Cold Comfort
Set after 'Entropy' (Buffy Season 6)
Chapter Seven
She's dreaming. Hands pick at her, ugly faces frown and glimmer green. The brown men rage through her dream - there are voices, the flapping of pages; a buzzing and rustling, an endless racketing, hammering hum. She turns her face to the floor that she's lying on; it's dusty stone, but it feels like home. Their voices are louder, her arms and legs feel like air; they're disappearing. She tries to scream, but somehow it doesn't work. Suddenly she's shaking and shaking, or she's being shaken… She can hear her name-
'Dawn. Dawn. Honey, come on. You need to wake up now. Dawnie.'
'Tara, don't. You're shaking her too hard-'
'She's got to wake up. Dawn.'
Willow watches as Tara, kneeling by the sofa, shakes the unconscious Dawn by the shoulders with a fierce energy that Willow hasn't seen in her before. 'I'll call 911,' she suggests uneasily.
'No,' says Tara, sharply.
Willow hesitates, nervous at the unexpected vehemence of her tone. 'This isn't-'
Tara frowns for a moment, and then turns back to Dawn. 'She's waking up.'
Dawn's tossing her head restlessly on the cushion, her fine hair knitting itself into snarls. She gives a little bubbling, mewling moan, like a kitten being drowned. Tara's smoothing her hair, calling to her in her low, gentle voice, 'Hey, Dawnie. Come on. You're ok. You're back home now, sweetie. Good girl.'
Dawn's eyes open and she looks up at Tara, dazed, as though she doesn't know where she is.
Tara comes downstairs after she's got Dawn to bed. Willow looks up from her computer.
'Dawnie ok?'
Tara pauses, leaning on the banister.
'I'm not sure,' she says.
Willow closes her lap-top.
'You think we should call the doctor? Maybe I should go look for Buffy.' She remembers that Buffy left to look for Spike, and adds hastily, 'Or I could call Xander – he could take us to the hospital.'
'I don't know,' says Tara, slowly. 'I'm not sure it'll help.'
'You don't think we should be on the safe side? I mean, it's probably just teenage stress – you know, combined with Hellmouth-y stress – but what if it's something she ate, or a – a virus, or something?' The thought is pulsing at the back of her mind, Buffy won't survive it if Dawn dies.
Tara comes down the last step, and sits down on the sofa with Willow.
'I got this really strong feeling,' she says. 'It was like she was - slipping away.'
Willow looks aghast.
'No – not… I mean -' Tara sighs. 'While Dawn was out, it felt like her aura was disappearing, being… sucked away.' She draws a breath. 'And when I was putting her to bed, she said - she said -'
Dawn's eyes had been bleak as they'd looked up at her, with creases underneath them. She'd lain back against the pillow looking small and flat.
In a hard little voice she'd said, 'Are they going to take me away?'
Tara looks helplessly at Willow. 'She was pretty out of it. I don't know what it means, but -'
A key turns in the lock, and they both fall quiet.
'Hey guys,' says Buffy, closing the door briskly. 'Did you get anything else from the location spell?' Willow's and Tara's eyes flick across to the results of the location spell, lying crumpled under the chair where Tara dropped it as she saw Dawn fall. Tara jumps up to rescue it.
'No, that was pretty much it,' she says. 'Just Warren and the robot-building. No new updates.'
'Oh. Well, good. Don't really feel like messing with the socially-challenged ones tonight, anyway.'
She sounds a lot better than she did when she left, thinks Willow.
'How'd things go with Spike?' she asks. 'Is he going to pitch in and be undercover-guy?'
Buffy's got her back to them, taking off her coat.
'He wasn't there,' she says. 'Probably off somewhere in town, making the demon world wish it never got out of bed this evening.' She rests her hands on the table for a moment, then turns round to face them, smiling. 'Dawn in bed?' she asks, sitting down.
Tara looks at Willow.
'Yes,' she says. 'She's kind of sick. Actually, she – she fainted.'
For a moment Buffy's face just looks tired and blank. She looks as though she's trying to remember where she is. Then she frowns.
