"As always, it's about the blood," Willow said, closing the musty book in
front of her with a thump. Too bad this little research interlude was over.
Now it was back to the Ratsgininrom Manuscript, its frail pages swollen and
warped with Clem's blood. Just looking at the tome made her tummy all ooky.
"I admit that night in the tunnels is a little fuzzy in my memory, but there was defiantly biting, and consumption. For anyone who's curious, I'm more than happy to show off the bite marks," Xander objected from the head of Casa Summers kitchen table. His good hand directed Willow and Buffy's attention to his offended neck.
"So, what was wrong with my human blood that it didn't start the big thaw?" he demanded, which wasn't really what he wanted to know. What Xander truly wanted was an explanation of why, with a Massacre of the general Sunnydale population going on right now, they were wasting their time trying to fix the pet vampire. It was a question he'd brought up many times, in one form or another, over the past week and no one had managed to provide him with a satisfactory answer. Or, at least not an answer that satisfied him, which might not be the same thing at this point.
"Well, he didn't drink enough," Willow explained, happy to exposition. "You said yourself it was more of a sip than a...a.Big Gulp."
Sinking back in his chair, Xander closed his eyes against the pop culture imagery Willow had called up: thirty two ounces of his blood congealing in a tacky, colorful plastic cup for the vampire on the go. That was Will, always one with the words. He had a few words of his own he wanted to throw out there.
"So we want to make him good and healthy so he can take another stab at it? I'm really not on board with this plan."
"Spike saved your life," Buffy reminded him from the opposite side of her kitchen table. She tried not to sound irritated by Xander's habit of hijacking the moral high ground, but suspected it wasn't working. Her mind had been roaming back and forth, up and down, over her opinion on the vampire. She wanted to hate him, because that was easy, right? Xander certainly slipped into a state of passionate loathing with easy grace. And whenever he did she felt the need as Slayer and de facto leader to provide the niggling voice of reason, which was niggling her into the uncomfortable position of Spike defender extraordinaire.
With blatant poignancy, Xander placed his broken arm, encased from palm to elbow in a plaster cast, on the table in front of him. At which point his hair, which hadn't gotten the memo on manliness, flopped childishly into his eyes. Annoyed, Xander pushed it back with his one fully functional hand.
"Sure, Spike saved my life by not killing me. He rescued me from himself. Excuse me if I don't think dead boy gets a medal for not draining me dry," Xander snapped, more than happy to be making with the righteous indignation.
"No! No medals," Buffy said. "Just, you know, soul plus you not dead, I'm thinking he might deserve the benefit of the doubt on this one. A Little. Maybe." Way to stand firm Slayer, she thought. Xander graced her with a look of contempt, and Buffy couldn't blame him.
"Let's approach this logically," Xander offered, suspecting he was nearing the end of his own tightly rationed rationality. "You two want to keep Sid Vicious of the Undead around? Fine. Let's leave him nice and incapacitated. There's nothing so wrong with a frozen vamp. Or, we could chop off one of his legs! Remember when he was in a wheelchair? That was a Spike I could deal with."
Which was, admittedly, slightly over the top, but Xander didn't give a shit anymore. If he kept talking somebody, at some point, would have to come to their senses and realize he was right on the vampires are bad issue. How hard a concept was it to grasp?
Across the table, Willow and Buffy exchanged a glance. Oh no, Xander berated himself, I blew it. He knew that insane look in Buffy's eyes; the I 'heart' vampires expression. Thanks to his little rant the Slayer had officially joined Willow in the fans of Spike club.
"I can get the blood," Willow chirped, ignoring Xander's entire contribution to the conversation. "We won't even have to open a vein if you're up for a little black market shopping"
"You know me. I'm a shopoholic," Buffy said with mock seriousness.
You have got to be kidding me, Xander thought, letting his head fall onto the kitchen table with a melodramatic thud. Portents were exploding all around them and they were going to get all sisterly and bondy over black market platelets?
Willow grabbed her coat while Buffy slid one arm around Xander's shoulders and kissed his cheek.
"Don't poke the vampire while I'm gone," she warned.
______________________________________________________________________
It turned out the black market was the easy part. Shady demons dripping slime, trading hepatitis-infected blood for some old spell book Willow was obviously still reluctant to part from? No problem. Buffy wasn't even too scared about what the ugly creatures were going to do with the potent spells. It had to be light compared with the end of the world. Because this was apparently what she did now: bargain with the lesser evil for the greater good. There had to be a chapter against that in the hero handbook.
By the time Buffy and Willow left the warehouse, blood in hand, the afternoon had slid into evening, turning the familiar alleys of the industrial side of town dark and foreign. There was no moon and the unlit streets were practically invisible, their edges defined only by the shadowy outlines of the buildings around them. Since Slayer powers didn't include nifty night vision Buffy didn't notice the bodies littering the pavement until Willow tripped over one, sending plastic bags of blood bouncing over the asphalt.
"No matter how many times this happens, it's still gross," Willow said as Buffy helped her up.
"Can't argue with that observation," Buffy agreed, tentatively hunting around in the dark for the packets of blood, shivering as her fingers brushed a still warm corpse. Warm bodies meant the vamps still had to be close by. Glancing at Willow, Buffy began to doubt Spike, shiny new soul or not, was worth all this trouble.
"So, uh, this is the Massacre?" Willow asked, accepting the bags of blood Buffy passed back to her, trying to hide the hysterical edge in her voice. For the first time she realized life without magic was about to reduce her back to the status of snack sized victim, and it wasn't a position on the food chain she felt comfortable with.
"Yeah. This is it. Every night."
Why had she thought tonight would be any different? Buffy could feel the vampires all round them, an eerie itching inside her head that indicated demons were close, close enough that she should go slay them. Buffy's eyes shifted from Willow, to the distance, to the bodies, and back to Willow clutching the packets of blood to her chest. It was her birthright, her moral responsibility, to go forth and fight the Big Bad, but she couldn't leave Willow, and her stomach sank once again at the knowledge that she was choosing one person's life for another. I don't want this responsibility, she almost said out loud. Would she know she was an adult when she accepted the fact that life was unfair? Gnawing at her lip, Buffy brokered a deal with herself. Get Willow home safely, then come back out and slay the baddies. And the people who died in the meantime? Just one more thing not to think about. Right now she had to concentrate on finding the safest way home for Willow.
"Th-the vampires? They'll come back through here," Tara whispered hesitantly in Willow's ear. "They're everywhere tonight."
Willow turned and was struck breathless - again - by the immediacy of her insane vision: the texture of Tara's skin, her familiar nervous head bob, intimate details culled from her memory to form this most perfect mirage. Even in her imagination Tara looked uneasy and worried, as though the apparition was a mirror of Willow's own mood.
"I can get you home safe," Tara told Willow with that little chin lift she used when she was sure of herself. Of course you can get me home, Willow thought bitterly. How was a delusion of her imagination supposed to guide her through a labyrinth of monsters? There was no inner spark left that could manifest itself as some hallucinatory savior. The Devon coven, with their chalk and their chanting took away everything that made her powerful. Their stupid light show left her head hollow and dark, and she hated them for it.
"I can't see the way out," Willow objected softly.
"Neither can I," Buffy admitted. "But I can feel the vamp's out there. They're coming closer." Buffy fished a stake out of her pocket, trying to decide between fight or flight, as though that were really a choice.
"I think we need to go this way," Buffy said, pointing down the street in the opposite direction Tara was indicating with a tentative sweep of her hand.
"No! She doesn't know the way! She can't protect you. Willow, you have to trust me," Tara pleaded, her beautiful voice hard with fear. Fear for me, Willow thought, stepping instinctively towards the vision and stumbling into another dead body. At that moment she was pretty frightened for herself too.
"Willow?" Buffy demanded. In the dark she could barely make out what she had come to think of as that "out of body" expression clouding Willow's face.
