Warning: There's a fair amount of "fucking" this and that,
but no real harsh language except expletives; there's an extended implied
sex scene, but no plumbing (plumbing -- explicit body parts -- doesn't
interest me).
Old Blood
Nan Dibble
Returning from school at the usual time, Dawn drank a glass of milk, then went upstairs and changed into jeans, a blue-and-white striped cotton longsleeved T (covering the taped gauze patch on her right forearm), white socks and Reeboks. Then she knocked at the adjoining bedroom Willow shared with Kennedy and made her request: "I need a locator spell. For Spike."
"We can't find him?" Willow asked, half startled, half joking.
"I need to find something for him."
"You gonna tell me why?"
"No," said Dawn, folding her arms, looking the witch straight in the eye. "I seem to remember the words 'owe him big time' being mentioned."
"C'mon in. No big." Willow hitched a shoulder. "What you got for the focus?" As focus for the spell, Dawn produced a wad of gauze stiff and rusted with Spike's week-old blood.
It was simple sympathetic magic: like calling to like. With minimal preparation, Willow scattered red powder onto the map Dawn had brought, said, "It calls to itself: focus to locus. Mark ye!" in Latin, and touched the focus to the map. Shaken, the powder adhered in points of correspondence like tiny gemstones. The residue was carefully poured back into a shaker and capped.
Four points. Two together, two separate.
One was here: Revello drive--Spike himself.
It was only a moment's work on the laptop to access what Dawn thought of as the Backward Directory to put a name--McDonald--to the other singleton out on Marsh Avenue.
She folded her hands a moment and considered. Then she pushed the chair back from the desk and stood. Willow had already resumed the job of changing the dressings on Kennedy's right shoulder that Dawn's knock had interrupted.
Dawn thought it probably would have been polite to ask either of them how Kennedy was feeling. Since she didn't care, it was probably best not to ask. Collecting the folded map, she ranged the house summoning, one by one, those Potentials who'd taken part in the park patrol. They convened in the yard and gathered in the shade of the big corner maple.
Dawn sat forward intently. "I want you to get in trouble with me. It's something for Spike, and it's important."
She had no doubt whatever that she had everybody's attention.
They were all more or less the same age but they were Potentials and she wasn't, and they were learning to kill things and she wasn't. They surrounded her like a pack of mostly amiable dogs watching the littlest dog bark.
They were in the process of sorting out their pack structure. She'd come on one patrol. Once. And run errands, and made signals, because that's what Spike wanted. Besides running with them, step for step, she'd also played bait for a monster fledge and put it down with a taser, but they didn't know that. They didn't know how she'd figured out for Spike where the new nest was. They didn't have to. Because she did.
She could aim herself like a gun and pull the trigger. And was doing so now.
The littlest dog sat tall and met every eye.
She began, "Because of the ambush in the park, Spike had to choose between bringing us all home safe and taking care of something real important to him. He chose to stay with us. So the other choice was lost. And nobody else knows about it but me. Because it's not about Slayers. It's not even about humans. It's about vampires: separate from us. Kind of a private thing to him."
Then she told them about the Order of Aurelius, and the eldest blood, and the smart, quick, savage fledges, and how Spike had told her he'd come to believe that the worst thing a vampire could do was create another vampire.
Dawn went on, "A little over a month ago, something was done to Spike, he still doesn't know what, that put his demon in control for a few nights. He hunted. He drank people. Just like any vamp, except that he's very, very good at it. And with some of the people he'd drunk nearly to death, he opened his arm and made them drink from him before they died. They were turned, and rose as fledgling vampires. The newest model from the Order of Aurelius.
"At first Spike didn't remember any of it. Then, slowly, he began to piece together what had happened. Know what he'd done. Or really, what he'd been used to do. If you can imagine looking at it his way, it's a kind of rape. It made him sick. And it made him mad. But the next night, the Bringers took him and, and hurt him: during the time of the Turok-Han." Sober nods all around. "There was nothing anybody could do until that was settled. Since Buffy brought him back, he's been trying to locate those fledges. And dust them all."
Dawn saw a chill run through the group. Shivers, unease. A monster story in the warm afternoon sunlight beyond the shade of the sheltering tree.
Amanda raised her hand. "But these fledges...if they're like Spike--"
"There are no other vampires like Spike. He's the only vampire ever to have killed two Slayers. He started out trying to kill Buffy before they went all kissy-face and decided other things were more...interesting." That got a lot of grins. "He's still technically the Master Vampire of Sunnydale, though he thinks the meetings are boring, and minions are boring, and the conversation is appalling, and there's no sodding liquor or dancing." A burst of loud laughter. And Dawn thought very coldly, They don't know. Buffy hasn't told them. Willow hasn't told them. If I hadn't forced it, I wouldn't know either.
For an instant that frightened her: that he could be so hurt, and she cut off from it, separate. No, she thought. I would have found out. Without Willow. Without Buffy. In spite of them. Like I found out I was the Key. What I have to know, I find out.
That steadied her, and the laughter had quieted. They were waiting for her. She went on, "Spike didn't start out as what he is. He's made himself up. Like a story. Tried one thing and then another, then broke himself apart and tried again. It's not just the soul. He's always done it. He tries to be more than he is, better than he can even imagine. He...reaches for things he can't even see. It's who he is, and what he's for, and what's important to him." Then Dawn used the analogy from Alien, about the one surviving monster that could eventually generate thousands, amoral and scary and devouring. Not just murder but murder forever. Murder unending. Amanda's frown smoothed, and other Potentials were nodding.
Kim hadn't seen the movie. Amanda quietly drew her apart to explain. Amanda spontaneously making the finger-fangs-biting gesture caught Dawn's eye because she herself hadn't used it. Maybe it was a newly discovered archetype.
