Fic: The Soul Lies Down (8/?) - part 2
Title: The Soul Lies Down (8/?) - part 2
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~13,500 this chapter (~41,500 total)
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death.(A sequel/companion to angearia's Fin Amour).
Notes: Second half of Chapter 8. Concrit is welcome.
*
It was late when they got back to the empty house, Dawn a warm, slack weight on her shoulder, but Buffy wasn’t tired. Maybe it was the single glass of champagne she’d indulged in leaving her feeling so buzzed, or her happiness for her friends. Or maybe it was that she could still feel the imprint of Spike’s body pressed against hers, trapped between that wall and a hard place. A very, very hard place.
Her skin prickled as a throb of desire went through her, and she hastened to put Dawn to bed so they could… what? She could hear Spike moving around downstairs, clattering about in the kitchen, and… what? What would happen if she went back down now, feeling like this? It was in her nature to be impetuous - following her heart, she’d always called it, and considered it a good, a positive thing - but this was so difficult. Why hadn’t anyone prepared her for how difficult this was?
She went to her bedroom instead, closed and locked the door behind her, and shed her clothes. Her reflection caught the corner of her eye and she turned fully to look at herself, naked, vulnerable. Spike could be standing right behind her now and all she’d see would be this, a thought that was incredibly thrilling. Slowly, sensually, as though putting on a show, she reached up and began to take down her hair, and by the time she was done she was so turned on that there was nothing else to do but slide into bed.
She’d never allowed herself this, the slow, teasing touches beneath crisp sheets as her thoughts lingered on him. Oh she had needs, and she had almost unconsciously been thinking of him for quite some time now, but giving herself permission? Indulging, even? That was new territory.
It was so easy to imagine. Scarily so. A fight taking a turn for the passionate, violence driven from fists and feet to hips and mouths, pushing up against the training room wall, pinning down against the floor. Fuck you through the floor, he’d said, and she gasped at the wave of lust that went through her. But as she cupped her breasts, rolling aching nipples between her fingers, that wasn’t the kind of fantasy she felt like just now.
Spike could be… he could be so tender sometimes. She wanted to play with that sweetness now, imagine his slow worship of her body, as he had kissed her face earlier, a trail of kisses from neck to breast to belly to… oh… she slid her middle finger between her pussy lips, already wet with anticipation. Her finger felt cool against the heat from her core, as his would feel, and wow, yeah, that’d be nice pushed up inside her. He’d hook her legs over his shoulders and pump her slowly with his forefinger while nipping her lower belly and hip with blunt teeth. She'd arch up into him, begging for contact, but he’d just push her firmly back down, murmur something about how beautiful she was that would make her melt, get her completely off her guard, and then, oh yeah, then he’d swipe his tongue across her clit, achingly slowly.
Buffy shuddered as her finger traced the same path as Spike’s imaginary tongue, again and again until the sensation began to gather, drawing slowly in from the tips of her toes and the points of her nipples, to coalesce about her sex. She saw them in her mind’s eye, tanned skin and pale, sweating, sliding sinuous and slow, a different kind of dance altogether. He would sense as she neared her peak, move up her body and rub the head of his erection against her clit as she pawed at his sculpted chest with her hands, smooth cool skin reverberating with that sexy dark chuckle. Then he’d lower himself down, arms straining, so that the look in his eyes drowned her as he fucked into her excruciatingly slowly.
Suddenly she was rocketing towards orgasm, unable to hold off for the end of the fantasy, whatever it would be, clenching and gasping and coming and coming.
Afterwards, she lay in her bed, bedclothes clinging to her skin, stroking herself softly through the aftershocks and looking inside for some reaction - horror, disgust, something. That didn’t come, though. There was fear, yes, because the path her heart was leading her down was fraught with risk. But there was that encompassing sense of fondness, too, of excitement and warmth and comfort, and wanting to just be with him.
Dragging herself up, she headed for the shower in the hope that it would be sufficient to mask her satisfaction from Spike’s freaky senses. Nearly an hour later, curled up beside him on the couch, blow-dried and in her robe, she felt him give her one long, considering look, which she refused to meet but couldn’t help smiling slightly in response to, before settling back and appearing engrossed in the black and white horror flick once more. A few minutes later, he slumped deeper into the cushions and nonchalantly draped his arm across her shoulders - the smile that had been tugging at the corners of Buffy’s mouth ever since she’d come down deepened, and she tucked her head against his shoulder, arm across his chest and legs curled up under her, listening to the low rumbling contentment in his chest that even he didn’t seem aware of.
Buffy had watched a documentary with her mom once about some famous bridge in Europe somewhere and how it had been built. Mom loved that stuff with her art-collector’s eye for architecture, but Buffy, doing her homework on her lap, hadn’t been all that interested. Except for the part, that one sequence she remembered vividly, where they’d shown the full thing speeded up and it was pretty cool, how the two sides of the bridge seemed to grow out of the walls of the gorge, straining towards one another until the last piece was carefully lowered into place. She felt like that now, with Spike - reaching towards him, towards that something that hovered so precariously over the once-unassailable chasm between them. And he had already stretched so far, changed so much. She suspected the rest was up to her, and it was big and scary and, it hit her, she wasn’t ready.
