Chapter 9

Who's Afraid of Big Bad Spike?

Sunnydale – May 10th

"No, Mr. Giles, these girls are not ready to be tested any further."

All the events of the last nine days had led up to this moment for Willow. Weeks of cajoling Giles and preparing for the Trials had led up to now, and all her hopes were slipping away. The battle with the demons had left her half dead, and only Tara's healing spell allowed her consciousness. But Madame LaFusce was ending it all. Right now. If she didn't do something, Madame LaFusce would walk out the door and she would have failed. If she didn't do something right now, she might never get an opportunity to practice magic again.

"I can do better," she protested. "Honest. Give me another test. Anything. I'm ready. Right now, anything." She was desperate.

No sooner had the words left her mouth than the warehouse filled with the groan of tearing metal. Creeeeaaaakkk. The sound went from loud to teeth-aching in a matter of moments. And then it abruptly stopped.

            "It looks like you've got your chance," Madame LaFusce said dryly.

The creaking was replaced by a rumbling that seemed to grow louder with every heartbeat. Willow was suddenly aware of just how dangerous this test could turn out to be. Then came the thum, thum of heavy footsteps. A moment later, a massive creature wandered around the corner. His name, it would turn out, was Sam. For now, in her own mind, she simply called him big.

"Holy Jurassic Park, Batman!" Xander had exclaimed.

Giles simply said, "Oh dear."

Buffy had stepped up next to Willow as Tara gripped her arm. "Willow, you don't need to do this," she had argued. "That thing is big. And big usually means dangerous. And you just almost got yourself killed. Once a night is enough, you know. You didn't ask for this."

"Actually, I did," Willow answered as she prepared to face the threat coming towards them.

He was huge, stooped over, and built like a Mack truck. Even bent double, he stood at least seven feet tall. Had he been standing erect, he would've been more like ten or twelve feet. He weighed in at about a ton, all of which seemed to come crashing down with each and every step. He moved slowly, but his alert eyes darted quickly about taking in every detail. Huge tusks protruded up from his lower jaw and over his massive lips. He stopped when he saw them all there and sniffed predatorily.

"Me smell witches," Sam grumbled out throatily. "Likes'em, me does – all roasted up and juicy." He lumbered forward towards them.

"Well, Miss Rosenberg, what are you waiting for?" Madame LaFusce sniffed indignantly. She seemed completely unafraid of the behemoth approaching them.

Gaining confidence from the Frenchwoman's lack of fear, Willow stepped away from the group to engage the giant in magical combat. Taking a steadying breath, she centered her inner calm and tapped into her magical reservoirs. Calmly, she began an incantation and released a ball of green fire at the creature. He did not even flinch. She then tried lightning, with similar result. He continued to advance. Needing to buy time, she cast a magical barrier in front of him. Sam paused, but only long enough to lick his chops before simply walking through it. Willow cast more attacks at him. She attempted to shift his position in space to no effect. She tried energy darts, which only seemed to tickle him. She became steadily more panicked.

Closer he advanced, step by step. Soon he towered over her, breathing down in a whirlwind of fetid breath. Willow tried another spell, this one at point blank range, her voice rising in panic. Again, it seemed to simply absorb into the creature. Sam began to laugh a slow, ragged laugh that cascaded more of the stinking breath down upon her. "Me eat you now," he said matter-of-factly.

Willow turned back to the group standing behind her, every one of them prepared to fight to defend her, only being held back by the iron gaze of Madame LaFusce. Asking for help would be failure; the alternative could be death. Then she heard his voice.

"ere now, Sammy, wot's you up to?"

"Spike!" the monstrous voice grumbled out like a glacier cracking in half.

"Spike?!" Willow yelped, spinning back around to see the black leather clad vampire standing between her and the hulking demon.

"Spike!" exclaimed nearly everyone else behind her, except for the more articulate Giles, who proclaimed, "Dear Lord, what is Spike doing here?"

Madame LaFusce was silent, but Willow could hear the unnaturally loud scribbling of her pen on the clipboard.

"What Spike want?" Sam asked.

"Me? Nothin', mate. I just thought I'd come watch the bloody destruction. You know, front row seat and all." Spike stepped back from between Sam and Willow, arms spread. Willow could see that his face was altered into its full vampire form. "So, uh, Sammy, where do you want your body sent?"

The massive creature had begun to move forward, but suddenly stopped. "What Spike mean, my body. This one have nothing but puny spells."

"Oh, right, yeah. Well, you and I both know that you actually eat magic, so no spell is going to accomplish anything. Of course, she knows that, too," he glanced over at Willow meaningfully. It was clear to Spike that she knew nothing of the kind. He hoped she could pick up on the clues he was dropping. "So I can only assume that she was luring you into range." Spike was trying to look innocent, something he didn't do very well.

