So they did have designs on my slayer, Spike thought, steamed. Drugging Buffy’s drink was the only way a bunch of milquetoast college boys could have nabbed her. They wanted Buffy for demon food, not fooling around, and probably didn’t know they had captured an empowered legendary hero. With Cordelia and the runaway from the cemetery, the monk-boys had three.
Spike jumped down from his perch. “Go back to Gator and keep an eye on that window. If anyone uses it to leave, capture but don’t kill.”
Spike’s mind raced as Lucius zigzagged through the trees. He hadn’t wanted to fight the Slayer with distractions, but the minions were gone, and if the monk-boys had managed to manacle Buffy before she was fully conscious, he’d be a fool to pass up the opportunity.
With Lucius and Gator along to mangle the frat boys, Spike could get some overdue revenge. Klaus von Hardt had betrayed him to Colonel Koch of the SS, but Machida could have prevented the treachery. Spike had served the reptile and earned the protection the demon snake had chosen to withhold. Since Klaus was long dead, Machida and Tom, Lars Warner’s descendant, could settle the score.
Once Machida was skewer meat, he’d free Cordelia and kill her while the chained Slayer watched. Dru would just have to be happy with the third girl and a monk-boy. Then—what? Spike frowned as he stepped out of the trees. Killing a slayer who had been captured and chained by mortal snake worshippers wouldn’t exactly enhance his reputation as a legendary evil.
Hearing footsteps on gravel, Spike ducked back under cover. Xander was walking down the drive, still wearing the skirt, carrying his regular clothes, and talking to himself.
“One day I’ll have money, prestige, power,” Xander said.
If you’re lucky, which you’re not. Spike sighed. Xander was a magnet for trouble—demonic and human. If something was looking for someone to mess with, it would find Xander. Money, prestige, and power weren’t factors in the Xander equation.
“And on that day, they’ll still have more,” Xander concluded.
Not if their source is dead, Spike thought. When Xander suddenly headed back toward the house, Spike ran into the woods that bordered the front lawn. He paused when he heard the sputtering sound of an old car coming up the drive.
Rupert Giles parked the dilapidated Citroen and turned off the ignition. Before the engine stopped rumbling, the librarian, Willow, and Angel got out and moved through the trees with the vampire in the lead. Spike silently faded back as they filed past his position.
“Looks like everyone’s gone,” Willow said.
Everyone but me, and who invited you? Spike scowled as the trio lined up to survey the house. A twig snapped as a robed figure came up behind them.
“Hey!” Angel whirled to face the intruder. Willow’s and Giles’s reaction time lagged a second.
“Hey! What are you guys doing here?” Xander asked.
Having a bloody meeting of Slayer friends in the soddin’ woods! Spike tightened his jaw, trying to keep a lid on his explosive frustration.
“A bunch of girls are missing,” Willow explained. “The Zeta Kappas may be involved. And Buffy.” She frowned, puzzled. “Are you wearing makeup?”
“No.” Xander wiped lipstick off his mouth. “I think Buffy’s still inside somewhere with Cordelia. Their car’s still here.”
“Why are you wearing that?” Giles pointed to the robe.
“I found it in their trash,” Xander explained. “I saw them through the window. They were wearing robes and went down into the basement. I was gonna use it to sneak in.”
“They may be involved in some kind of ritual,” Giles said.
“With the missing girls,” Willow added.
Angel vamped out and growled. “With Buffy.”
“Okay,” Xander said, “that is the guy you want to party with.”
Spike threw up his hands as the four ran across the lawn toward the house. With the Slayer’s misfit gang in the mix, the odds had gone against him. The three humans weren’t a problem, but there was no reason to believe Angel’s combat skills had diminished with the return of his soul. Defending a girl he cared about, even if he wouldn’t admit it, would just make him stronger.
To avoid being seen, Spike ran through the woods for several yards before he turned toward the house to retrieve Gator and Lucius. The snake demon wouldn’t die at his hands, but it would die tonight. Machida didn’t stand a chance against the Slayer and the Sunnydale Do-in-a-demon-a-day Club.
