Chapter 21: Noon
All the trace silver had been wakened. No longer neutral and inert, it hungrily absorbed all magic within its range; and its range grew as it fed.
That was no direct problem to Spike, but it was to Rayne, who found, before the night was over, that he could no longer generate the pleasure he used to keep Spike distracted and reasonably cooperative. The silver created static and added the energies to its charge. And losing the distraction--and insulation--of the pleasure, Spike was bored and uneasy. He slept...and dreamed of burning.
He woke with a yell, up and on his feet in an instant, shaking and disoriented.
The next second, Rayne recovered himself from the corner of the caboose where Spike had unthinkingly flung him and was back, holding Spike tight and close from behind, arms around Spike's chest, making soothing sounds until Spike was fully awake and surrendered to the embrace, still shuddering.
That had been a bad one. The worst yet. Heat and flame as deep as he went, and he'd felt himself starting to disintegrate into exploding incandescence. His demon was practically shrieking in terror and he wasn't too sanguine about it himself. No use telling himself it was only a dream, with the certainty of the noontime ceremony before him.
Dreams like that weren't a warning. They were a certainty; and he felt that certainty all through him, fragile and full of dread.
"We can't stay here," Rayne reflected, leaning forward to kiss the hinge of Spike's jaw. "We have to move now, not later."
"Gonna burn," Spike muttered, shutting his eyes and making himself not reach for calm, letting the desperate, involuntary breaths he was pulling in make him dizzy. He too was using distractions, presenting the demon's mostly unreflecting terror or appetites to keep Rayne from looking sharper, deeper than the surface. Spike wasn't sure he could keep doing that--letting his demon have free rein. Couldn't sort the confusion like that. Couldn't keep watch on the patterns, see the convergences he needed, to know what to do and when.
He'd just about lost himself into the demon--the definition of a fledge--when the silver had sparked back at him, interrupting his channeling of the Stone. Couldn't have that. But couldn't risk losing that camouflage, either. He didn't know what to do.
"No you won't," Rayne insisted urgently, hugging him tighter, breathing warm against his cheek. "I won't let you. I'll protect you. But I can't do that here... Come--sit down," Rayne said, pulling and guiding him back to the cot and sitting beside him there, all concerned and consoling, offering his warmth in place of the memory of fire as though he knew how terribly cold Spike was deep inside, with only extremes to choose from.
Helplessness was cold. Fear was cold. Everything that wasn't the consuming fire was cold, even though he dreaded it. Fire and ice, he thought, his mind spinning away into the poetry of apocalypse. He'd always found poetry a refuge, even though he couldn't write it worth shit. Needed it now, to focus, but Rayne had taken it away, the green words on his arm, that he rubbed absently, missing the certainty of what had been written there....
"Would you like a drink?"
"God, yes!"
"I'll have some brought," Rayne decided, getting up as though he really didn't want to, was afraid of Spike bursting completely apart without Rayne's embrace to anchor him. "Won't be but a moment, dear heart," he added anxiously, not leaving: waiting for something from Spike. Agreement, reassurance, maybe.
Spike didn't know, didn't care. Could only feel the formless waiting and expectation. He was seeing in Picasso jaggedness, Monet blurs again. Edges and corners of things that were themselves undefined and unrecognizable. Wrapping arms tightly around himself, he began rocking. That had pattern and made him feel marginally better.
It wasn't Rayne's warmth he missed because it didn't mean anything. A touch from Buffy or from Bit, that would have warmed him all the way through. But couldn't have that now. Had to be away from them, separate, to do what he must. But he hadn't known it would be so dreadfully cold to put himself beyond their reach, except in his mind....
He didn't notice Rayne leaving, but after an unknown, uncounted time noticed him back, pouring liquor into a glass. Spike left him the glass and grabbed the bottle, putting the contents down in long, desperate gulps so that the inside would match the outside, what he felt and what he saw, all blurred incoherence. Couldn't have enough of that, soon enough. Couldn't keep control or fully lose it, neither one.
Wasn't up to this. Really wasn't. Terrible idea to begin with but he was in it now, and had pulled Dawn with him. Hoped she was all right and would forgive him but that was Mike's now, to see to her, and he supposed the forgiving didn't matter since he wouldn't know about it, the one way or the other, until he could hold out his hand to her and await her answer as he'd dreamed of doing so many times--sometimes with one result, sometimes with another, but always the burning. No variation in that. So maybe it didn't signify whether she forgave him or not since it all came out burning in the end.
Holding the glass, Rayne was watching him uncertainly, a small perplexed frown between his brows. With a sort of shrug, Rayne took a sip, then made a face of distaste. Spike didn't care: he was interested only in effect. Rayne watched him again. They were having a dialogue of motions, gestures. How nice.
"Don't get too impaired to walk," Rayne advised, as though the alternative worried him.
Spike quit swallowing long enough to assert, "'M never too drunk to walk." Anyway, it was only a pint: not enough to get properly snockered with.
Rayne continued to look worried and uncertain, then went outside to talk to whatever runner was posted there. Spike could feel the vamp, knew it wasn't Mike anymore, and beyond that didn't care. Rayne was ordering up an escort, his little gaggle of fire mages, and making security arrangements for moving Bit, who'd be needed later. Be simpler with a phone, but Digger, traditional vamp that he was, didn't do phones. Likely didn't know how. Or maybe in the deeps, reception was crap. What you didn't depend on couldn't fuck you up when it failed. Maybe Digger had the right of it, after all.
Finishing the pint, Spike pitched it away. He could feel the chemical warmth start to flow out from his center. Not anything real, and not what he needed, but it would do for now. Drunk could also be good camouflage. Not likely Rayne would look past that, if Spike made himself obnoxious enough. And he'd never had much problem with that.
**********
The kitchen timer went off. Both Buffy and Giles glanced around as Willow, with sleepy concentration, poured the used scrying powder, the materia, off the map onto a saucer, then started preparing the map for the next location spell. Since she'd been methodically checking every hour, the thrill was pretty much gone for the observers: after a sip of tea Giles resumed his explanation of Tannhäuser, and Buffy propped her chin back on her fist.
She said, "So I get that this Venusburg is a sort of operatic whorehouse, and this poet/singer/knight Tanhouse--"
"Tannhauser."
"--Tan-whatever gets himself enthralled there and then he's sorry. But what's that got to do with Spike? I mean, he has a nice enough voice, and he argues about who stole from who about the Billy Idol look, but he's not a glam rock star or anything. It's just the look. The image."
