Chapter 8

While the two young slayers dueled in the desert, Spike granted Yoder his first interview. They conducted it in the parlor of Dilip Singh, proprietor of the Happy Trails Tourist Court (Established 1955), New Delhi native, and resident sorcerer. Spike slumped into one of Singh's easy chairs and watched soundlessly as Yoder bustled with note pads, pencils, and recording equipment. When everything was laid out to his satisfaction, the diminutive librarian sat cross-legged on a floor pillow and pulled the coffee table up to him to use as a desk. He clicked the remote control of the video camera, waited for the tiny green "Record" light to pop on, and recited to it the official documentation: "April 30th, 2005, 11:15 AM Mountain Time; location: Ashcraft, Arizona; interview with the vampire known as Spike, a.k.a. William the Bloody; conducted by myself, Mr. Paul Yoder of the Council of Watchers."

Spike glanced into the camera lens and said tonelessly, "Cheers."

Pencil now in hand, Yoder made an admirable attempt to hide his eagerness and remain the professional, neutral scribe/reporter. "First off," he began, "I'd like to learn about the method you used to reinstate your soul."

The vampire known as Spike shrugged. "Thought you lot already had a method of your own. Don't Red still do it with one of those magic eight balls of hers?"

Yoder nodded. "An Orb of Thesulah. There's a few of those around, but our copies of the text that goes with them, The Annals for the Rituals of the Undead, have all been lost. The council's were destroyed in The First Evil's attacks, Willow's was buried with Sunnydale, and we guess that the copy she gave Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is probably in the hands of Wolfram & Hart. Willow's tried to write down the spell from memory, but she's not sure how accurate it is. She hasn't been able to resoul anyone with it yet."

"Well, dunno if I'll be much help, either. The whole thing for me was sort of a blur." Spike's face and body stiffened; it was clear that he didn't relish discussing the subject. "I'd got upset about something - which'll remain bloody private, thank you - an' I remember scouting about in Sunnydale's darker corners 'til I learned about a wizard who had a brother who knew of a shaman that could give me what I wanted if I entertained him enough. Entertainment for him turned out to be me fisticuffing with all his best beasties."

"What shaman?" Yoder fired off. "Where? Wizard's name?"

"Hold your water, Watcher. Wasn't told any names. I paid the bloke enough and he teleported me to the middle of Africa, judging by the look of the place. I remember villagers yellin' at me not to go into the cave I'd been told to go into. So I went in, and I fought Mister Shaman's ghouls…" Spike fell silent for a moment, and his voice grew tighter, lower. He looked at neither Yoder nor the camera, but at the wall. "Then he said he was satisfied, and that I'd get what I came for."

His voice was so low now that Yoder had to strain to understand him.

"It hurt. Oh, God, how it hurt. I didn't remember that having a soul hurt that way. Realizing in the space of an instant what you've done…the enormity of what you've done…to all...all the people you've...all those years; all those people…"

He looked down at his knees in silence. The nauseating, heart-sickening feel of guilt and grief and hopelessness and self-loathing flooded over him, threatening to drown him. Put it in a drawer, Paloma had advised him. Just file it in a drawer in your head, comprende? No good keeping it out in the middle of the damn floor all the time; it's just gonna get in your way. You gonna keep tripping over it and not be able to accomplish a damn thing. There hadn't been anyone to tell him that at the beginning, though, when he'd needed it most...just himself, and the basement (with sounds of life above his head as students and teachers crashed and laughed like flocks of blameless birds), and the stinking, terrifying First. Dimly he heard Yoder ask, "How'd he do it?"

"He touched my chest." Spike chuckled. "No fuss, no muss. Just me screamin' on the ground, going batshit insane. I suppose then he teleported me back to Sunny Cal, before I could drool and piss all over his cavern."

Yoder slid a pencil and a pad of paper across the table to him. "Could you make a sketch of what he looked like?"

Spike regarded the librarian for a moment, then picked up the pad, scribbled something, and tossed it back. To Yoder's great disappointment, he'd merely drawn a tall, black blob with stick arms and two little eye circles. Beside the blob was a small stick figure whose eyes were represented by Xs.

"That's me," Spike explained.

Yoder sighed and added Spike's name and the date at the page's bottom. "Well, at least we've got an idea of his relative height, and narrowed him down to a possible continent."

