Anya popped back to the warehouse alone the next day after she closed the Magic Box. Nobody had asked her to. Nobody asked her much of anything, really. They were too busy waiting and watching to see when she would do something evil.

Vengeance isn't evil, she thought, it's justice: disproportionate justice. Around her the insects shimmered and hummed. None of them had tried to sting her since the first one she saw in the Magic Box. Maybe they could sense she was a demon. Their wings brushed Anya's cheeks like children's fingers. Why was she here anyway? For the Scoobies? For Xander? She wasn't exactly in the Slayer's inner circle. They only came to her when they needed help. They used her like they used Spike.

That stupid vampire never could control his temper.

She almost went to Buffy, in those first moments of anger after he attacked her. But the Slayer's desire for vengeance was so fleeting Anya didn't have time. Buffy's anger had flickered on the edge of the demon's consciousness and then dissipated before Anya even knew it was there. I should have been faster, Anya thought. Then she would have had the satisfaction of incinerating something. She wasn't really that angry with Spike, but it was frustrating to have so much power and not be able to use it at will!

Moving through the warehouse was like walking blindly through thousands of beaded curtains. The sensation of little blue bodies constantly against her skin was beginning to make Anya claustrophobic. She tried to think of something else. Would Giles really care if she moved the Magic Box to LA? She didn't think so. They could afford some nice little store on Rodeo Drive. She wouldn't mind working in a smaller place as long as it wasn't in Sunnydale.

Good! She had finally found the bodies! Well, not so good because they looked really uncomfortable with their stomachs filled with those gestating eggs pulsing below the surface of their skin. The abducted men were strung up along the walls of the warehouse, held in place by what looked like typical monster snot. Their stomachs were grossly lumpy and distended. Too bad for you, Anya thought as she checked the pulse of the man nearest her. Yep. He was alive. At least Dawn would be happy to know she was right about the breeding thing. Dawn always liked to be right.

"I'll get you my pretty," Willow warned, creeping up on the shimmering blue bug in the Summer's kitchen, mason jar at the ready. She pounced, and then screamed as Anya appeared directly in her path. The demon dissipated and reappeared on the far side of the room. Willow fell hard against the counter.

______________________________________________________________________



"She's gone all evil again!" Anya complained to Dawn who had run in when she heard the noise.

"Have not!" Willow exclaimed. "I mean- for one thing I can't." She tried not to sound bitter. Judging from Anya's expression she was failing. The demon smoothed the sleeves of her suede coat and looked unimpressed.

"You can still do evil," Anya kindly pointed out, "just not magically."

Dawn bit her lip as Willow's face darkened. Willow looked like she was going to say something harsh, possibly about Anya's own demonic relation to the good/evil fault line. Instead Willow slammed the glass jar down over the bug that had landed next to her on the counter.

"I could have brought you a bug back from the warehouse if I knew you wanted one." Not that I would have, Anya thought. She turned to Dawn. "And you were not incorrect about the men. They are being used to gestate the host's eggs. I doubt they'll survive the hatching."

"That's really disgusting," Dawn cringed. "Willow, what are you going to do with that thing?"

"I was going to study it, you know, see if we can learn anything. And if not, hey! Everybody needs a pet, someone to talk to." Willow flinched at the looks on their faces. Apparently it was too early to be making with the jokes.

______________________________________________________________________



Buffy really did not want to go to the crypt. Pushing open the door she hated how familiar it smelled: the rock and dust and candles. As always the TV was on. She snuck in slowly, hoping to surprise him.

"Clem?"

"Arrgh!" Clem shouted, jumping out of his chair. "You, ha, you're a quiet girl, Slayer," he complimented her, looking awkward. He hoped she wasn't going to kill him for taking Dawn to Rack's last spring. She looked like she wanted to kill something.

"Is Spike here?" she demanded.

"He's downstairs."

"Has he been laughing?" Buffy asked suspiciously.

"Not that I've noticed," Clem said timidly. "Although he has been swearing a lot."

That was fine, Buffy thought. She could handle swearing.

Spike did not look up when she descended the ladder although Buffy was sure he could sense her presence. He could probably smell her. That thought alone made her want to run home. But no, she was not going to be afraid. Not of him. Her fist tightened around the lacquered stake in her pocket.

"Come to finish me off then, have you?" Spike asked. He sat cross-legged on the bed, surrounded by books. He did not want to look at her. In her presence Spike knew, because the soul screamed it at him, that she had never loved him, could never love something as base as he had been.

"I need your help," Buffy said. He looked at her then, surprised.