"It's all about image, really. Contrasting images. The pleasures of the flesh," Giles went on, looking so prissy and teacherish that nobody would suspect he knew any except from a report, long ago, "as opposed to the exaltation of the spirit. Carnal love as opposed to holy, chaste love, with the Venusburg the exemplar of the former. Tannhäuser tried to embrace both, and it killed him. But the pope's staff bloomed, you see, so it seems God accepted Tannhäuser's repentance and forgave him, as the pope could not. At least according to the legend."
Buffy fiddled with her Diet Coke can. "But this Tan-whatever, he was happy there, right?" She was remembering Spike collared and oiled, stretched languorously by the fire at the mansion.
"Tannhäuser was a git. No matter where he was, he was unsatisfied. In the arms of Venus, he wanted holiness. In respectable society, he proclaimed the primacy of carnal ecstasy."
"That's like sex, right?" Buffy formulated dubiously.
"One presumes so."
"So why throw that up at Spike? He's never wanted to be holy. Far from it!"
Giles considered her with an expression suggesting he was thinking about all sorts of embarrassing implications he wasn't gonna actually say out loud. "He wanted you. Quite consistently and absurdly. Perhaps that's his version."
"Of what?"
"Of heaven."
Buffy felt compelled to blurt, "Giles, I'm not holy!"
"Perhaps you are, Buffy--from the viewpoint of a vampire. Which he insists on being and refuses to even try to repudiate. After his fashion, Spike also wants incompatible things. Wants to be, and remain, the Big Bad, and also to be a righteous and honorable man. Your champion and lover, and also the Master Vampire of Sunnydale, with all that entails. Finally, he cannot be both; and I believe he knows it. So in referring to the Venusburg, I suppose I was teasing him a bit about his inconsistencies...and because I knew that he'd understand the reference but probably wouldn't admit it, from assumed lower-class snobbery. Also, it was apt, given the manner of the enthrallment and the absurdity of a narrow ferret like Ethan cast as a blowsy, Teutonic Venus...." Giles made a quick open-handed, dismissive gesture. "Small pedantic joke, of no great moment or profundity."
"Huh."
Lifting her head, Willow announced, "They're moving," and both Buffy and Giles leaned to study the map, which now showed a bright red dot a finger's breadth from where it'd appeared before.
Buffy demanded, "Where?"
"Well, I can't tell yet, can I?" Willow exasperatedly puffed a few strands of hair away from her face.
"Do it again, then."
Willow shook her head. "If they're in a car, with Spike stuffed in the trunk or something, they'd be wherever they're going before we could get mobilized. If they're walking, they'll have to zig-zag because, well, pipes. So all I'm gonna get is the general direction until they stop."
While Buffy considered the kitchen window, bright with dawning, Willow continued, "It's still early. Either this ritual takes a whole lot of prep or the earth magic, charging the silver, has made Rayne too itchy to stay holed up in the Great Underground Empire. In which case, yay us! We've forced them into something like the open, which I doubt was the original plan. Grues, I mean vamps, aren't too keen on sunlight."
Reminded and grimly reflecting for a moment on Spike's dreams of burning, Buffy decided, "If the opposition's moving, we should be too." Sliding off her stool, she waited a second for all the creaky joints to get in gear, then headed for the front room where the SITs were variously sleeping or readying weaponry. When the awake ones registered her presence, Buffy said, "Saddle up."
Rona asked plaintively, "Breakfast first?"
After a moment's grudging consideration, Buffy nodded. "But we'll grab it on the way. As soon as we know where we're going."
*********
When Spike came out of the fog enough to realize where they were going, he found it irresistibly funny. Flopping on the walk-rim of the tunnel, he put his head down on his arms and laughed until tears came, ignoring attempts by the escort Digger had assigned to haul him back to his feet. Then he demanded more liquor. Demanded smokes. Then he started punching out the nearest vamp, just on general principles. Rayne wanted Chaos? Spike would give him Chaos. And random, he couldn't be read, so he was as random and contrary as possible until the fog swept back in. Wasn't hard: he'd had decades of practice pissing people off. Came naturally, pretty much. No thought required.
When next he came to himself, he was actually there: in the factory. Michael had certainly made cats' meat of it, just as Buffy had said. Most of the windows broken: vast slants of morning sunlight blazing in, whole large tracts of the floor it would be flaming death to cross. Rayne was looking around, dismayed. Likely expected the defensive fortress Spike had made of it, not the wreck Mike's anger had left.
But the back, behind the barricade of dead machinery, was still pretty much intact, and no windows there. Coming through from the only tunnel access, back there, seeing the brightness beyond, none of the dozen or so vamps of the escort had ventured past the wall of machines. No wonder: Spike's demon was having a bit of a fit, exposed in the open with so much light sizzling just beyond his fingertips. Just Spike and Rayne and Rayne's three fire mages out on the factory floor.
Slowly, head tilted, Spike experimentally extended his right hand into a sunbeam. There was warmth, then pain, then his fingers starting to smoke. With a cry, Rayne noticed what Spike was doing. Rayne grabbed and shoved him against one of the machines of the barrier hard enough that Spike reeled and stumbled, rebounding. Rayne caught and shoved him again, into the vamps, who manhandled him through the gap into the safer darkness, a few taking quick shots at his middle because they could and Rayne might not catch them at it. Had a fair collection of bruised, aching places, he noticed as he went down. Uneasy, nervous, vamps lashed out. Just how it was. A few kicks, too, before they backed off to let Rayne through.
Hands on hips, glaring down at Spike slowly trying to right himself, Rayne demanded, "Are you insane? Are you five? Can't I take my eyes off you for an entire minute without your getting yourself into trouble?"
Spike didn't answer, getting unsteadily to his feet, favoring a knee he wasn't sure would hold him. Rayne whipped a suspicious glance around the vamp escort, who backed off farther, idly picking up bits of trash from the floor and looking as innocent as game-face allowed.
Spike started limping a wandering path toward the back left corner. "Knackered," he said to nobody in particular. "Gonna have a bit of a lie-down." Since nobody prevented him, and the fog held off, he veered around the trashed remains of the office and the spill of broken glass (barefoot, he missed his boots) roundabout to the square pit of the freight elevator shaft. He stood a minute, considering it. No elevator in it anymore: should be a clean drop. Might be rubbish piled at the bottom, though; and he couldn't be sure about that knee. Couldn't make up his mind. Then felt Rayne rummaging around in his head, checking if there was an exit down there (there wasn't), whether Spike had hatched some plan (he hadn't), whether Spike needed to be thrown back into mind-fogged restraint. Spike waited out the periodic inspection dully, just feeling blank and tired, hurting in assorted places.