"Sorry, Mate; I'd give you more details if I could. This is the best I can do. Told you it was bloody traumatic." Spike sounded genuinely sincere. "The boys that arranged it all have long since vanished into the netherworld. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for 'em." He stretched out his legs and shoved his hands into his pants' pockets. "Anything else?"

Yoder flipped the pad to a blank page. "What can you tell me about Illyria?"

Spike rolled his eyes. "Now that," he answered, "Is Fred's domain. I can tell you a bit about the meat locker and Tupperware that Old Ones are stored in, and how we were able to knock 'Lyri's powers down a peg, but Fred knows her best. I'm not her Grand Quahog."

"Excuse me?"

"Grand Qwa'ha Xahn," Dilip called out from his desk in the office adjoining the parlor. "An Old One's high priest and guide."

"Do you know-" Yoder called back hopefully.

"No. No more than anyone else here. Talk to Fred."


"So, Fred…build any good particle accelerators lately?"

Willow flashed a quick smile at her fellow Mensa as she climbed into Fred's pickup truck. She'd pointedly avoided the Giles-infested coffee shop, and chosen instead to phone Winifred for a tour of Phoenix's centers of paranormal activity.

Fred smiled back gratefully. "No, but I've gotten involved in a really interesting project with a local research company. We're trying to design a more efficient solar energy panel and I'm attempting to apply a formula that we used in L.A. to make necro-tempered glass, which absorbs so much sunlight that even vampires are safe behind it…"

It was a relief to be able to discuss such mundane stuff. She didn't want to talk about Buffy; didn't want to think about Buffy, and she was glad that so far Willow hadn't mentioned her.

When they'd exhausted the subject of solar panels, Willow said sadly, "Fred, I'm really, really sorry about Giles not letting me help you. If I'd known, there's no way I would have let him stop me."

"It's all right," Fred assured her. "It wasn't your fault."

"No, it's not all right. It's wrong to act like someone doesn't matter. Giles isn't usually that way."

Her reply triggered a question that had plagued Fred for two years. "Willow, why didn't you tell us about Spike when you came to L.A.?"

Willow gave her a blank and somewhat baffled look. "What about him?"

Unbelievable! Fred hardly knew where to begin. "That he was a good guy? A souled vampire ally was helping you fight The First Evil? You didn't think that was something important enough to mention? I mean, you told us about gathering the slayers-to-be and what kinds of magic you were hoping would work and Buffy killing a Turok-Han...but you never said a word about Spike being there."

A slow flush crept across Willow's face. "I didn't? I guess - I don't know - well, he stayed down in the basement so much, and, and, he was all b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b for awhile..." She flipped her finger rapidly up and down against her lips to indicate insanity. "...I guess I just forgot." She seemed to realize how stupid that sounded.


Did I forget?

Now that she gave it some thought, she supposed she must have. She'd been shocked at discovering that Buffy had slept with Spike (and was a bit shocked now to discover that Fred was sleeping with him), but for the most part Spike hadn't really registered on her radar since they'd brought Buffy back from the dead - Willow'd had her hands full with that, and then Tara and magic and the dark days; England and the coven; the flesh-eating demon; Kennedy everywhere she turned... She tried in vain to recall whether she'd mentioned Spike to Faith during their drive back to Sunnydale.

She remembered how oddly safe and liberating it had felt during that visit to Angel's hotel; away from home and reminders of the DarkWillow time and how she kept losing

(spun out of; didn't just lose it)

control.

In Los Angeles she'd regained her confidence: she was relatively unknown; a clean, new slate. No one there knew her sordid details. She'd even felt daring enough to half-joke, half-confess her sins to Wesley, although she didn't think he really quite believed her. Once she got back to Sunnydale that confidence fell apart again, as she'd feared it would, but L.A...

I ROCKED in L.A.

"Gotta make a stop here," Fred announced suddenly, and pulled the truck into the parking lot of a meat processing company. "Blood run." She parked and waved to an employee entering the building.

"Blood run?" Willow echoed.

"Uh-huh. We buy Spike's and Angel's blood here. They save it and freeze it in five-gallon pickle buckets for us, an' then we take it home and thaw it out and re-freeze it in single-serve sandwich baggies."

Willow screwed up her face. "Eww."

"Tell me about it," Fred agreed. "We never know what kind of blood we're going to get. The guys like beef okay, but lots of times it gets mixed in with pork or sheep and tastes pretty bland. Deer blood's their favorite. It's got a good gamey whang." She slid her purse strap over her shoulder and hopped out of the truck.