"Range of what?" the creature asked. "What can she do?"

"Well," Spike said, drawing it out. "I probably shouldn't give it away."

"Spike!" yelled both Willow and Sam simultaneously.

Spike held up his hands in mock surrender. "Allright, allright. Fine. I'll spill. I suppose nobody told you that she's a black belt in Karate. No? Didn't think so. Always being unfair to us demons, you know. Nobody ever tells us the full story." Spike shook his head in mock disgust. "And that one over there, the blonde – I suppose nobody told you that she's the slayer."

"No!" Sam cried in disbelief.

"Bloody yeah," Spike shot back. "And here you are, able to eat all the magic they can throw at you, but with a pain threshold so low that simple slap could send you crashing down into a quibbling heap more pathetic than last year's jell-o." Spike shook his head dramatically at the inhumanity of it all.

The vampire took a deep breath and looked up, collecting himself. "So, in the interest of fairness to demons and all, I thought I'd come by when I heard it was you that got set up. I mean, I've always liked you Sam, and I just couldn't stand by to see this injustice." Spike paused to light a cigarette. He took several drags, focusing on nothing in particular. The silence in the air was palpable. He then looked up, surprised to see both Sam and Willow staring at him. "Wot? I've said my peace, now you two do that battle-to-the-death thing you're all so fond of. Like I said, I'm just here to watch."

Sam gazed at Spike a moment longer, then turned to Willow. "Is he telling the truth?" he asked suspiciously. Willow noted that he had switched from the simple speech to a rather normal, if accented, English. Scares folks more when he talks dumb like that, Spike would inform her later.

Willow put on a brave face. "Yeah, Spike's telling the truth. So … so, put up your dukes and let's have it out." Willow put up a boxing pose to emphasize her words.

Sam looked over Willow at the crowd watching. He sniffed the air several times, tasting the scent. Then he focused on Madame LaFusce. "Sorry, but you didn't mention the Slayer. Or an audience," he stared at Spike meaningfully. "I'm outta here – and I'm keeping the money," he added. Then he turned and lumbered off. Only Willow heard him say, "Thanks, Spike, I owe you one," out of the side of his mouth.

Madame LaFusce walked up and gazed at Spike, seemingly unafraid of the vampire. "Who are you, that you should interfere in my testing?" she asked harshly.

"Name's Spike," he said. "Who the hell are you?"

That's when things went downhill.

* * *

An hour later, it was all over but the crying. Everyone had returned to the Magic Box following the end of the Trial. Willow was crushed. Having no words of comfort to offer, Giles made tea.

            Willow slumped over her tea and stared at the book before her. She knew, deep down, that she should be grateful for how understanding Madame LaFusce had been. In her own brusque and somewhat offense manner, the tiny Frenchwoman has been almost kind – especially after how things had turned out.

            If it had just been her near-death encounter with the korlorf demons, things may have been salvageable. Indeed, up to that point, she had done the test all on her own. She hadn't needed any saving from anyone. And even if she hadn't done the task efficiently, she had at least done it. To some degree, though, fate seemed to play its own quirky sense of humor into the situation. At least that's what she had tried to tell everyone when it had all come hopelessly apart.

            "Well, this is just one of those wacky twists of fate, now isn't it?" she had said bravely as Madame LaFusce had stormed out of the building.

            "Well, if you think of, 'How can I conspire to completely ruin every hope you ever had of ever being taken seriously,' as 'wacky', then yes, I think it is," Xander had said. Xander had a wonderful way with ironic humor, but very little tact.

The book she had, The Basic Guide to Common Demons, was a gift from Madame LaFusce. Or at least it would have been considered a gift if Madame LaFusce had liked Willow even a little. Instead, it felt more like a curse. It was an 'elementary' guide to understanding the most common demons one was likely to encounter and what their known powers and weaknesses were. "Here," Madam LaFusce had said as she quickly packed her things to leave the warehouse. "Read this and we'll see if you learn anything. If so, there might be hope for you yet." The delegate from the watcher's council then marched off in rather profound huff.

It wasn't the failure of the final test that had pushed Madame LaFusce over the edge. It wasn't even that someone had rescued Willow from the test. No, it was who had rescued her that had been the disaster. Of all the things that could happen, of all the outcomes she could have foreseen, this was the worst. All because he had rescued her.

"Cheer up, honey," Tara said, sitting next to her at the round table at The Magic Box. "You tried, right? And you did your best. I'm very proud of you, no matter what happened."

Willow tried to put on a brave smile, but it was no use. She was simply too upset and humiliated to put on a brave face. This was quite extraordinary, since putting on a brave face was something that Willow rather excelled at. But this time it was simply not to be – not even Tara could get Willow to smile.