Be smart; don't be stupid, Willow ordered herself. Heart racing, she swayed like a reed between the Slayer and the apparition of her dead lover. Without realizing it she smiled, just a little, at the specter. With the death, and the dark and Tara, it almost felt like old times.
Sensing victory, Tara's face lit up just like it had when Willow chose her over Oz.
"Run. Now," Tara ordered, ducking into a dark alleyway, a flutter of lace and velvet.
Feeling betrayed by her vaunted intelligence, Willow scurried after Tara, the sound of her hard soled boots against the asphalt booming like drums in the silent night.
"Willow? Where are you going?" Buffy demanded, watching with growing frustration as Willow turned a corner and clumped off down an anonymous alleyway. There was nothing for Buffy to do but chase after her and hope they were not hurling headlong into the grasp of the enemy.
______________________________________________________________________
Sitting on the coffee table, Buffy watched as Spike drank his seventh mug of warm, 98.6°, black market blood. Still in his tattered jeans, he had shivered away the past week on the couch, sallow and faded under a pile of ineffectual blankets. Now with the hot, human blood filtering through his body Spike's skin blushed demurely, a pale pink glow that spread across his face and chest, infusing his dead flesh with the illusion of life. Almost human, Buffy thought, touching his hollow cheek with the back of her hand.
"You're warm," she said. Once again, Buffy thought, I am one with the obvious.
"It'll fade," Spike said irritably, jerking away from her touch. Refusing to look at her, he wiped the bright trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.
Taking the empty cup back she tapped out an uneven rhythm on the porcelain with her fingernails. She was irritated by his hostility. Having just risked death by vampire mob to break the damned spell, Buffy thought she and Willow were entitled to a tiny bit of gratitude. But now was not the time to wade through the vampire's emotional state. The Massacre bled on in an exhausting montage of dead bodies: throats slashed, hearts ripped out of chests, skulls cracked and exposed organs never intended to be seen. Buffy's tired eyes ached from bearing witness to death's grisly secrets. Every night people died, and she thought whoever said forewarned was forearmed should be shot.
"Is it working?" Dawn asked from the arm of the couch where she sat holding the purring, contented kitty. With a concerned expression the teenager leaned in closer. Closer to the vampire without the chip. Buffy tensed, but congratulated herself for not ordering her sister out of the room and into a private boarding school in Main. Were there vampires in Main?
"Yeah. It's working," Spike said with a cruel smile. The stutter was gone, facial expressions back on line. Maybe Xander was right, Buffy fretted, and the only good vampire was a frozen one. They would find out soon enough.
Leveraging himself off the couch Spike stood easily, rolling his shoulders as though to relieve tension. It was one of his affectations of life; dead muscles didn't cramp up. By now, the brief flush of warmth generated by the fresh blood had exhausted itself, leaving his skin ashen once again, except for the angry red gashes healing too fast for Xander's comfort. Now that he was up and moving Buffy began to doubt her earlier compassion. The tension of waiting for Spike to do something eeeeeeevil was going to exhaust her. As though the Massacre wasn't doing that already.
"Back to room temperature," he told Willow. "Thanks for the help, Red."
"No problem," she smiled and patted his cold arm. "Just don't go and start eating people again. You'll make me look bad."
"And with that ringing endorsement, can we get on with this?" Xander asked from where he sulked, half hidden, in the armchair by the fireplace.
"Get on with what?" Spike queried, entranced by the clarity of his voice. His brain, inarticulate and frozen for so long, was ticking off a wealth of coherent, if useless, observations. Willow (fetching as always in her gloomy velvet coat) was using a new, somberly perfumed soap, Buffy had smudgy, tired circles around her eyes, and he had managed to loose his boots somewhere. And, his nagging, irate demon reminded him, he had killed Dru. He had murdered his own deranged, dark queen. Confused by the breaking waves of nausea rolling though his dormant stomach, Spike sat back down and waited for someone to tell him what the fuck was going on.
"While you were all artic, I tweaked the translation some to try and get a handle on the whole bodies in the street problem we've been having," Willow said, sitting on the couch beside him. So much for his new powers of observation because Spike hadn't noticed the sheaves of paper in her hands.
"The Massacre's not over?" he asked stupidly.
"It so very isn't," Xander said, his voice hard and disgusted. "We've got death. We've got blood in the streets. It's your average portent for the end of the world."
"So what have you done about it?" he asked Buffy, wishing for a shower and more blood before he had to start pretending like he cared about the world's problems.
"What do you think I do?" Buffy demanded, irritated by his sudden Watcher- esq tone of authority. "I go out. I slay, but the damage one Slayer can do against an army of vampires is fairly minimal. And the general population? Not helping. People hear there's been a rash of murders in public areas and what do they do? They go our for dinner and get eaten. They meet their friends at the movies and they die with them."
Died because she couldn't do her job. As the Slayer she was descended from a long line of warriors imbued with the sacred duty of keeping late night Cineplex's safe.
"Mass stupidity isn't your fault," Spike said softly, knowing as the words escaped him that he was the last person who could comfort the Slayer, who could comfort anybody. His competence was destruction, the demon hissed smugly.
"Maybe not, but saving the lives of the chronically stupid is my responsibility," Buffy retorted.
Willow cleared her throat and glanced nervously from Buffy to Spike. "I, uh, think I know how to end the Massacre," she said.
Buffy fought the urge to throw herself across the room and hug this new, wonderful, competent Willow who was so accurately miming the old Willow. Her best friend. The one who had magically (although obviously not magically) guided them home safely last night through a labyrinth of vampires. The one who would never, could never, kill anybody.
Willow lifted a single sheet of paper in one black nailed hand and began to read, " So it will be that the spawn of the visionary shall rise from the blood of the sire and cast willing destruction into the weeks of Thead-"
"Uh, Will? How about summarizing for the terminally exhausted?" Buffy pleaded, rubbing her eyes.
"You need to kill the leader of the vampire mob and the Massacre will end," Willow said, obediently succinct.
"I did that," Spike said, his voice low and dangerous as he glared at Xander. "I killed Dru."
Willow shook her head. "Can I summarize less? Dru killed some, okay, lots of people, but that wasn't the Massacre. The Massacre itself? Technically that began after she died and was started by, I'm quoting here, 'the spawn of the visionary.'"
"Ah-ha!" Xander said, pointing an accusing finger at Spike. "That would be you. You're Dru's spawn. Drusilla wanted the chip out so the two of you could paint the town red, with the blood. She thought you were the guy who would start the Massacre."
"But I'm not massacring anything, am I? I've been stuck on the Slayer's couch for the past six days with mystical hypothermia. I haven't had time to engage in mass slaughter. Not that I would," Spike added quickly, seeing Buffy's eyebrows shoot up.
"Dru must have turned somebody else," Buffy mused. "I just need to find him and kill him. Or her. To be fair."
Willow nodded. "I think so. According to the big book of confusion, more with the quotes here so bare with me, 'The perpetrator of death will be killed by the shining Warrior of the People.'" With an unsuccessful flutter of her fingers, Willow attempted to hide a giggle. "I'm thinking that's you."
Beside Willow, Spike gave a very un-Spike like laugh and even Xander, who was in no mood for fun, tried to smother a chuckle. Feeling betrayed by her friends, Buffy glared at them all. As though the Chosen One wasn't bad enough, now they had to stick her with this stupid Lone Ranger, faux Indian moniker too? In exactly what way am I shining, she wanted to know.
______________________________________________________________________
Only the supernaturally inclined went out that night, which would normally mean Buffy and Anya and Spike. Except Anya said she had some things to do at the store that couldn't wait. Buffy refrained from pointing out that if the vamps ate her whole clientele nothing at the store would be very important. Without Xander to anchor Anya to the Scoobies, Buffy could sense the other woman drifting farther out of their circle, and Buffy didn't know if she had the time or the energy to do anything about it.
So that just left her and Spike. Not much of a cavalry, Buffy admitted to herself. Especially since half of them might turn around and start attacking the civilians. Eating the civilians. Oh, she should have just left him at home.
