserable devil.  He was like one of
those unfortunate chappies in ancient Greece, really, who couldn't
catch a break to save their lives.  Spike, card-carrying world saver,
who had earned his just repose, shot out of heaven and plunked down
into the care of possibly the most careless and incompetent Watcher
in the history of supernatural observation.  Poor Spike, who had
asked only to die for love and was now, thanks to my blundering, in
the lion's den pitching his best woo at an impostor with undoubtedly
sinister aims.

I raced into and out of cafes, scanning the merry throng. A thousand
anguished questions unspooled in my fevered brain.  Was there any
hope?  Was I too late?  Was Spike even now stopping a cement-filled
sock with his skull, in prep for a journey to some hell dimension in
a rolled carpet?

I nipped round a corner and lo, they were before me, nose to nose at
the railing by the river's edge.  "Spike!" I yelped.  "Stop!  Hold!
Stay your hand!  Spike!"

Spike and the Pseudo-Buffy released each other.  Spike looked
irritated.  The Psuedo-Buffy looked alarmed.  I staggered the last
few steps and clutched at the railing for support.

"Zuptya," I panted, as the need for oxygen reasserted itself and bent
me nearly double, "You're fired."

"Eeek!" cried Zuptya.

Zuptya, it must be said, possessed no flair for the cloak and dagger
game at all.  Someone else pulling a Mata-Hari might have tried to
brazen the thing out or throw herself in the river or draw a
revolver: Zuptya simply burst into tears and resumed her own features.

"F-f-fired?"

Spike retreated a stunned step or two, a series of expressions
chasing themselves across his face, with Bitter Comprehension taking
the honors and Heartbreak coming in a close second.

"Yes, fired," I told Zuptya.  "And if you don't want something worse,
tell me who put you up to this."

"It was just an audition!" wept Zuptya. "I just wanted a gig!  That
guy said that if I was convincing he'd make me a star."

I grasped her by the shoulders. "Who was it?  What did he want?"

"Might have known," Spike muttered dully, to neither of us. "I should
have known..."

"Some producer guy.  I just had to get Spike back to my place,
without, you know, dropping character.  The guy gave me pictures,
told me what to say.  He's waiting there right now."

I had heard enough.  "Spike!"

Spike didn't move.  He was staring at the moon-kissed currents of the
wide Missouri, the entire set of his jib wilted and forlorn.

"Spike!  Spike, don't you see it?  This is a trap, man."

Spike nodded absently.

"Zuptya."  I shook her.  "Take my advice and get out of town.  You've
gotten mixed up with a very bad lot and if you go home, now or ever,
I can promise you'll regret it."

"Ayii!  Seriously?"

"Damned seriously.  Run!"

Zuptya squealed and made off into the shadows.  Spike listened to her
high heels clatter and fade, then shook his head sadly. "I should
have known it wasn't her."

I turned to Spike and attached him by the collar.  "Spike, we are
leaving.  You are in extreme danger.  The knives are well and truly
out now, as this incident clearly demonstrates.  If I do not miss my
guess, that so-called producer was Ethan Rayne, a black warlock
famously unburdened by ethics, caution or common sense.  If he's
after you God knows what the harvest will be.  We have no time to
lose."

Spike appeared indifferent.  Listless.  As one to whom the bright
panoply of life had been revealed as a hollow sham no longer worthy
of interest.  There seemed no point in trying to reach him with
measured argument and I didn't try.  Spike needed a firm hand, not
therapy.

He suffered himself to be led as I waved, danced and generally
humiliated myself in quest of speedy transportation.  Flagging a cab -
- an optimistic undertaking in any city -- soon showed itself
poignantly hopeless in the teeming throng of Omaha's riverfront on a
Saturday night.

"Damn his eyes!  He drove right by us, Spike!  Did you see?"

Spike shrugged.

"Perhaps we can rent an auto.  Who rents autos in this infuriating
town, I wonder..."

Spike heaved a sigh. "What's the point," he muttered.

"Because we need to warn Buffy, you git."

I had thought that might elicit a spark, and it did.

"Buffy?"

"She is on her way, Spike, at this very hour."

"Why?"

"Why?  Why?  To see you, you idiot!  I have summoned her into a trap!"

"You told her?"

I hustled Spike into a shambling trot, still waving at passing
hacks. "Of course I told her!  You did not see her after the
Hellmouth, Spike. The poor girl was inconsolable.  Stern and self-
controlled, yes, and lovely in her grief, but crushed withal: a
shell, a specter."

Spike blinked.  "Buffy?  A specter?"

"Absolutely a specter."

"Over me?"

"None other.  She mourned you to the skies, Spike, in her way.  She
lost her last bit of zing when you died and has been surviving -- if
you can call it that -- on will alone ever since."

Spike shook his head.  "That isn't right.  Not over me.  It wasn't
supposed to make her sad."

"Well, it jolly well did.  God help us if you get killed again, at
this time of day.  It'll finish her."

"No!" exclaimed Spike in dawning horror.  "Not that, never that!
What are we going to do?"

I was spared the necessity of confessing I hadn't a clue by a
battered sedan veering out of traffic and homing for us like a
torpedo.  I knocked Spike aside.  Tires screeched as the vehicle
braked to a messy halt at the curb.

"Get in," barked Jeffries, gunning the engine.

"They're right behind us!" added Zuptya, at his side.

***

You can never see too much of the rural countryside, that's my
opinion.  I make a point of it in all travels.  Of course one sees
precious little while blazing down backroads in the middle of the
night with hell at one's heels, but into each life some rain must
fall, I suppose.