But she would be. That was new, but certain. It was just a matter of time and her curse was impulsiveness but she could take things slow if she put her mind to it, she could.
“Spike?” she asked, not raising her head. “You wanna, like, go to the movies sometime?” She felt the pressure of his eyes on the top of her head, and swallowed. “Maybe before patrol one night?”
“Sure, Slayer,” he said. “I’ll even buy you a soda-pop and let you squeeze my hand at the scary parts.”
He was mocking her; she poked him in the ribs.
“I’m serious. And that actually sounds nice.” Not that anything in a movie could scare her these days, but Spike had nice hands. She’d be pretty happy to get more familiar with them.
He shifted slightly against her, not enough to dislodge her, just enough to be revealing. Always talking with his body, that was Spike, and right now he was telling her all about his surprise and his pleasure.
“You mean, a date.”
Buffy smirked. “A date? Please. You’re completely off your - your bird.”
“Oi! Not nice to make fun.” But he was almost laughing with outrage, and Buffy knew she’d won this round. As if there’d ever really been any question.
“So Friday night, then. You can pick me up at eight.”
“Pick you up? What do you expect me to do, woman? Go out at five to and drive around the block?”
Buffy sat back and just gave him the look of a woman who would have things her way. “And try to wear something nice, okay? Something that doesn’t scream barely-reformed serial killer. My mom’s got an axe and she knows how to use it.”
*
“Axe, axe, goddamnit…”
Buffy dug roughly through her weapons chest in the living room, pulling out a handful of stakes and her crossbow as she went.
“Where’s my axe?” Distantly she heard her own voice calm and low.
“Spike must have taken it.” Xander, standing just behind, was tense as a bow-string.
“Shit.” She gripped the sides of the wooden chest until it creaked. “How long did you say?” There was her sword at the bottom. That would have to do.
“I called the Magic Box about thirty minutes ago,” her mom said. “I don’t know how long before that - it can’t have been more than a couple of minutes, I was just getting the laundry from the dryer. And, uh, Spike came back - I don’t know, ten minutes later?” She was sitting on the sofa, ashen-faced and twisting her hands together.
“He ran straight here from the shop,” Xander added. “You know how fast he is. Guess he came to load up.” He pulled a hand down his face. “His car’s gone.”
“He was in and out in a flash. All I got was that he was going to try to track them somehow. Buffy, I’m so sorry.”
“Mom, just-” Buffy set her jaw, then took a sharp, stabbing breath at the feel of Xander’s hand on her shoulder, warmth in counterpoint to the shivering of her muscles. “Did you see anything? Anything at all? Hear anything?”
“No, nothing. She was here, in her play pen, and then she was just - gone. I’m so-”
Buffy held up a hand. “Xander, my bag.”
They loaded up quickly.
“I don’t get it,” Xander said in a low voice as they hurried for his car. “Willow’s protection spell should have repelled any demons. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time one of her spells went kablooey, but we know this one works. The only thing that managed to get through it last time was… oh, god. You don’t think she could’ve-”
“It’s not Glory,” Buffy said with dark finality. “But even if it was, doesn’t matter. We’ll get Dawn back, and then we’ll make whoever took her pay.”
It had been such a nice day, too, sunny and pleasantly warm. Buffy had gone to her morning classes and spent a couple hours in the library before heading into town to treat herself to a manicure for her date that night. She’d thought Spike was home with Dawn, but apparently he’d been badgering the newlyweds at the shop over… something. Something trivial. Flowers, had Xander said? She looked at her nails now, shimmering baby pink, and hated the sight of them.
Willow was waiting for them on the curb outside her building, a bulky leather satchel in tow.
“Hey,” she said, sliding into the back, “We did the location spell, here’s the address.” She passed a slip of paper forward to Xander. “Tara’s gone to your house to stay with your mom, Buffy. Just in case, you know.”
“Okay, good. Will, please tell me that bag’s full of something dangerous.”
“Everything I could think of.” She held it tightly against her side as Xander raced back out onto the interstate. “Any idea what the big bad is?”
“No, but-”
“Um, Buffy?” Xander passed her the slip of paper. “You recognize this?”
She stared at the address.
“No. No way. Those little-”
“What? Who?” Willow craned forward.
“The wannabe evil nerd guys, remember? Warren, Jonathan and the other one. Spike and I tracked them down to their lair a few weeks back.”
Some lair. They’d been hiding out in Warren’s mom’s basement. She and Spike had roughed them up a bit before letting them run off, suitably scared and out of pocket the spoils of one bank robbery and one jewelry heist. She remembered turning to Spike and telling him he’d done good, pulling his punches like that. How it was an art people didn’t appreciate. She even remembered how he’d sulked about not getting to break any bones.