"These shoes don't fit right," Spike complained of Xander's white sneakers. And the hideous polyester shirt he'd borrowed from Xander irritated the welts on his back. Weak as he was, Spike trusted the sight of acid blue paisley would terrify his opponents to blindness.
"Shush," Buffy insisted. "They'll hear us coming if you don't shut it."
"Who exactly is going to hear us?" Spike demanded, throwing his arms wide to indicate the eerily empty road. They had checked out most of Sunnydale, examining the cold, silent streets, sliding past dark restaurants, closed stores, shuttered windows where Buffy could see her own drawn face, but not Spike tired and surly beside her. Obviously.
Every so often a police car crept by, tires crunching on the gritty pavement, swirling their lights silently, and slowing down to assess whether the pedestrians were a threat or just stupid. If the cops looked inside their back bags and saw the axes and stakes Buffy was pretty sure she knew which category she and Spike would fall into.
"There. They might hear us," Buffy whispered, pointing down the street at a police car, red lights flashing in soundless distress as the windows shattered loudly, vampiric arms reaching in to claim their victim. Seven to one, Buffy thought. If you could count a Sunnydale police officer as one.
"I suppose you'll want to save him then," Spike said, as though it didn't matter to him either way.
Maybe it doesn't, Buffy conceded, racing towards the marauders, not caring if Spike was following or not. For a few seconds all that was important was the thud of her boots against the ground, the freedom of running - the excitement of the fight to come. Faith was right; it was a high, this constant proximity to death.
Then she was plunging her stake though the first vamp's chest, ripping through cloth and unyielding flesh to strike the silent heart. Not for the first time she was grateful that vampires disintegrated instead of falling bloodied and dead at her feet. Even if she was probably going to get some weird cancer from all the dust she inhaled over the years, it helped to preserve the illusion she wasn't just some glorified killer. Oh no, I'm the Shining Warrior of the People, she reminded herself. That was so much better.
Buffy turned to face her next attacker but the vamp's headless body crumbled to nothing before she had a chance to strike. So Spike had kept up after all. He gave a short, sharp cough as he inhaled the dust of his victim. That's what you get for needless breathing, Buffy chastised silently. Then something caught her eye, five somethings with lumpy foreheads and fangs.
"On your left," she ordered Spike, whirling to take on the next vamp. Back in the day five vamps in a week had seemed like overkill. I must be getting better, she thought, slamming her fist into her attacker's nose, feeling and hearing the cartilage snap. This isn't even winding me.
The same could not be said for Spike. Glancing away from her opponent more than would have strictly been considered wise, she decided he wasn't moving so great. Not as recovered as he wanted them to think: just playing tough. What a surprise. Of course, Spike playing tough was still pretty deadly. With an expression of calculated disdain he swung the axe in an erratic circle, dismembering the heads of two attacking vampires and staking a third. Neat, Buffy thought, staking her own opponent and throwing the next vamp, a bearded, stockbroker type, against the side of the police car with a sharp kick. She had the bearded vamp pinned against the hood, and was about to drive her raised stake through his heart when she realized he was the last vamp standing and she still needed information.
"So," she said, conversationally, slamming her knee into her captive's groin, "let's talk."
The stockbroker struggled upright and shook his head, staring over her shoulder at Spike. "I'm not a traitor."
"No. You're very loyal. Good for you," Buffy nodded, and drove her stake into her captive's stomach. "Now tell me who's responsible for all this." Which had seemed like a cool and tough move in her mind, but when the creature's cold blood began to leak over her hand she had to fight the urge to wipe it on her jeans.
Groaning in pain, the vamp sagged against the car, hands modestly crossed over his wound. The bearded vamp still addressed Spike, who looked fascinated by the Slayer's interrogation methods. "It's not too late for you to take part in the victory. Kill the Slayer and join us," the stockbroker droned.
"Not bloody likely," Spike snorted. Buffy felt an unexpected flash of pride at his nonchalant loyalty.
"Answer the question," Buffy demanded. She raised the stake, slick now with blood. "Or do you want me to stab you some more?"
Blood oozing through his fingers, the vampire shivered and shook his head.
"Judas leads us through the weeks of Thead since William the Bloody was too weak to hear the truth in our mistress' song," the vamp hissed reluctantly, and shifted his narrow eyes back to Spike. "He will punish you for your betrayal of our sire. Your wrinkly friend was only the beginning."
He meant Clem, Buffy realized with horror, even as new questions began gathering like storm clouds in her mind. Where can I find this Judas? What the hell is a Thead? Why would anybody follow one of Drusilla's demented visions in the first place? They must have known she would stop them, so what was the point? But before she had the chance to open her mouth, Spike had stepped in close. Did he have a question? No, Buffy realized too late. Questions were only for people with some modicum of self control. Spike, always the antithesis of patience, lunged in and swept their informant's head off with a single sweep of his broad, hungry axe. The Slayer watched with dismay as the vamp's head exploded to dust as it hit the ground. Wearing the twisted, self-satisfied smirk she had always loathed, Spike ran his thumb along the blade's edge as though admiring its sharpness.
"I wasn't done with him!" she objected into the cold night air. Her voice sounded loud and distant as though it belonged to somebody else.
"Books, dreams, weeks of bloody Thead. There was nothing left to get from him, Slayer," Spike growled back. At that moment it didn't matter that he wasn't angry with her. All he needed was a focus, someone to throw his fury at. Fury that Clem was dead and it was all his fault. Again. Even with the bloody soul he was bollixing everything up.
"We're done when I say we're done. And you might want to keep a leash on that temper of yours. Bad things tend to happen when you loose it," Buffy snapped, reminding them both of his crimes.
She waited for him to flinch or show some sign of shame, but all Spike did was glare, nose to nose with her, radiating violent anger. This was point where he would escalate, Buffy thought, her grip tightening on the stake in her hand. If he made a move she was perfectly willing to dust the last vampire in the street. Instead Spike stepped back, cocked his head, and shrugged.
The demon wanted to slam her head into a wall and watch that self-righteous look slide from her eyes, while the soul longed to fall to his knees and beg for absolution. Obstinately, Spike was determined to do neither.
"I'm sorry I killed your vamp," he said, the apology not quite ruined by his stunned expression that he was making it in the first place. His wide blue eyes met her own, annoyingly sincere.
Oh not fair, Buffy decided. She hadn't been prepared for him to cave so soon.
"I don't need you to be sorry. I need you to stop acting like a sociopath," Buffy snapped.
Scowling, she turned away from him and went to check on the cop still trapped inside his patrol car. Forcing open the locked door she found the body, limp and empty, held up only by his seatbelt.
"How's our boy?" Spike asked with grudging concern.
"He's dead," Buffy said, surveying the corpse with professional detachment. She could be a doctor or a coroner or a murderer, she thought, mentally listing off exciting possibilities for her future career.
______________________________________________________________________
"Are you sure about this?" Spike asked, laying one long fingered hand on his crypt door. He was being a good puppy and not asking all the questions skimming through his mind. Didn't ask, why here? What do you expect to find? Because she was all terse and businesslike and still pissed about him offing their informant in a typical bout of short temperedness. Even the soul couldn't bring him to regret that brush with cruelty, sodding fledgling bastard deserved it.
"Oh yeah. I'm one with the readiness," she said grimly.
He pushed open the door. The inside of the crypt was about ten times more disgusting than Dawn's description had led Buffy to believe. Of course, it had been a week, so decomposition was in full force. The two crept slowly into the dim room, their shoes sliding on the gore covered stone floor. Before she had scoped out even half of the crypt, Buffy's chest began to burn with the effort of not inhaling. Unrepentantly, she envied Spike's empty lungs
What if my snazzy Slayer intuition's wrong, she wondered. What if Judas wasn't here and they were subjecting themselves to this wretched murder scene for nothing? Skirting around a stiff, maggot-ridden hand, Buffy put her own hand to her mouth, still horrified with all she had seen. Horrified by her ability to still be horrified.