"That is what Watcher's do," Spike said evenly. He had been watching her for a long time now, he knew, and Buffy had never found his stalking very helpful.

Buffy stared at him, thinking of all the things that had happened in this cave: Spike chaining her up and promising to kill Drusilla, finding the Buffy shrine, wild, breathtaking, never quite reaching the bed sex, demon eggs hatching. Mostly not good things had happened here. Under her gaze Spike's implacable expression was slowly turning to something resembling guilt. That would be the soul, Buffy thought, and I don't care.

The silence stretched out between them.

"Whatever happened to my duster?" Spike asked suddenly. He'd been wanting to know and there was never going to be a natural time for that question, was there?

"I burned it," Buffy said defiantly.

"Did you now?" Spike looked slightly amused. " Have a nice little marshmallow roast?"

Buffy collapsed in an old Victorian chair. She hated it when he was disarming like this; there was always some ulterior motive. "I didn't think of it," she admitted.

Spike held up the small red volume he had been thumbing through. "I've been reading the Slayer's Handbook. It's obvious Giles never gave it to you."

"Kendra had one," Buffy said with a sad smile. You remember Kendra, right Spike? The Slayer your girlfriend killed?

"What does it say?"

"The usual crap you would expect from the Council. A Slayer walks alone. Listen to thy Watcher. Walk softly and carry a pointy stick." He reached out and passed the book to her. Buffy wrinkled her nose.

"Can I burn it?" she asked.

"Only if I get to roast a marshmallow."

Buffy smiled at this, and then frowned. There will be no laughing with the evil fiend, she ordered herself. Spike took her mood change in stride.

"What do you need help with? Is it the bugs?"

Buffy nodded. "It's been a week and still nada with the pest control. I found the Queen but I can't seem to kill the damn thing. Dawn looked it up in one of the texts at the Magic Box. A Sgubykci demon? Does that mean anything to you?"

"Oh. Shit." Spike said standing and walking over to the manuscript laid out on a nearby table. "I think my calculations were off then."

"Spike! What did you do? If this is like the eggs I'm going to dust you and use you to grit my driveway this winter!"

Spike turned and gave her a contemptuous look.

"At least I would if it snowed in California," Buffy concluded lamely.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Slayer, but this is beyond me." Even without the soul, Spike thought. "According to the Ratsgninrom Manuscripts there will be three portents: the Host; the Massacre; and the Rising Death."

"This is Sunnydale, we have rising death every night. So let me guess. Three portents and then the end of the world."

"Very good. The Slayer gets a cookie. I think it would be safe to assume our little bug problem is the Host. I would have put that together sooner except I thought we had more time. I thought we had sodding years. This manuscript is going to drive me out of my skull." Spike's eyebrows constricted, wrinkling his forehead in frustration.

"Does it say how to kill the Host?" Buffy asked, all business.

"No," Spike paced back and forth. "Although obviously you do, or the next portent wouldn't be able to occur. Don't suppose you want to hold off on killing it, give me time to get a handle on the bloody translation?"

"People are dying," she reminded him.

People are dying, Spike repeated silently. It sounded like a buffet. Poor humanity, to be seen only as cattle for the demon underworld. Even cobalt blue wasps wanted to munch on them. Buffy was watching him with hopeless expectancy. Good thing the Scoobies didn't know she was here. They would sweep down with their collective ire and chop off his head.

"I'm an idiot," Spike exclaimed, pawing through the piles of books on the bed. He opened one and flipped through the pages. "The consciousness of the Host doesn't lie with the Queen. It's a collective. The mind, the life energy, is generated by the swarm. You have to destroy the individual members of the Host."

Buffy sat up, trying not to look impressed. "How do you know that?"

Spike brandished the book. "Watcher diary from Turkey, 1933. Blue wasps swarmed a town."

Maybe choosing Spike as a Watcher hadn't been such a lame idea after all, Buffy thought. "How did they kill it?"

"They didn't. Everybody in the village died."

Buffy fell back in her chair. "Fuck."

"Calm down. I'm not done yet." Spike thumbed through another volume looking oddly intent and Giles-like. "One was destroyed in Macedonia, 1856. A mage opened a portal back to the Sgubykci home dimension. But a rift can only be opened wide enough to transport about 500 of the collective then it closes down. A wider portal than that and we risk damaging the integrity of our dimensional walls. How many wasps are we talking about, Slayer?"

"Thousands," Buffy grimaced.

______________________________________________________________________



"I vote for flamethrowers," Xander said, selecting a piece of pepperoni pizza from the coffee table. Pizza and mass destruction at Casa Summers. It was just like old times.