'That's weird,' she says. 'She fainted last night. Do you guys think she's eating ok?'
They exchange looks again. Tara leans forward, and says gently,
'She said some strange things while she was waking up. Willow and I are going to look into it.'
'It's probably nothing,' says Willow, reassuringly. 'Do we still have those books on the Order of Dagon that Giles ordered last year? We never used them, 'cause they didn't arrive until – until we didn't need them any more. Maybe they'd have some helpful stuff about Dawn.'
Tara nods.
'They're probably still in the shop,' she says.
'Well… good,' says Buffy, smiling steadily. 'We can have a relaxing movie night, all research-free, and ask Anya about the books tomorrow.'
It's Bernie who draws the short straw.
He lingers outside the door of Room Five, not keen on the job of waking up that weird punk-rocker guy at this hour, not just to get him to move his crummy car. He'd had a kind of a manner with him, that blond guy, chip on his shoulder or something. He was dressed weird too, like he was a pop-star or a homo. Not that Bernie's got anything against fairies - his own cousin Percy wears pink shirts and drinks crème de menthe, and a smarter guy never played the clarinet. He draws a wheezy breath, knocks firmly, and opens the door.
When he does he gets a shock. The blond guy's there all right, asleep and stark nude, all wrapped up in some snoozing floozy. What's with the world anyway, when a guy can't open a door at 6.35am in his own motel without busting in on some naked goddamn orgy?
Spike stirs for a moment, feeling Anya's hair against his lips, hazily. Then the sounds of horrified hotelier begin to drift through to him: throat-clearing and finger-tapping. He lifts a tousled head and peers at Bernie through puffy and confused eyes.
'Yeah?' he says.
In tones of heavy disapproval Bernie says,
'Didn't like to disturb you, uh, Mr... uh...'
'Not at all,' says Spike, croakily deadpan.
The floozy sort of shifts and gasps at this point, and then sits up, holding her head. Bernie's eyes bulge. She doesn't have a stitch on. Not one of them floaty things they used to wear in the movies to get past the censors; nothing. Last time he saw a girl that goddamn naked was before the war. Before the flood more like it, his wife says later when he's describing the painful scene.
It's the same girl he checked in with, notes Bernie. When the guy'd said two singles, he'd figured they were brother and sister. Possibly they are - Bernie has few illusions about these arty types. Fine figure she is though. Fine, fine... his jaw comes gently to rest on his undershirt.
Anya drags the back of her hand across her eyes and shakes her head. When she looks up to meet Bernie's deeply interested gaze, she gasps, clutches around for the sheet and yelps,
'Spike!'
Spike, who had been on the point of asking Bernie if it was the air in his Aero that made him say 'O', asks instead,
'Something you wanted, mate?'
Bernie comes to with a start.
'Just seein' if you could move your car,' he mumbles. 'Wife's sister wants to, uh, huh, park her truck.'
'Fine,' says Spike, looking pointedly at the door. 'Ta-ta, then.'
Bernie takes a last, awed look at Anya and leaves, shaking his head.
Before the door closes behind him, Anya turns on Spike.
'Well, thank you for defending my honour!' she says, pulling the sheet tighter around her. 'Why don't you just sell tickets?'
'Me!' Spike retorts, eyebrows raised. He slumps back onto his elbows. 'I bring you to a nice place like this and you roam the corridors all night in the altogether! I think you can bloody expect to dispense a few cheap thrills.'
He pauses. Not the ideal choice of words, under the circumstances.
'When I say 'cheap thrills',' he begins, but trails off, unable to think off anything both conciliatory and plausible.
Anya gives him an ambiguous look and leaves the room, still inelegantly swathed in white, like a pretty kebab.
Spike sighs. He'd woken up groggy, entangled, amorous. Her sharpness startled him. It's her natural tone of voice, he's used to it, been used to it for years.
But he's not used to waking with his lips at the hollow of her throat, in her warmth, her soft ringless hand on his neck.
Bernie gets his returns, about forty minutes later. Can't take the vengeance out of the girl.