"Sometimes I wish we still had a little magic," Buffy whispered, creeping back to where Spike stood, stunned and motionless in the center of the crypt. Once upon a time Willow could have thrown some salt on the ground and cleaned this whole place up. Feeling like a wimp, Buffy trained her eyes on Spike's ugly paisley shirt rather than look at the devastation around them.
Is that what you wish, love, Spike thought bitterly. I wish Clem wasn't spread like jam all over my floor. I wish I could have gotten Dru back to Europe. I wish this wasn't happening. Too bad really, because he used to love a bit of chaos. Without the soul this would have been right up his alley.
Silently Spike cocked his head at the hole leading to the lower level of the crypt. Hand still uselessly covering her mouth, Buffy nodded. Time to check downstairs.
Dust and death and madness, Spike was sure he could smell it all in the air as they entered the lower level of the crypt. In the center of the room, sitting among the torn sheets and ripped stuffing that had once been his bed, sat a beautiful young man, all auburn hair and long black eye lashes. Pretty, Spike conceded. Pretty statutory. Dru's effete little fledgling couldn't be more than fifteen or so. Did she kill you right away, he wondered, or did she play our games with you first?
"I expected you sooner," Judas complained, his voice childish and petulant. He wasn't in game face, but Buffy could feel the taint of unnatural death rolling off of him in waves.
"Well, here we are now," Buffy shrugged, too tired for banter. Dru's little pet reminded her of the Anointed One, soft and calm and irritatingly childlike. Judas my ass, she thought, taking in his apple cheeks, and the faint freckles decorating the bridge of his nose. This kid's mother had named him something preppy like Brad, or Justin.
"Had a bit of a party in my place," Spike observed dryly. He remembered this, the quiet repartee with your opponent before ripping his lungs out. Was this what Clem had to sit through? Maybe it had been a quick death, lacking in hours of pointless quipping, but Spike doubted it.
"I was looking for you," Judas said. "But you were hiding behind your Slayer. Drusilla thought you would kill the Chosen One. She thought you would drink the blood of the sacrifice and lead us to glory."
"Dru had a lot of inane ideas," Spike said in the same slow, dangerous voice. Hearing the anger hidden in his tone Buffy was glad she had taken the axe away from him, leaving the blond vampire weaponless and scowling beside her. Why? Because she was afraid he would kill Dru's little spawn? That was what they came for, she reminded herself, shifting the axe in her hands.
"I'm going to kill you," Buffy said factually. "Would you like to put up some kind of fight?" She hoped he did because loping off the heads of innocent looking kids didn't fit neatly into the heroic job description. Judas fixed her with his happy, stoned expression and awkwardly clambered to his feet like a child - like someone who's body was growing too fast for his coordination to keep up. But you'll never grow, never change Buffy thought, not even if I let you live.
"I'm not going to fight you," he whispered with his innocent red mouth, leaning in close like a little boy with a secret. Too close, Buffy thought vaguely. Definitely invading personal space here. She could smell his dead, formaldehyde odor over the general, cloying reek of decay that permeated Spike's crypt.
"Why not?" she whispered back, for no good reason she could think of.
She noticed there were little flecks of gold in his irises. Such very pretty eyes. When she was young her father used to take her swimming in a lake that same shade of bluish green. Dawn would have to wear fluorescent yellow water wings because she was the baby, but Buffy could swim all the way out to the center of the lake, so far away she couldn't even hear Dawn's high pitched complaints. Of course that was a lie, because Dawn didn't exit, at least not as her sister, when Buffy was a child, and maybe her father had never taken her to that lake. Maybe the monks had made it all up and she had never even seen a lake. Maybe real lakes weren't actually the color of Judas's eyes. She wondered if she could go swimming in those irises.
"Poor Slayer, you are overwhelmed by the Massacre, but my followers and I are like drops of rain before the storm. When we are gone the waters will rise and sweep away all those you seek to protect. Once you vanquish us the rivers will open to your door to destruction," Judas intoned, his gaze slipping hungrily from the Slayer's eyes, down her neck. Buffy's own eyes were uncaring and glazed. Spike looked from Judas to the Slayer and realized he was going to have to do something mildly heroic.
With the flat of his hand Spike delivered one hard smack upside the fledgling's head. "You're mixing your metaphors," he chastised. This prat was his replacement? If anybody needed it, here was proof Angelus had driven Drusilla out of her sodding skull.
Buffy shook her head as though trying to clear it. "Thrall. Was that thrall?" she demanded. Spike looked dubious and shook his head. Okay, she agreed. Probably not. Probably just exhaustion from six endless nights of slaying. And I'm supposed to save the world, she thought, tightening her grip on the axe. That should help the kids sleep at night.
Blood poured think and red from the well of Judas's ear, tricking down his neck. Biting his lip in pain, the young vampire looked like he was going to cry, but Buffy's fling with compassion was over.
Pursing his mouth the vamp tried again in his sing-song voice. "What comes after me will break you, Slayer. The end-"
"Is neigh?" Spike guessed, lighting a cigarette with an annoyed flick of his lighter. "Can we get on with this?"
Buffy decided they really, really could. With one quick swing she severed the boy's head from his body, feeling an alarming amount of nothing as his ashes scattered across the floor.
"Well, that was easy," she said into the awkward silence, trusting that Willow was right, that the Massacre was indeed over.
"Was it?" Spike asked, looking down at his decimated belongings: burnt books, broken stereo, cracked Victorian chair. These were all the little props he'd assembled to build a life here. That was your first mistake, you wanker, he berated himself. You're dead.
Buffy closed her eyes against the reek of decay wafting down from the crypt and tried not to think about the death toll of the past week. Spike was right, with over a hundred dead, a hundred people she hadn't been able to help, the Massacre hadn't been easy at all. But since when did Spike care about the human mortality rate? Since never, and he probably still didn't. But Drusilla was gone, and she was pretty sure he cared about that. And Clem, gentle, benign Clem who had looked out for Dawn and shared bread recipes and deserved better than this for their friendship.
"Should we hold a funeral for Clem?" she wondered out loud.
He doesn't need a funeral, pet. He needs a bloody cleaning crew, but Spike didn't say that. Instead he shrugged to indicate his lack of opinion on the topic, and tried to remember the precise word to describe how he felt. Guilt, he realized. Goody for me. Sitting down on the ruins of his bed Spike tried to imagine what he was going to do next.
Buffy watched him shuffle his sneakers though the dust, trying to scrape off the gore from the rubber soles. What would he do now? She supposed he could clean out the crypt - it had survived worse, or, more accurately, it had been destroyed more. The crypt would survive. Spike on the other hand looked hopeless and lost, as though he had been shipwrecked on an unknown island.
It threw Buffy to see his cruel veneer crack, so she said "Are you coming home where I can keep an eye on you, or do you want to stay in the crypt?
Running his fingers through errant, curling hair, Spike fixed her with a dubious look. Those were his options: life with Clem's corpse or life with Buffy? Each sounded equally awful. His demon snarled at the idea of being locked up inside the Slayer's suburban home, and the soul curled up in the pit of his stomach, tired and heavy as lead and just about as useful for making decisions.
"I'm going with you," he said, choosing what he hoped was the lesser of two evils.
Well, that's just great, Buffy thought, suddenly regretting the offer. Spike stood, awkwardly bemused, with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. He looked ancient and immobile as a forgotten statue. For a moment she doubted he would go with her after all, but when she moved towards the tunnel entrance, he followed like a ghostly, silent shadow, chip free and dangerous behind her. At least Dawn would be happy, Buffy supposed, brushing her fingers against the damp stone wall. She wished she had brought a flashlight, even though she knew the way home well enough in the dark. Even more than that she wished she didn't have to go home and un- impress Xander, again, with her lack of decision making skills. Maybe if she had done her homework and actually read the Slayer Handbook she would know how to avoid these murky moral situations by now. Then again, probably not.