“Oh,” Willow said. “Humans. My, my spell, I didn’t...”
Comprehension dawned.
The slip of paper crumpled in Buffy’s fist. She was choking on her fury.
“They are so unbelievably dead.”
Tires squealed as Xander wrenched them from the off-ramp onto a residential street.
“Uh, Buff?” he said quietly. “Humans are, well, human. We don’t kill humans.”
Between her feet she unzipped the sports bag and drew out her sword, unsheathing it as they drew up to the curb, the blade glinting orange in the street lights.
There was Spike’s car up ahead. He’d been waxing it in the shade that morning when she’d left for school. Now it shone ominously, black as onyx, and sharp: how she felt.
How she was.
Take my daughter? My daughter?
Her bones juddered with the need for violent motion.
“Watch me,” she said, and jumped out before the car had fully come to a stop.
*
Inside the house was dark but she had no patience for theatrics. Flipping on the lights as she went, Buffy shouted for Spike, and the silence only made her blood rise higher.
“Xander, check upstairs then follow us. Willow, with me.”
“Where are you going?”
“The basement.” Movement was the only thing keeping the scream in. She talked over her shoulder through gritted teeth. “There are probably gonna be booby traps. Lasers, Klingons, I don’t know.”
“I’ve got a spell,” Willow said. Her bag clinked. “Nephthys, goddess of night, in peril descend with us, in darkness blanket us…”
The stairs creaked and her hackles rose as the spell took hold, but the basement, too, was empty.
“Fiat lux!”
They saw it at the same time in the soft spell-light. A hole in the floor. It reminded her of Spike’s crypt, and that’s how she knew. “They’ve dug down into the sewers.”
*
There were buzz saws coming out of the sewer walls. It was a thing. Willow’s spell dealt with them.
Xander caught up just as they came across the woman. She stood barring their way down the tunnel, tall and beyond incongruous in some travesty of a maid’s outfit.
“Move, or I bring the hurt,” Buffy warned. “One chance.”
“I can’t let you hurt my masters.”
“Wait, is she-?”
“A robot.”
Buffy squinted. “No, I know you.” Silence. She turned to the others. “I know her. Katie or Catherine or something. Warren’s ex.”
“She’s real?” Xander stepped closer. Waved his hand in front of her blank eyes. “What in the realm of Midgard did they do to her?”
Sound of Willow’s feet, shuffling side to side. “Something’s not right here. She looks-”
Noticing the way the woman’s right hand was hidden behind her back like she was concealing a-
Xander extending a finger to poke her in the-
“No, don’t! I think she’s got a-”
“Xander watch ou-”
Thunder.
The woman blinked calmly. “I can’t let you hurt my masters.”
Oh, god.
There was so much blood.
*
Keep it together, Summers. Breathe. Breathe.
Focus.
Move.
*
The woman went down like a marionette with the blast from Willow’s magic, gun a melted twist of metal embedded in the opposite wall. Still breathing, she noted distantly. Buffy had caught Xander as he went back and he was breathing too, staring up at her with glassy eyes. More fighting than breathing. Fighting to breathe.
Blood seeped from his shoulder with every heave of his chest.
“Willow. Snap out of it! You have to- I need you to-”
The black drained from Willow’s eyes as she fell to his side. “Xander, oh god. You’re okay, you’ll be okay. Where’s my bag?” She scrabbled for it, upending its contents. “I can- I can-”
“Do it,” Buffy said. “Willow. I have to go.”
“Take this,” she said, and flung a ball of light down the tunnel. Her eyes were black once more.
*
“Wait, wait, please,” the boy moaned. Beneath the blood and swelling, she saw that it was Jonathan. Her hands bunched in his shirt. “I’ll tell you - I never wanted - just please don’t kill me.” He started weeping. “I think Andrew’s dead. I think he killed him.”
“Where is she.”
“There’s a fork in the sewers. Go left and it opens into natural caverns. They’re - they went - there’s a magic circle, you’ll see it.”
She only realized she’d cracked his head against the wall when he sagged, dead weight.
She regretted it a minute later, coming out into not just one cavern but a network. Squeezing her eyes shut, she made herself decide. Focus. Move.
Run.
One, two, three caverns empty. The fourth held furniture, chairs, a desk, overturned as though in a struggle or flight. The fifth was dark, and Buffy had to wait for the spell-light to catch up. As it did, objects came clear. A velvet robe, torn and discarded. Candles knocked to the floor. A spray of blood. A long thigh bone.
A circle of sand.
“Dawn.”
Her heart stopped. Pain blossomed in her chest. There was the baby, naked.
Whimpering: alive.
“Oh, Dawnie. Oh, baby.”
She was too rough, snatching her up. She knew. She couldn’t help it. She was crying, messy, heaving bursts, ripping at the buttons of her blouse to get Dawn next to her skin. The baby was so limp, too weak to cry, and cold, but seemingly uninjured. On her knees, Buffy doubled over, holding Dawn too tightly and shuddering, undone.