Released so Rayne and his mages could begin setting up for the ritual, Spike blinked at the black shaft, absently licking the back of his hand, then decided the hell with it and stepped into the hole, turning to catch the edge one-handed for a second before completing the drop. There was trash--crates, scraps of broken furniture. He landed in a crooked sprawl. Face to face with Sue.
**********
Rayne's cowled, robed mages didn't come for Dawn until mid-morning, and no way was getting out of school worth it. After miles of ascending passages and being hauled up sheer shafts in rope slings, they exited from a shed beside a rusty railroad track overgrown with weeds and overlooked by a water tower like a teetery striding alien just about to succumb to the plague. Dazzled and disoriented, Dawn winced and shaded her eyes, trying to get used to there being a sun up there and light all around and a chilly breeze that made her shiver and hug herself. She felt like some grotty blouse stuffed in the back of a drawer and forgotten--smelly and creased with unappealing wrinkles.
A battered old Ford pulled up, mostly red, coughing smoke in the last stages of automotive emphysema. The mages bundled her into the back seat between them, the third one sliding in by the driver, a nervous teenaged boy. Dawn thought the teen had been hired for the job, on the cheap; his zits did not convey an impression of blinding intelligence.
On the principle of "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Dawn was about to wail that she was being kidnapped, as though three robed guys hauling a grimy high-school-aged girl around an abandoned rail line didn't have a high enough weirdness factor to make anybody blink, but when she opened her mouth, all that came out was a wheezy squeak. She tried again. Not even a squeak, this time. Some way, the mages had stolen her voice--like the creepy Gentlemen she partly remembered but mostly had heard about. She looked around wildly, pointing at her throat and fish-gasping mouth as though she thought it was some terrible oversight, an unintended mistake they'd correct if she could just make them realize. Which was dumb, she admitted to herself, when she could stop hyperventilating and sagged back between the two mages, arms sullenly folded and bottom lip quivering.
Being kidnapped was almost ho-hum compared to being voiceless. Dawn felt singularly deprived and pitiful, to be dragged to her doom not even able to complain.
She wasn't surprised when the car passed the mall without turning: too many people, too much activity. The high weirdness of ritual sacrifice might be noticed, even in Sunnydale, in broad daylight even though the mall's interior was vamp-friendly and therefore there were usually a few vamps around, hunting. Even in Sunnydale, somebody might be inclined to try to interfere or at least report it to mall security. There could be complications.
But her eyes opened wider when the car turned off the highway onto the potholed industrial drive. Could they be headed for... Yes! she shouted inwardly as the Ford bumped uphill, turned, and nosed in near the familiar sentry-post alcove of the factory. Spike's factory.
She didn't know why the sight of it made her feel so much better, so much more hopeful that she didn't even struggle or kick, being hauled out of the car and inside, with the protesting teenager being hustled along right behind her.
Nobody on duty at the sentry post, check. And the inside like the aftermath of a tornado, heaps of junk, broken windows, and parts of the sheet-metal roof gone so the sunlight came right in, all the shadows pitch black by contrast, that she was being forced toward.
On the far side of the barrier, a couple of vamps took the teenager off the mages' hands. He was unceremoniously eaten. As Dawn winced away, the mages let go of her: obviously, there was no longer any place to run.
Automatically, Dawn continued toward the office--not realizing, in the dimness, that it'd been battered into flinders until her shoes crunched on glass. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the tumbled heap that used to be wall supports, a desk, the broken shells of molded pink fiberglass chairs... Off to her right, halfway to the tunnel access hatch, Rayne and his mages were drawing the containing circle on the concrete floor by the light of a lantern a vamp was holding high like a really ugly, oversized lawn ornament.
No sign of Spike, which was puzzling but not worrying: his presence was required, as hers was. When the time came, Dawn knew he'd be there. All the same, she wanted to see him, see if he was right in the head yet, find out what he planned to do when push came to shove.
Because all of this had to mean something, right? Spike, who never left off fighting, never gave up, caving so easily to capture and deep bewilderment--there had to be a reason, right? Had to be a reason why he'd as good as asked her to stay in prime, pure sacrificial condition, not that she'd really intended otherwise, but it wasn't normally the sort of thing she and Spike talked about. So why bring it up if he didn't have a plan and that was something needed to fit into it?
Unless the plan had gotten lost as he had, with the craziness and the rocking....
Figuring he was probably on the lower level in the erstwhile fledges' dormitory, since that was about the only other place to be, she carefully circled the spills of glass until she bumped into one of the steel elevator supports and hung on there. She tried to call his name before remembering she had no voice, and made a wry face. She thought a moment, then took hold of the taskin fang on its cord, intending to bang on the support and at least make a noise that way. A voice quietly saying her name made her turn.
In game-face, Mike was laying out fast-food clamshell containers on the floor. As Dawn hesitantly approached, he remarked, "Vamp that was supposed to fetch you breakfast sort of forgot. Sort of had an accident. So Digger, he gave me leave to bring it. Don't want the Lady to have no complaint, how you were treated. Mostly cold. Couldn't help that. Think I got some of the things you like, anyway...." Laying out plastic cutlery in a twist of napkin, he stopped, stilled: head still bent, features still downcast, an ill-trimmed wing of hair falling over his forehead. "You mad at me, Dawn? That I ain't got you out of this yet?"
Realizing he was taking her silence as reproach, Dawn tapped his shoulder. When he looked up, Dawn made talky-mouth with her hand, slapped the other hand over her mouth, and lifted the talky-mouth hand palm-up, helplessly. She could tell, even in game-face, when he got it. His face cleared for a moment, then clenched into a scowl as he looked over his shoulder at the mages.
Dawn found it strange how the situation changed because Mike was in it. Nothing was different and everything was different. She was happy and at ease in his company. Maybe her body would be shed today. And maybe her being afraid of that was just a reflex. Habit. She was the least pinch of an awareness, and a force, perhaps as old as Time itself; and even bodiless, she'd still known the parts that were her, and collected them to her, and bound them with a bit of soul, and been herself. And Mike was a vampire--six, going on forever. She smiled at him fondly.
Then she tapped his shoulder again, recalling his attention. Leaning and reaching, she pulled at his upper arm, and he was willing but puzzled, not knowing what she wanted from him. She sank down and drew his big hand, palm-up, into her lap as though she were a gypsy going to read the lines. But with her fingertip she wrote on his open hand invisible lines for him to read: L I A R.