______________________________________________________________________
End Part II
**And I would like to apologize to any and all for the ridiculous amount of time it took for me to get this chapter posted.
"I admit that night in the tunnels is a little fuzzy in my memory, but there was defiantly biting, and consumption. For anyone who's curious, I'm more than happy to show off the bite marks," Xander objected from the head of Casa Summers kitchen table. His good hand directed Willow and Buffy's attention to his offended neck.
"So, what was wrong with my human blood that it didn't start the big thaw?" he demanded, which wasn't really what he wanted to know. What Xander truly wanted was an explanation of why, with a Massacre of the general Sunnydale population going on right now, they were wasting their time trying to fix the pet vampire. It was a question he'd brought up many times, in one form or another, over the past week and no one had managed to provide him with a satisfactory answer. Or, at least not an answer that satisfied him, which might not be the same thing at this point.
"Well, he didn't drink enough," Willow explained, happy to exposition. "You said yourself it was more of a sip than a...a.Big Gulp."
Sinking back in his chair, Xander closed his eyes against the pop culture imagery Willow had called up: thirty two ounces of his blood congealing in a tacky, colorful plastic cup for the vampire on the go. That was Will, always one with the words. He had a few words of his own he wanted to throw out there.
"So we want to make him good and healthy so he can take another stab at it? I'm really not on board with this plan."
"Spike saved your life," Buffy reminded him from the opposite side of her kitchen table. She tried not to sound irritated by Xander's habit of hijacking the moral high ground, but suspected it wasn't working. Her mind had been roaming back and forth, up and down, over her opinion on the vampire. She wanted to hate him, because that was easy, right? Xander certainly slipped into a state of passionate loathing with easy grace. And whenever he did she felt the need as Slayer and de facto leader to provide the niggling voice of reason, which was niggling her into the uncomfortable position of Spike defender extraordinaire.
With blatant poignancy, Xander placed his broken arm, encased from palm to elbow in a plaster cast, on the table in front of him. At which point his hair, which hadn't gotten the memo on manliness, flopped childishly into his eyes. Annoyed, Xander pushed it back with his one fully functional hand.
"Sure, Spike saved my life by not killing me. He rescued me from himself. Excuse me if I don't think dead boy gets a medal for not draining me dry," Xander snapped, more than happy to be making with the righteous indignation.
"No! No medals," Buffy said. "Just, you know, soul plus you not dead, I'm thinking he might deserve the benefit of the doubt on this one. A Little. Maybe." Way to stand firm Slayer, she thought. Xander graced her with a look of contempt, and Buffy couldn't blame him.
"Let's approach this logically," Xander offered, suspecting he was nearing the end of his own tightly rationed rationality. "You two want to keep Sid Vicious of the Undead around? Fine. Let's leave him nice and incapacitated. There's nothing so wrong with a frozen vamp. Or, we could chop off one of his legs! Remember when he was in a wheelchair? That was a Spike I could deal with."
Which was, admittedly, slightly over the top, but Xander didn't give a shit anymore. If he kept talking somebody, at some point, would have to come to their senses and realize he was right on the vampires are bad issue. How hard a concept was it to grasp?
Across the table, Willow and Buffy exchanged a glance. Oh no, Xander berated himself, I blew it. He knew that insane look in Buffy's eyes; the I 'heart' vampires expression. Thanks to his little rant the Slayer had officially joined Willow in the fans of Spike club.
"I can get the blood," Willow chirped, ignoring Xander's entire contribution to the conversation. "We won't even have to open a vein if you're up for a little black market shopping"
"You know me. I'm a shopoholic," Buffy said with mock seriousness.
You have got to be kidding me, Xander thought, letting his head fall onto the kitchen table with a melodramatic thud. Portents were exploding all around them and they were going to get all sisterly and bondy over black market platelets?
Willow grabbed her coat while Buffy slid one arm around Xander's shoulders and kissed his cheek.
"Don't poke the vampire while I'm gone," she warned.
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It turned out the black market was the easy part. Shady demons dripping slime, trading hepatitis-infected blood for some old spell book Willow was obviously still reluctant to part from? No problem. Buffy wasn't even too scared about what the ugly creatures were going to do with the potent spells. It had to be light compared with the end of the world. Because this was apparently what she did now: bargain with the lesser evil for the greater good. There had to be a chapter against that in the hero handbook.
By the time Buffy and Willow left the warehouse, blood in hand, the afternoon had slid into evening, turning the familiar alleys of the industrial side of town dark and foreign. There was no moon and the unlit streets were practically invisible, their edges defined only by the shadowy outlines of the buildings around them. Since Slayer powers didn't include nifty night vision Buffy didn't notice the bodies littering the pavement until Willow tripped over one, sending plastic bags of blood bouncing over the asphalt.
"No matter how many times this happens, it's still gross," Willow said as Buffy helped her up.
"Can't argue with that observation," Buffy agreed, tentatively hunting around in the dark for the packets of blood, shivering as her fingers brushed a still warm corpse. Warm bodies meant the vamps still had to be close by. Glancing at Willow, Buffy began to doubt Spike, shiny new soul or not, was worth all this trouble.
"So, uh, this is the Massacre?" Willow asked, accepting the bags of blood Buffy passed back to her, trying to hide the hysterical edge in her voice. For the first time she realized life without magic was about to reduce her back to the status of snack sized victim, and it wasn't a position on the food chain she felt comfortable with.
"Yeah. This is it. Every night."
Why had she thought tonight would be any different? Buffy could feel the vampires all round them, an eerie itching inside her head that indicated demons were close, close enough that she should go slay them. Buffy's eyes shifted from Willow, to the distance, to the bodies, and back to Willow clutching the packets of blood to her chest. It was her birthright, her moral responsibility, to go forth and fight the Big Bad, but she couldn't leave Willow, and her stomach sank once again at the knowledge that she was choosing one person's life for another. I don't want this responsibility, she almost said out loud. Would she know she was an adult when she accepted the fact that life was unfair? Gnawing at her lip, Buffy brokered a deal with herself. Get Willow home safely, then come back out and slay the baddies. And the people who died in the meantime? Just one more thing not to think about. Right now she had to concentrate on finding the safest way home for Willow.
"Th-the vampires? They'll come back through here," Tara whispered hesitantly in Willow's ear. "They're everywhere tonight."
Willow turned and was struck breathless - again - by the immediacy of her insane vision: the texture of Tara's skin, her familiar nervous head bob, intimate details culled from her memory to form this most perfect mirage. Even in her imagination Tara looked uneasy and worried, as though the apparition was a mirror of Willow's own mood.
"I can get you home safe," Tara told Willow with that little chin lift she used when she was sure of herself. Of course you can get me home, Willow thought bitterly. How was a delusion of her imagination supposed to guide her through a labyrinth of monsters? There was no inner spark left that could manifest itself as some hallucinatory savior. The Devon coven, with their chalk and their chanting took away everything that made her powerful. Their stupid light show left her head hollow and dark, and she hated them for it.
"I can't see the way out," Willow objected softly.
"Neither can I," Buffy admitted. "But I can feel the vamp's out there. They're coming closer." Buffy fished a stake out of her pocket, trying to decide between fight or flight, as though that were really a choice.
"I think we need to go this way," Buffy said, pointing down the street in the opposite direction Tara was indicating with a tentative sweep of her hand.
"No! She doesn't know the way! She can't protect you. Willow, you have to trust me," Tara pleaded, her beautiful voice hard with fear. Fear for me, Willow thought, stepping instinctively towards the vision and stumbling into another dead body. At that moment she was pretty frightened for herself too.
"Willow?" Buffy demanded. In the dark she could barely make out what she had come to think of as that "out of body" expression clouding Willow's face.
Be smart; don't be stupid, Willow ordered herself. Heart racing, she swayed like a reed between the Slayer and the apparition of her dead lover. Without realizing it she smiled, just a little, at the specter. With the death, and the dark and Tara, it almost felt like old times.