The baby’s head nudging feebly at her breast brought her back to herself. Pulling her bra down she fed her right there, in the cave, in the half-light, crouched over in the wreckage, and felt her life flow into Dawn. Her love flow into Dawn. And remembered how she was named, and why, and for what: the action of love, and hope of the new day.
Sunrise after the darkest night; the everyday miracle of living.
A scream reverberated through the tunnels and caves, long, inhuman. Buffy straightened sharply. She’d seen Jonathan, and he’d said Andrew was dead. Where was Warren?
The scream went on and on.
“Spike,” she breathed.
*
The sight, when she came upon it, was so awful it staggered her. Warren - and it must be him, though only by a process of elimination - was chained and hanging from the ceiling of a small cave towards the back of the network (her stomach turned at the thought of what those manacles had been installed for, her mind’s eye flashing to the dead-eyed girl in the hokey maid’s dress). He was ruined. Just, ruined. Broken and bleeding, swollen, burned. The smell was incredible.
Behind him, a demon paced, slow strides of lithe, unhurried malice. His amber eyes seemed to glow in the low light as he casually stubbed his cigarette out on Warren’s naked back, and when he glanced up at her, there was a moment of absolute unfamiliarity in which she was certain he didn’t know her.
“Spike?” she whispered. He inhaled sharply and cocked his head, the gesture unnervingly inhuman with his bumpies up. His eyes still seemed elsewhere but something gave in the harsh ridges of his vamp face and he took a step towards her.
And Buffy stepped back, arms tightening on the baby. With the tortured man hanging right there, dripping blood and reeking of death, it was pure instinct. It was enough to shock him back to his human form.
“Dawn, is she-”
He had blood on his hands, on his face. She held herself rigid to keep from vomiting.
“She’s fine.” Buffy looked at him, then the horror he’d made of Warren’s flesh, then at him again. “She’s fine, Spike,” she repeated, voice low and level and barely even shaking. “We got to her in time. She’s just exhausted. But Xander’s been shot and there’s a couple others need the hospital, so let’s go now, okay? Let’s just go home now and look after our daughter.”
His eyes fell to Dawn and he laughed, a scorched, vicious sound that made her reel inside.
“You want to save him, don’t you?” He thumped Warren’s distended shoulder in a parody of a friendly slap, making him bark out another scream. All her sinews tightened in response, all her instincts clamoring.
“What’s more important here?” she asked, clinging to her reasonable tone for grim death. “Getting your child home safe, or… or that.”
“Oh right, because the house was so safe this evening.”
“Spike-”
“Did you know it was him sent the M’Fashnik after her? Him and his chums. Yeah, they did a real sweet little summoning spell while we were out playing blind man’s bluff with the First.”
“What?” It was hard to draw breath.
“Guess ancient evil also likes to watch, and isn’t too fussy about the truly pathetic quality of minions on offer.” He leered obscenely at Warren. “Me, I’ve always been more of a hands-on kind of demon.”
He reached up, yanking Warren’s head back by the hair, and the bloated mouth let out a shattered moan.
“Don’t-”
“Don’t what? Don’t what, Buffy?” Spike yelled, eyes flashing like a furnace, burning as hot now as he had previously run cold. “Don’t hurt him? Don’t kill him? Why the bloody hell not?” He’d let Warren go and was in her face again, but this time she didn’t flinch. “Damn it all, she’s my daughter too. She’s my daughter. And he’s tried to take her away from me twice. I leave him be now and he might very well try again, so you tell me, how am I supposed to let that go? How can you?”
How could she? She’d come storming down here with every intention of… of… she shook her head, dumb. Not this. Not this, but something just as final. She’d had a sword, but now she held her child instead. She looked down at her daughter, cradled so tightly. What wouldn’t she give, to keep her safe? The answer was beyond words, because it was anything. Anyone. The whole damn world if it came to it.
But one man’s life?
She had been set on ending him herself, but that was before she’d had to think about it. And god, she wanted him out of the world, but the sight of his broken body had side-swiped her with unwelcome compassion.
Spike’s voice was raw but he sounded composed when he said, “You need to understand that I will do anything to keep Dawn safe.”
“No,” she replied, and the words were reflexive and came from the very center of her being. “You need to understand that a slayer protects people. It’s not my place to be judge, jury and executioner.”
Slowly he stepped away from her, hands out at his sides - one step, and another.
“Then we have ourselves a stalemate, love.”
There was a moment when he just looked at her, waiting, seeking something at the last. Dawn whimpered in her arms. And Buffy froze.
She froze, and didn’t say a word, not no, or yes, or stop, or kill the son of a bitch. Caught between reason and desire. As everything was with him.
And in that second of hesitation, that seemed to stretch and stretch, Spike turned away from her and snapped Warren’s neck.