Because as close a watch as Digger had set on him, as close confined as Digger had kept him, there was no way Digger would have let him go waltzing out to mess into the Working his Sire was to be forced to perform, the Working whose centerpiece was the sacrifice of the human girl Mike had defected trying to protect. No matter how furious Mike claimed to be with Spike, Digger plainly had his doubts and reservations, and had put Mike on very obvious probation he'd openly violated in coming. Totally AWOL. When Digger found out, Mike either ran or he was dust.
They didn't have to talk, she found, to understand each other.
Mike's golden eyes had gone fierce and hot. The brow ridge seemed even heavier and more pronounced. Reaching out a careful finger, she stroked across his brows. Vamps liked that.
In a choked voice slightly slurred by fangs, he muttered, "Not gonna let them do you. Not Rayne. Not no one at all. But I don't know how to play it with vamps in the mix, and Goddam fucking mages. What does for one won't do for the other. They'd just take me down and go on. Ain't been able to figure how to manage it, all on my own."
Dawn tapped his forehead until he looked up at her again. Tilting her head toward the elevator shaft and rigging, she mouthed, Ask Spike.
For a second he was puzzled. Then the anger and frustration smoothed into his usual impassivity and Dawn wondered what he was thinking. Leaning in, he took a good deep breath by her neck, the bridge of his nose resting for a moment against her jaw. Then he rose casually, looked around to check who was attending to what, strolled to the shaft and vanished.
Dawn tore into the clamshells. She was starving!
**********
Mike wasn't much surprised to find that the remnants of Spike's crew had laired up here. It was a good enough place, he supposed...and where else were they to go, masterless, with no protection except each another?
"He'll tell on us," Sue muttered anxiously to Huey, but the three other vamps--dour Huey, uncertain Toby, and Mary who was about the only dangerous one among them--didn't move. Mike stayed where he'd landed, balanced, waiting until he was reasonably sure he wasn't gonna have to take on all four of them, then looked around until he spotted Spike curled up asleep in a pile of blankets and bedding.
As Mike took a step in that direction, Huey eased between, asking, "Digger send you?"
It was a pointed and delicate question. Mike thought about it a minute before shaking his head. "I'm here to get Dawn out."
Rousing, Spike sat up stiffly, saying, "Afterward. If there's an afterward. Not now."
He looked trashed and thrashed, but with him awake, the other vamps relaxed and went on about their business: stripping off the colors and sorting through discarded clothes for replacements.
Mike didn't like it, that Spike was still granted authority. Didn't like it that Spike still expected to call the shots after the way he'd fucked it all up, and the other vamps were letting him. Didn't like it that, having put Dawn in such jeopardy, Spike wasn't frantic to get her out of it. The way Mike was. Who had no plan, no authority, and no backup. Mike's hands closed into fists, and he was scowling, but he made himself say, "Got Digger's place mined, but then the party moved out, so that's no use."
Spike asked, "What time is it?"
Automatically Mike pulled out the watch and snapped it open. "Ten minutes of noon." Then he was annoyed at himself, to be so easily obedient.
Eyes shut and arms out before him, Spike had a slow, bone-cracking stretch. "Yeah, I can see that," he reflected softly. "You lot, you're Digger's and you came with Michael 'cause Digger had word the Slayer sussed out the move and is gonna try again to bust it up. Digger sent Michael to see to it. Huey, can you play that?"
"Slayer coming?" Huey asked.
"I expect."
"Keep her out?" Huey sounded dubious.
"Let her in. Toby, you take the sentry door. Don't expect anything to come that way--"
"They'll know," Toby blurted, "we weren't sent. Know we're not Digger's. Digger's vamps, the mages--"
"Hit him for me," Spike directed wearily, with a wave, and when Huey had clouted the smaller vamp off his feet, Spike slowly stood, working soreness out of his shoulders, twisting his back to one side, then the other. "What you're not taking account of," he told Toby patiently, "is how much they don't care. Digger said come, they came. While they're here, Rayne gives the orders, and Rayne wouldn't know one vamp from another unless they came color-coded." He looked down at himself--no duster, no shirt, no boots, just flimsy black harem pants--then sharply up at Mike, who prudently said nothing.
Mike had nothing, and knew it. Spike, maybe, had a plan or at least an idea. And supporters, who'd rather have the illusion of security that orders gave them than think for themselves. Mike would let Spike call it...until he saw a chance to get Dawn clear. Then all bets were off.
Mike was unimpressed: Spike was obviously making it up on the fly. What would Spike have done if the remnants of the crew hadn't chosen to lair up here, if Mike hadn't shown up? Taken on the opposition himself? More likely, caved into craziness and done whatever Rayne wanted. Let Dawn be sacrificed. Let it all go to hell, the way he had the sweeps, the factory, and the crew.
Spike was behaving as though everything was going as he'd expected. Mike didn't believe it for a second.
It was just a chance convergence, not a plan. Mike was going along with it only because he didn't have anything better.
Spike was continuing, "Michael, you're lead. Huey, you're second. Mingle. Don't start anything till the mages are distracted. Then do all the vamps, quick as you can."
Still sensibly on the floor, Toby whined, "How'll we know when the mages are distracted?"
Spike gave him a long look but didn't have Huey inflict more discipline. "Just don't you get distracted. Michael's lead, Michael calls it. When he--"
Spike went silent, and everybody else faded back, because a vamp was approaching the top of the shaft. Spike dove for the bedding. The vamp called down a summons from Rayne. Getting no response, the vamp jumped to the lower level. He had a leg pulled back for a kick when Mike's hand closed over his mouth, Huey held him, and Sue fiercely dispatched him with a piece of scrap wood.
As Huey brushed off his unbuttoned shirt, Mike mentioned neutrally, "You know we're outnumbered about three to one. Not counting the mages."
Rising, Spike was looking assessingly at the top of the shaft. "Don't count the mages. I'll do for them. Or they'll do for me, maybe...."
Jumping, Spike caught the lift rail about halfway up, then hitched himself the rest of the way to the top and over the edge.
"Wait," Mike told Huey absently. "I'll clear the hatch. Then you all drift along the back, make like you came in that way. Sue, you know best after me how Digger runs things. Anybody asks, you do the talking."
Standing beside Huey, Sue set her hands on her hips. "You turned on Spike. Now you're double-crossing Digger. Who you gonna turn on next, Michael?" Spike's way of referring to him was a snarl in her mouth.
