As Spike strode toward the alley, he heard the distinctive sounds of a fistfight. The sharp crack of knuckles on jaw was followed by a loud grunt and the crash of boxes or crates falling.
“Guys!” Willow cried out anxiously.
“Willow!” Xander said.
“Guys, you gotta get inside,” Willow said, her voice urgent.
It’s a party, Spike thought as he turned the corner and saw his prey: Angel, Xander, Willow, Cordelia, and Buffy. Everyone but the Slayer’s Watcher was in the alley. They could run and try to hide, but he had them now.
“We need a triage,” Xander said.
“This way,” Angel replied, taking charge. “Find an open warehouse.”
“Ladies! We’re on the move.” Xander grabbed his gun as he rushed past Cordelia and Buffy. With Cordelia and Willow following, he led the retreat away from Spike’s minion mob.
Angel swept the Slayer into his arms and carried her.
Spike shifted into vamp face, deadly serious now with the odor of fear thick around him. The red- and green-horned demons—economy size and large—growled in eager anticipation as they swept through the alley.
“Over here!” Angel yelled. He stepped back into the light of a security lamp as Xander rushed to open a warehouse door.
As Spike gained on the frantic humans, he saw that the woman in Angel’s arms had a mass of long dark hair and was wearing an eighteenth-century ball gown with layers of crinolines. Buffy had been transformed into a compliant and demure colonial lady, the exact opposite of her real identity. He loved the sick trick fate and Dru’s unnamed magic man had played on the Slayer and wondered if Angel realized Buffy’s getup was intended to attract him, a genuine son of the 1700s.
“Probably not, the dense sod.” Spike sneered as Xander slid the warehouse doors open and the humans raced inside.
“Check if there are any other ways in!” Xander shouted and pulled the doors closed as Willow cleared the entrance.
Spike stood back to let his pseudodemons work off some of their energy on the corrugated metal doors. He could hear the people inside trying to reinforce the barrier, but it wouldn’t work. Big Green and Hubby Vamp pried the doors open a crack and broke through, rolling barrels and throwing heavy grillwork out of the way.
Spike strode inside ready for action. This Slayer was about to meet her doom.
They found the prey cornered in a large storage area. Spike quickly dispersed his people to subdue Xander and Angel. Willow the ghost was noncorporeal, and Cordelia was a combat zero. Then he turned to Buffy.
“Look at you. You’re shaking.” Spike advanced on the sniveling wisp of fluff Buffy had become. “Terrified. Alone.”
Buffy backed away, whimpering, her cheeks damp with tears.
“Lost little lamb.” Spike growled low in his throat, suddenly infuriated by the frightened doe-eyed look on Buffy’s soggy face. He struck her across the mouth to wipe the pathetic expression away.
She choked on a startled cry, and her captive friends flinched.
“I love it,” Spike said calmly, but that was a lie.
“Buffy!” Angel fought to get free, but Big Red and the second pseudovampire didn’t let go.
Spike placed his hand on Buffy’s throat. The woman was so terrified she lay down across a piece of metal grillwork without a struggle. She was blubbering, too befuddled and intimidated to speak or resist, and that made him angrier. He gritted his teeth and touched the side of her face, his movements slow and deliberate until he grabbed her hair. He tightened his grip, his demonic yellow eyes probing her gaze for a sign that she had once been a vampire slayer, feared throughout the demon worlds.
There was no hint of the Slayer there. The magic man’s spell had turned a ruthless demon killer into a helpless, insipid damsel. The difference was too stark to overlook. The weepy twit wasn’t Buffy.
Behind him Spike heard Xander break away from the minions and start to fight back.
Spike bared his fangs and flexed his fingers in the girl’s dark hair. He could end her life in an instant, but it would be a hollow victory. A fragile, frightened stranger would die in Buffy’s body, but he would be deprived of the satisfaction he craved from a slayer kill.
He couldn’t do it.
“Now that guy you can shoot,” Willow said loudly.