Jeffries was no very bad drains as a driver, be it recorded.  Once we
slipped the surly bonds of Omaha and reached the wide spaces he
positively sent up smoke.  He put our pursuers well back with a turn
of speed that left my secret insides a quivering jelly, and lost them
altogether with a sprightly detour through a previously neat bean
field.

The soft summer night whizzed by.  The stars smiled from their lofty
thrones.  The engine whined.

"Who has a phone?  We need Buffy," I opined.

"Leave Buffy out of it," retorted Spike. "We have to lead those
tossers away from her.  Point this thing at Canada, Jeffries."

"Let's table that Canada notion for the moment, Spike," said Jeffries
calmly.  "I have no phone, no idea where we are and no clue what's
going on.  So much for me.  Zuppy, are you celled up?"

"Nope."

"I guess we need to look for a station or a farmhouse, then."

"Nobody's calling Buffy," insisted Spike.  "No Buffy in the
equation.  No."

Zuptya leaned through the gap between seats.  "I'm sorry I tried to
seduce you," she told Spike.  "With the pretending to be your lost
love and stuff.  I just really wanted a feature role and besides,
you're a muffin."

The car swerved, almost putting Zuptya into Jeffries' lap.

"Hey!  Watch the road!" she squealed.

"My looks are getting to be a sore point," Spike confessed.  "To be
honest I wish I were a bloody toad.  My looks have never brought me
anything but trouble -- I died in an alley because of my charming
face, you know."

"How awful!" clucked Zuptya.

A sign reading: Bendy Crutch -- Pop. 42 zinged past, but of houses,
shops or civilization I saw no trace.

"It's dead awful to be this handsome," lamented Spike, displaying all
the signs of a lad getting thoroughly worked up.  "Buffy only gave me
the time of day because of my looks.  She used me, and I was glad to
be used, but that's all it ever was."

"You poor thing," crooned Zuptya.

I felt it my duty to lodge an objection.  "You wrong her, Spike.
Buffy's had a change of heart.  She's enshrined you in her deeps and
so forth."

"Bollocks.  I'm onto you, Watcher.  You manipulative bugger, telling
the lovesick blouse a pack of lies to motivate him into the car and
out of harm's way.  Fine, you did your stupid job.  And call her if
you want, what do I care.  Just warn her somehow and we can have the
obligatory sodding awkward reunion and then I'll sod off to the
sodding monastery, right?"

"Language," I chided.

"You can take language and pound it up your arse.  You're not my
boss. I'm completely fed with you and your guilt and your orders and
your godawful peahen fussing.  Go repent all over somebody else, you
wanker."

"Guys," said Zuptya uneasily.  "Don't fight, okay?"

Spike waved her off.  "Just trying to put the duffer wise, Pumpkin.
Rupert here seems to think that he put a big black hole in the center
of my unlife by treating me like shite when I was a vampire, see.
Seems to be laboring under the delusion that the best way to atone
for hurting my feelings, back in the day, is to make me his cabin
boy.  What he can't get through his fat head is that I didn't give a
fuck then and don't give a fuck now.  I couldn't care less."

"If you are insensible of the honor I do you," I sputtered, "That's
your loss.  The path of the Watcher --"

"I had things going on, you know?  Life was full.  There I was,
trying to win the heart of the woman I adored.  Getting a soul.
Saving the bleeding world in a whacking great bonfire of agony and
upright intentions.  The good opinion of Mr. Pitiful Tight Ass Rupert
Giles, C.O.W., was at the bottom of a very long list, believe me.
And I've tossed the list anyway," added Spike. "I'm paid in full and
squared away proper.  I did my bit.  My agenda's my own now."

"Very commendable," I sniffed.  "Classic.  William the Bloody returns
from eternity singing the same wretched tune.  Go thou and look out
for Number One, Spike, as always."

"I DON'T WANT TO BE A SODDING WATCHER!" roared Spike.

"Keep it down," grated Jeffries, peering at the driver's rearview
mirror.  "I'm trying to concentrate.  I think we've reaqquired our
tail."

"Stop the car," snapped Spike.  "I'll give them a fucking tail, I
will.  I'm sick of this running crap.  Stop the car."

"No, don't!" cried Zuptya.  "Keep going, Jeff-baby!"

I tried to interject a note of command.  "Jeffries, accelerate.
Spike, for pity's sake calm down.  Zuptya, stop that infernal
writhing, you'll distract Jeffries.  Keep your heads, everyone.
We're not cornered yet."

"Nothing wrong with corners," muttered Spike.  "I do my best work in
corners."

Lightning seared our collective retinae, illuminating a massive wall
cloud at 12 o'clock.  What made this particularly problematic was the
accessory to said cloud, an evil wedge-shaped funnel ploughing the
world and heading straight for us.

Jeffries hit the brakes.  The car nosed into a patch of corn.  An
unholy roar filled the air.

"Right!" shouted Spike, popping the door and tumbling out.  "High
fucking time."

Cornstalks whipped and swayed.  Jeffries pushed Zuptya down under the
dash.  I fought myself out of the car and staggered after Spike.  A
pair of headlights caught him in profile and he raised both fists,
grinning.  He appeared to shout defiance.  The headlights drew
closer.

The wind became punishing.  I lost my footing and all track of events
for a moment or two, and when my sight cleared the wind had died.
There was only silence in the world, a hushed, breathless calm.

Two figures knelt in the littered road among the broken cornstalks,
wrapped in each other's arms.  They spoke not, nor did they move.

I gave them a discreet moment or two, then cleared my
throat.  "Buffy, my dear.  Bit of a blow, wasn't it?  Are you all
right?  Spike, anything missing?"

They didn't answer.  They betrayed no consciousness of my presence at
all.  It seemed only decent to give them another moment or two or
three, so I went to check on Jeffries and Zuptya.

TBC