Chapter Index | Next
Pairing(s): Buffy/Spike, (Anya/Xander, Willow/Tara)
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~13,500 this chapter (~41,500 total)
Timeline: AU S5, S6, S7 and post-series
Warnings: character death, violence and gore
Summary: As a child, I used to dream of a man in black and white, spinning in the desert like a dervish, sword flashing in the moonlight as he danced with death.(A sequel/companion to angearia's Fin Amour).
Notes: Second half of Chapter 8. Concrit is welcome.
*
It was late when they got back to the empty house, Dawn a warm, slack weight on her shoulder, but Buffy wasn’t tired. Maybe it was the single glass of champagne she’d indulged in leaving her feeling so buzzed, or her happiness for her friends. Or maybe it was that she could still feel the imprint of Spike’s body pressed against hers, trapped between that wall and a hard place. A very, very hard place.
Her skin prickled as a throb of desire went through her, and she hastened to put Dawn to bed so they could… what? She could hear Spike moving around downstairs, clattering about in the kitchen, and… what? What would happen if she went back down now, feeling like this? It was in her nature to be impetuous - following her heart, she’d always called it, and considered it a good, a positive thing - but this was so difficult. Why hadn’t anyone prepared her for how difficult this was?
She went to her bedroom instead, closed and locked the door behind her, and shed her clothes. Her reflection caught the corner of her eye and she turned fully to look at herself, naked, vulnerable. Spike could be standing right behind her now and all she’d see would be this, a thought that was incredibly thrilling. Slowly, sensually, as though putting on a show, she reached up and began to take down her hair, and by the time she was done she was so turned on that there was nothing else to do but slide into bed.
She’d never allowed herself this, the slow, teasing touches beneath crisp sheets as her thoughts lingered on him. Oh she had needs, and she had almost unconsciously been thinking of him for quite some time now, but giving herself permission? Indulging, even? That was new territory.
It was so easy to imagine. Scarily so. A fight taking a turn for the passionate, violence driven from fists and feet to hips and mouths, pushing up against the training room wall, pinning down against the floor. Fuck you through the floor, he’d said, and she gasped at the wave of lust that went through her. But as she cupped her breasts, rolling aching nipples between her fingers, that wasn’t the kind of fantasy she felt like just now.
Spike could be… he could be so tender sometimes. She wanted to play with that sweetness now, imagine his slow worship of her body, as he had kissed her face earlier, a trail of kisses from neck to breast to belly to… oh… she slid her middle finger between her pussy lips, already wet with anticipation. Her finger felt cool against the heat from her core, as his would feel, and wow, yeah, that’d be nice pushed up inside her. He’d hook her legs over his shoulders and pump her slowly with his forefinger while nipping her lower belly and hip with blunt teeth. She'd arch up into him, begging for contact, but he’d just push her firmly back down, murmur something about how beautiful she was that would make her melt, get her completely off her guard, and then, oh yeah, then he’d swipe his tongue across her clit, achingly slowly.
Buffy shuddered as her finger traced the same path as Spike’s imaginary tongue, again and again until the sensation began to gather, drawing slowly in from the tips of her toes and the points of her nipples, to coalesce about her sex. She saw them in her mind’s eye, tanned skin and pale, sweating, sliding sinuous and slow, a different kind of dance altogether. He would sense as she neared her peak, move up her body and rub the head of his erection against her clit as she pawed at his sculpted chest with her hands, smooth cool skin reverberating with that sexy dark chuckle. Then he’d lower himself down, arms straining, so that the look in his eyes drowned her as he fucked into her excruciatingly slowly.
Suddenly she was rocketing towards orgasm, unable to hold off for the end of the fantasy, whatever it would be, clenching and gasping and coming and coming.
Afterwards, she lay in her bed, bedclothes clinging to her skin, stroking herself softly through the aftershocks and looking inside for some reaction - horror, disgust, something. That didn’t come, though. There was fear, yes, because the path her heart was leading her down was fraught with risk. But there was that encompassing sense of fondness, too, of excitement and warmth and comfort, and wanting to just be with him.
Dragging herself up, she headed for the shower in the hope that it would be sufficient to mask her satisfaction from Spike’s freaky senses. Nearly an hour later, curled up beside him on the couch, blow-dried and in her robe, she felt him give her one long, considering look, which she refused to meet but couldn’t help smiling slightly in response to, before settling back and appearing engrossed in the black and white horror flick once more. A few minutes later, he slumped deeper into the cushions and nonchalantly draped his arm across her shoulders - the smile that had been tugging at the corners of Buffy’s mouth ever since she’d come down deepened, and she tucked her head against his shoulder, arm across his chest and legs curled up under her, listening to the low rumbling contentment in his chest that even he didn’t seem aware of.