Buffy sat down at the table with her own cup of tea. "It could be worse," Buffy said optimistically. "Nothing quite comes to mind right away, but I'm sure it could've been worse."

"Yeah. Why get your knickers all in a bunch over some over-the-hill frog and a bunch of know-it-all pond-hoppers, eh?" The voice that broke in belonged to Spike,

Spike lit up a cigarette as he took the book from in front of Willow. "Nice piece," he said as he flipped through the pages. "Did you nick it from the old bag?" he asked, referring to Madame LaFusce. "Can't say as they did my kind much justice," he commented absently as he flipped through the pages and stopped on an illustration of vampires.

Buffy took the book from his grasp and handed it back to Willow. "This belongs to her, William, and no, she didn't steal it. Now, is there a particular reason you're here, or should I just stake you for the pure fun of it?"

"Tempers, geez," muttered Spike. "And don't call me William," he continued menacingly.

"Why not, it is your name, isn't it?" Buffy challenged.

"The name is 'Spike.' And in case you'd forgotten, it was Spike who got little miss redhead here out of trouble with Sam an hour ago."

"Oh, believe me, I haven't forgotten," said Buffy. "And I also haven't forgotten about how you 'stood up' to Madame LaFusce." The sarcasm hung in the air between them like a thick fog.

"Yeah," said Willow, "tough Spikey really gave it to her." She narrowed her gaze at him with unconvincing menace. "If only you hadn't interfered, I would've figured it out without you."

"No you wouldn't have," Spike retorted back. "Sam wasn't gonna fall over for you, ya know. He wasn't particularly going to do anything but roast you up and eat you for a nice snack. But old Spike, here, was there to stop him. And what kind of thanks do I get? None. I wonder who sucked all the gratitude out of you lot."

Spike was correct, in a sense. He had, in fact, saved Willow from Sam. But in doing so, he hadn't saved her from Madame LaFusce. Indeed, he had put the nail in Willow's coffin when it came to the Trial.

Spike sat down at the round table with the others and absently rubbed his bruised knuckles. "You know," he said to no one in particular, "I put my neck out for you guys when Sam was called in, but I didn't see a single person jumping to my rescue when that old French bat tried to stake me."

"Spike, it was a ruler, and she used it to slap you across the knuckles," Buffy pointed out exasperatedly. "And you know, as soon as she did, you were suddenly like, 'Oh sorry, ma'am,' and, 'The name's William, ma'am.' Did you have some kind of traumatic experience with a schoolteacher when you were young or something?"

Spike would've blushed if he wasn't undead. Instead, he stood up defensively. "Who told you about that? Nobody's supposed to know about old Missus O'Brian." He paused, looking at the blank stares from around the table. "Look, I took care of her. Went to her house right after I was turned and decided to put her out of her misery. Nobody gets away with treating me that way." Spike looked around the room daring anyone to contradict him.

"What way?" Buffy asked, confused.

"You know," replied Spike, withdrawing a bit. "Always correcting my grammar, telling me my letters weren't right, that sort of stuff."

"You went back and killed your grammar school teacher?" Buffy asked, appalled.

Giles cleared his throat. "That would explain it," he said absently.

"Explain what?" Buffy asked.

"Well, there's a record in the Watchers' histories of a collection of papers found in the possession of an old tutor woman. It appeared to be Spike's handwriting, but the text was, 'I will not drink blood without permission.' One hundred times, wasn't it, Spike?"

"Yeah, well, I was pretty new to the whole vampire thing that time. And she caught me by surprise, is all. And besides, I went back to get her a few years later." Spike sniffed as if that settled the matter.

"The Watchers' histories say she died of natural causes," Giles commented.

"So I was a little late, big deal. That's hardly the point. The point is that I stood up for her," he pointed at Willow, "and no one stood up for me. Well, to hell with you lot." He thrust a finger into the cover of the book Madame LaFusce had given Willow. "Study it well, Red, because next time old Spike may not be there to save you." He turned and walked towards the basement door of the Magic Box, which lead to the sewers that he used to move around Sunnydale.

Don't worry, Willow said to herself, watching him go. I'll study it. Because next time, I'll be ready.

"You tried to kill your grammar school teacher," Buffy was saying, a small giggle bubbling up inside her. "And you ended up staying after school and writing sentences instead. Oh that is too much!" She laughed, and the others, even Willow, smirked.

"Bugger off, all of you," Spike shouted. "And don't come crying for me next time you're in a jam." He left in an offended huff.

As the door slammed behind Spike, Xander looked around incredulously. "Oh please, like any of us are ever going to need a rescue from Spike."