The Road to Byzantium 1/2

[rahirah]

The Road to Byzantium

by Barb C.

Disclaimers: The usual. All belongs to Joss and Mutant Enemy, and naught to me.

Rating: PG-13 for violence and naughty, naughty words

Characters: Spike, Dawn, Anya

Distribution: Ask and you shall receive, I'd just like to know where it ends up.

Synopsis: The Knights of Byzantium have returned to Sunnydale. Spike, Dawn and Anya take to the road to avoid them, but when they run into a mysterious hitchhiker, their plans go awry. Can a neutered vampire, an ex-vengeance demon, and the Key to the Universe evade a very human foe?

Author’s notes: This story takes place in the same universe as “Raising In the Sun," “Necessary Evils," and “A Parliament of Monsters." It was written for leni_ba in the 2008 cya_ficathon Thanks to betas extraordinare typographer. shipperx, slaymesoftly, deborahc, kehf, and bruttimabuoni



Spike was on fire again.

The dusting of curly light-brown hair on his left wrist was starting to singe and fizzle in the filtered sunlight. Wisps of smoke curled upwards and whipped away out the window. The first time it had happened, sitting at a red light in Ventura, Dawn had panicked and thrown her Diet Sprite at him. By now, fifteen miles out of Ojai, it was starting to get old.

"Fucking hell," the vampire muttered, slapping the flames out before his skin could catch. He examined the red spot with a scowl. Dawn fished an ice cube out of her cup and handed it over to him solemnly.

In the back seat, Anya looked up from her magazine and heaved an exasperated sigh. "You know, if we'd just waited until it was dark..."

Spike took a drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt out the window. It bounced off a Fire Danger: HIGH sign and tumbled to the shoulder in a shower of orange sparks. "Not a chance. We want to be well out of Sunnydale before those Byzantium wankers roll in."

"Because running away from them worked so well the last time," Dawn muttered, so low that no one could hear it.

No one except the vampire with super-sensitive ears, anyway. A muscle in Spike's jaw twitched, and his knuckles went whiter-than-white on the wheel. "Not going to be like the last time," he said flatly.

"I didn't mean it like..." Dawn trailed off unhappily. Of course it wasn't going to be like last time. Last time her sister had been with them. Not that it had made any difference, in the end. But Buffy was gone now. My sister is dead, Dawn thought, rolling the words around in her brain, testing the weight of them. It wasn't fair. She hadn't even had time to get used to My mother is dead yet. Buffy'd died a hero, saving the world - saving her - one last time. But dead was still dead.

It didn't help the way the others looked at her - pitying, sure, but she was positive that behind the pity was Why are you still here? Dawn couldn't blame them. Sometimes she asked herself the same thing.

"It's all right." Anya reached out with the hand that wasn't still encased in a neon-purple wrist brace, and patted Spike's shoulder. "We realize that it must be emasculating for you to be sent away with the non-combatants, but - "

Spike's scowl was just a hair short of game face. ""m not a sodding non-combatant!" he snarled, leaning over to fiddle with the radio.

The car swerved. Anya hopped up and finger-flicked the back of his head. "Ten and two, Spike!"

Reflexively, Spike swung around and batted back, only to double over in agony as the chip fired. Dawn dropped her soda and grabbed the steering wheel, ice cubes cascading across the floor as the DeSoto slewed across both lanes and leaped the shoulder onto rough ground. The gnarled trunk of a live oak reared up before them, and then Spike's long fingers covered hers, his lips skinned back in a terrified snarl as he wrestled his pain and the black steel monster of a car into submission. Tires thundered over gravel, a spray of prickly leaves clawed the hood, and with a bump and a jounce they were back on the highway. Spike brought the DeSoto to a halt and sat there, head bowed, shoulders shaking, hands welded to the steering wheel.

"Violence is never the answer," Anya observed placidly. She sat back and gave the pages of her Modern Bride a crisp snap. "Extremely satisfying, but never the answer."

Spike growled low in his chest, and one hand left the wheel and crept towards the inside pocket of his duster, where Dawn knew he kept a flask of whiskey. Sweat beaded his brow above the rims of his day-driving goggles - nothing to do with the heat; it was a stress thing for vampires. Halfway there his fingers clenched, and his fist dropped to one knee. Timidly, Dawn laid a hand on his arm, feeling muscle and tendon tense as steel cable to her touch. "Are you OK?" she asked.

"Fine, Bit." The harshness in his voice was the kind that kept it from shaking. He cast a longing look in the direction of his duster pocket, and then his mouth firmed. "Promised Buffy I'd take care of you, ‘n I will. Whatever it takes."

Dawn picked a melting ice cube off her shirt as they pulled out onto the highway again. Spike didn't look OK. He looked exhausted and hung over and scared. And thin. Spike had never been a big guy, but he'd always had a solid sort of leanness to him. Now every ounce of extra weight (and there hadn't been all that many ounces to begin with) was burnt away, and then some. You could lose yourself in the hollows of his eyes, draw blood on the cathedral arches of his cheekbones.

She'd have to get some pig's blood to keep around for when he came over, Dawn decided, and make sure he was feeding right. She could tell Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg it was a science project. Still, this was about a million times better than the condition she'd found him in when she'd first braved his crypt a couple of weeks after Buffy's death.

For the next fifteen minutes they drove in silence. State Route 33 spooled away ahead of them, snaking up into the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. The July sun beat down on the dusty green armies of scrub oak and manzanita marching uphill and down alongside the road. Dawn propped her knees up and laid her head against the grease-smudged windowpane, watching the chaparral roll by. That was one of the cool things about driving with Spike: he didn't care about stuff like sneakers on the dashboard. It was probably the only cool thing about this trip, though. The DeSoto's air conditioning, if it had ever had any, had given out years ago, and Spike, of course, didn't need it. If he'd been by himself, he'd have had all the windows rolled up tight, the blacked-out panes protecting him from the sun. But his passengers needed air, especially if he planned on chain-smoking all the way down the Cuyama River.

