I'm posting two chapters today as a bonus, so make sure you read Chapter 5 first! Don't want anyone getting themselves all confused and disoriented.

This one is dedicated to each of you reading, favoriting, and following. 'Cause you rock.

Chapter 6

"Spike, we're not just letting you go!"

"What're you gonna do to stop me, Harris?"

"Gee, I dunno. Get the Slayer to kick your ass? Or hell, if you supposedly can't hurt humans, I'll do a little tail kickin' myself!"

"Xander, would you stop?" Anya rubbed her hand on Xander's chest. "Clearly he's feeling emasculated and yelling is just making him feel better. I'm sure Spike won't even try to get out."

Spike grabbed his duster from the back of the couch and shrugged it on. Now that they'd done the de-briefing Scooby thing, he wanted to just go somewhere where they weren't. He wouldn't have minded if Buffy wanted to patrol with him or something, but having all of them around was driving him bloody mad. He blamed the claustrophobic feeling on having twenty mini-Slayers and the Scooby set all in the house on Revello Drive. He would give anything, right now, to be chained up in that basement, so long as he was alone.

"Spike," Buffy said, a cold warning. She stood between him and the door, her hands fisted at her sides and her expression stern.

"Bugger this," Spike said, moving for the door to Giles' apartment anyway. As he stalked out to the garden, not even bothering to close the door behind him, he heard the commotion inside. Moving as quickly as he could, he tried to make it off of the old man's property.

He didn't even make it halfway before he was hoisted by his coat and tossed to the side like a rag doll. Flipping to his feet, he spun around, face to face with the Slayer. They moved in a circle, matching evenly, step for step, so they never got closer. Then she lunged, pounced him, knocked him clear to the ground. Spike felt his skull scrape the stone.

Groaning, he couldn't help but stare up at her. Her golden hair hung like a curtain around their faces, which were only milimetres apart from each other. He knew that she could feel how hard he was against her by the insulted way her eyes scanned his face.

"You, uh, like to be on top, love?" Spike rolled his tongue behind his teeth, appreciating the way her heart sped up at the suggestion.

Someone somewhere cleared their throat and snapped the Slayer to her senses. "You're a pig, Spike." She jumped to her feet, never taking her eyes from him.

Spike stood, slowly, savoring the moment. He examined his coat as though he were looking for tears he knew weren't there. "The fact is this, sweetheart," he finally said. "I'm leaving, with or without your permission."

"Or what?"

Spike shrugged, moving toward the property line again. Buffy grabbed him by the collar and decked him. He licked the blood from his lip, then backhanded her. She waited, staring at him. No reaction.

"The chip?" Her eyebrows shot up.

"Oh, bloody—"

She decked him again, this punch harder than the last. Then twice more. With the fun he'd been having, he'd forgotten he was supposed to have the soddin' chip in his head. Spike grabbed her fist when she swung again. The boy tossed Buffy a stake and Spike took four long steps backward.

"Now, wait just a minute. Buffy!" He held his hands up, surrendering, but she didn't even slow down.

"If you don't have a chip, I'm not letting you loose on the world, Spike."

She had started plunging the stake in when a girl's scream stopped her. They all turned to the doorway of Rupert's apartment, where Tara was covering her mouth. "He has a s-s-soul."

"What, Tara?" Willow asked, tilting her head.

"No, no, Angel has a soul, Tara," Giles said, removing his glasses and rubbing his eye with his wrist. "Spike doesn't. In fact, I don't know any other vampire who does."

"S-s-sorry, Spike. I wasn't gonna tell 'em."

"No, I appreciate it, Earth Mother. Wasn't plannin' on tellin' 'em myself, but I guess I should've known Id' have to."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Buffy looked Spike in the eye, keeping the edge of Mr. Pointy poised where it had stabbed through the top layer of flesh over his unbeating heart. "Did you tell her you had a soul?"

"She figured it out all by herself, a'right?"

"I can see auras," Tara said, wrapping her long sweater tighter around herself. "It runs... in my family. Um, my mom. And he's got these, like, little light swirly spots. He's, um, vampire darkness with human soul mixed in?"

"How did you do it?" Anya asked, her eyes lighting up as she smiled.

"What? Ahn, he's not..."

"It is possible. Did you... Where did you go for it?"

"Africa," Spike said with a shrug.

"You went to see the Nafsi?"

"When, exactly," the Watcher said in his bloody Americans tone, "did you have the chance to visit Africa?"

"It's a long story, alright? I fought for my soul, I got my soul, I'm very soulful."

"So you're like Angel?" Red asked.

Spike pointed at her, growling. "I am nothing like the Great Poof, you got that?"