I vote for a spell that turns all the locusts into little burnt crisps done by someone who isn't me, Willow thought darkly. The place where the magic had been in her head was hollow. Inside she seethed at her own powerlessness. On the couch Willow curled into a ball next to Xander and tried to concentrate on what her friends were saying.

"Spike said we could summon a Namiag demon. It would consume the Host, but it would probably go on and destroy the town while it was at it. That's what happened in Bolivia," Buffy said with a sigh. She wanted a nice vampire to fight, something she could kick and stab at.

"Did Spike have any other helpful information?" Xander asked sarcastically. What had happed to being a Watcher in name only? Xander knew now was not the time for that question. But, barring eminent death, that time was going to come soon. Of course, eminent death was always a real possibility.

"Whatever we do, we should do it before the eggs hatch," Anya interjected. "Obviously the men are intended to be food when the little buggers emerge. Once they've fed they'll probably join the rest of the swarm."

"Gross," Dawn said from where she sat cross-legged on the floor next to her sister's chair.

"We need to do something before that," Buffy insisted.

"That may be enough," Willow said thoughtfully. Insects have a remarkably short lifecycle. If we can prevent the new generation from being born the swarm may die out on its own."

"Cool," Dawn grinned. Finally she was going to see some action. "So what do we do?"

"You stay home and do your homework for once," Buffy said.

"School hasn't even started yet, Buffy. Way to stay in touch with reality."

"Then you get to stay home and watch movies with Clem," Buffy amended patiently.

Because her sister always had to have a demon baby sitter? Buffy wasn't sure Clem could provide more than pleasant company. At least Spike could protect her, and Dawn had no business on a mission like this until she could protect herself.

Dawn looked crushed, but Buffy was immune to teenage pouting. "We finish this tonight," she said.

______________________________________________________________________



"Hello, Joyce," Spike said to the headstone. He placed the bouquet of white roses in front of the marble slab. "Flowers are a bit nicer this time. Give a body a bit of income and he starts to feel all posh."

He paused to light a cigarette and watch a lone insect float by on pale blue wings. Should he be out helping Buffy? No. Of course not. If she needed his help she would have asked.

"I just wanted to tell you that I'm real sorry, about what I did to Buffy." Spike shook his head. "I don't know why I think you can hear me, except that I seem to spend all my bloody time talking to dead people these days. It's good that the Bit didn't raise you. The dead deserve their peace. They don't need to be popping up and asking favors and bobbing their heads like bloody jaybirds." Spike trailed off, wondering if Tara could hear him. He could not see her among the gravestones, but ghosts didn't need to be seen if they didn't have a mind to.

Spike stood silently before the grave watching the smoke from his cigarette dissipate into the darkness.

"I come here sometimes too," Dawn said behind him.

Good kid, Spike thought. He hadn't heard her coming until the last second. Walking forward she kissed the tips of her fingers and touched them to the headstone. Then Dawn turned an accusing look at Spike.

Ah, so she knows then. Spike hardened himself for whatever it was Dawn was going to say. He didn't expect her to hit him. It was more of a slap really, but she was trying. The sound of her palm striking his cheek was loud in the calm night air.

"Did that hurt?" she demanded.

Spike took a drag off his cigarette and exhaled thorough his nose like a dragon. "Nope," he said honestly. Dawn's eyes filled with tears. Shit. More bloody crying.

"I can't believe you left me," Dawn sniffled.

Spike smiled heartlessly. Shouldn't she be angry about what he did to Buffy? He decided the solipsism of youth was almost as great as the selfishness of the undead. Gently he wiped away the first tear, hoping no more would follow. Dawn shivered at the coldness of his hand.

"I didn't leave you, Niblet. There were things I had to do."

"The soul. Willow told me." Dawn looked up at him like she thought she would be able to see it. But Spike looked the same as ever; beautiful and pallid, like marble in the thin moonlight.

Great, Spike growled internally. The news was out. Well that's me buggered, he thought. As though my reputation wasn't shit already.

"I'll make you a deal, Dawn. Let me teach you how to throw a decent punch and I'll give you another shot." It was a damn shame the Slayer's kid sister couldn't even land a respectable blow.

Dawn didn't even have to consider the offer.

"When do we start?" she asked eagerly, tears suddenly forgotten.

Kids were so easy. He and Dru had always enjoyed feeding off the young. It was the only time their victims were almost excited for it. By the time the prey realized what was happening and started screaming it was too late. Spike dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his boot.

"We start now, pet."



TBC