Venison. A small, trusting fawn lying down in her lap. The life's-blood of that innocent sacrifice running wet over her fingers. Old Yeller. Sounder. Bambi.

"I think I'll just wait here in the car."

Ten minutes later, as one of the butchers helped them load the sealed buckets into the truck's back seat, Willow whispered, "What do you say when they ask you what you're going to do with it?"

"Feed it to our hogs. I made up a story about raisin' piglets and putting blood in their slops to give them extra iron." Fred raised her voice. "Thanks, Earl." She waited until the butcher "yer welcome"d her and walked out of earshot. Then she added, "I was going to tell them we raised vampire bats and sold them to zoos, but I was afraid they'd think that sounded suspicious."

Willow smiled. "It would've been closer to the truth, but, yeah." I must really seem like a feeb to Fred, she said to herself, Forgetting to tell them that there was another souled vampire in the world. It's just that...it was just SPIKE.

For some reason, that statement also seemed feeble. Which in turn made her damned uncomfortable.


When Yoder began to try to coax supernatural knowledge from Dilip, Spike slipped out and went back to his motel room apartment. The interview had shaken him badly, and he needed sanctuary. He shut the apartment's door. After a moment, he reached out again and locked it. Then he stood in the middle of the comfortable old room with his eyes shut, and breathed in its scents.

Pine. Hair spray. Laundry soap. Spaghetti sauce. The room's familiar peacefulness wrapped slowly around him like a warm blanket, quiet and soothing. God didn't seem so quick to condemn in here, somehow. Saints and slayers never entered to cluck their tongues in disgust.

He stood there a few more minutes, and then opened his eyes and shook the despondency off. Let Angel wallow in that pond. Spike had better things to do.

The battery was low in the cordless telephone on the nightstand; he unplugged its base and plugged in the plastic novelty phone shaped like a pair of big red lips that Fred had found at a rummage sale and insisted on bringing home because it was so hilariously tacky. He lifted the upper lip and pressed it against his ear and dialed a number.

On the fifth ring, Charles Gunn finally answered. "Hey, Man. That little dude through pickin' your brain yet?" His voice crackled with signal interference. Spike imagined him driving past some skyscraper or under a bridge.

"For now, I s'pose. I reckon he'll try to chew through all of us one by one."

Through the phone came the sound of Gunn's chuckle. "Well, I ain't hangin' around waitin' to get inquisitioned by Bilbo Baggins. I was just about to call you - we got a hot tip on some witchcraft supplies for sale. The real thing, sounds like; none of that pussy 'magicks' spelled with a c-k-s shit." Static broke up the connection completely for several seconds.

"Sorry. Damn cell phone. Anyhow, I'm on my way to pick you up; Paloma's waiting for us at that little demon cafe on the west side of Phoenix, with the guy that gave us the lead. She said be sure to bring you."

"What, she expectin' me to do the haggling? I don't know shite about magic. Why can't she play fishwife?"

"I don't know. She just said make sure you come."

Spike grunted. "All right, then. Hope our dealer's not some stodgy old fart with a stick up his arse." He hung the receiver back in its cradle and made the telephone mouth whole again, and the oversized plastic lips pouted up at him with an enigmatic smile.


The cafe was neatly hidden in the basement of an otherwise abandoned building. Its back alley offered a covered curbside drop-off area for sun-sensitive customers, along with sewer access for those who had no objection to stench. Gunn and Spike descended a dimly-lit flight of stairs into the cafe proper. Strings of forty-watt colored light bulbs criss-crossed the ceiling, giving the place a garishly cheerful atmosphere. Paloma waved at them from a corner booth with a pleased little smile. They could just make out the back of a head across from her.

"Must be our connection," Gunn commented. "What's she grinning about? She looks like the cat that swallowed the canary."

The booth's table was littered with plates and burger baskets. Most of them were empty save for some fried pieces of breading and a few tufts of fur, but Paloma's guest had a fresh plate before him, and was talking animatedly and waving a french fry in the air for emphasis. His little triangular ears flapped up and down, and his skin rippled in a hundred different creases and rolls. He turned and looked at Spike and Gunn with friendly hound dog eyes, and beamed.

"Well, dog gone it, Spike! You're a sight for sore eyes! I sure have missed ya, buddy!"

A smile began to creep slowly across Spike's face. Perhaps this wasn't such a bastard of a day, after all.

"Bloody hell. Clem."