"I'm bored," she announced. "We should play a game or something."

"You can help me pick out bridesmaid's dresses," Anya offered. "I'm thinking green."

A wicked light sparkled in Spike's eyes, and the barest hint of a grin quirked his lips. "Think Harris would appreciate the traditional burlap and blood larva, myself."

Dawn shuddered. "Speaking as a potential larva wearer? I vote green." Obviously a subject change was in order. "I know. Spike could tell us a story."

Spike raked a hand through his platinum-blond curls - in the last couple of weeks, he'd started touching up his roots again, which was an encouraging sign. "Dunno as I've got anything entertaining to hand," he said.

Dawn was conversant enough in Spike-speak to know that meant, Come on, flatter me into it. "Aw, but you're so good at it," she wheedled, batting her eyelashes.

"Laying it on a bit thick, Snack-size," Spike growled, but it was his good-humored growl this time. "Lessee. I ever tell you about the time Angel and I were trapped in a submarine?"

Dawn slouched down in the cracked black leather seat and slurped at her Sprite till the ice cubes rattled, letting Spike's voice and the summer heat lull her into a half-doze.

A vampire, an ex-vengeance demon, and the Key to the Universe were driving down the highway... And that was the really annoying thing about all this, Dawn decided. She'd never, ever felt like the Key to the Universe. In the last year she'd discovered that her whole life was a magically-manufactured lie, that she was really some vast cosmic force squished into human form. And that everyone who was anyone, mystically speaking, was out to either destroy or control her. And none of it mattered. She still felt exactly like Dawn Summers, desperately ordinary fourteen-year-old girl.

Ever since she'd found out that her older sister was the Slayer, the Chosen One, the one girl in all the world who'd inherited the mystic strength and skill to fight the demons and vampires of the world, she'd gone to bed every night wishing desperately for something just as special to happen to her. And now, surprise, she was even more special than the Slayer. And Buffy was dead and Mom was dead and Dad wasn't answering Mr. Giles's calls, and every single one of those jealous memories was fake, fake, fake, and she knew exactly why Buffy had always complained that being special sucked major ass.

At least Buffy had helped people. All she was good for was to be the key to a door no one wanted to open. And that wasn't anything she wanted to think about, here in a getaway car driven by a vampire with a behavior-modification chip in his head that meant he couldn't fight humans without giving himself a migraine, chaperoned by an ex-vengeance demon who still hadn't completely recovered from the injuries she'd gotten the last time someone had tried to capture the Key.

"...so I decided I'd win Dru's black heart back, and your Will was just the witch to help me do it..."

Dawn shook herself. Spike had segued out of one tale and into another.

"...made the colossal cock-up of thinking the best way to keep the Slayer off my back was kidnapping her bratty little sis..."

"Hey!" Dawn said, indignant. "I wasn't bratty! I was... spunky!"

"Worst mistake I ever made," Spike went on, with a mock-doleful shake of his head. "‘course, I was plastered at the time. Dunno why the experience didn't put me off the drink for good." Dawn stuck her tongue out, and he continued with a grin, "What I hadn't taken into account was, the Slayer might not have been home, but your mum was, and let me tell you, I'd rather the Slayer come at me with a stake than Joyce Summers take the sharp edge of her tongue to me. Gave me a proper hiding, your mum did." He chuckled reminiscently. "If your sis hadn't barged in, all huffy and righteous, I give it even odds Joyce could have talked me into heading back to South America then and there."

"Do you ever think that maybe it didn't really happen that way?" Anya asked, intrigued. "Maybe all of that was inserted into your memory when the monks created Dawn. I mean, it's not very plausible, is it? Two years ago, Willow was barely able to make a pencil float, and it's not as if there aren't plenty of competent witches in South America. So why would you have decided she was the one to cast the love spell for you? And how likely is it that as notoriously vicious a vampire as William the Bloody would end up drinking hot chocolate and blubbering about his ex-girlfriend to his victims?"

"Didn't blub," Spike replied with great dignity. "I was expressing my grief in a restrained n' manly fashion." He shrugged and lit another cigarette, with a little smile at Dawn. "Whatever happened before Half-pint here come to us doesn't signify, does it? ‘Sides, it was bloody good hot chocolate."

"Mom was always - " Dawn stopped, hoping Spike would attribute the catch in her voice to a sudden case of Sprite poisoning. "Wait. What's that?"

Anya leaned over and pressed her nose to the cloudy glass. "What's what?"

Dawn pointed. "Up there on the shoulder, at the top of that next hill - it's moving!"

All three of them squinted out into the bright afternoon. The shadows were still crawling out from beneath the rocks and bushes where they'd hidden from the noon sun, but on the next rise limped a shadow torn free of its moorings. The scarecrow figure took a swaying step out onto the asphalt, waving its ragged arms in some arcane semaphore. Spike immediately applied foot to accelerator.

"Wait!" Dawn shrieked, as the DeSoto roared past the hitchhiker. "Stop! That's a person!"

"Right," said Spike. "An' coincidentally enough, people are exactly what we're trying to avoid at the moment."

"But he's hurt!"

"He looks hurt," Anya pointed out. "But is he? It could be a trap. If any of the Knights who were here last spring bothered to phone home to headquarters before Glory slaughtered them, the rest of the order probably has dossiers on all of us. The Lower Beings know Spike's car's not exactly inconspicuous, not to mention Spike."

It made sense - and yet... Dawn's shoulders hunched mutinously. Was she going to let this Key business turn her into a hermit? Someone afraid to risk talking to any random stranger because they might be a member of some wackazoid Key-stealing cult? She was gripped with the sudden conviction that unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life holed up behind tinfoil windows, ordering all her food and clothes over the internet, they absolutely had to stop the car. "And what if it's not a trap?" she demanded. "This is practically the middle of the desert. He could die if we leave him here."

The complete disinterest in Spike's face was... well, inhuman. "So?"

Vampires just didn't get this stuff, she reminded herself. She wished she could see Spike's eyes behind the insectile lenses of his goggles. "Look, if you do good things for people, they'll do good things for you." Honesty compelled her to add, "Sometimes."