Spike braced for the sting of a bullet in the back that never came.
“What the . . .” Xander sounded puzzled.
“I’m scared,” a child cried. “I want my mommy.” The mysterious spell had been broken, and the henchmen were munchkins again.
Spike looked back, his hand still twined in black hair, and the girl’s costume wig came off. He glanced at the hairpiece clutched in his hand and realized that—
Spike snapped his head around as Buffy sat up with a bright smile.
“Hi, honey. I’m home!”
God, I love this one! The thought was barely formed in Spike’s mind before the Slayer punched him in the stomach.
Buffy followed with a left to Spike’s jaw, then a hard right and a kick that sent him sprawling into a metal staircase. He reached for a length of pipe and came back swinging. Buffy grabbed onto the end of the pipe before it hit her, whipped Spike around, and wrenched the weapon out of his hands. Before he could react, the pipe slid across his face and thudded into his stomach. He doubled over.
“You know what?” Buffy grinned. “It’s good to be me.” She brought the end of the pipe up under Spike’s chin, laying him flat out across the piece of grillwork. The force of her blow was so great he slid off into a heap on the concrete floor.
Growling, Spike sprang to his feet and faced her. The Slayer met his menacing stare—confident, relaxed, and ready for another go-round.
Spike quickly considered his options. He could fight her, but no one was watching his back except his enemies, a few terrified kids, and four confused and embarrassed men. Besides, she was using a metal pipe, not a stake that could kill him. There was no challenge in continuing a fight that wasn’t to the death, but the Slayer could inflict a hell of a lot more pain than he cared to endure.
He ran.
Sunnydale
September 2002
“Right back to the beginning,” the Master continued. The magnitude of the ancient vampire’s power filled every crevice in the storeroom as he stood up.
Spike cowered, overwhelmed.
“Not the bang. Not the word.” The Master’s voice boomed with disdain, inspiring dread. “The true beginning.”
Spike rocked forward when the Master walked past, as though pulled by the blood bond that flowed from him back through Darla to her powerful sire.
“The next few months are going to be quite a ride,” the Master went on, “and I think we’re all going to learn something about ourselves in the process.”
When the old vampire turned to glare, Spike shrank from Its contempt.
“You’ll learn you’re a pathetic schmuck,” the Master said pointedly, “if it hasn’t sunk in already. . . .”
Spike couldn’t argue with that.
Sunnydale
October 1997
Spike didn’t go straight back to the factory after he left the warehouse district. He ran past the Sunnydale WELCOME sign into the forest, trying to throw off the fury and frustration that was eating away at his insides. Was that what Dru meant when she warned of the Slayer’s poison? That he would be consumed by disgust and self-loathing for his failure? If so, there was an antidote.
Sooner or later he would kill Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
When Spike reached the top of a rise overlooking the town, he paused to peer down. Sirens and car alarms still blared, lingering effects of the transformation spell’s chaos. Streets were darkened where lights had been blown out, and tendrils of smoke rose from smoldering fires. All the baby bites were being bundled back into their homes by frightened parents. This was one Halloween they wouldn’t forget.
He wouldn’t, either.
He
should have followed his instincts and not trusted a fate that had made things too easy. Nothing worth doing was easy, and the cosmos was having another soddin’ laugh on him. And why not? He was a bloody fool.
He had stalked the Slayer and cornered her, had her right by the throat. He could still feel her racing pulse, the blood pumping through her arteries, the shudder when he touched her skin.
Except that the girl hadn’t been the Slayer.
Spike shouted at the night, a scream of savage rage.
He should have killed her anyway, in spite of the false persona, but he didn’t.
Because of the terror he had seen in her eyes.
Because they weren’t the Slayer’s eyes.
Fuming, Spike lit a cigarette. As long as he was being honest with himself, he had a couple more questions he hadn’t dared ask.
He had had his hands around Buffy’s throat on Parent-Teacher Night, too. He could have snapped her neck in a second, just like he snapped Nikki’s. There had been more than enough time before the Slayer’s mom clobbered him with the axe.
