"Hello, love." The familiar, cheeky voice rang out clearly across the cemetery.
Buffy sighed inwardly and stopped, shifting her bag of weapons to a more comfortable position on her shoulder. She turned to face him.
"Come for a bit of a visit, pet?" Spike asked with an optimistic grin. "Made up your mind already, have you?" He perched on a handy tombstone like some scruffy crow.
"No . . . and no!" Buffy replied vehemently. "I thought you said you were going to stop bothering me."
"I said I'd wait for you to decide what you felt about me," he reminded her. "And here you are only a few days later, coming 'round to see me."
"I am not coming around to see you," she replied, flustered. "This is my job, remember? Patrolling?"
"Mmm-hmm," he murmured, unconvinced. "Sunnyhell has how many cemeteries? I only live in this one. You know that I'd take care of things here for you, yet here you are again. So tell me what should I think?"
"We are not having this conversation again," she insisted, moving away briskly.
"I don't know how to break it to you pet, but it seems we are," he said, jumping down from the tombstone to stride in step with her.
"What part of no did you not understand?" Buffy asked, turning aside.
"I've heard it from you before," he replied, moving quickly to cut her off, his duster swirling about his legs. "It could be the way you always make it mean 'convince me'. Why should this time be any different?
"You said it yourself - you like the things I do to you. You like the way I make you feel. Who else is going to give you what you want? What you need?" He smiled, recalling satisfying memories. "Hell, who else can take what you dish out when you let go?" Spike looked at her speculatively. "Didn't you ever worry you might crush poor soldierboy's ribcage? Had to hold back all the time with him, didn't you? In work, at play . . ."
"That's not a basis for a relationship - just the fact that we're . . . physically compatible," she protested awkwardly.
"But holding yourself back is? Having to lie to poor Captain Cardboard about what makes you feel good - and don't try to tell me you didn't," he admonished, seeing her about to retort. "The things you do . . . that we do . . . you never did with him."
"Did," she interjected. "Things we did. Emphasis on past tense here."
He spread his hands as though to let her objection slip free. "As you wish, pet. But no human boy, however brawny, is going to be able to satisfy you."
Buffy closed her eyes in exasperation. "Can we not discuss my sex life in a public graveyard?"
"Fine. Come back with me and we'll have all the privacy you could want," Spike offered with a devious smile.
"No!"
"No no? Or 'I want to be talked into it' no?" he asked, moving forward and running his hands from her waist down, tracing the swell of her hips.
"How about an 'I'll break both your arms if you don't stop now' no? Clear enough?" she asked, stepping back out of his reach. "If you must know, I'm here tracking a demon that terrorized a bunch of people back at the park. It headed this way, but I lost it just before you turned up."
"Ah. And you only remember this now?" he smiled. "Convenient, pet, I must say."
"Well I would have said something sooner," she jibed, "but someone was going out of his way to be annoying and I had to deal with that first. Are you going to make yourself useful, or do I have to go back to the 'arm-breaking' part?" she asked.
"Not the sort of rough-and-tumble I was hoping for," he sighed with mock disappointment, "but better than nothing. Let's go kill your demon, then."
Having arrived at this semblance of a truce, Buffy and Spike set off together through the cemetery, looking for signs of the demon's presence. It didn't take them long; uprooted vegetation and shattered monuments provided clear evidence of its passage.
"It's making this too easy," Buffy murmured. "Typical demon; long on destruction, short on thinking skills." She glanced sideways at Spike to see if he had registered this jab.
"You just aren't willing to spend time with the right sort of demon, pet," he offered. "We have all sorts of talents you don't appreciate. Despite everything, you're still sadly ignorant of some of my better qualities."
"Better qualities?" she snorted. "I've seen you naked. Maybe I should threaten to break your jaw, rather than your arms, if only to shut you up for a while," she continued, slipping back into the more comfortable relationship of insult and counter.
"Just because you want to shoot the messenger doesn't make the message untrue," Spike replied, unwilling to let her take the easy way out of the conversation.
Buffy stopped abruptly and turned to face him, bracing her hands on her hips. "Listen," she said, "let's get something straight here-Look out!" She grabbed the lapels of Spike's duster and hauled him with her roughly to the ground. Demon claws split the air where he had been standing moments before.
Buffy regained her footing and thrust forward, driving one shoulder hard into the demon's midsection. It staggered back, and she followed up with a spinning kick directed at its head, but the demon recovered quickly enough to grab her leg and used this hold to send her sprawling into the brush.