"Will, is there some kind of spell you can do?" Buffy asked, keeping her eyes on Spike. "Something to see if it's for real or he's just messing with us?"

"I... I could see, I guess."

"I think... in one of my mother's spell books, maybe," Tara offered. "It's this spell that lets other people see an aura. I can show you?"

"I've had enough spellwork done on me in my life, thanks," Spike said.

He knew it was a losing battle. Honestly, so long as he didn't have to put up with a bleeding stone getting shoved into his brain that triggered his urge to kill, he'd deal with it.

xxxxx

Buffy and Xander had chained Spike to the tub again once they realized he could hurt humans, and everyone had slept over at Giles' to make sure Spike didn't try anything fatally stupid during the night. Tara returned to her dorm to pick up her mother's book while Willow ran to the magic shop.

It was almost sundown when Buffy watched Willow speak the first lines of the spell. Giles had gathered and sprinkled the herb-y stuff in a circle around Spike, who Xand and Buffy had transferred (and tied) to a chair. Willow, Tara, Giles, and Anya each stood along the circle of spices.

"Mother Hecate, goddess of light and moon, of magic and the spirit realm, show us the essence, show us the way." Wills passed the book to Giles on her left.

"We beseech thee, grant us sight that we may see," he read, adjusting his glasses.

Xander leaned against a far wall, arms crossed over his chest, while Buffy paced with a stake in hand. She didn't know what game Spike was playing, or if they could trust this Tara girl, but she had to be ready for anything. She was the Slayer, the almighty freakin' Chosen One. Bring on the dark juju. Giles passed the book to Anya.

"Grant us the wisdom to understand," she shouted at the ceiling before passing it, finally, to Tara, who was looking at Spike head-on. He rolled his eyes. Tara's mouth opened, closed, and opened again.

"S'wrong, love?" he asked.

"Um." She turned and plucked something out of her bag. When she stood again, she held not the book but a small cloth in one hand and a knife with pretty amethysts and sparkly things on the handle in the other. "To make it only show your, um, aura, and not, like, blind us with everybody's, we need a little..."

"Blood?"

Tara nodded, eyes wide and on Willow.

"It's always blood." Spike held out his hand. Tara hesitated for only a moment, then stepped carefully over the line of herbs. She used the knife to make a cut in Spike's palm and he twisted his wrist in the rope that bound it so the blood dripped down onto the herbs.

"Hecate, we spill the life force and invite you here. Grant us your truth." Tara draped the cloth over Spike's wound, pressing it there for a moment until his hand clasped it. "Here you go."

"Ta, love." Spike nodded and Tara stepped back again, her long skirt almost swishing the spot where Spike's blood was. They all waited, glancing around the room. Buffy was expecting, maybe, fireworks, some angry spirit voices, something. Just when she was beginning to think the spell was a dud, wind picked up in Giles' apartment, though the door and windows were all closed.

"There it is," Tara muttered.

Suddenly Spike's body was outlined with a black smoky blur. It swirled, stalking almost like Spike did in his black coat in the shadows, the way he had when Buffy first met him. Little spots in the darkness shone gold, like stars in the night sky, and these swelled a little bigger until they took up almost a third of the shadow. Some of them started to take on a pinkish glow. Everyone looked to Tara to interpret it for them.

"The darkness is the demon. His, um, vampire side? And the goldish-whitish bits are the human parts of him. Kinda like his soul, I guess."

"And the pink?" Buffy asked. She rested her hands on her hips, still circling but more with curiosity than apprehension, almost forgetting altogether that she was still holding a stake. She stopped in front of Spike, watching his face. When they locked eyes, she could see the pink getting more intense in her periphery.

"Buff, what pink?" Xander asked.

"I—" She glanced back at Xander, then pointed in Spike's direction with her stake.

"Mother Hecate, we thank thee for thine guidance," Tara murmured quickly, bowing her head. The swirly magic-y stuff vanished altogether.

"Well, that was definitely a soul," Anya said. She walked toward the end table and picked up the bag of popcorn she'd taken a break from munching on.

"What? That might've just been a glitch!" Xand protested. "We don't know what we saw."

"Tara thinks it was, too!" Anya waved her hand so emphatically that a piece of popcorn went flying. Giles grumbled under his breath and picked the garbage up off of his living room floor. "Don't you trust me?"

"Ahn, not this again. Didn't we establish the relationship-y goodness we've got going with the whole I-put-myself-between-you-and-commando-Riley?"

"Have you heard from this Riley again, Buffy?" Giles walked into the kitchen.

"No. Wills, did you see him on campus or anything at all?"

Willow's nose twitched and she shook her head. "No. Sorry, Buffy. I really thought he was normal, I swear. Didn't figure he'd turn out to be a major poophead. I told him I'd beat him to death with a shovel if he was mean to you at all and everything."