But he had hesitated.
Why?
What had he seen in the Slayer’s eyes then that stayed his hand?
Sunnydale
September 2002
The Slayer’s eyes.
The image, startling in its intense clarity, blazed through the fog clouding Spike’s mind.
The Slayer’s eyes.
“Look at you.” The Master’s demand was steeped in scorn. “Trying to do what’s right, just like her. You still don’t get it. It’s not about right, it’s not about wrong—”
Spike frowned. He heard the words, but they were just words. They weren’t even true.
“It’s about power,” Buffy said.
Yes, Spike thought. It was all about power.
“Except you don’t have any, Spike. Not anymore.” Harmony crossed her arms and smiled, smugly, like she always did right before she zinged someone. “The Slayer made you weak. Evil is a lot more powerful than good because evil doesn’t care.”
Is that true? Spike rolled the concept around in his mind, testing it against all he had been through and thought and felt and learned in a hundred and more years of life and death, of loving and leaving and losing. A rip appeared in the fog, letting another realization slip through. The Other had tried to trick him with a false assumption.
“Tricky bad thing,” Spike said, wagging his finger. He folded his arms on his knees and rocked. “Isn’t going to work. No more lies.”
He remembered the Slayer’s eyes.
“Don’t think about the Slayer!” Harmony stamped her foot, her face a darkening storm. “You were her pet project. She made every day a fresh bout of torture, trying to drive you around the bend, haunting you.”
The Other didn’t want him to think about Buffy, but some things were true and some things were false. That was just the way of it.
Spike sensed the important thing skimming across his consciousness, darting back and forth just beyond his grasp, trying to elude the Other that didn’t want it known. He stared at the floor, thinking about Buffy’s eyes, and the important thing pierced through the mists into consciousness.
Good was more powerful because it did care.
That was the power he had seen in Buffy’s eyes on Parent-Teacher Night, the first time he hadn’t killed her: The Slayer would never give up, but she had been willing to die so good would prevail.
“All the more reason to kill her!” The Master railed. “Dead slayers have no power.”
“You promised to kill her for princess,” Dru said.
“You had plenty of chances,” Harmony reminded him.
Except that Buffy was a force, with a will, strength, and skill that matched his.
Spike stood up, stricken by a truth as profound as his love was pure: Buffy was his equal, and the only person in the world who could give him acceptance and respect that mattered.
“Forget the Slayer,” Dru said.
Spike stared at the apparition. The Other was strong and still had a grip on his mind, but he knew now what It didn’t want him to know. He could fight It, and eventually, he would beat It.
Dru persisted, desperate and sulking. “The Slayer used you, twisted and stomped you, and threw you away—like a toy, battered and broken.”
“Buffy needed me to feel alive,” Spike said. This truth, crystal clear and immutable, rose from a small patch of serenity embedded in his soul. “And I needed her to feel a man.”
That had always been the crux of his life, and now—it wasn’t.
Epilogue
Sunnydale
February 2003
Spike waited as Buffy, Giles, and the Potentials left the cemetery, the night’s training session having been abruptly adjourned. The Watcher wasn’t happy about leaving him behind, but the Slayer understood. Sometimes a man had to be alone.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, he was alone.
The First wasn’t showing up as every dead person he had ever known or killed, and all the vengeful voices were silent. He hadn’t heard a peep out of them since the primordial source of evil had taken him prisoner, tortured him, and ordered him to choose sides. Spike smiled as he walked by familiar tombstones, still amazed at how easy it had been to tell the First posing as Dru to “get bent.”
The door into his old crypt was ajar. He hadn’t been back since he left Clem to watch over things while he went off to bargain for his soul. After a while, the flop-eared demon had given him up as gone-for-good and stopped coming by.