Buffy had watched a documentary with her mom once about some famous bridge in Europe somewhere and how it had been built. Mom loved that stuff with her art-collector’s eye for architecture, but Buffy, doing her homework on her lap, hadn’t been all that interested. Except for the part, that one sequence she remembered vividly, where they’d shown the full thing speeded up and it was pretty cool, how the two sides of the bridge seemed to grow out of the walls of the gorge, straining towards one another until the last piece was carefully lowered into place. She felt like that now, with Spike - reaching towards him, towards that something that hovered so precariously over the once-unassailable chasm between them. And he had already stretched so far, changed so much. She suspected the rest was up to her, and it was big and scary and, it hit her, she wasn’t ready.
But she would be. That was new, but certain. It was just a matter of time and her curse was impulsiveness but she could take things slow if she put her mind to it, she could.
“Spike?” she asked, not raising her head. “You wanna, like, go to the movies sometime?” She felt the pressure of his eyes on the top of her head, and swallowed. “Maybe before patrol one night?”
“Sure, Slayer,” he said. “I’ll even buy you a soda-pop and let you squeeze my hand at the scary parts.”
He was mocking her; she poked him in the ribs.
“I’m serious. And that actually sounds nice.” Not that anything in a movie could scare her these days, but Spike had nice hands. She’d be pretty happy to get more familiar with them.
He shifted slightly against her, not enough to dislodge her, just enough to be revealing. Always talking with his body, that was Spike, and right now he was telling her all about his surprise and his pleasure.
“You mean, a date.”
Buffy smirked. “A date? Please. You’re completely off your - your bird.”
“Oi! Not nice to make fun.” But he was almost laughing with outrage, and Buffy knew she’d won this round. As if there’d ever really been any question.
“So Friday night, then. You can pick me up at eight.”
“Pick you up? What do you expect me to do, woman? Go out at five to and drive around the block?”
Buffy sat back and just gave him the look of a woman who would have things her way. “And try to wear something nice, okay? Something that doesn’t scream barely-reformed serial killer. My mom’s got an axe and she knows how to use it.”
*
“Axe, axe, goddamnit…”
Buffy dug roughly through her weapons chest in the living room, pulling out a handful of stakes and her crossbow as she went.
“Where’s my axe?” Distantly she heard her own voice calm and low.
“Spike must have taken it.” Xander, standing just behind, was tense as a bow-string.
“Shit.” She gripped the sides of the wooden chest until it creaked. “How long did you say?” There was her sword at the bottom. That would have to do.
“I called the Magic Box about thirty minutes ago,” her mom said. “I don’t know how long before that - it can’t have been more than a couple of minutes, I was just getting the laundry from the dryer. And, uh, Spike came back - I don’t know, ten minutes later?” She was sitting on the sofa, ashen-faced and twisting her hands together.
“He ran straight here from the shop,” Xander added. “You know how fast he is. Guess he came to load up.” He pulled a hand down his face. “His car’s gone.”
“He was in and out in a flash. All I got was that he was going to try to track them somehow. Buffy, I’m so sorry.”
“Mom, just-” Buffy set her jaw, then took a sharp, stabbing breath at the feel of Xander’s hand on her shoulder, warmth in counterpoint to the shivering of her muscles. “Did you see anything? Anything at all? Hear anything?”
“No, nothing. She was here, in her play pen, and then she was just - gone. I’m so-”
Buffy held up a hand. “Xander, my bag.”
They loaded up quickly.
“I don’t get it,” Xander said in a low voice as they hurried for his car. “Willow’s protection spell should have repelled any demons. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time one of her spells went kablooey, but we know this one works. The only thing that managed to get through it last time was… oh, god. You don’t think she could’ve-”
“It’s not Glory,” Buffy said with dark finality. “But even if it was, doesn’t matter. We’ll get Dawn back, and then we’ll make whoever took her pay.”
It had been such a nice day, too, sunny and pleasantly warm. Buffy had gone to her morning classes and spent a couple hours in the library before heading into town to treat herself to a manicure for her date that night. She’d thought Spike was home with Dawn, but apparently he’d been badgering the newlyweds at the shop over… something. Something trivial. Flowers, had Xander said? She looked at her nails now, shimmering baby pink, and hated the sight of them.
Willow was waiting for them on the curb outside her building, a bulky leather satchel in tow.
“Hey,” she said, sliding into the back, “We did the location spell, here’s the address.” She passed a slip of paper forward to Xander. “Tara’s gone to your house to stay with your mom, Buffy. Just in case, you know.”
“Okay, good. Will, please tell me that bag’s full of something dangerous.”
“Everything I could think of.” She held it tightly against her side as Xander raced back out onto the interstate. “Any idea what the big bad is?”
“No, but-”
“Um, Buffy?” Xander passed her the slip of paper. “You recognize this?”
She stared at the address.
“No. No way. Those little-”
“What? Who?” Willow craned forward.
“The wannabe evil nerd guys, remember? Warren, Jonathan and the other one. Spike and I tracked them down to their lair a few weeks back.”
Some lair. They’d been hiding out in Warren’s mom’s basement. She and Spike had roughed them up a bit before letting them run off, suitably scared and out of pocket the spoils of one bank robbery and one jewelry heist. She remembered turning to Spike and telling him he’d done good, pulling his punches like that. How it was an art people didn’t appreciate. She even remembered how he’d sulked about not getting to break any bones.