"That so?" Spike cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Question is, then, what could that bloke possibly do for me that's worth riskin' your life if it is a trap? Not a lot."

"Maybe he's a brilliant brain surgeon who could take your chip out so - never mind, he totally isn't." Dawn played her trump card. "It's what Buffy would do."

For a second she thought it wasn't going to work. Then, "Bugger," the vampire muttered, hit the brakes, and punched the car into reverse.

They rolled to a stop about fifty feet from the hitchhiker, who'd collapsed into a desolate heap of rags on the side of the road when they'd driven past. The man, whoever he was, scrambled to his feet again and broke into a lop-sided run, gesturing wildly. The dusty rags of his clothing fluttered wildly in the breeze. He was brown-haired and nondescript, younger than Dawn had thought at first - it was his clothes, and the ragged growth of beard he was sporting, that made him look older.

Spike watched his approach in the rear-view mirror. "Right, we're stopped," he said. "Now you want to tell me who's going to hop out and talk to the violent lunatic - the fourteen-year-old girl, the bird with the broken wrist, or the bloke who bursts into flame?"

Dawn bit her lip and frowned, unease overtaking her burst of altruism. Something about the hitchhiker's face was awfully familiar. The man was banging a fist on Spike's window now, and Dawn could see his lank hair swinging over a very familiar forehead tattoo - the sigil of the Knights of Byzantium. "Turnabout, turnabout!" he croaked. "Carry the lass who's born to be king!"

Dawn's belly went cold. Behind the scruffy beard... "I know him," she whispered. "He's one of those crazy guys from the hospital. The one I tried to talk to first, last winter, back when I was trying to find out what it meant, being the Key." It had never occurred to her to wonder what had happened to all the people Glory had brainsucked - they'd just seemed to disappear after Glory died. "What do you want?" she said, voice quavering.

"Green girl, shining girl, so beautiful - mine eyes have seen the Glory," the man whispered earnestly, drawing aside his rags to reveal an ugly red scar across his belly. "And all the king's horses, and all the king's men! Et tu, Brute?" He eyed Spike, and bared yellowing teeth in a sudden mad grin. "He hath a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous."

"Too right," Spike growled. "So you'd best be on your way, and we'll be on ours."

The man slammed his fist down on the hood of the car with a frustrated howl. "My way your way wrong way wrong wrong wrong! Full fathom five my father lies, into the cradle endlessly rocking!"

"Bugger this for a game of soldiers." Spike revved the engine, and the man leaped back with a little yelp. "He's barmier than Dru."

"Can't you figure out what he means?" asked Dawn. "It seems awfully important."

Spike shook his head. "He's just rabbiting on about the ocean."

The man's face lit up. "It is an Ancient Mariner - "

"‘He stoppeth one in three,' yeh, yeh, I know," Spike interrupted. "Look, mate, if - " he stopped abruptly, eyes going wide as the crazy quilt of literary references clicked together into something that apparently made sense to him. "Oh, bloody hell."

"What? What?" Dawn shrieked. The ragged man was pounding on the door again, fear distorting his drawn face. "Spike, we have to let him in! He's been hurt, maybe someone's still after him - "

Spike was already slamming on the gas, cursing a blue streak. "Not him, you bog-ignorant chit! You! He's trying to warn us - " One look at her adamant face and he braked again. "Anya, open the fucking door! Get in, you cheese-brained berk!"

Anya scooted over, forgoing the color commentary for a grimace of distaste, and the ragged man broke into an elated grin. "Backwards, turn backwards, and a star to steer her by!" he cried.

But he was only halfway into the back seat when Dawn saw the riders crest the hill in front of them. Men on horseback, their foreheads tattooed with the same mark that their hitchhiker bore, and wearing the black surcoats of the Order of Byzantium. The ragged man saw them too, and gave a wordless wail of defeat and anguish. The mounted troop galloped through the brush on either side of the highway, flinging handfuls of glittering metal at the road as they swept past the car. The rear door slammed behind their new passenger, and the DeSoto swung around with a roar, only to lurch to an explosive halt as both front tires blew out on the scattered caltrops.

Half a dozen knights leaped from their horses and rushed the car, wrenching the passenger-side door open. Gloved hands grabbed Dawn's shoulders, dragging her out of the car. No, oh no, it's all happening again! "Let me go!" she hollered, kicking and squirming. In the back seat, Anya was thwapping anyone who came near with her bridal magazine, and the ragged man was striking out with blind, hopeless fury. Dawn sank her teeth into the nearest thumb and was rewarded with a yell of pain.

Spike shrugged his duster over his head and lunged across the front seat with a roar of his own, grabbing her ankles. He flinched as full sunlight slapped him across the face, then bared his teeth and held on. For a moment the whole bizarre tug-of-war teetered in precarious balance, one vampire against six men, and then fire licked along the backs of Spike's exposed hands. Blue flame leaped up on each separate knuckle and tendon, charring the already-scorched flesh and spreading upwards along thin, steely wrists towards the straining curve of his shoulders.

"No!" Dawn screamed. "Don't you die! Don't - "

He wasn't letting go. He wasn't letting go! Sheer panic drove Dawn's heel into Spike's face. The unexpected boot to the head broke his grip where the pain of fire hadn't, and Spike, still aflame, tumbled backwards into the dark interior of the car. She caught one last glimpse of his pale, stricken face as they hauled her away. She'd seen that look in his eyes just before he'd toppled from Glory's tower, on the night when he'd almost saved her, almost saved Buffy. It was a million times worse now.

The ragged man was already sprawled face-down and moaning in the scrub, while more knights pulled a very uncooperative Anya from the back seat. Dawn twisted wildly in the knights' grasp, trying to see if Spike had gotten back into the car safely, but all she could see was the faces of her captors, and above them, the gnarled branches of live oaks, reaching up into a blue, blue sky. The knights threw her down, pinning her spread-eagled to the ground. Rocks dug into her shoulder blades, and every thorn and twig on the West Coast was trying to work its way into her clothes.