Chapter Ten
Sunnydale
September 2002
“And so are you, Hostile Seventeen.” Adam towered over Spike, skin and scales glistening in the dim storeroom light. “You’re right where you belong.”
No, that’s the problem, Spike realized. That’s always been the problem.
He focused on the feel of the rough cloth under his fingers, the pit mark in the floor, the dank smell of moisture and cement, but the army of facts kept coming, relentlessly. Bits and pieces of memory and knowledge chiseled chunks from the psychological barrier he had built to keep them out.
Truth had gotten back in with his soul, and it wouldn’t be denied. Not anymore.
He had never belonged anywhere, had never been accepted.
William’s presence among Cecily’s friends had been tolerated—barely. Every social circle seemed to need someone to belittle, a court jester that would bear the insults and abuse without complaint. He had unwittingly filled that role, but was more pathetic for not having known it. Cecily had reviled him for this blind denial, for having dared sully her with the mere mention of his love.
Darla and Angelus had honored the blood lineage that bound him to them through Dru, but mostly they had put up with him and his reckless antics to please their addled daughter-granddaughter. Dru had loved him—until he formed a temporary alliance with the Slayer to keep Angelus from awakening Acathla and destroying the vampire food supply along with the world. When he drove away from Sunnydale with Dru, he had left his heart behind with Buffy. Dru knew it long before he did, and had finally sent him packing.
Each revelation hammered another chisel of hard, cold fact into the wall. Truth seeped into and split the cracks, exposing reality. Delusion and denial leaked out.
The Slayer’s mismatched circle of friends had feared him and despised him. They had given Anya, an ex-vengeance demon with a long resume of evil accomplishments, a chance to prove she had changed. After the Initiative wired his brain for pain, the Scooby Gang had given him haven in a bathtub and a basement apartment, but only because they knew the bloody chip was controlling his vicious nature. When it became apparent he could hurt and kill evil, they had let him fight for good. Still, Giles and Xander had remained skeptical of his motives, and wary. Willow and Dawn had accepted him—but eventually he lost them too.
Buffy had never trusted him.
Spike stared at the floor, drowning in the flood of realization and remorse that swept brick and mortar away.
He loved the Slayer with a wild, dangerous, and consuming passion. Buffy thought it would flare and grow cold, but she was wrong. True love burned forever, as hot as a soul in a bad man. . . .
The Mayor replaced Adam as It squatted beside Spike. “So what did you think? You’d get your soul back and everything would be jim-dandy?”
Spike had hoped just that, but it was the absurd wish of a man muddled by love and desperation. The spark was an agony that seared every thought with guilt and regret. The pain was more excruciating than the punishment imposed by the chip, and no penance could erase or ease it.
“A soul is slipperier than a greased weasel.” The Mayor laughed. “Why do you think I sold mine? Well, you’d probably thought you’d be your own man. I respect that, but—”
Sunnydale
October 1997
Spike sat in an upholstered chair in front of the TV with his feet propped on the end of the bed. The set was tuned to a trivia game show, but he wasn’t paying attention. It was hard to hear over Dru’s lecture to
her dolls.
“This is what happens when mummy gets upset.” Dru held out a small decorative urn as though the dolls could see. Miss Martha’s ashes were inside the brass jar, stuffed into a velvet bag and tied with her green ribbon gag. “Bashed and burned, my darlings.”
Spike glanced at her but didn’t interrupt. He didn’t want to trigger another bout of irrational raving. She had been depressed and angry for three weeks, since he had returned from the Delta Zeta Kappa party. Instead of Machida’s maidens, he had brought her the obnoxious man in the tie who had harassed Xander.
Spike smiled, thinking back. He had reached the hacienda window where Gator and Lucius were waiting just before Buffy’s intrepid assault force burst through the front door. What the Slayer’s friends lacked in expertise, they made up for in fervor. He had witnessed a few of their best moves despite the fluttering curtain obstructing the view.
Xander had ridden the back of the tie guy, slugging him repeatedly. “That’s for the wig!” Bam! “That’s for the bra!” Bam! Giles had, surprisingly, decked one boy with a single backhand, and Angel had taken care of the rest. Willow had kept her wits about her and didn’t wilt in the face of danger. When the four friends rushed into the basement to save Buffy, Spike had leaped through the window and captured Dru’s dinner.