That was rich, coming from her, after her Lady MacBeth night at the Bronze.
She was still only a fledge, Mike thought, moving to whatever wind that blew. He was the steady, consistent one, even though he couldn't have explained it to her and had no interest in trying.
If they hadn't been there, he would have dusted Spike without compunction, then got Dawn clear some way in the confusion. Spike, he thought, knew that perfectly well, yet had set him at lead.
Mike had no confidence in plans made by the certifiably insane.
**********
Spike swung out on the upper floor and stood for a moment, head bowed. Certainly not praying, proper vamps never did that, totally counterproductive: just being still, getting a clear sense of himself, settling himself to the thing at hand. Then he lifted his chin, sniffed in a short breath, and clapped his hands like a gunshot, stepping out briskly toward the others, hollering, "Let's get this bloody thing done, then. What's the holdup?"
The concentric circles were made, with their Nerfi and H'loon protection spells. Mages and Dawn inside, vamps outside; and this time the outer line of writing would keep them out: Spike was halted at the edge as if by an uncrossible doorway. The air stank of magic, the mix of junk burning in the brazier, and faintly, Dawn's fear. Her eyes were huge.
He couldn't think about that. Make a noise, pull all eyes to him to distract from Mike and the crew sliding out of the shaft in the dimness behind.
Spike spun on his heel (missing the duster's weight and swirl, missing his boots to come down solidly) and started pacing the rim, declaring, "You're gonna miss your time, wankers, an' all this for nothing." He locked his eyes on Rayne, holding the shut box. "So gimme the thing, trinket, bloody lawn ornament shot-put, hey?"
Rayne opened the box, revealing the Stone, and Spike could feel its unshielded keening like electricity everywhere, jittering on his last nerve. He didn't flinch, held himself still as Rayne came toward him with the Stone, kept an expression of bored and generally pissed-off, but Rayne wasn't fooled. Could see it in his eyes, maybe, or just know that if Spike had been human, he'd have been covered in muck sweat. Terrified to take the thing, attune himself to it and let it take him; terrified of what would come after--what he'd dreamed of so many times.
Stopping in reach, carefully between the runes, Rayne insisted softly, "It will be all right. The sun can't get at you. And there are four of us to protect you."
"Yeah, sure. Hand it over."
"You'll bring it all down. Glorious destruction. What you were made for."
"I was made by a bint with an itch in an alley. Ain't gonna persuade me, mage. An' keep out of my head now: it's distracting."
That was a thing Spike was depending on--that once he touched the stone, Rayne would have to leave him alone to do the Working, fearing to break his concentration, unable to tolerate the forces loosed by and through the Stone. Touching the Stone, he'd be free.
The dread and reluctance hid the eagerness banked like black fire within him.
Because he had to, smiling, the mage let the Stone's rough weight fall into Spike's hands.
Spike reeled back an involuntary step.
It was like being dropped into a storm, lightning and lashing wind, rain from every direction; like stumbling from silence into a rock concert blaring at full blast, so loud you couldn't make out the words, much less the tune. And beyond and above those was being pulled every which way simultaneously inside: terror and fierce exhilaration and hunger for more as strong as bloodthirst. For an instant, he was overwhelmed. But he'd always liked LOUD, and crazy was no novelty anymore. He steadied and joined the party, grinning.
**********
On the theory the opposition would expect them from topside, through the sentry post, Buffy opted for the sewer line. Hunched, listening, under the ladder with Willow and Giles as the SITs caught up and silently formed up behind them, Buffy was calculating the logistics of forcing the hatch when it opened, admitting dim light, and a voice ordered softly, "Stay put."
The weird thing was, she knew that voice. At once, without question. Mike. And the even weirder thing was, she relaxed from her crouch and straightened: accepting Mike's word, despite everything.
A moment later, Willow flinched against Buffy's back. "It's started."
Buffy heard, felt nothing. Huh.
Just as well, she supposed. No distractions from taking out all the vamps (well, maybe not Mike) to leave Willow and Giles clear to deal with Rayne.
There was noise, then: vamps howling, shouting. The noise didn't come closer, so it wasn't that they'd been discovered. Probably. When Mike's voice directed, "Come on," Buffy was already halfway up the ladder and pushing the hatch out of her way.
As soon as her feet were on the floor she moved aside to let the rest come up behind her, taking quick stock of the situation.
Vamps were fighting vamps on the near side of a large circle chalked on the floor. Inside the circle were Rayne and three mages, all robed in different colors, like the mages in the mall parking lot. All chanting and gesturing. Rayne held Dawn, whose arms were bound in front of her, both arms bleeding from long cuts, shoulder to wrist.
As soon as they were clear of the hatch, Willow began doing magic-y things, her left hand clasping Giles' to draw on his stored power. That was Willow's business, and Buffy left them to it, leading the SITs against the vamps.
It wasn't a general melee, she realized as Sue slid into place next to Rona, and another vamp--a strapping black woman Buffy vaguely recognized--joined the formation of Kennedy, Molly, and Amanda as the point of an unequal triangle, giving the SITs her back, engaging the nearest vamp with smoothly coordinated ferocity.
The remainder of Spike's crew--five, it seemed, counting Mike--going up against what therefore had to be Digger's vamps, and nothing so simple as colors to distinguish which were which. But fortunately, it seemed the SITs knew the difference, most of them having done sweeps with Spike's people for months, in and out of the factory almost daily. Out of the corner of her eye, Buffy saw Kennedy start to plunge a stake into the back of a lanky male vamp, then turn the blow enough to deflect against his shoulderblade and shove him aside to plow into the vamp he'd been engaged with. He joined the formation of Chloe, JoAnne and Lisa, and they adjusted to include him at lead just as though they'd drilled the change. Mike, fighting alone, suddenly had backup: all the SITs knew him, in game face or not. That part being handled, then.
Willow (with Giles) seemed to be managing the mages. One was down; another was tearing at his robes as though he'd been doused in itching powder.
Buffy spotted Spike when he moved: springing to the top of the barrier machines and from there to the nearest of the rafter beams no vamp could reach directly. Bare to the waist and white-pale against the dark as he jumped, he landed and stood in the open sunlight shafting down from a broken place in the roof. Face lifted to the blaze of light, holding the Stone in his two hands, he started to burn.