"We have Orlando, General!" someone shouted.

"You traitorous bastard!" a second voice snarled. There was the meaty thud of boot connecting with ribcage, hard. "You almost lost us the Key!"

An older man with a grey-streaked goatee and more elaborate forehead tattoos strode up, leading his lathered horse behind him. "Hold, Dagobert! Our brother cannot be held responsible for his actions. You know this. And he has been an invaluable aid in bringing us this far." He shot Dawn a look of weary disgust, like she was some icky but necessary household task he had to complete - taking out the garbage, or cleaning the toilets. "Did you think we would simply give up?" he said. "We are Byzantium. Kill one, and we send a hundred. Kill a hundred, and we send a thousand."

"I didn't kill anyone!" Dawn spat.

"No?" Goatee's eyes were flinty. "But how many have died for your sake?" He waved at the nearest of his men. "Dagobert, Neville, search the vehicle and dispose of the demon. Brother Maynard, take charge of Orlando, if you will. And Alauno... bring the knife."

A knight with a shaggy blond mustache clapped a fist to his chest and trotted off, while two more headed back towards the DeSoto. A cleric in black robes took the arm of the man in rags - Orlando, then - and drew him to his feet. "No!" Orlando cried, as Maynard led him away, out of Dawn's line of sight. "The great work has yet to be completed! The shining ones are coming, the harriers of Heaven!" he shouted back at her. "The Key is the link, the link must be restored!"

"General Aethelred," the taller of the two knights who'd gone to inspect the car said, "The demon is gone. This is all that was left." He held out one gloved palm to display a small heap of grey ash. If Dawn's heart had faltered before, it stopped now. Curiously, she didn't scream or cry or even feel sad. It was almost like she'd stepped outside herself, leaving the fear and sorrow behind, because right now, she just couldn't deal with it. Mom, Buffy, Spike... she'd hit overload.

The knight turned his hand over, and ashes drifted down, sprinkling the front of her shirt with grey-white flecks that...

That smelled an awful lot like the contents of the DeSoto's ash tray.

She was pretty certain her heart hadn't really stopped beating, but it sure felt like it had just started again. She was the Slayer's sister, and she'd seen a lot of vampire ash in the last few years. It was gritty and grey-brown, not flaky and grey-white, and it sure as heck didn't smell like the butt-end of an unfiltered Marlboro. Something had happened in that car, something other than Spike burning to death. But even if he was still in one piece, the sun was still high, and Spike still had a chip in his head. He wasn't going to leap to the rescue, at least not right this minute.

Somewhat to her surprise, she found herself talking. "You know Glory's dead," she said. "My sister killed her. So she can't use me to open all the other worlds into this one any longer. It's all over. You don't need to be doing any of this."

General Aethelred stared down at her for a long moment. "Before we lost contact with General Gregor in the spring, he informed us that those accursed monks had made the Key flesh. You engendered in him grave doubts - he did not join the Order to slaughter children. He spoke of it as a test of his devotion." He sighed. "I regret this, girl, more than I can say. But while the Beast is indeed dead, there can be no assurance that another will not rise in her place some day, when once more the stars wheel round to the proper configuration. Another who will complete the task at which she failed. I regret that you must die. But die you must."

Alauno returned, sweating, and handed over a dagger with a short, triangular blade - similar to the athame Dawn had seen Willow and Tara use for some spells, but slimmer and more deadly-looking. Aethelred took it, clasping the leather-wrapped hilt in both hands. He looked briefly upwards as if in prayer, and -

"WAIT!"

The knights turned. "You're planning on cutting her throat, aren't you?" Anya continued, as if she were discussing whether she wanted brie or Camembert to accompany dinner. "You're forgetting something very important."

Aethelred glared for a moment. "Bring the woman here," he said at last, and a pair of knights frog-marched the rumpled but unfazed Anya through the brush to face him. "And what, pray tell, escapes us?"

"Just this," she said. "Glory's dead, yes. But before she died, she shed Dawn's blood, at the proper place and the proper time. The doors of the universe were opened. I'm sure your adepts sensed something rotten in the State of California about then."

Aethelred glanced at Brother Maynard, who nodded. "And?"

"And those same doors were closed again, by her sister's blood. Neat trick, exploiting the laws of similarity like that. But the universe, in my experience, doesn't like having neat tricks played on it." Anya tossed her hair and smiled, and it wasn't a very nice smile. "If you shed the blood of the true Key here and now, so soon after and close to the Hellmouth... well, I don't know about you, but personally? I'd rather be very far away when you try it."

"And who are you? What qualifies you to speak of such things?" Dagobert demanded.

Anya straightened, and all of a sudden her eyes were as ancient and unyielding as the stone of distant mountains. "Who am I? I'm Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkens soon-to-be-Harris, who was Anyanka of Arashmahaar, born Aud of Sjornjost. I was cursing men with suppurating boils when your Order was a gleam in some out-of-work Templar's eye, and I've prudently run away from more apocalypses than you have hairs in your chinny-chin-chin, so if I were you? I'd listen to me. And set us both free with abject apologies, and possibly chocolate."

Go Anya. Dawn held her breath. Athelred's frown screwed his forehead tattoo into grotesque inky patterns. "Is this true?" he asked Brother Maynard.

The cleric spread his hands and made a small distressed tch. "It's not an impossible scenario. We would have to make greater study of the local aether to determine if it's truly the case." He looked unhappy. "I should prefer that someone with a more thorough grounding in aetheric disturbances - Brother Edric, perhaps, or Brother Selwin - conduct any such investigation. It is not my field of expertise."

Aethelred's face was red from more than the heat, but after a moment he gave a short nod. "Very well. Maynard, send a summons to the chapterhouse and bid Edric attend us with all speed. Until then," he shot a sour look at Anya, "you are our guests." He waved. "Bring the horses. We shall return to camp."