Sensing victory, Tara's face lit up just like it had when Willow chose her over Oz.
"Run. Now," Tara ordered, ducking into a dark alleyway, a flutter of lace and velvet.
Feeling betrayed by her vaunted intelligence, Willow scurried after Tara, the sound of her hard soled boots against the asphalt booming like drums in the silent night.
"Willow? Where are you going?" Buffy demanded, watching with growing frustration as Willow turned a corner and clumped off down an anonymous alleyway. There was nothing for Buffy to do but chase after her and hope they were not hurling headlong into the grasp of the enemy.
______________________________________________________________________
Sitting on the coffee table, Buffy watched as Spike drank his seventh mug of warm, 98.6°, black market blood. Still in his tattered jeans, he had shivered away the past week on the couch, sallow and faded under a pile of ineffectual blankets. Now with the hot, human blood filtering through his body Spike's skin blushed demurely, a pale pink glow that spread across his face and chest, infusing his dead flesh with the illusion of life. Almost human, Buffy thought, touching his hollow cheek with the back of her hand.
"You're warm," she said. Once again, Buffy thought, I am one with the obvious.
"It'll fade," Spike said irritably, jerking away from her touch. Refusing to look at her, he wiped the bright trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.
Taking the empty cup back she tapped out an uneven rhythm on the porcelain with her fingernails. She was irritated by his hostility. Having just risked death by vampire mob to break the damned spell, Buffy thought she and Willow were entitled to a tiny bit of gratitude. But now was not the time to wade through the vampire's emotional state. The Massacre bled on in an exhausting montage of dead bodies: throats slashed, hearts ripped out of chests, skulls cracked and exposed organs never intended to be seen. Buffy's tired eyes ached from bearing witness to death's grisly secrets. Every night people died, and she thought whoever said forewarned was forearmed should be shot.
"Is it working?" Dawn asked from the arm of the couch where she sat holding the purring, contented kitty. With a concerned expression the teenager leaned in closer. Closer to the vampire without the chip. Buffy tensed, but congratulated herself for not ordering her sister out of the room and into a private boarding school in Main. Were there vampires in Main?
"Yeah. It's working," Spike said with a cruel smile. The stutter was gone, facial expressions back on line. Maybe Xander was right, Buffy fretted, and the only good vampire was a frozen one. They would find out soon enough.
Leveraging himself off the couch Spike stood easily, rolling his shoulders as though to relieve tension. It was one of his affectations of life; dead muscles didn't cramp up. By now, the brief flush of warmth generated by the fresh blood had exhausted itself, leaving his skin ashen once again, except for the angry red gashes healing too fast for Xander's comfort. Now that he was up and moving Buffy began to doubt her earlier compassion. The tension of waiting for Spike to do something eeeeeeevil was going to exhaust her. As though the Massacre wasn't doing that already.
"Back to room temperature," he told Willow. "Thanks for the help, Red."
"No problem," she smiled and patted his cold arm. "Just don't go and start eating people again. You'll make me look bad."
"And with that ringing endorsement, can we get on with this?" Xander asked from where he sulked, half hidden, in the armchair by the fireplace.
"Get on with what?" Spike queried, entranced by the clarity of his voice. His brain, inarticulate and frozen for so long, was ticking off a wealth of coherent, if useless, observations. Willow (fetching as always in her gloomy velvet coat) was using a new, somberly perfumed soap, Buffy had smudgy, tired circles around her eyes, and he had managed to loose his boots somewhere. And, his nagging, irate demon reminded him, he had killed Dru. He had murdered his own deranged, dark queen. Confused by the breaking waves of nausea rolling though his dormant stomach, Spike sat back down and waited for someone to tell him what the fuck was going on.
"While you were all artic, I tweaked the translation some to try and get a handle on the whole bodies in the street problem we've been having," Willow said, sitting on the couch beside him. So much for his new powers of observation because Spike hadn't noticed the sheaves of paper in her hands.
"The Massacre's not over?" he asked stupidly.
"It so very isn't," Xander said, his voice hard and disgusted. "We've got death. We've got blood in the streets. It's your average portent for the end of the world."
"So what have you done about it?" he asked Buffy, wishing for a shower and more blood before he had to start pretending like he cared about the world's problems.
"What do you think I do?" Buffy demanded, irritated by his sudden Watcher- esq tone of authority. "I go out. I slay, but the damage one Slayer can do against an army of vampires is fairly minimal. And the general population? Not helping. People hear there's been a rash of murders in public areas and what do they do? They go our for dinner and get eaten. They meet their friends at the movies and they die with them."
Died because she couldn't do her job. As the Slayer she was descended from a long line of warriors imbued with the sacred duty of keeping late night Cineplex's safe.
"Mass stupidity isn't your fault," Spike said softly, knowing as the words escaped him that he was the last person who could comfort the Slayer, who could comfort anybody. His competence was destruction, the demon hissed smugly.
"Maybe not, but saving the lives of the chronically stupid is my responsibility," Buffy retorted.
Willow cleared her throat and glanced nervously from Buffy to Spike. "I, uh, think I know how to end the Massacre," she said.
Buffy fought the urge to throw herself across the room and hug this new, wonderful, competent Willow who was so accurately miming the old Willow. Her best friend. The one who had magically (although obviously not magically) guided them home safely last night through a labyrinth of vampires. The one who would never, could never, kill anybody.
Willow lifted a single sheet of paper in one black nailed hand and began to read, " So it will be that the spawn of the visionary shall rise from the blood of the sire and cast willing destruction into the weeks of Thead-"
"Uh, Will? How about summarizing for the terminally exhausted?" Buffy pleaded, rubbing her eyes.
"You need to kill the leader of the vampire mob and the Massacre will end," Willow said, obediently succinct.
"I did that," Spike said, his voice low and dangerous as he glared at Xander. "I killed Dru."
Willow shook her head. "Can I summarize less? Dru killed some, okay, lots of people, but that wasn't the Massacre. The Massacre itself? Technically that began after she died and was started by, I'm quoting here, 'the spawn of the visionary.'"
"Ah-ha!" Xander said, pointing an accusing finger at Spike. "That would be you. You're Dru's spawn. Drusilla wanted the chip out so the two of you could paint the town red, with the blood. She thought you were the guy who would start the Massacre."
"But I'm not massacring anything, am I? I've been stuck on the Slayer's couch for the past six days with mystical hypothermia. I haven't had time to engage in mass slaughter. Not that I would," Spike added quickly, seeing Buffy's eyebrows shoot up.
"Dru must have turned somebody else," Buffy mused. "I just need to find him and kill him. Or her. To be fair."
Willow nodded. "I think so. According to the big book of confusion, more with the quotes here so bare with me, 'The perpetrator of death will be killed by the shining Warrior of the People.'" With an unsuccessful flutter of her fingers, Willow attempted to hide a giggle. "I'm thinking that's you."
Beside Willow, Spike gave a very un-Spike like laugh and even Xander, who was in no mood for fun, tried to smother a chuckle. Feeling betrayed by her friends, Buffy glared at them all. As though the Chosen One wasn't bad enough, now they had to stick her with this stupid Lone Ranger, faux Indian moniker too? In exactly what way am I shining, she wanted to know.
______________________________________________________________________
Only the supernaturally inclined went out that night, which would normally mean Buffy and Anya and Spike. Except Anya said she had some things to do at the store that couldn't wait. Buffy refrained from pointing out that if the vamps ate her whole clientele nothing at the store would be very important. Without Xander to anchor Anya to the Scoobies, Buffy could sense the other woman drifting farther out of their circle, and Buffy didn't know if she had the time or the energy to do anything about it.
So that just left her and Spike. Not much of a cavalry, Buffy admitted to herself. Especially since half of them might turn around and start attacking the civilians. Eating the civilians. Oh, she should have just left him at home.