As they're leaving, Spike pays Bernie, and stops to ask about gas stations; Anya goes out to the car to check for holes in his silver-foil screen. There aren't any - it's still dark anyway- and she comes back in, crossing to where Spike's standing, at the counter. She puts one arm around him casually, and leans in towards Bernie, flashing him a crocodile's smile.
'Thank you so much,' she says charmingly. 'For the custard.'
Spike pauses in the act of paying over dollar bills, and turns in her half-embrace to look at her. Up until now he'd thought she'd been significantly less nuts than either Dru or Buffy. Hell, he'd been wrong. Against all odds, Anya was leading the field. Bernie's eyes are straining at their sockets: if possible he's more transfixed than during their earlier encounter. A well-dressed couple with a spectacled child who have just come in watch her with interest from the doorway.
'It was so thoughtful of you. All over my pillow-case. Really a very generous quantity.''
Bernie gapes. The well-dressed couple exchange worried glances.
A flicker of doubt crosses Anya's face. 'It was custard, wasn't it? I don't know what else it could h-'
Spike grabs her roughly by the wrist.
'Excuse me,' he says to Bernie, as smoothly as he can. 'My wife has one of her headaches coming on.' He nods goodbye, and wrenches Anya to the door. She gives the pop-eyed Bernie a little wave as they leave - close on the heels of the well-dressed family, who are retreating in an orderly fashion towards their Merc.
As they get in the car, he says,
'What was that for?'
A tiny smile escapes Anya, and then disappears.
'What?' she says. 'It wasn't correct for me to thank that guy?'
Spike flicks her a murderous glare.
'Don't try pulling that Goody Two-Shoes stuff. And you can ditch all the "vengeance demons are unfamiliar with social conventions and complex sentence construction". Feel like I'm on the road with an Introduction to Social Anthropology. I know you can talk properly.'
Anya's silent. Spike looks across at her again.
'S'ppose I should count myself lucky you didn't have his ears cut off and his internals crocheted into a fetching pattern,' he says.
Anya's looking down at her Iced Fuchsia toenails.
'I don't have my pendant anyway,' she says, in a subdued voice.
'Yeah?' says Spike. 'Give it back to D'Hoffryn?'
'No.' She sniffs. 'It's in the Magic Box. I didn't think I'd need it.'
He hopes that's not a threat.
It's not quite dusk when they reach St Hilda's Lake Hotel, so they sit in the car to wait. Spike's not quite sure what Willy's told this guy, but first impressions count, and he's not keen to bowl in there huddled in a blanket, Vamp Flambé.
Anya gets out to stretch her legs and comes back drinking a diet coke. When she gets in she hands one to Spike.
'So what's going on?' she says, slurping. 'What's this guy's problem?'
'Hmm?' says Spike, looking at the drink she's brought him. 'Oh - Fyarl demons, apparently. Raiding the joint, terrorizing the guests, nicking the spoons, that kind of thing, Willy said. Should be fun.'
He's talking absently, turning the coke can round and round in his hand. There's a lot about life that he just doesn't know about – he's starting to get that. He's always been contemptuous of the Scoobies and their squeaky clean faces and bedrooms and records. They've always been horrified at the things he's done, and he's always sneered at their New World naivety. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, was his attitude when they recoiled from his fond reminiscences about bygone eviscerations.
But he's been doing just that.
He may have spilt brains and said rude things at sensitive moments; he may have broken promises and spines; he's put the body of a dead German governess to uses they'd be helpless to describe; but when it comes to being casually offered soft drinks, he's a trembling virgin.
'Oh well,' says Anya. 'I was hoping it would be mainly desk-work. Guess not.' She looks out of the window. 'Sun's going down.'
Spike opens his can and takes a sip. It tastes of shampoo, but he drinks it to the last drop.
It's a smart hotel. Smarter than you'd think, if you'd met Willy the Snitch. Smarter than Spike'd been expecting. He'd thought any contact of Willy's would be running a dead-beat flea-hole, the kind of joint where the dress code's demon-casual - blood on your chin and some kind of obvious skin disorder.
Anya pats her hair self-consciously as they climb the steps, and so does Spike. For some annoying reason, he thinks, she doesn't look like she's been driving all day after a cheap night in a cheap motel, and he does. Women.