Seeing Buffy’s minions in action was a gift of fate, Spike thought as he folded last Sunday’s edition of the Sunnydale Press and tossed it on the bed. He would not, as he had previously been inclined, underestimate the Slayer’s pals in a fight. The three girls had been rescued, and a murderous college cult had been uncovered and broken up. The Sunnydale justice system moved faster than other courts, and all the men involved had been sentenced to consecutive life sentences.
Although there had been no mention of the giant snake in the newspaper, Spike assumed Machida was dead. Bones of missing girls had been found in a huge cavern beneath the frat house, some dating back fifty years. That timing supported his theory, that Lars Warner had brought Machida to California after World War II and introduced him to the boys of Delta Zeta Kappa. Several global enterprises, whose chairmen and founders had been members of the fraternity, were experiencing falling profits, IRS raids, and boardroom suicides.
“Miss Edith hears rumblings.” Dru clutched the doll and turned toward Spike. “Grumble rumbles under the ground, all shaking and making the killer disappear.” She closed her eyes and trembled. “Making you disappear, Spike. The bees buzzing all around, singing of smoke and fire.”
Spike stood up to calm her before she lost control. “I can handle any fire that isn’t solar, luv. You know that.”
Dru swayed, caught in a powerful trance. “Cataclysm with the ugly little beasties screaming to get out, get out, but the sun melts the dark—” Her eyes popped open. She dropped Miss Edith and flailed at him with her fists.
“Easy, Dru—” Spike tried to catch her hands, but she had mustered a measure of strength and wrenched free. “Stop it, Dru—”
“Kill her, Spike.” Dru pounded his chest, but the blows weakened quickly and stopped. “You’ve got to kill the Slayer before she poisons you.”
“And how would she do that?” Spike asked gently, guiding her to the bed as she started to collapse. There was a poison called “killer of the dead,” which could only be cured by the blood of a slayer, but he doubted Drusilla or Buffy knew of it. He had become a student of vampire vulnerabilities in his quest to find a cure for her ailment. “I’m a vampire.”
“Foul, stinky mush all rotted inside.” Dru grabbed a fistful of his shirt as she fell back on the pillows. “Kill her now, Spike.
“First chance I get,” Spike said, pulling the quilt up under Dru’s chin. Dru’s outburst had put an unnecessary strain on her fragile constitution. He had postponed the inevitable slayer confrontation to concentrate on getting Dru well, but he had recently reassessed that decision.
The du Lac Manuscript was taking longer to find than he had anticipated. Dorian and Garbo couldn’t enter the librarian’s apartment to search without an invitation, and Giles hardly ever left the high school library, which limited the hours the two vampires could search. And now Dru’s troublesome visions about the Slayer were eroding her remaining strength.
He couldn’t afford to wait.
On his way out, Spike glanced in the birdcage and swore under his breath. The water and seed cups were empty. The new raven cowered against the bars as he refilled them. Dru had pouted for days after the first bird died of starvation. He had wasted precious research time catching another, but it wasn’t going to last long if Dru couldn’t remember to feed it.
Spike picked up the doll Drusilla had dropped and put it back with the others. “Miss Edith, remind her to feed the damn bird.”
Jacob was waiting for him in the main room. When Spike decided to modernize his surveillance techniques, he had found an expert in video systems and turned him into a vampire. Then he had stolen the necessary equipment from Jacob’s ex-employer. Jacob was proving to be a valuable asset. He had videotaped Buffy fighting another new minion the night before and had spent the day installing monitor screens and playback machines in the factory.
“Are we set up yet, Jacob?” Spike asked.
“Ready to roll, Spike.” Jacob smiled nervously.
“Is something wrong?” Spike eyed him curiously. He had assured the electronics expert that he was not expendable, but Jacob was still shaken by the death of the other new minion on the slayer assignment.
“No,” Jacob said quickly. “I’m pretty sure I got it all.”