***

After two or three hours slung across a horse's broad butt, bouncing down an almost-nonexistent trail in the brazen July sun, Dawn was ready to embrace the sitting-and-doing-nothing part of being a prisoner with open arms. Or tied-together arms. But they'd been sitting and doing nothing now for as long as they'd been riding. The knights' camp was several miles off the highway, at the bottom of a steep-walled canyon - Sespe Creek, from Dawn's brief study of the dilapidated road map in Spike's glove compartment. Now, at the height of summer, the creek was only a few inches of swift brown water purling its way between tumbled boulders and sun-bleached reeds. The sun had set over an hour ago, but the canyon's floor had been in shadow long before that.

"Hey!" she shouted, as a knight trudged past carrying an armload of silvery, sun-weathered driftwood for the fire. "How long till you hear from Brother Selwin?"

The knight shook his head and kept walking towards the creekside, where his compatriots had built a fire circle on the sandy beach, and pitched a couple of big Army surplus tents. Dawn and Anya had been tied up with a good fifty yards and a thicket of brushy willow separating them from the camp proper.

Dawn sank back against the rocks with a groan. "How are we supposed to know if they're calling this Selwin guy by cell phone or carrier pigeon?"

"Either way, we stall them as long as we can," Anya said. "We were supposed to call Giles when we reached Fresno, and when we don't, they'll know something's wrong. I imagine that Xander's on his way to rescue us right now."

Craning her neck, Dawn peered through the whippy branches. She could see the passing shadows of knights against the orange glow of the fire, tending to camp chores. Horses whickered softly in their picket lines, hooves clacking against river-stone as they shifted their weight from hip to hip, and the tantalizing odor of roasting meat filled the air. "How many of them do you think there are?"

"Not a thousand, that's for certain," Anya shifted a little in her bonds, as if her wrist was paining her. Which it probably was. "There really aren't that many left. The Order of Byzantium's been in decline for centuries, and Glory slaughtered most of the active members last spring."

"Giles and Willow were supposed to stop the Knights in Sunnydale!" That had been the whole point of them leaving town: Spike would keep her and the still-recovering Anya out of danger, while Giles and Willow cast a confusion spell which would send the knights going in circles until they wore out and gave up. Dawn gnawed on her lower lip. Willow was getting better at magic all the time, but her control still left a lot to be desired. Maybe the spell had failed. Or maybe...

"Well, yes, it's possible they're all dead in various gruesome ways," conceded Anya. "But I prefer to look on the bright side. The knights were waiting for us, so it's not likely they went to Sunnydale at all. Maybe they're just smarter than we gave them credit for. Things that have been around for centuries usually are."

"But who'd tell them that we were leaving town, or which way we were going?"

Anya shrugged. "Spike's got enemies, Dawn. It doesn't even have to be someone who cares about you being the Key. He hasn't made himself Mr. Popularity in the last year or two."

That was true enough. Dawn hunched unhappily against the boulder. There were plenty of demons in Sunnydale who thought Spike was a traitor, and who'd love to see him meet his comeuppance at the hands of a bunch of humans. And plenty of demons who'd sell out the Slayer's orphan sister just for kicks. Once Spike got back to town and found out just who those demons were, Dawn wouldn't bet on them living long and happy lives, but that was assuming Spike himself was still undusty. Which he absolutely, definitely was.

But that didn't mean they should just sit around and wait for a rescue. Especially with no way of knowing how long it would take this Selwin guy to get here. The trailhead leading into the canyon had been plastered with ROAD CLOSED signs, she didn't hold much hope of running into other hikers. Dawn braced her shoulders against the rough surface of the boulder behind her, fingers sifting through the scree of fallen rock beneath her, trying to find a sharp edge that maybe she could use to saw through the rope binding her wrist. Why not? It worked in the movies.

The crunch of boots on gravel warned them that someone was coming. Dawn suspected that Aethelred had ordered them tied up so far away from camp precisely so his men would have as little contact with them as possible, and not start thinking about what it meant that the Key was a human being. But now Alauno, the knight with the unfortunate mustache, tramped up the slope towards them, carrying two wooden spoons and bowls slopping over with rather watery chili con hamburger. "Here," he said, "General's orders. As long as you're here, we're not going to starve you."

"How thoughtful. Are we just supposed to plunge our faces in?" Anya inquired.

Alauno set the bowls down on the flat of a nearby rock. "That, or I'll untie your hands," he said, "but only one at a time. Don't try anything. I'll be watching."

"Go ahead," Dawn said, nodding at Anya.

"So," Anya said brightly, accepting the bowl as if it were only her proper due, "Are you a full-time knight? Or is this only a weekend thing? Frankly, there doesn't seem to be much room for advancement." She surveyed his forehead critically. "One can only get so many tattoos."

Alauno looked a little embarrassed - probably, Dawn thought, he was an accountant in Modesto or something, when he wasn't trying to shiv fourteen-year-old girls for the greater good. She kept feeling around for the perfect rock while Anya distracted the knight, though she wasn't sure what they'd do if they did escape. She didn't like the idea of wandering around in the middle of nowhere, and she didn't trust her ability to find her way back to the highway in the dark. Maybe Anya knew about wilderness survival. But Anya had spent most of her life as a vengeance demon who could teleport out of anywhere she didn't like - why would she need to know about wilderness survival? She could see them wandering around till the desert sun made them as crazy as Orlando. "How is he?" she asked abruptly. "The crazy guy, I mean."

Alauno snorted. He glanced over at the fire, where Orlando was sitting, rocking back and forth, curled into a hard knot of arms and legs. "No better or worse than he's been for the last three months. He babbles of devils and angels dancing in the mouth of Hell, and a green light that devours them all. Brother Maynard says he is unlikely to recover his wits, but we care for our own."

"Yeah, well, he didn't seem too happy to see you this afternoon," Dawn muttered.

That got her a sharp look. "He knows nothing of what he does. His mind was stolen by the Beast. We found him amongst the bodies of our fallen brothers, one breath away from joining them." The knight collected Anya's bowl and spoon, and re-tied her hands. "But God works his will even in tragedy, for only madmen and wizards can see the Key is it truly is, and it was Orlando who led us to you."