There's a girl sitting on the railings outside the hotel gate. She's got brown hair with a pink streak and she's smoking a roll-up. She's dressed the way the girls used to dress when the boys dressed like Spike. Spike gives her a nod as they pass her, wondering if she's been turned away for looking too indie/alternative. She takes a drag and gives him a cold look, as in, don't get fresh.
The inside's smart too. There's a fake-marble-topped desk with orchids in a cut-glass vase at one end, and a tanned, determinedly classy middle-aged man leaning against it at the other. His tan drops a few shades down the scale as he sees Spike and Anya.
Spike takes in the décor and the glazed look in the classy man's eyes, and doesn't see any harm in offering him a trademark charming grin while he fumbles for a screwed-up piece of paper in the pocket of his leather coat.
'Hi,' he says, frowning at he scribbles on the note. 'Uh… Trevor?'
The classy man recoils, looking so nervous and affronted that Spike begins to wonder if he's said 'Blow-job?' by mistake. Eventually the man clears his throat and says distantly,
'Mr Trevor Clarence. Is there some way I can assist you?' This in a voice that implies he hopes it's something to with directions to Antarctica. Spike holds out his hand.
'Name's Spike,' he says. The classy man looks as though this hardly surprises him, but doesn't actually reply. 'Friend of Willy's,' supplies Spike helpfully. 'From Sunnydale.' Trevor winces slightly. Spike lowers his voice: 'Heard you'd been having a little trouble with a couple of Fyarl demons. Willy thought maybe I could help you out.'
Trevor looks up, aggrieved.
'St Hilda's Lake is not the Hellmouth,' he says sharply. 'We have no demons here, I can assure you.'
Two men pass through the lobby, drinking cocktails and talking about racing. One has antlers. Spike raises his eyebrows.
Trevor passes a hand over his brow.
'Mr Spike. It was extremely good of you to offer your services, but I'm afraid our mutual… acquaintance has been quite misguided. The situation here is entirely under control-'
He breaks off as a beautifully-coiffed lady appears at the door and crosses the room to where he stands. She's expensively thin and wears an elegantly cut, keep-off-the-grass black suit. Caroline Charles, thinks Anya, staring harder than she would have if Xander had been there.
'Honey?' the coiffed lady sing-songs at Trevor, who visibly stands to attention.
'Yes dear?' he says nervously. His posture is excellent, Anya notes.
'Those possums, honey,' says the coiffed lady, straightening his tie. 'The ones that got into the kitchen last week, and took the veal and smashed the coffee grinder?'
'The? Uh. The possums,' agrees Trevor wretchedly, avoiding Spike's cool gaze. The coiffed lady taps her patent leather toe impatiently at this stammered response.
'I'm afraid they got in again this afternoon. They've eaten the chef.' She smiles tolerantly and turns to leave. 'You'll get it seen to, won't you?'
'S-sure baby,' Trevor calls weakly after her. He looks helplessly at Spike. 'For a couple of hundred dollars - you'd…?' he trails off hopefully.
'Say five,' suggests Spike, glancing at his tattered black fingernails.
'Take room number twenty-nine,' says Trevor, sighing. 'You've got three days.'
Room Twenty-Nine's not bad. Bit heavy on the floral print, but life's tough.
Anya touches up her make-up and carefully unpacks her bag while Spike flops on the bed and begins sharpening a big knife. Gender-role stereotyping amongst love-torn cross-country demon-hunters, an Introduction to Social Anthropology, chapter five.
There was no argument about sharing a room. Spike's unwilling to further confuse Trevor, and Anya, possibly to avoid any further comments about wandering about in the altogether, hasn't said a word.
Spike's sharpening with complete absorption, in that way he has. If the knife were a sentient knife, it would no doubt be feeling itself the only knife in the room. Anya watches, fascinated by the sight. Then she gives herself a little shake and carries on unpacking.
'So are we going to do it tonight?' she asks conversationally.
Spike looks up. She's methodically straightening the seam in a knitted sweater, cooler than a diamond-eating frost-monster. Do it? This is why they'll never make a movie of her life, he thinks. Cut the tension, kill the plot.