**********
He had it now. Or it had him--same difference. He'd cogged himself to it, could tune and alter its pitch and frequency. Like playing a bloody theremin, all the vibrations tuned by touch, a cacophonous music no ear could hear. Could only be felt, modulated, as it passed through him. Couldn't see the spectral "wings" Red had told him about but could feel his substance spread achingly wide to encompass and channel such huge and chaotic input, the narrow-point bottleneck between energized infinities.
As the mages directed and connected, like calling to like, Spike could feel the linked somnolent grumble of the Hellmouth waking as the dimensional torques that formed it began to shift in response to the Stone's song. A harmonic echo so huge that within seconds the Stone's cacophony was lost into it and Spike was wrestling with the waking fury of the Hellmouth itself, the Stone his point of contact. Like holding a ravening, bounding tiger by an ear, or maybe a whisker.
Wasn't gonna do it, too much for him to handle, but he'd known that, going in. He'd blow out like an overtaxed fuse and the Hellmouth would explode into this plane again, driven by the pressured impingement of all the dimensions it was potentially connected to separately or simultaneously. Needed more juice to mange something like that, someone who for all his century plus was finally as mortal as the next idiot.
He jumped for the machines and then on to the rafter where the sun was--a coherent force, all colors and no color, and it was enough. Streaming through him, pure and deadly, it pushed him out beyond what he could consciously control, stretched him to his absolute limits, and for a moment they were in balance, the natural sunfire and the unnatural tectonic howl of dimensions meeting and trying to slide into one another, open into one another, with him as the focal point. Then it was too much. He felt himself coming apart, losing coherence on a molecular level.
Couldn't hold such force together, much less wield it. Guessed it was time, then.
Opening his eyes to the dazzle, blind with it (he hadn't thought about that), he couldn't distinguish Dawn at all, or anything much. He could feel her, though, all stretched thin almost as air as he was: a single spark of green energy that was neither Hellmouth, Stone, nor sun. A connection, as immaterial as a skein of soul, between them. Enough, or had to be. Spike held out his hand, asking for what he needed along the connection of what was his, theirs, shared alike. Dawn wouldn't know, and wouldn't know how, but the Lady would, and he'd put himself where he was meant to be, to take it. She'd grant it, or she wouldn't: through Dawn, to him, already on the cusp of incandescence.
From the Lady of Doorways, the Lady of Dimensions, the power rushed along the thread of soul-stuff, sufficient to his need.
**********
To Mike, it felt like silence then. But it wasn't, because up on the beam, Spike was shimmering, burning, but unconsumed. Something was happening.
He didn't know, didn't care, what because Rayne had swung the knife high to plunge it into Dawn. Mike dove for the circle, past the circle, unquestioning how, and took them both down. Came up fast with Dawn in his arms and got her out the quickest way: by tossing her at the dark rafter next on from the one where Spike was perched. Couldn't nobody get at her there. That was what was important, not the knife plunged into his side, though that hurt like hell. Only metal, wouldn't do him no serious hurt, though it stank of magic and the pain flared up his whole side and he couldn't seem to find his balance.
Slayer, she had her arm up and was yelling, "Here! Now!" with the witch hanging onto her other arm, holding her in place, and everybody going for the called mark with dreamlike slowness. A different circle was building, shimmering almost into sight, a dome reacting to whatever Spike was doing up above. Best to get there, maybe, if the witch was half as scared as she looked. Mike took a second to slap the mage away and check that Dawn had made the rafter all right, hanging over it and scrabbling her knees around to get onto it, then crossed back over the circle and fell inside the dome a second before the vamps still outside went up like guttering candles and were gone.
**********
Like teasing open a knot, Spike unwove the dimensions from one another, easing them apart. Easy enough, when you knew how and could draw on infinite force to do it. Could identify each skein with simple knowing and tuck it back into itself, adjusting the dimensional imbalance.
The Hellmouth shuddered and finally collapsed into normalcy. Only dirt, rock, air, water left. However, there was considerable residual geologic force to dissipate somewhere. Spike knew right where he wanted it and shrugged it off that way: into Digger's warren. With knowing that came to him with the Lady's power, he felt the levels cascade onto one another, punctuated by occasional hiccups that were the charges Mike had set in the shafts, to bring it down all tidy and all at once. Spike liked that.
Expansive and full of joyous destruction, he popped portals open randomly. Dozens, then hundreds, winking into being, oval or rectangular with the light of otherwhere shining through or swirling blackness. He'd been studying the Council's collection of spells for months. He understood the concepts, could make the words become without even having to speak them. Drawing on the Lady's power, he could flick a portal into being with a thought.
He looked for vamps but found none except under a warning dome that had Red's flavor about it so he left that alone and looked elsewhere for prey. The remains of the office went away, and most of the back wall.
Some way, the protective circle had been breached--Dawn's blood touching it, felt like--and he found he had access. He popped a portal right over one of the mages still standing, then shut it on him like the mouth of a purse or a really large and fangy fish. And the mage was gone, except for his wailing cry left behind, a second or so. He'd done another the same way when he felt Rayne battering into his mind, to reassert control.
But Spike and his demon were no longer separate, and the soul was happily in touch with the infinite, totally blissed out on a level nothing mortal could normally contain. Rayne's blandishments of pleasure could find nothing to hold to, not in the full of the sunlight and the Lady's favor.
Spike ate a prone mage while trying to decide what special horror to open for Rayne. But there were so many and all he had was the least flavor and taste of each, and he felt his coherence slipping as he tried to know and encompass them all.
"I wouldn't really have done it!" Rayne protested in Spike's mind, with a strong impression of indignant you idiot! "I loved him!"
With all the madness he'd suffered and the passivity he'd endured, the violation and perversion of desire, with all the rage that it'd come to this instead of what he'd wanted, Spike threw the mage blindly into whatever opened to receive him. Let the Lady choose. Spike just wanted him gone.
When that portal clapped shut, leaving the floor empty except for the dome, the Lady was done and withdrew. Used beyond its capacity, the Stone crumbled in his hands. All the varied forces that had passed through and shielded him were gone and he was left blind and vacant in the sunlight.
As he'd known it would, the burning began.
**********
The idiot wasn't coming down, hadn't the sense to fall. Was burning already, as she'd seen a dozen vamps go, consumed in seconds.
Warned by the dreams, Buffy had brought a sheet of mylar to cover him but he'd put himself out of reach, and mylar didn't throw worth beans. It didn't unfold particularly handily, either.
Frantically wrestling with the crinkly silver stuff within the confines of the protective dome, Buffy bumped Willow, demanding, "Take it down. Now!"