"These shoes don't fit right," Spike complained of Xander's white sneakers. And the hideous polyester shirt he'd borrowed from Xander irritated the welts on his back. Weak as he was, Spike trusted the sight of acid blue paisley would terrify his opponents to blindness.
"Shush," Buffy insisted. "They'll hear us coming if you don't shut it."
"Who exactly is going to hear us?" Spike demanded, throwing his arms wide to indicate the eerily empty road. They had checked out most of Sunnydale, examining the cold, silent streets, sliding past dark restaurants, closed stores, shuttered windows where Buffy could see her own drawn face, but not Spike tired and surly beside her. Obviously.
Every so often a police car crept by, tires crunching on the gritty pavement, swirling their lights silently, and slowing down to assess whether the pedestrians were a threat or just stupid. If the cops looked inside their back bags and saw the axes and stakes Buffy was pretty sure she knew which category she and Spike would fall into.
"There. They might hear us," Buffy whispered, pointing down the street at a police car, red lights flashing in soundless distress as the windows shattered loudly, vampiric arms reaching in to claim their victim. Seven to one, Buffy thought. If you could count a Sunnydale police officer as one.
"I suppose you'll want to save him then," Spike said, as though it didn't matter to him either way.
Maybe it doesn't, Buffy conceded, racing towards the marauders, not caring if Spike was following or not. For a few seconds all that was important was the thud of her boots against the ground, the freedom of running - the excitement of the fight to come. Faith was right; it was a high, this constant proximity to death.
Then she was plunging her stake though the first vamp's chest, ripping through cloth and unyielding flesh to strike the silent heart. Not for the first time she was grateful that vampires disintegrated instead of falling bloodied and dead at her feet. Even if she was probably going to get some weird cancer from all the dust she inhaled over the years, it helped to preserve the illusion she wasn't just some glorified killer. Oh no, I'm the Shining Warrior of the People, she reminded herself. That was so much better.
Buffy turned to face her next attacker but the vamp's headless body crumbled to nothing before she had a chance to strike. So Spike had kept up after all. He gave a short, sharp cough as he inhaled the dust of his victim. That's what you get for needless breathing, Buffy chastised silently. Then something caught her eye, five somethings with lumpy foreheads and fangs.
"On your left," she ordered Spike, whirling to take on the next vamp. Back in the day five vamps in a week had seemed like overkill. I must be getting better, she thought, slamming her fist into her attacker's nose, feeling and hearing the cartilage snap. This isn't even winding me.
The same could not be said for Spike. Glancing away from her opponent more than would have strictly been considered wise, she decided he wasn't moving so great. Not as recovered as he wanted them to think: just playing tough. What a surprise. Of course, Spike playing tough was still pretty deadly. With an expression of calculated disdain he swung the axe in an erratic circle, dismembering the heads of two attacking vampires and staking a third. Neat, Buffy thought, staking her own opponent and throwing the next vamp, a bearded, stockbroker type, against the side of the police car with a sharp kick. She had the bearded vamp pinned against the hood, and was about to drive her raised stake through his heart when she realized he was the last vamp standing and she still needed information.
"So," she said, conversationally, slamming her knee into her captive's groin, "let's talk."
The stockbroker struggled upright and shook his head, staring over her shoulder at Spike. "I'm not a traitor."
"No. You're very loyal. Good for you," Buffy nodded, and drove her stake into her captive's stomach. "Now tell me who's responsible for all this." Which had seemed like a cool and tough move in her mind, but when the creature's cold blood began to leak over her hand she had to fight the urge to wipe it on her jeans.
Groaning in pain, the vamp sagged against the car, hands modestly crossed over his wound. The bearded vamp still addressed Spike, who looked fascinated by the Slayer's interrogation methods. "It's not too late for you to take part in the victory. Kill the Slayer and join us," the stockbroker droned.
"Not bloody likely," Spike snorted. Buffy felt an unexpected flash of pride at his nonchalant loyalty.
"Answer the question," Buffy demanded. She raised the stake, slick now with blood. "Or do you want me to stab you some more?"
Blood oozing through his fingers, the vampire shivered and shook his head.
"Judas leads us through the weeks of Thead since William the Bloody was too weak to hear the truth in our mistress' song," the vamp hissed reluctantly, and shifted his narrow eyes back to Spike. "He will punish you for your betrayal of our sire. Your wrinkly friend was only the beginning."
He meant Clem, Buffy realized with horror, even as new questions began gathering like storm clouds in her mind. Where can I find this Judas? What the hell is a Thead? Why would anybody follow one of Drusilla's demented visions in the first place? They must have known she would stop them, so what was the point? But before she had the chance to open her mouth, Spike had stepped in close. Did he have a question? No, Buffy realized too late. Questions were only for people with some modicum of self control. Spike, always the antithesis of patience, lunged in and swept their informant's head off with a single sweep of his broad, hungry axe. The Slayer watched with dismay as the vamp's head exploded to dust as it hit the ground. Wearing the twisted, self-satisfied smirk she had always loathed, Spike ran his thumb along the blade's edge as though admiring its sharpness.
"I wasn't done with him!" she objected into the cold night air. Her voice sounded loud and distant as though it belonged to somebody else.
"Books, dreams, weeks of bloody Thead. There was nothing left to get from him, Slayer," Spike growled back. At that moment it didn't matter that he wasn't angry with her. All he needed was a focus, someone to throw his fury at. Fury that Clem was dead and it was all his fault. Again. Even with the bloody soul he was bollixing everything up.
"We're done when I say we're done. And you might want to keep a leash on that temper of yours. Bad things tend to happen when you loose it," Buffy snapped, reminding them both of his crimes.
She waited for him to flinch or show some sign of shame, but all Spike did was glare, nose to nose with her, radiating violent anger. This was point where he would escalate, Buffy thought, her grip tightening on the stake in her hand. If he made a move she was perfectly willing to dust the last vampire in the street. Instead Spike stepped back, cocked his head, and shrugged.
The demon wanted to slam her head into a wall and watch that self-righteous look slide from her eyes, while the soul longed to fall to his knees and beg for absolution. Obstinately, Spike was determined to do neither.
"I'm sorry I killed your vamp," he said, the apology not quite ruined by his stunned expression that he was making it in the first place. His wide blue eyes met her own, annoyingly sincere.
Oh not fair, Buffy decided. She hadn't been prepared for him to cave so soon.
"I don't need you to be sorry. I need you to stop acting like a sociopath," Buffy snapped.
Scowling, she turned away from him and went to check on the cop still trapped inside his patrol car. Forcing open the locked door she found the body, limp and empty, held up only by his seatbelt.
"How's our boy?" Spike asked with grudging concern.
"He's dead," Buffy said, surveying the corpse with professional detachment. She could be a doctor or a coroner or a murderer, she thought, mentally listing off exciting possibilities for her future career.
______________________________________________________________________
"Are you sure about this?" Spike asked, laying one long fingered hand on his crypt door. He was being a good puppy and not asking all the questions skimming through his mind. Didn't ask, why here? What do you expect to find? Because she was all terse and businesslike and still pissed about him offing their informant in a typical bout of short temperedness. Even the soul couldn't bring him to regret that brush with cruelty, sodding fledgling bastard deserved it.
"Oh yeah. I'm one with the readiness," she said grimly.
He pushed open the door. The inside of the crypt was about ten times more disgusting than Dawn's description had led Buffy to believe. Of course, it had been a week, so decomposition was in full force. The two crept slowly into the dim room, their shoes sliding on the gore covered stone floor. Before she had scoped out even half of the crypt, Buffy's chest began to burn with the effort of not inhaling. Unrepentantly, she envied Spike's empty lungs
What if my snazzy Slayer intuition's wrong, she wondered. What if Judas wasn't here and they were subjecting themselves to this wretched murder scene for nothing? Skirting around a stiff, maggot-ridden hand, Buffy put her own hand to her mouth, still horrified with all she had seen. Horrified by her ability to still be horrified.