"Yippee." Dawn shook her head at the bowl Alauno offered her, suddenly queasy. Everyone always forgot she'd seen all that happening - seen Glory rip apart grown men as if they were stuffed toys, as the Knights of Byzantium had charged to the attack, an attack that wasn't aimed at Glory, but at her. Who did you cheer for, when something like that happened? "Who stabbed him?"

"The Beast," Alauno replied impatiently. He held out the bowl. "Who else? Do you want this, or not?"

Dawn clasped the rock she'd just found a little tighter and gave a sulky shrug. "Why bother to eat when you're going to kill me?"

"Suit yourself," the knight said, and started back towards the camp.

Dawn waited till Alauno was out of earshot. "Got one," she whispered. "Can you scootch over?"

Anya wriggled round so they were sitting back to back, and Dawn went to work. It was immediately apparent that cutting a rope with a sharp rock, when you couldn't see either the rope or the rock, was a heck of a lot harder than it looked in the movies. "Ow!" Anya hissed, as Dawn's hold slipped for the third or fourth time.

Dawn grit her teeth. Locks of yucky, sweaty hair kept falling in her eyes and making them sting, and chaff from the dry reeds was getting down the neck of her t-shirt and itching like crazy. "Stop making so much noise!"

"Then stop slitting my wrists!"

There was a loud clatter. "Rats!"

"What?"

"I dropped the rock." Dawn leaned sideways and strained her fingers. It had to be right back there someplace... there it was! "When we get loose, we have to go back and find Spike."

"I think Spike's gone," Anya whispered back with unnecessary vehemence.

"No! That wasn't vampire dust!"

Anya went quiet. After a moment she said, "I didn't say it was." When Dawn remained stubbornly silent, she added, "It's been hours since the sun set."

The cool night breeze felt even cooler all of a sudden. Dawn blinked back tears - stupid to cry, when Spike wasn't dust. But when she looked at it logically... against a supernatural opponent, Spike was their first line of defense, but against a human opponent, he was all but helpless. At best, the vampire had been badly burned today. And what with falling off Glory's tower and not feeding right, he wasn't in very good shape to begin with.

Let's face it, Spike wouldn't be in this mess at all if it wasn't for his promise to her sister. He'd be back in Sunnydale, kicking back with a beer and a game of kitten poker. Or gone from Sunnydale altogether. And Buffy was dead. How long could she reasonably expect Spike to stick around? He had a life, after all. Or an unlife. Whatever.

Her rock was cutting into her palm harder than it was cutting into the rope. Dawn squeezed her eyes shut against the stupidness of tears and sawed harder.

"Here!" The bark of Alauno's voice made her heart race. "What are you two - "

It was then that they heard the noise - a chilling scream that echoed off the canyon walls, dying away into a deep-throated, coughing snarl. The horses burst into shrill whinnies of fear, plunging and kicking against their tethers, and knights dashed to calm them. Alauno stopped dead and stared upwards. Overhead long pale ridges of limestone stretched their bony fingers up the cliffs, fringed with trees like ragged black lace against the night sky. Nothing that human eyes could see moved there. Another scream rang out.

"What was that?" someone called out, a mote of panic in their voice.

"Cougar," Dagobert snapped. He emerged from one of the tents carrying a very un-medieval-looking shotgun. "They come down out of the mountains when there's a drought. Probably after the horses." He glanced over at the General, who gave a curt nod. "Ewald, Antonin! Take your squads and circle the camp - Ewald, you go upstream, and Antonin, you go down. Make a lot of noise! You two, with me!" Dagobert waved to Alauno and another knight, and Alauno trotted off, as another blood-curdling scream ripped the night air.

"Hey!" Anya yelled. "What about us?"

If anyone heard, no one answered. Half the knights split into two groups and fanned out into the darkness, shouting and beating the brush along the riverbank. The rest of them gathered closer to the fire, shooting uneasy looks out into the night. Dawn had the sick feeling that if a cougar ate them, Athelred would consider his problem well-solved.

"Maybe we can get closer to the fire," she said. "If we can kind of hop on our knees..."

Anya jerked her chin at the jagged expanse of rocks and scrubby brush between them and the beach, and then at her own light summery skirt and blouse. "Or we could stay here. I'm not dressed for excruciating pain."

A low, warning growl sounded from the brush, and Dawn froze. Ever so slowly, she turned her head to the side. The willow-withies parted with a dry rustle, revealing a pair of tawny, predatory eyes, enormous pupils flashing red in the firelight. That was impossible. There was no way a cougar could have gotten from the top of the canyon to the bottom so quickly. Unless... there were two cougars?

Dawn swallowed hard, in an attempt to foil her stomach's plan for crawling up her throat and leaping for safety on its own. What were you supposed to do if a cougar was after you? Don't run, make a lot of noise - or was that bears? With her hands tied, she couldn't even throw rocks. Without thinking, she dug the toes of her sneakers into the stony rubble, and kicked hard, flinging half a dozen small stones wildly into the air. "Take that, Snagglepuss!"

"FUCK!"

The eyes levitated straight up, and Spike surged out of the underbrush, rubbing his bruised forehead. "Second time today you've tried to brain me, Bit," he grumbled. "A bloke could start to take it personal."

"Spike!" Dawn cried, in a strangled sort of shriek, bouncing up and falling back on her ass as she lost her balance. Part of her noticed that he was wearing his demon face for the first time in... she couldn't remember how long, but somehow it didn't seem to matter much. "You're alive!" Not that she'd doubted it for a minute.

"Manner of speaking," Spike said, dropping to one knee. "Now hush." His white-blond hair was singed to half an inch of frizzle. There were still angry red burn marks across his face and all along the backs of his hands where his wrists poked out of the sleeves of his duster. He whipped a big-ass knife out of one boot, making short work of the ropes around her wrists and ankles, and disposed of Anya's bonds just as swiftly. With a quick glance down at the knights' camp, he beckoned the two of them to follow.