"Dating life on the Hellmouth, I guess," Buffy grumbled. She adjusted the bandana holding her hair back. "Normal just ain't gonna happen."

"Well, unless you're with Xander," Anya said, smiling at him. Her face went stone cold, a bit of the old vengeance demon coming to the surface as she glared at Buffy. "You can't have Xander."

"Duly noted." Buffy sighed, tossing her stake onto the couch. "I should've gone away to college."

"Yeah. I'm sure Faith could've held down the fort!" Willow offered a goofy grin.

"Spike," Giles said, returning to the room with a mug that he handed off to the still-bound platinum blond pain in the ass. "You wrote something while we were silent. The Initiative. Were you planning on expanding upon that information?"

"I dunno. Is there a cookie in it for me if I talk?"

"There's more blood and a lack of a sound thrashing in it for you."

"Old softie." Spike dropped Tara's cloth and slurped from the mug Giles had given him. Buffy and Xander both audibly gagged. "How 'bout I also get to actually leave your flat?"

Buffy shrugged. "If he starts killing again, I'll just find him and dust him. It's not exactly like he's Captain Subtlety."

"That's the spirit, pet."

"Anyone mind if I un... untie him?"

Willow smiled over at her, then joined her, each of them untying one of Spike's hands. He sighed and slouched once he was free. Buffy half expected him to go on the attack. But he just stood up and gulped down some more blood.

"So what I don't understand is why the army would give Spike a soul," Xander said. "And also with the question of how."

"No, the army gave him a chip," Willow said. "Like, a Behavior Modification Chip. Like a soul, but without the actual guilty cookie-baking instinct."

"More like shockin' a bad doggie," Spike agreed. He set the mug down, rubbing at the back of his head.

"He got the soul from a demon."

"Demons give away souls?"

"You can fight for it. It's literally hell, but if you have that kind of stamina and a dash of being a glutton for punishment..." Anya said.

"That's right. I earned it, fair and square."

"You somehow lost your chip and went to Africa to gain a soul all in the space of Thanksgiving and Willow's spell?" Giles inquired, glasses sliding down his nose. "In the space of the week when you were chained to my tub."

"No. It's all very complicated, and I don't much feel like explainin' it."

"Fine." Buffy sat on one of Giles' barstools. "Spike's got something keeping him from killing, I don't really care about the specifics. Army guys. Spill."

"Right. Gits shocked me, locked me up, were doin' experiments on demons," he said. He was staring straight at Buffy, as though no one else were in the room. The intensity of it gave her major wiggins, made her squirm a little. Last vamp who looked at her like that got an axe to the neck. "There's this bloke named Adam, and he wants to make this Frankenstein army."

"Adam?"

"Yeah. Top secret government plaything." He licked his lips, seeming to think it all over. "S'all I can remember right now. Wills, if you could hack 'em, that might help."

"Sure. Secret encrypted government files? I'm your girl. The coroner's office is so high school."

"Since when is he the plan guy? If Giles isn't the plan guy, then I'm the plan guy! I'm the back-up plan guy!"

"Riley is one of 'em, too. Boy..." Spike took a deep breath. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and stuck it between his lips though he didn't light it. "He's regulation, just doesn't know half of what's going on there, I wager. Has corn for brains, that one."

"Regulation?" Buffy echoed. "My Slayer dream. He said that he was regulation."

Buffy twisted up her face, thinking. Spike had told her, in the dream, that he had to show her something or he'd get all dusty. If she hadn't seen it herself, would she have believed that Riley was part of the Initiative, or that Spike had a soul? That was a whole world of topsy-turvy. She wasn't sure she believed it and she'd seen both things with her own eyes. She might've staked Spike for saying either. Slayer dreams were way too big on the cryptic. They were like prophecies—completely useless until they happened.

"Slayer? Buffy?"

"Huh?"

"Said I might patrol and then try to find myself a crypt. Wanna come with?"

"Yeah, I guess." She grabbed her coat from the back of the couch. "Uh, Willow, I'm gonna just head back home after since break technically started yesterday. My mom wants to do the whole holiday shopping thing tomorrow. That okay?"

"Sure!" Willow said, waving her off. "Tara and I can go get some shopping done at the mall."

Spike glanced at the witches, licked his teeth, but said nothing.

Bonus author's note (I'm just getting bonus-happy today): I'm currently working on Chapter 29 of this story with a little ways (several chapters) to go yet. I'm already looking at sequel possibility. I've got at least one in mind, and possibly another after that. So I guess what I'm saying is this is very likely a trilogy in the making so you guys will have much to read from me in the future! :)