“Oh,” Willow said. “Humans. My, my spell, I didn’t...”
Comprehension dawned.
The slip of paper crumpled in Buffy’s fist. She was choking on her fury.
“They are so unbelievably dead.”
Tires squealed as Xander wrenched them from the off-ramp onto a residential street.
“Uh, Buff?” he said quietly. “Humans are, well, human. We don’t kill humans.”
Between her feet she unzipped the sports bag and drew out her sword, unsheathing it as they drew up to the curb, the blade glinting orange in the street lights.
There was Spike’s car up ahead. He’d been waxing it in the shade that morning when she’d left for school. Now it shone ominously, black as onyx, and sharp: how she felt.
How she was.
Take my daughter? My daughter?
Her bones juddered with the need for violent motion.
“Watch me,” she said, and jumped out before the car had fully come to a stop.
*
Inside the house was dark but she had no patience for theatrics. Flipping on the lights as she went, Buffy shouted for Spike, and the silence only made her blood rise higher.
“Xander, check upstairs then follow us. Willow, with me.”
“Where are you going?”
“The basement.” Movement was the only thing keeping the scream in. She talked over her shoulder through gritted teeth. “There are probably gonna be booby traps. Lasers, Klingons, I don’t know.”
“I’ve got a spell,” Willow said. Her bag clinked. “Nephthys, goddess of night, in peril descend with us, in darkness blanket us…”
The stairs creaked and her hackles rose as the spell took hold, but the basement, too, was empty.
“Fiat lux!”
They saw it at the same time in the soft spell-light. A hole in the floor. It reminded her of Spike’s crypt, and that’s how she knew. “They’ve dug down into the sewers.”
*
There were buzz saws coming out of the sewer walls. It was a thing. Willow’s spell dealt with them.
Xander caught up just as they came across the woman. She stood barring their way down the tunnel, tall and beyond incongruous in some travesty of a maid’s outfit.
“Move, or I bring the hurt,” Buffy warned. “One chance.”
“I can’t let you hurt my masters.”
“Wait, is she-?”
“A robot.”
Buffy squinted. “No, I know you.” Silence. She turned to the others. “I know her. Katie or Catherine or something. Warren’s ex.”
“She’s real?” Xander stepped closer. Waved his hand in front of her blank eyes. “What in the realm of Midgard did they do to her?”
Sound of Willow’s feet, shuffling side to side. “Something’s not right here. She looks-”
Noticing the way the woman’s right hand was hidden behind her back like she was concealing a-
Xander extending a finger to poke her in the-
“No, don’t! I think she’s got a-”
“Xander watch ou-”
Thunder.
The woman blinked calmly. “I can’t let you hurt my masters.”
Oh, god.
There was so much blood.
*
Keep it together, Summers. Breathe. Breathe.
Focus.
Move.
*
The woman went down like a marionette with the blast from Willow’s magic, gun a melted twist of metal embedded in the opposite wall. Still breathing, she noted distantly. Buffy had caught Xander as he went back and he was breathing too, staring up at her with glassy eyes. More fighting than breathing. Fighting to breathe.
Blood seeped from his shoulder with every heave of his chest.
“Willow. Snap out of it! You have to- I need you to-”
The black drained from Willow’s eyes as she fell to his side. “Xander, oh god. You’re okay, you’ll be okay. Where’s my bag?” She scrabbled for it, upending its contents. “I can- I can-”
“Do it,” Buffy said. “Willow. I have to go.”
“Take this,” she said, and flung a ball of light down the tunnel. Her eyes were black once more.
*
“Wait, wait, please,” the boy moaned. Beneath the blood and swelling, she saw that it was Jonathan. Her hands bunched in his shirt. “I’ll tell you - I never wanted - just please don’t kill me.” He started weeping. “I think Andrew’s dead. I think he killed him.”
“Where is she.”
“There’s a fork in the sewers. Go left and it opens into natural caverns. They’re - they went - there’s a magic circle, you’ll see it.”
She only realized she’d cracked his head against the wall when he sagged, dead weight.
She regretted it a minute later, coming out into not just one cavern but a network. Squeezing her eyes shut, she made herself decide. Focus. Move.
Run.
One, two, three caverns empty. The fourth held furniture, chairs, a desk, overturned as though in a struggle or flight. The fifth was dark, and Buffy had to wait for the spell-light to catch up. As it did, objects came clear. A velvet robe, torn and discarded. Candles knocked to the floor. A spray of blood. A long thigh bone.
A circle of sand.
“Dawn.”
Her heart stopped. Pain blossomed in her chest. There was the baby, naked.
Whimpering: alive.
“Oh, Dawnie. Oh, baby.”