At his silence, she looks up too. 'Spike? Are we going to kill the Fyarl tonight?'
'Oh. The Fyarl. Right -yeah. No,'
'Because I need to know whether to wear pants or not.' She puts the sweater away on the shelf and lovingly dusts off the dress she's wearing. 'This is new.'
'Well, get as fancy as you like,' says Spike, going back to his sharpening. 'We need to find out who they're working for before we kill 'em.'
'Working for?'
''Yeah - The Fyarl are do-as-they're-told-types. Brains of a scrambled egg. Someone's got to be giving them instructions. We can go out tonight, get to know the demon scene a bit, see if there's any rumours flying about.'
Anya finds a thin orange and silver dress, and steps behind the wardrobe door to put it on. She's thinking.
'What are you doing this for?' she asks suddenly.
'Don't want to skin a fellow with a blunt knife now, do I?' says Spike, without raising his eyes or breaking his rhythm. He's getting used to deflecting weird non-sequiturs.
'No,' she says. 'This. I thought you were cutting loose. What are you doing here, chasing up low-risk mercenaries at minimum wage? '
'Low risk? You're hard to please, aren't you? They ate the bloody chef.'
'You know what I mean,' she says, unperturbedly setting a comb in her hair. She rubs at a smear of mascara on the toe of a silver pump. She'd packed in a hurry. 'I know drinking the blood of the innocent's out-'
Spike winces. 'But there are other sources of gainful employment. You could get into debt-collection. I know you used to call in debts for Willy. Scaly Sherwin from the caves said you were the best little leg-breaker Sunnydale ever had. He told me he's seen you crack skulls like they were M&Ms -'
That makes Spike look up.
'You shouldn't have anything to say to Scaly Sherwin,' he says sharply. 'He's not a nice bloke.'
Anya drops her shoe, this surprises her so much.
'Right,' she says. 'Well if he asks me to go to the movies, I'll tell him I'm not allowed to date reptile demons 'til I'm in college.'
Spike gives her a look, but she carries on. 'Anyway - that's where the big bucks are, these days. Focused, efficient brutality. We've not in the gang any more. I don't get why we still have to be the good guys.'
He shrugs and goes back to his knife. 'You know why,' he says rather dourly. 'Same as always. La Belle Dame Sans Merci hath me in bloody thrall.'
Anya stops folding and stares.
'La Belle Dame Sans Merci?' she says, shocked. 'That's awful.'
'You know 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci?' says Spike, equally surprised. He hadn't really expected her to get the reference. If she read at all, he'd assumed it would be either invocations to the devil in ancient Sanskrit, or 'Cosmo' - certainly not fanciful ballads of the Romantic era.
'She did some work for me once,' explains Anya. 'Couple of hundred years ago. We didn't stay in touch.'
Spike rubs the back of his head. He feels there may be crossed wires involved.
'The Belle Dame I'm thinking of,' he says, 'is the subject of a poem by Keats.'
'Oh,' says Anya. 'The one I'm thinking of is a demon who gradually vaporizes men's hearts and then sucks them out of their mouths during sex.'
Yep, thinks Spike, sounds like Buffy. There's a pause, and Spike has an eerie feeling that they're both waiting for Xander to say something dumb – 'boy, she sounds like a scary mother - maybe a little scarier in Spike's version', or 'yeah, but can she turn into a giant bug?'.
This alarms him. The sod might have ruined his life, but he wasn't going to infiltrate his speech patterns.
Anya's gazing out the window, looking like dingoes ate her baby. Brooding, in Spike's opinion, is for sissies and Angel and those about to lay eggs. He sits up. He's only got one stock response to the blues - get ratted.
He jumps to his feet, picks up her purse and thrusts it at her.
'Come on sweetheart,' he says, giving her the look he'd been giving his knife, earlier. 'Let's go out. Break some heads and some hearts and some by-laws, and home in time for tea. Paint the town red and all.'
She smiles up at him and takes the purse.
'You mean red in the figurative sense, right?' she says as he guides her out the door.