Spike led them upstream, slipped noiselessly along a meandering, overgrown path that wound through the underbrush smack up against the canyon wall. The vampire stopped every few yards to jitter impatiently while Dawn and Anya picked their cautious way after him. The moon was just past full, and only now rising over the canyon walls. Spike halted in a grove of cottonwood and white alder, level with the spot where the horses were tethered. He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. "Guard just around the bend," he whispered. "But we're all right here for a bit - oomf!"

Dawn flung herself at him, burying her face against his neck, reveling in the smell of leather and tobacco and burned, scared, filthy vampire. Spike caught her up in a fierce, awkward hug - his thin frame was shaking, and he held her like a man who'd feared the loss of something precious. She could feel his chest expand as he breathed her scent in, and she hoped she smelled less a little less gross than he did at the moment. "How did you - ?"

"Like the bit with the ashes? Added a touch of verisimilitude, I thought." Spike bared his fangs in an exceptionally pleased-with-himself grin. "Not the first time I've been cornered by an angry mob in broad daylight, pet. Back seat of the car comes loose. I nip into the back, pull it out, crawl through into the boot, and pull it back in place after me, all at vamp speed. Do it right, an' it looks like I've vanished, 'specially if they're distracted. Boot's locked and I've got the key, so 'nless they've got a crowbar, I just lie doggo till dark." He gave an ostentatious sniff. "Easiest job of tracking I've had in the last half-century - just follow the horseshit."

"I knew you were alive," she half-sobbed. "I just thought - "

Spike gave her a shake, hard enough to bring on a chip-flinch, and hugged her harder. "Don't," he snarled. "Like I'd leave you." He took a deep breath and turned to Anya. "Right, then. I'm going to go back out there, make a ruckus, an' lead the rest of them off. While I've got them chasing me," he pressed the knife into Dawn's hands, "cut as many of the horses loose as you can. An' then scarper, the both of you, back the way you came. I'll keep 'em hopping - we get lucky, they'll break their sodding legs in the dark."

"Wait!" Dawn said. "What about you?"

Spike shook his head impatiently. "Never mind me. You two get the hell out of Dodge. I'll manage."

"No, you won't," said Anya. "It's going to take us hours to walk out of here in the dark, if we don't want to break our own legs. And I think I've broken quite enough bones this year, thank you. You'll have to lead them around till dawn if you want us to get away. How do you expect to get back to the car?"

His silence told Dawn all she needed to know. "Don't you dare tell me you're not going to leave me and then pull something like this!" she said in a furious whisper.

Spike closed his eyes, game face melting back into its usual human contours. When he opened them, they were blue again, but no less pained. "Look," he said, low and intense. "I know what you must think of me, Bit. Can't blame you, can I? If I hadn't buggered it up on that tower - " His voice didn't break, but there were definitely fracture lines. "If I'd done what I promised then... but I won't bollocks it up tonight. I won't."

He couldn't be serious. Could he? "You didn't - "

"I did!" he snarled. "William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers - what a fucking joke! Can't even put an old man down! Wasn't for me, you'd have been safe as houses, and your sis'd be alive, and - "

Dawn pulled back and gaped at him. How could he be so stupid? "Doc wasn't an old man! He was some kind of uber-demon, with magic and stuff! And Glory had just, like, re-arranged your guts!" Dawn was aware that her voice was rising, and she didn't care. "It wasn't your fault! You did everything you could! If it's anybody's fault Buffy's dead, it's mine - I knew I should have jumped, I knew, it should have been me, and I was just too scared and then she - she - " She was shaking as hard as Spike was, face smashed into his shoulder, and if she started crying now, she'd never stop. "I thought you hated me," she snuffled.

And it was weird, how Spike's breath was coming in harsh hiccupy jerks when he didn't need to breathe at all, except to talk and smoke and track by scent and... boy, that thing about vampires not needing to breathe was really stupid when you thought about it. "Could no more hate you, sweet bit, than - " he broke off, rough-voiced. "Thought you couldn't think very kindly of me. Been a piss-poor... whatever I am, and no mistake." He was the one to pull back this time, staring intently into her eyes. One thumb smoothed the tangled hair back from her tear-streaked face. "Never think I'd trade you, Dawn. Never. Even for her."

There could have been a lot more hugging, in Dawn's opinion, but Anya cleared her throat loudly. "All extremely touching," she said, "but aren't we supposed to be escaping?"

Spike swiped a hand across his nose and shook himself. "Right."

"Some way that doesn't end up with you going extra-crispy," Dawn added. Spike pulled a face, but didn't argue. "You can see in the dark. Can't you just sneak us past the guards?"

"Bank's too narrow, 'nless I draw him off," Spike said promptly, as if any plan which didn't involve a tragic, doomed last stand was distinctly second-rate. "Still wouldn't mind stampeding the horses, though. Aethelred the All-Too-Ready is gonna notice you're gone soon, if we don't give 'em all something to occupy their time."

"At least until the next wave of them shows up," Anya said with a sigh. She pursed her lips. "It's all very aggravating, knowing that whatever we do now, we're just going to have to do the whole thing all over again in a month." She made a shooing motion. "Well? Go chase your horsies. We'll wait here."

But Spike didn't move. Dawn strained to see his face in the darkness. "Spike?"

"She's right. Long as you're the Key, this is gonna keep happening." His fist balled on his knee. "And I can't bloody fight them. Running away only takes you so far."

"Well, yeah." Dawn planted her fists on her hips. "But it's not like I'm going to magically stop being the Key, so - "

"P'raps not," Spike interrupted. "But do they know that?"

Anya blinked. Dawn scratched her nose, where a bramble had caught her across the face on the crawl away from camp. "Um... yes? Now Glory's dead, the Knights of Byzantium are kinda the Key experts, aren't they? I mean, they've been hunting for it - me - for, like, centuries, right?"

"Spike's got a point," said Anya. "No one ever expected the monks to make the Key human, did they? That was thinking outside the box. If I could convince them that hurting you might destroy the universe, maybe we could convince them that you're an ex-Key."