She was too rough, snatching her up. She knew. She couldn’t help it. She was crying, messy, heaving bursts, ripping at the buttons of her blouse to get Dawn next to her skin. The baby was so limp, too weak to cry, and cold, but seemingly uninjured. On her knees, Buffy doubled over, holding Dawn too tightly and shuddering, undone.
The baby’s head nudging feebly at her breast brought her back to herself. Pulling her bra down she fed her right there, in the cave, in the half-light, crouched over in the wreckage, and felt her life flow into Dawn. Her love flow into Dawn. And remembered how she was named, and why, and for what: the action of love, and hope of the new day.
Sunrise after the darkest night; the everyday miracle of living.
A scream reverberated through the tunnels and caves, long, inhuman. Buffy straightened sharply. She’d seen Jonathan, and he’d said Andrew was dead. Where was Warren?
The scream went on and on.
“Spike,” she breathed.
*
The sight, when she came upon it, was so awful it staggered her. Warren - and it must be him, though only by a process of elimination - was chained and hanging from the ceiling of a small cave towards the back of the network (her stomach turned at the thought of what those manacles had been installed for, her mind’s eye flashing to the dead-eyed girl in the hokey maid’s dress). He was ruined. Just, ruined. Broken and bleeding, swollen, burned. The smell was incredible.
Behind him, a demon paced, slow strides of lithe, unhurried malice. His amber eyes seemed to glow in the low light as he casually stubbed his cigarette out on Warren’s naked back, and when he glanced up at her, there was a moment of absolute unfamiliarity in which she was certain he didn’t know her.
“Spike?” she whispered. He inhaled sharply and cocked his head, the gesture unnervingly inhuman with his bumpies up. His eyes still seemed elsewhere but something gave in the harsh ridges of his vamp face and he took a step towards her.
And Buffy stepped back, arms tightening on the baby. With the tortured man hanging right there, dripping blood and reeking of death, it was pure instinct. It was enough to shock him back to his human form.
“Dawn, is she-”
He had blood on his hands, on his face. She held herself rigid to keep from vomiting.
“She’s fine.” Buffy looked at him, then the horror he’d made of Warren’s flesh, then at him again. “She’s fine, Spike,” she repeated, voice low and level and barely even shaking. “We got to her in time. She’s just exhausted. But Xander’s been shot and there’s a couple others need the hospital, so let’s go now, okay? Let’s just go home now and look after our daughter.”
His eyes fell to Dawn and he laughed, a scorched, vicious sound that made her reel inside.
“You want to save him, don’t you?” He thumped Warren’s distended shoulder in a parody of a friendly slap, making him bark out another scream. All her sinews tightened in response, all her instincts clamoring.
“What’s more important here?” she asked, clinging to her reasonable tone for grim death. “Getting your child home safe, or… or that.”
“Oh right, because the house was so safe this evening.”
“Spike-”
“Did you know it was him sent the M’Fashnik after her? Him and his chums. Yeah, they did a real sweet little summoning spell while we were out playing blind man’s bluff with the First.”
“What?” It was hard to draw breath.
“Guess ancient evil also likes to watch, and isn’t too fussy about the truly pathetic quality of minions on offer.” He leered obscenely at Warren. “Me, I’ve always been more of a hands-on kind of demon.”
He reached up, yanking Warren’s head back by the hair, and the bloated mouth let out a shattered moan.
“Don’t-”
“Don’t what? Don’t what, Buffy?” Spike yelled, eyes flashing like a furnace, burning as hot now as he had previously run cold. “Don’t hurt him? Don’t kill him? Why the bloody hell not?” He’d let Warren go and was in her face again, but this time she didn’t flinch. “Damn it all, she’s my daughter too. She’s my daughter. And he’s tried to take her away from me twice. I leave him be now and he might very well try again, so you tell me, how am I supposed to let that go? How can you?”
How could she? She’d come storming down here with every intention of… of… she shook her head, dumb. Not this. Not this, but something just as final. She’d had a sword, but now she held her child instead. She looked down at her daughter, cradled so tightly. What wouldn’t she give, to keep her safe? The answer was beyond words, because it was anything. Anyone. The whole damn world if it came to it.
But one man’s life?
She had been set on ending him herself, but that was before she’d had to think about it. And god, she wanted him out of the world, but the sight of his broken body had side-swiped her with unwelcome compassion.
Spike’s voice was raw but he sounded composed when he said, “You need to understand that I will do anything to keep Dawn safe.”
“No,” she replied, and the words were reflexive and came from the very center of her being. “You need to understand that a slayer protects people. It’s not my place to be judge, jury and executioner.”
Slowly he stepped away from her, hands out at his sides - one step, and another.
“Then we have ourselves a stalemate, love.”
There was a moment when he just looked at her, waiting, seeking something at the last. Dawn whimpered in her arms. And Buffy froze.
She froze, and didn’t say a word, not no, or yes, or stop, or kill the son of a bitch. Caught between reason and desire. As everything was with him.
And in that second of hesitation, that seemed to stretch and stretch, Spike turned away from her and snapped Warren’s neck.
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