"Sometimes I wish we still had a little magic," Buffy whispered, creeping back to where Spike stood, stunned and motionless in the center of the crypt. Once upon a time Willow could have thrown some salt on the ground and cleaned this whole place up. Feeling like a wimp, Buffy trained her eyes on Spike's ugly paisley shirt rather than look at the devastation around them.
Is that what you wish, love, Spike thought bitterly. I wish Clem wasn't spread like jam all over my floor. I wish I could have gotten Dru back to Europe. I wish this wasn't happening. Too bad really, because he used to love a bit of chaos. Without the soul this would have been right up his alley.
Silently Spike cocked his head at the hole leading to the lower level of the crypt. Hand still uselessly covering her mouth, Buffy nodded. Time to check downstairs.
Dust and death and madness, Spike was sure he could smell it all in the air as they entered the lower level of the crypt. In the center of the room, sitting among the torn sheets and ripped stuffing that had once been his bed, sat a beautiful young man, all auburn hair and long black eye lashes. Pretty, Spike conceded. Pretty statutory. Dru's effete little fledgling couldn't be more than fifteen or so. Did she kill you right away, he wondered, or did she play our games with you first?
"I expected you sooner," Judas complained, his voice childish and petulant. He wasn't in game face, but Buffy could feel the taint of unnatural death rolling off of him in waves.
"Well, here we are now," Buffy shrugged, too tired for banter. Dru's little pet reminded her of the Anointed One, soft and calm and irritatingly childlike. Judas my ass, she thought, taking in his apple cheeks, and the faint freckles decorating the bridge of his nose. This kid's mother had named him something preppy like Brad, or Justin.
"Had a bit of a party in my place," Spike observed dryly. He remembered this, the quiet repartee with your opponent before ripping his lungs out. Was this what Clem had to sit through? Maybe it had been a quick death, lacking in hours of pointless quipping, but Spike doubted it.
"I was looking for you," Judas said. "But you were hiding behind your Slayer. Drusilla thought you would kill the Chosen One. She thought you would drink the blood of the sacrifice and lead us to glory."
"Dru had a lot of inane ideas," Spike said in the same slow, dangerous voice. Hearing the anger hidden in his tone Buffy was glad she had taken the axe away from him, leaving the blond vampire weaponless and scowling beside her. Why? Because she was afraid he would kill Dru's little spawn? That was what they came for, she reminded herself, shifting the axe in her hands.
"I'm going to kill you," Buffy said factually. "Would you like to put up some kind of fight?" She hoped he did because loping off the heads of innocent looking kids didn't fit neatly into the heroic job description. Judas fixed her with his happy, stoned expression and awkwardly clambered to his feet like a child - like someone who's body was growing too fast for his coordination to keep up. But you'll never grow, never change Buffy thought, not even if I let you live.
"I'm not going to fight you," he whispered with his innocent red mouth, leaning in close like a little boy with a secret. Too close, Buffy thought vaguely. Definitely invading personal space here. She could smell his dead, formaldehyde odor over the general, cloying reek of decay that permeated Spike's crypt.
"Why not?" she whispered back, for no good reason she could think of.
She noticed there were little flecks of gold in his irises. Such very pretty eyes. When she was young her father used to take her swimming in a lake that same shade of bluish green. Dawn would have to wear fluorescent yellow water wings because she was the baby, but Buffy could swim all the way out to the center of the lake, so far away she couldn't even hear Dawn's high pitched complaints. Of course that was a lie, because Dawn didn't exit, at least not as her sister, when Buffy was a child, and maybe her father had never taken her to that lake. Maybe the monks had made it all up and she had never even seen a lake. Maybe real lakes weren't actually the color of Judas's eyes. She wondered if she could go swimming in those irises.
"Poor Slayer, you are overwhelmed by the Massacre, but my followers and I are like drops of rain before the storm. When we are gone the waters will rise and sweep away all those you seek to protect. Once you vanquish us the rivers will open to your door to destruction," Judas intoned, his gaze slipping hungrily from the Slayer's eyes, down her neck. Buffy's own eyes were uncaring and glazed. Spike looked from Judas to the Slayer and realized he was going to have to do something mildly heroic.
With the flat of his hand Spike delivered one hard smack upside the fledgling's head. "You're mixing your metaphors," he chastised. This prat was his replacement? If anybody needed it, here was proof Angelus had driven Drusilla out of her sodding skull.
Buffy shook her head as though trying to clear it. "Thrall. Was that thrall?" she demanded. Spike looked dubious and shook his head. Okay, she agreed. Probably not. Probably just exhaustion from six endless nights of slaying. And I'm supposed to save the world, she thought, tightening her grip on the axe. That should help the kids sleep at night.
Blood poured think and red from the well of Judas's ear, tricking down his neck. Biting his lip in pain, the young vampire looked like he was going to cry, but Buffy's fling with compassion was over.
Pursing his mouth the vamp tried again in his sing-song voice. "What comes after me will break you, Slayer. The end-"
"Is neigh?" Spike guessed, lighting a cigarette with an annoyed flick of his lighter. "Can we get on with this?"
Buffy decided they really, really could. With one quick swing she severed the boy's head from his body, feeling an alarming amount of nothing as his ashes scattered across the floor.
"Well, that was easy," she said into the awkward silence, trusting that Willow was right, that the Massacre was indeed over.
"Was it?" Spike asked, looking down at his decimated belongings: burnt books, broken stereo, cracked Victorian chair. These were all the little props he'd assembled to build a life here. That was your first mistake, you wanker, he berated himself. You're dead.
Buffy closed her eyes against the reek of decay wafting down from the crypt and tried not to think about the death toll of the past week. Spike was right, with over a hundred dead, a hundred people she hadn't been able to help, the Massacre hadn't been easy at all. But since when did Spike care about the human mortality rate? Since never, and he probably still didn't. But Drusilla was gone, and she was pretty sure he cared about that. And Clem, gentle, benign Clem who had looked out for Dawn and shared bread recipes and deserved better than this for their friendship.
"Should we hold a funeral for Clem?" she wondered out loud.
He doesn't need a funeral, pet. He needs a bloody cleaning crew, but Spike didn't say that. Instead he shrugged to indicate his lack of opinion on the topic, and tried to remember the precise word to describe how he felt. Guilt, he realized. Goody for me. Sitting down on the ruins of his bed Spike tried to imagine what he was going to do next.
Buffy watched him shuffle his sneakers though the dust, trying to scrape off the gore from the rubber soles. What would he do now? She supposed he could clean out the crypt - it had survived worse, or, more accurately, it had been destroyed more. The crypt would survive. Spike on the other hand looked hopeless and lost, as though he had been shipwrecked on an unknown island.
It threw Buffy to see his cruel veneer crack, so she said "Are you coming home where I can keep an eye on you, or do you want to stay in the crypt?
Running his fingers through errant, curling hair, Spike fixed her with a dubious look. Those were his options: life with Clem's corpse or life with Buffy? Each sounded equally awful. His demon snarled at the idea of being locked up inside the Slayer's suburban home, and the soul curled up in the pit of his stomach, tired and heavy as lead and just about as useful for making decisions.
"I'm going with you," he said, choosing what he hoped was the lesser of two evils.
Well, that's just great, Buffy thought, suddenly regretting the offer. Spike stood, awkwardly bemused, with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. He looked ancient and immobile as a forgotten statue. For a moment she doubted he would go with her after all, but when she moved towards the tunnel entrance, he followed like a ghostly, silent shadow, chip free and dangerous behind her. At least Dawn would be happy, Buffy supposed, brushing her fingers against the damp stone wall. She wished she had brought a flashlight, even though she knew the way home well enough in the dark. Even more than that she wished she didn't have to go home and un- impress Xander, again, with her lack of decision making skills. Maybe if she had done her homework and actually read the Slayer Handbook she would know how to avoid these murky moral situations by now. Then again, probably not.
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End Part II
**And I would like to apologize to any and all for the ridiculous amount of time it took for me to get this chapter posted.