“Well, let’s see it, then.” Spike looked up at the screen suspended from the ceiling as Jacob clicked the remote.
The opening shot showed a large wagon decked out with scarecrows, jack-o’-lanterns, colored corn, and strings of pumpkin lights. A tall, thin vampire stepped out from behind a row of trees, grabbed the Slayer from behind, and heaved her toward a display under the POP’S PUMPKIN PATCH sign. She landed on a lighted jack-o’-lantern, squashing it.
“Excellent.” Spike nodded as the vampire toppled some hay bales and roared to menace the downed Slayer. He glanced at Jacob. “What was his name again?”
“Bobby.” Jacob hit pause, then reversed the tape a few frames.
Spike waved to continue, and the tape resumed as the Slayer picked up a gourd. She heaved it at Bobby, hitting him in the forehead. He staggered, and then staggered again when a pumpkin smashed into his face. Buffy was on her feet before Bobby regained his balance. She threw a stake. He blocked it with a scarecrow.
“Nice move,” Spike said, nodding.
Bobby whirled to increase momentum for a karate kick, but Buffy ducked. He tried to kick again, but she fended it off with a series of punches. They traded several blows until she grabbed his coat and threw him aside. Then the picture broke up.
“What happened?” Spike snapped, but the glitch passed just as Buffy kicked Bobby into rows of pumpkins piled on top of more hay bales.
Bobby scrambled to his feet, but the Slayer never missed a beat and matched him blow for blow. When Bobby threw her against the wagon, the girl didn’t falter. She connected with a solid kick, held onto the wagon cover staves, and snagged the vampire in a headlock with her feet. She snapped her legs and flipped him.
“Did you see that?” Spike didn’t turn to look at Jacob. He was totally captivated by the gutsy Sunnydale Slayer.
When Bobby tried to grab her, she somersaulted over him, pulled the Halloween calendar countdown sign out of the ground, and jammed the stake into Bobby’s chest.
Spike applauded as Bobby vanished in a cloud of dust. “She’s got spunk.” He paused slightly before turning back to Jacob. “Good job, mate. Now let’s see it again.”
Spike watched the tape straight through again, and then went back to the beginning to study each individual move. Buffy was quick of mind as well as fast on her feet. She had a natural instinct for hand-to-hand combat that some highly trained men never developed. The chal
lenge excited him as much as it frightened Dru.
“Here it comes.” Spike studied the segment where Bobby threw the Slayer against the wagon. “Rewind that. Let’s see that again.” He moved to another screen and looked back at Jacob. “She’s tricky. Baby likes to play.”
Jacob didn’t comment. He probably couldn’t fathom why any vampire would go looking for a fight with a slayer.
That’s why I’m the boss, Spike thought as he circled to the third screen to watch a replay of the Slayer staking Bobby with the sign.
“You see that, where she stakes him with that thing? That’s what you call resourceful. Rewind it again.” Spike was watching the screens and didn’t hear Dru come in.
“Miss Edith needs her tea.” Dru held the doll before her as she walked in.
“Come here, poodle.” Spike noticed she was shaky on her feet and held out his hand. She hadn’t rested long enough to recover from her distress.
“Do you love my insides?” Dru asked. “The parts you can’t see?”
“Eyeballs to entrails, my sweet.” Spike looked back at the screen. “That’s why I’ve got to study this Slayer. Once I know her, I can kill her. And once I kill her, you can have the run of Sunnyhell and get strong again.”
“Don’t worry. Everything’s switching,” Dru said as she walked behind him. “Outside to inside.” She paused, her voice low and ominous. “It makes her weak.”
“Really?” Spike turned from the screen to look at her. Apparently, a new premonition had shown her something quite different from the one before. “Did my pet have a vision?”
“Do you know what I miss?” Dru lifted her chin in playful defiance. “Leeches.”
“Come on,” Spike coaxed. “Talk to Daddy. This thing—that makes the Slayer weak, when is it?”
Dru fiddled with Miss Edith and answered hesitantly. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Halloween,” Spike said. “Nothing happens on Halloween.”
“Someone’s come to change it all.” She cocked her head, as though listening to the doll. “Someone new.”
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