"What? Oh, sure--"
Before Buffy could move, someone had gone past her. A vamp's agility and speed, onto the machines and then straight into Spike, carrying them both off the beam and both blazing as they fell. Buffy was right on it, tossing the far end of the mylar to the nearest SIT and pulling it into place over the two burning vampires, horribly afraid she'd see it collapse with only dust underneath. Back in the empty office space, up on the rafter, Dawn was screeching for somebody to come get her down, catch her, something.
The mylar held, tenting the shapes, smoke wafting up from underneath. So maybe she'd been quick enough, maybe....
They'd fallen onto a sunny patch of floor: Buffy didn't dare lift the mylar. Spotting a blue tumbling pad overlooked on her last visit, she ran and grabbed it, slapped it down next to the mylar, and got whatever was underneath rolled onto it by touch (nasty scary crackly sensation). Then it was easy to drag the pad back through the gap between the machines, with SITs holding the mylar in place, into the safe darkness or at least indirect light, considering that most of the back wall was gone.
Uncovered, they looked like mummies. Blackened bone showed. Now that she saw, Buffy didn't dare touch for fear something would break off.
"No, not yet," Dawn was snapping, running from the back to stand...and look...and bleed on the mummies. "Shouldn't go to waste," she commented absently, watching the steady drops fall from her wounded arms.
One of the mummies suddenly moved, lurched, and latched onto Dawn's arm above the elbow, feeding. Since Dawn did nothing but shut her eyes and stand there, Buffy uneasily let them alone. The blackened, crisped skin flaked off, revealing fresh, whole skin underneath, bone and muscle reknitting as they all stood around watching. Too broad-shouldered to be Spike. Spike must be the other one. That wasn't moving.
Amanda produced a knife and without hesitation slashed a forearm, then held the knife out blindly for someone to take. And she did, and did the same. Within a minute, all nineteen SITs were bleeding on Spike, making various wry, wincing faces but doing it just the same. After Amanda threw up and Rona fainted, the three volunteers from the class came and took the knife and offered their contribution.
They hadn't all come to Buffy's summons. One SIT was pregnant; three had too great a distance to come--Europe; Canada; New Jersey--to get there in time; one couldn't wheedle the money from her parents and tried to hitchhike. That hadn't gone well--she'd ended up having to conk the driver and been stranded, with a wrecked car, in downtown St. Louis. But all who could had come to Buffy's claim that Spike was in desperate need of help and backup.
Not for her, or for the Hellmouth. For Spike.
Who was nearly back and naked and mostly surrounded by underage girls. Buffy adjusted the mylar to waist-high and got a few oh, come on! glares for her efforts before the girls shifted their interest to Mike, likewise pantsless, now folded into Dawn's arm that Willow wasn't bandaging.
Spike's body was no longer absorbing the blood, it was just running off, so everybody seemed to agree that was enough. They paired off and began bandaging one another with supplies from Willow's kit.
Spike's hair was coming in sandy-brown and longer than he usually tolerated. Bemused, Buffy bent and touched it--soft, ungelled, slightly curly. She'd never seen its natural state. So she wasn't prepared when he came up at her, golden-eyed and game-faced, and sank his fangs into the join of her neck and shoulder.
It was euphoric. It was too much. It probably wasn't a good idea.
After he'd fed for a minute or so, Buffy held him, her cheek against his, rubbing circles on his back and telling him softly, "It's OK. It's OK," until, more aware, he licked the wound shut and just rested against her.
She'd be a little lightheaded from it, it was more than he usually took, but the blood would regenerate by morning. They were a good team that way, she thought.
**********
Spike woke vaguely, gradually, to the sound of familiar children's voices.
Dawn was saying, "--couldn't even yell 'Help! Get me down from here!' and bleeding all over the place--"
"You should watch that tendency to get sliced up," put in Amanda's dry earnest voice, the one she used when she thought she was trying to make a joke. "Not only will people start to talk--in a house full of vampires, you could get a reputation as a tease."
"It's not full of vampires," Dawn huffed. "Only one!"
"In residence, anyway." Rona's drawl. "The other one just hanging around, all mopy and lovelorn--"
General laughter and the sound...of a pillow being thrown. Took Spike a moment to identify it. Then Candy, of the top-knot and edible-looking unitards, piped up breathlessly, "Anybody else see it? I saw it, just like before, only, like, more so. Like he was made of light, and these big wings spreading out, past the walls and the roof, even.... He's an angel! Like totally!"
"Yeah, right," responded Rona, unimpressed. "And I'm Aaliyah."
Molly put in, "What's this business about Mike getting stabbed with an enchanted knife?"
"Oh, that was good," Dawn responded eagerly. "It wouldn't close, and you can't kill a vamp by simple blood loss, but he was all twisted around about tasting me, well, drinking from me, really, without my saying he could, and frankly, he was just a mess. Not even counting the burnage he was so disgusted about, he pretty much saved Spike's life, well we all did, but afterward? He's all, 'It's so dumb, doesn't know what got into him to do such a dumb thing,' so he won't have to admit why he did it, you know how he is."
"Lunkhead," agreed Sue fondly. "Pretty much always been like that. Decorative, though. Always thought so. Then, after I got vamped, I--"
"Nobody wants to hear about that, Sue," Amanda put in quellingly.
"I do," Kennedy objected. "Vamps got a right to talk, same as anybody."
"Leave it, Ken," said Rona. "Sue, full details of your disgusting love life later. In private."
"Anyway," Dawn said firmly, reclaiming the floor, "so you remember about the silver, about Willow turning it magic-negative, big magic suckage? Well, Buffy was there when she did it, and she had this sterling anklet, seveeere icky with a skull on it and everything--"
"From Spike," commented Kennedy. "No brainer."
"Well, what do you think? So it was affected too, see? Anyway, Willow made Buffy take off the anklet and laid it on the wound and it closed up, just like that. Right while you looked."
"Was this the same knife that cut you?" Amanda asked in a deliberate, puzzled voice, worrying at a detail. "They why--"
"Well, that's nothing," Dawn responded, sounding embarrassed. "Well, if you must know, I healed myself. I could have done it anytime. But I didn't. Because Spike, he needed the pure sacrifice and everything. To do what he was doing. For his plan. My mom was with me for a little while there, and she showed me how but it had to be later, you see, in case.... Well, in case."
"What are you going to do about him?" inquired Kennedy.
"About who?"
"Don't be cute. About Mike, of course."