Dawn continued, "One of the fledges, the Slayer dusted. Two were unlucky and ran into your patrols the first night or two after they'd risen. Three more of the fledges, Spike was able to hunt down himself last Friday: just about the first day he was really on his feet more than an hour at a time. As you may have heard, he celebrated afterward. At Willie's." Dawn waited out some of the laughter and comments, then went on, "He wanted to go after them sooner, but his legs pooped out after two and a half blocks." Surprised looks and some laughter, yet some poor baby! expressions of concern. "I know because I'd tagged along to make sure he didn't get himself into trouble." Broad grins, at the concept of Spike in trouble: they'd begun to know him, that much at least. "What I'm trying to say, this is desperately important to him. And because he chose as he did in the park patrol, the last two fledges he knew about got away." Dawn stared slowly around the group, waiting if need be until she'd met every single pair of eyes. "I know where they are. I'm not waiting for sunset. They're pretty much pinned down by daylight. Now is the best chance there'll be, and maybe the last. And Spike's unconscious in the basement because he stayed for Kennedy last night and burned both hands nearly off."
Dead silence. Because they hadn't known. And now they did. The faces Dawn saw were startled and anxious...and also indignant, angry. Because they'd had a right to know: they were Spike's--he'd said so, and kept faith with that claim. And he was therefore theirs.
Buffy's compulsive secretiveness had delivered the pack to Dawn's purpose.
Dawn said, "He can't go, so I will. This isn't Slayer business: it's vampire business. Because it's Spike, and because it's me. Who else wants trouble?"
Rising, Amanda said, "Second rule: we keep between Dawn and trouble. What's the mark?"
And the rest of the pack rose with her, to hear Dawn call it. Most of them were grinning like wolves.
The first mark was a hardware store. With the lunch money Buffy had given her, Dawn bought a cheap, heavy knife and a fistful of inch-thick dowel rods. Back on the street, she passed the dowels out and everybody cracked them into serviceable lengths. Then they passed the knife around, roughly whittling the jagged ends into points.
They'd all sworn to touch no weapon in the house except upon instruction. Fine: they'd made their own.
The map's conjoined dots indicated Third Street Cemetery--one established so long ago, people hadn't even believed graveyards required pretty, soothing names. Old graveyards generally didn't provide much fledge action, but from time to time mature vamps would establish a nest there because of the availability of big hideous mausoleums seldom disturbed during the day.
Dawn had a vague recollection that Harmony's pitiful attempt at gathering minions and clueless fledges and becoming a power in Sunnydale's undead politics had been based here.
The map's scale wasn't large enough to provide an exact location, especially on a green oblong containing no street addresses in tiny type. Dawn could only approximate Maria and Bob's hiding place from which quadrant of the graveyard held the two ruby dots.
She named a mark, a big marble bench, for them all to return to. Then they scattered, sweeping the area to report back on structures large enough to accommodate two or more vampires. There were six. Dawn folded the map and handed it to Rona (who'd insisted on coming, stitched butt gash and all), who had the sack that held spare stakes, the knife, and other things not convenient for pockets. Then Dawn sat on the bench, and the Potentials gathered around the mark.
"I think what they've done is begged lodging in another nest," Dawn commented softly, with due respect to acute vampire hearing. Not all vamps slept during the day. "Besides the fledges, we could be facing up to half a dozen mature vamps. Our Maria and Bob don't like being on their own, and any fight would give them more chance to get away in the confusion than they'd have by themselves. If we can, we'll do them all. But it's Maria and Bob we want. This is what Maria looks like." From memory, Dawn recited the notebook description Spike had so methodically noted down in his elegant old script. And then the same for Bob, the Vampire. "Remember: if you're hurt, get out. They can't chase you into the sunshine. Well, they can, but...." Appreciative soft, grim chuckles. Dawn added, "Do teams of two. One engages, one goes for the stake. If one team's in trouble, the first team that's free doubles with them. So when you dust one, look to see if anybody needs help before you engage again. Choose up your teams. Rona, you're with me. You're strong and mean, and I'm just mean. Should be a good match."
They started with the mausoleum most in the open, bathed in sunshine. Amanda and Kim were point and moved in fast, a quick glance, and out again. Half the possible nests were ruled out in a few minutes. Dawn had the two next least likely silently scouted for footprints, more trash than usual, or any other sign of unnatural habitation. Finding none, the point team cleared them too. The pack gathered before the final target: slate roofed and ornate, about ten feet from the cemetery's high outer wall, large stretches of which were draped in shade from the street trees beyond.
Spike would risk a dash like that, if he had to.
Dawn thought a few minutes, then set Amanda and Kim to catch anything that tried to escape toward the wall.
"Door's on the opposite side," muttered Rona.
"I'd noticed that," Dawn responded calmly. "No harm in taking care."
She indicated a different pair to be point. Then, on a finger count of three, they went in.
About two minutes later, all that was left in the mausoleum was the drifting dust of four vampires spilling out and lifting into the sunshine.
The back had seen action too. Two vampires, one taller, one shorter, had erupted straight through the tile roof. Kim and Amanda had staked the first as he landed, and the other one they tackled and impeded for the extra second needed for her to combust.
Dawn waved the dust away from her face, then held out her hand to Rona and waited until Rona passed back the map.
Only two red jewels remained.
"That one's Spike," commented Rona, kibitzing, and pointed. "What's the other one?"
"Glitch," Dawn lied. "Artifact of the way the spell was done. Anybody
hurt? Bloody brilliant, then. I give you the late, late not so great Maria
and Bob. I can't wait to see Spike's face when we tell him. Next mark is
home. There's another thing to do."