"I already tried that," Dawn pointed out. "But the General wasn't listening."

"Not used up, then," Spike said slowly. He frowned, stroking his chin. "But...spoilt, maybe? Seems to me I recall Glory saying somewhat about the Key being pure - 's why she wouldn't believe it was me, yeh? Vampires aren't pure. Farthest thing from it. So..."

"If we can convince them that Dawn's not pure, they'll go away and leave us alone." Anya finished up with a decisive nod. "The only problem is, exactly what did Glory mean by 'pure?' As thaumaturgic terms go, that one's not terribly precise. It could mean spiritual innocence, or some form of ritual purity we don't know the parameters of - "

"I knew I should have said yes when Kenny Buckley asked me to make out under the bleachers," Dawn muttered. Spike growled rather alarmingly.

"I wouldn't worry about that one," Anya continued. "Magicians are depressingly sexist, but magic isn't. A disembodied energy field which can't have sex to begin with isn't likely to have virginity as a condition for use."

"Then why're we talking about it?" snapped Spike. "What kind of purity are we looking at, then?"

Anya arranged her skirts daintily and sat down on the nearest boulder, hugging her knees. "Whatever the original rituals for using the Key were, they were transliterated into blood magic when Dawn became human. I mean, think about it, it wouldn't do much good to slice up a disembodied mystical energy field with a sword, would it? Disembodied energy fields don't bleed. Not often, anyway, and when they do it's usually a sign that something's gone horribly wrong - "

"Point," Spike cut her off. "Get to it."

"Whatever we do, it's got to involve Dawn's blood." At Spike's low growl and Dawn's horrified look, she added hastily, "But it doesn't have to involve cutting, necessarily. Mystical energy fields don't change, unless someone does a ritual to manipulate them. But human bodies change all the time, all by themselves." She rubbed her splinted wrist and grimaced. "As I keep finding out. So we just need to figure out what kind of change would make Dawn impure." She considered for a minute. "Maybe we can convince them you have leukemia!"

It was hard to tell at this distance, but it looked like the knights were starting to straggle back into camp. Dawn tiptoed to the edge of the spinney and parted the branches to look downstream. A couple of horses stamped and squealed as the breeze picked up - Spike's scent was apparently as unsettling as a real cougar's. Any minute now, someone was going to come and check on the horses, or on her and Anya, and then... "What about, um, that time of month? All that bull about becoming a woman has to be good for something."

"That would be perfect!" enthused Anya. "Blood loss is very symbolic."

Dawn thought back. "No, rats, I got my first period back in my fake memories."

Spike made a pained noise. Guys were so squeamish about the weirdest stuff. "Can we please stop talking about blood?" His stomach rumbled audibly. Dawn wondered how long it had been since he'd fed.

"You said yourself, it's always about - oh!" Anya clapped her hand to her mouth. "Oh! I've got it!"- " At Dawn and Spike's blank looks, "Don't you see? Spike's a vampire - impure by definition. He drinks blood! If he drinks Dawn's blood - "

"No! Spike was up in a flash, fangs bared, fists clenched. "Not happening. Ever! Forget it!" There was such passion in his voice, such towering fury in the set of his shoulders, that both she and Anya cringed, forgetting for a moment that this vampire was chipped, neutered, harmless. In another moment he'd deflated. He tapped the side of his head with a finger. "Can't bite, anyway, remember?"

"Spike, I - I wouldn't mind." The catch in her voice couldn't decide if it were fear or anticipation, and there was a weird, hot, squirmy feeling in her belly. "Angel... Angel bit Buffy that once. If I let you bite me, maybe the chip wouldn't..."

Spike's eyes were on her, their blue leached to pale steely grey in the darkness. "An' you think I've got a death wish? You think this is something out of your bloody romance novels, Bit? For a vamp, a bite's about the kill. Always. Why d'you think Angel left town? Wasn't just because he couldn't keep his dick in his trousers. He bit your sis, yeh, and he liked it. Not a chance in sodding hell I'll let that happen." He made a slicing motion with one hand. "Think of something else."

A shout from the camp interrupted them. "Hoy! The prisoners are missing!"

There was an immediate uproar, knights running and shouting for the patrols to pull back. "There's no time for anything else!" Anya snapped, and for a minute you could forget she was stripped of her powers, neutered, harmless. "They're coming!"

Maybe it was because she'd done it once before that it was so easy. The monks might have made her out of Buffy, but Dawn didn't have any Slayer super-healing at her command - you could still see the scars on her wrist, thin and white, from where she'd cut herself last winter, when she'd first found out she was the Key. And here she had Spike's big-ass hunting knife in her hand, the lovingly-honed blade only a little dulled from sawing through the ropes. It was incredibly simple to reverse her grip and set the knife-tip (steely-hard, like Spike's eyes) to her own wrist, indenting soft flesh. Even simpler to drive the point in, and cut.

"Dawn! No!" There was real horror in Spike's voice - cool, she'd horrified a vampire - and his hard cold fingers were around her wrist in a flash.

"Don't you get it? They're not stupid! It's got to be real!" Dawn shoved the knife, its blade streaked with her blood, in his face. "Eat it, Spike! Now! That really, really hurt, and I don't want to waste it!"

Spike was too stunned to argue. He dropped her wrist as if it were red-hot, and stared, mesmerized by the sight of his own hand, black with her blood. Almost of its own volition his tongue flicked out, quick as a snake's, to taste, and then he was licking his fingers clean with a moan he'd probably think was really embarrassing if he were in any condition to notice. A second later he'd snatched the knife from her hand, and the thought crossed Dawn's mind that it might have been a bad idea to slice open a vein right in front of a half-starved vampire no matter what else was going on.

"There they are! I hear voices!" a knight shouted, and immediately after came the sound of booted feet crashing towards them across the uneven ground. Dawn clutched her throbbing wrist tight and staggered to her feet, hoping she hadn't cut anything vital.

"Do you want to bite me now?" she demanded, challenging.

TBC...