"Is he an angel, too?" Candy gushed and was ignored, except for Dawn, who replied, patient sage instructing naive acolyte, "There are all sorts of spiritual beings. Maybe some of them are angels. Most of them...not so much. Not in Sunnydale, anyway. We get the fangy kind. The other kind move to L.A." (Some knowing snickers.) "As to Mike, I don't see that I need to do anything about him," Dawn went on in the tone that usually went with flipping hair. "He's fine just as he is. Doesn't need improving. We talked a long while last night on the phone, and--"
"Is he your boyfriend or not?" Rona demanded.
"Why does he have to be anything? We're what we are, and it suits us. Is Spike Buffy's boyfriend? Are they making wedding plans? Not hardly! They are, and they do, what suits them. I don't see why I can't do the same."
"That's not realistic," put in Amanda sadly. "You can't be seventeen forever."
A silence. Then Dawn said, "I don't see why not. Real is relative, 'Manda. And seventeen seems a pretty good age to be. Have it all and not give up anything. Anybody. When you get involved with vamps--"
"So are you?" Rona interrupted avidly. "Involved with vamps?"
"Well, of course: Spike! And I'm certainly not gonna leave him with nobody but Buffy to watch out for him. And Mike...well, he likes how I smell. And how I taste. Likes it a lot. Not high on the traditional boyfriend-o-meter, but it's important to him. When you hang out with vamps you have to be flexible about things like that."
"If you say so," commented Amanda dubiously.
Still mostly asleep, listening to the children's voices happily bickering and gossiping, Spike wasn't sure when he was. Couldn't make it fit together. Seemed as if he was back in Casa Spike, half the SITs quartered there and underfoot at all hours. But Casa Spike was gone, burned; and Sue hadn't been a vampire then. But he'd heard Molly's voice, and Chloe's, and others from that time that weren't a part of things anymore. Not Kim, though. He'd been waiting for Kim to chime in, laughing and blunt, the way he remembered her.... And Candy was from the class, didn't fit with a gaggle of SITs, yet here she was, vapid and visionary. All a jumble of past and present he couldn't make sense of.
Blinking slowly, he pushed up onto his elbows and saw he was in Buffy's room. In Buffy's narrow bed, alone in it, more's the pity. And starkers under the sheet, might as well be covered with fucking cellophane for all the good it did in a room full of children--
Who were crying, "Oh, he's awake! Buffy, he's awake!" and pounding out into the hall to lean over the stair railing to report such remarkable news.
Very strange.
Dawn was still here, though. He noticed as he reached down for the blanket, to put another layer between his naughty bits and the unaccountable audience of chattering girlflesh certain to note every detail. Once they came back, which he was sure they would. Unless prevented.... Dawn waggled fingers at him, saying, "Hi," like she expected him to growl and bark at her.
"What's all this, then?" Spike asked, sitting up now he was decently covered and pushing both hands through his hair, finding it in deplorable condition, every which way and too long and he didn't know how that had happened. Likely looked like a dandelion puff.
"How much do you remember?" Dawn asked cautiously. "Have you noticed your arm?"
Spike looked, and the green writing was back, spiraling around his left arm. The line of poetry that meant Dawn he'd incised into himself, that he'd meant for forever.
"I think it never really went away," Dawn said. "He couldn't change it, so he hid it. To make you feel alone, unconnected. But it was always there, between us. Like the soul. You gonna leave off about that now, Spike? Nagging me to get a different connection? Because I won't. Ever."
She watched him rub the tat, though there was nothing different to the touch. Not a whit magical. Pure symbol, pure meaning, deeply felt. A good antidote for all Rayne's powerful unreality that meant nothing, that he'd accepted but never believed.
"Fetch me some pants, Bit," Spike directed absently, thinking back. He could remember as far as the burning. Whatever came after, he knew nothing about.
So maybe those dreams would leave off, now. Maybe with no Hellmouth to tempt and roil things up, Michael would be able to manage things fine on his own. Spike wanted none of it back. And Buffy, she could have her escort service without half of 'em getting eaten the first night, and run her class...or whatever she pleased, didn't matter to him, so long as it was what she wanted. Vamp population should be manageable several years, anyway: take that long for any of Digger's lot to inchworm back to the surface and make anything like a nuisance of themselves.
And he could settle down to the translation so long as the fucking Council didn't renege, or renege further...and likely Rupert might be a help with that, if they could ever get the bloody wanker to actually leave and then stay gone.... And the odd challenge fight up to Willy's, just to keep things interesting and remind anybody who cared who the true Master of Sunnydale was even if he left the day-to-day matters to Michael.
Or just decide hour to hour, minute to minute, what he felt like doing. Be in the moment, like proper vamps were.
He was done with plans.
When Dawn pulled out a pair of folded black jeans--didn't have to hunt for the right drawer, he noticed: must have come across it in secret Buffy-clothes-borrowing reconnaissance--and set it on the foot of the bed, he said, "Now you clear out. Don't need anybody to teach me how to put m' pants on. Don't need an audience, neither."
"Not a morning person," Dawn observed wisely. "Just a second, then, before the thundering herd stampedes back. I understand now. About why you wanted me as the pax bond, why you had me taken. Because you wanted you taken, and it would need both of us to do it. We both had to be there."
Wrapping the blanket around him as he rose, Spike responded, "Yeah. So?"
"Well, I'm forgiving you, is what. You could at least appreciate it!"
"Morning?" Spike wondered, looking to the bright windows.
Buffy came in then, and came straight at him, and lifted on her toes to clasp hands around the back of his neck and pull his head down for a nice long snog, and Spike didn't notice when Dawn left or when he forgot about holding the blanket in place.
"It's Saturday," Buffy explained simply, when she finally had to break for air. "You slept all yesterday afternoon, and then all night. Nearly twenty-four hours of your famous horizontal funeral statuary impression. Not a twitch, not a breath. I was beginning to get a little worried."
Putting on pants didn't seem all that important anymore. Taking Buffy's arms at the elbow, Spike flopped back on the bed, pulling her with him.
As he started undoing the buttons of her blouse, Buffy pushed at his shoulder, not very hard, protesting, "But they're all waiting to see you. They'll know!"
"Hate to break it to you, pet, but they've known what we get up to some time, now. Why didn't you pick a sweatshirt, like a sensible woman?"
Buffy slapped his hand away, no harder than a kitten paw, and set to work on the buttons herself. Eyes downcast, she asked, "Are you back now? Really back back?"
"Let you be the judge of that," Spike said, and pounced her backward.
Popped buttons flew everywhere.
Finis