Spike kicked an empty vodka bottle as he stepped inside. When the Potentials had asked about his old digs, Buffy had described the crypt as “comfy.” Now the place was just trashed. Vandals and thieves had destroyed or taken everything of value. His mattress was gone, the TV screen was shattered, and stuffing had been pulled out through slashes in the chair. When he had stopped living with Dru, he had stopped caring what things looked like as long they worked: chair, lamp, bed, and TV. He hadn’t needed much. Now he was content with a cot and shackles in Buffy’s basement.
Funny how priorities change, Spike thought, dropping into the lumpy chair. Everything had changed, dramatically and mostly for the better—although not necessarily for his better. He had gone through hell to reclaim his soul only to find out that lost souls come back with hell conveniently built right in.
The spark burned and, since he was a bottomless pit of horrific sin, it probably always would. Still, he didn’t have any remorse. Everything he had suffered had been worth it, even if Buffy never let herself love him in that all-consuming, love-of-my-life way that he wanted. He liked to think it was possible. It mattered, just not quite so much now. Buffy had given him something else just as priceless and perhaps even more difficult to earn: Her trust.
The Slayer hadn’t jumped to conclusions, assuming he had gone bad when they found out he was killing again. She had looked beyond the evidence to find the truth, that the First had brainwashed him and implanted a trigger. He had memorized the Slayer’s words, the words that gave him hope that there was some rhyme and reason for all the pain.
“You faced the monster inside of you and you fought back. You risked everything to be a better man. And you can be. You are. You may not see it, but I do. I do. I believe in you, Spike.”
Knowing that Buffy believed in him had helped him withstand the torture and resist the First’s evil influence in the caves. But not until tonight had the Slayer shown—beyond all doubt—that her faith in him as a man was absolute. Riley Finn of the Initiative had given Buffy control of Hostile Seventeen’s destiny. When the med-lab doctor explained that the chip was degrading and would kill him before long, she had been given a choice: repair it or remove it.
Buffy had removed it.
With the chip’s power over him eliminated, the last few pieces of Spike’s shattered existence had fallen back into place.
Not very long ago, he had been convinced that Buffy’s com
plete, unconditional trust would validate his worth—just as he had once thought Cecily’s affections would. He had been wrong on both counts. He hadn’t recognized the truth until tonight, when he was walking away from the Initiative’s destroyed complex with his free will restored. He had always possessed the courage and strength of character to dance to a different drummer—even as William.
Spike shook his head and laughed quietly, no longer astonished at the ironic turns his long life had taken. As William, he could have put on airs and mimicked the proud gentleman peacocks Cecily so obviously favored. He had thought of doing just that on occasion, but had always rejected the lie. It had been so much harder to be true to himself, to suffer the ridicule and contempt. But that persistent essence, that certainty of who he was, had driven him to find a legend and endure unspeakable torment to get his soul back. He had done that for himself—to be worthy of Buffy.
“That much worked, didn’t it?” Rising from the chair, Spike took a last look around. There were memories here, good and bad, but everything was going to change again.
Spike closed the crypt door when he left, putting his past to rest behind him. As he swept through the cemetery, his thoughts turned toward tomorrow and the trials yet to come. Buffy had beaten and killed the übervampire to rescue Spike from the First’s caves because she needed a great warrior she could trust: She needed him.
The überbad band was on deck to hit the stage, to take it all down in death and screaming, horror and bloodshed. And that wasn’t the raving of a madman.
It was coming from beneath to devour.
A chill winter wind rose on the night, stirring dry leaves and howling through mausoleum cracks, stinging his face as though he could be intimidated by an omen. The First had tried to turn his mind to mush, to bury him in the hopeless quicksand of insanity. When that had failed, It tried to break his will with drownings and beatings, but he hadn’t broken. And through it all, he had to wonder: Why him?
Spike stopped, suddenly stricken by the rhyme and reason that made sense of his suffering.
The überbad had tried everything in Its arsenal of ultimate power to eliminate him as a warrior because It was afraid of him. If the First—the most powerful evil ever—feared him, and the Slayer—the most powerful force for good—trusted him, then he was the man he had always wanted to be.
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