During the momentary distraction, Spike had scrambled to his feet again and now leapt for the demon's back, getting one arm around its throat in a chokehold and squeezing tightly. The demon tossed its head and roared, scattering stringy yellow spittle all around, before throwing itself backward into a tree and knocking Spike loose, dazed.
"Spike!" Buffy yelled, rushing forward to attack again. "Get the axe from my bag!" He shook his head to clear the ringing, and saw the bag where it had fallen. He lunged for it in a diving roll as the demon swung at him again. Freeing the axe, he tossed it underhanded to Buffy, who caught it and spun to strike all in one fluid move. Thick yellow-white fluid - more like pus than blood - began to leak from where the blade had split the demon's warty hide.
"Okay, officially grossed-out now," Buffy complained, drawing her arm back for another blow. "Doesn't anybody just have ordinary blood anymore?"
Spike rooted around in the bag for another edged weapon. Finding none, he cursed, then pulled out the pistol crossbow and loaded it. He took careful aim at the demon's back and fired. It howled in outrage and clutched at the bolt that now protruded from its back, giving Buffy another chance to attack.
In a black van parked a few hundred yards from the cemetery entrance, Warren, Andrew and Jonathan watched the monitors closely as their plan unfolded. It had been Warren's idea - more and more of their plans seemed to be his plans these days - but Andrew had agreed readily. He had summoned the L'wuxxan demon that Buffy was now fighting. It had been a lure to bring her into this part of the cemetery where they had hidden a number of their miniature surveillance cameras.
Warren turned to look at Jonathan. "It's your turn, magic man. Shake that magic bone, or whatever you have to do," he prompted with a grin.
"This spell doesn't use the bone," Jonathan replied testily, "and I'm still not sure this spell functions exactly like we think it does. I wish you had let me have a few more days to research it."
"What's to be sure about?" interjected Warren. "You cast the spell, the Slayer gets a bad set of nightmares for a few days, and she's off our backs so we can carry out our heist."
"Yeah, Jonathan," added Andrew, "I did my part, so now you have to do yours."
"Don't rush me," he complained. "And what do we do about Spike?"
"When the Slayer goes down, the demon will probably take care of him and then that's one less person we have to worry about," said Warren. "Just do it."
Frowning, Jonathan lit a stick of pungent incense and sat before the mystic symbols he'd inscribed on the floor of the van. "Dominus insomnii," he intoned carefully, "occisora aegresco . . ."
Warren and Andrew bent forward eagerly to the monitor screens to watch the results of the spell unfold.
Back in the graveyard, the battle wasn't going as planned.
"Bloody hell!" complained Spike, throwing down the crossbow. "Doesn't he know he's supposed to be dead already?" Half a dozen bolts feathered the demon's back and it was bleeding from twice as many cuts, yet it fought on.
"Is this your idea of an under appreciated demon talent, Spike?" Buffy gasped out between heaving breaths. "Because I really could have done without this particular example." Gripping the axe more firmly with two hands now befouled with the demon's thick blood, she moved forward for yet another attack. "Do you think you might-" Her words were cut off suddenly as she pitched forward face-first to the ground at the demon's feet.
"Buffy!" Spike shouted, seeing her fall. He raced forward and slammed bodily into the demon, knocking it away from her long enough for him to retrieve the axe. He stood spread-legged over Buffy's body and braced for the next attack.
The demon swung a clawed hand wildly, ripping his scalp open from his temple to just behind his ear. Blood flowed freely, obscuring his vision. His head rang with the force of the blow, but he managed a return swing with the axe. When it failed to connect, the momentum of it almost tipped him over. Struggling for balance, he fell to one knee, unknowingly saving himself from another blow to the head. Spike forced himself to his feet once more, determined to keep the demon away from Buffy. Another wild swing with the axe, and it stumbled back. Its movements began to be less certain at last, as the effects of its injuries finally took their toll on the huge body.
"About bloody time, too," Spike muttered, moving in for the kill. He leapt for the demon again, clutching it around the neck with one arm while with his other hand he used the axe as a giant knife, sawing raggedly at its throat. Sheets of thick blood cascaded down the demon's chest until finally it toppled motionless to the dirt.
Dropping the axe and lurching back upright, Spike staggered over to Buffy. He sighed in relief as he heard the strong, regular sound of her heartbeat. He ran his hands quickly over her, wiping the gore away; no bones seemed to be broken, and there were no signs of any head wounds. He shook her and shouted her name repeatedly, to no avail. He was at a loss to explain why she was unconscious, but he knew where he could get help.
"Come on, love," he said gently, lifting her into his arms. "I'll get you home."