Part Four
Tara had been mildly amused when Spike had donned the medic alert bracelet at the airport in Egypt. The amusement had grown only slightly when the stewardess got on the speaker and asked all passengers to close their shades to accommodate a fellow traveler suffering from a rare light- sensitive medical condition.
But when they were preparing to disembark in Berlin, and Spike dug through his small bag, Tara had to cover her face so that the obliging stewardess didn't see her laugh when he pulled out a long swath of black material and wrapped himself up from head to toe.
Airline officials led them quickly to a windowless inner room of the airport, where they waited until the sun had set before finally leaving. They hailed a cab, and Spike used his rusty German to direct the driver to a hotel that the stewardess had suggested.
"Porphyria?" Tara commented idly once they were on their way.
"Sod off," Spike grumbled, opening the window and lighting a cigarette. "Was Olson's idea and it's come in damn handy."
The hotel was of the luxurious chain variety, and Tara raised her brow at the ornate lobby, only lowering it when Spike produced a credit card and handed it to the concierge.
Spike had gotten them a suite, not because they needed the extra room, but because he knew that Tara had been staying in utter crap holes due to her cash situation. No sense in roughing it if they didn't have to.
During the ride up in the elevator, she frowned at the number display. "There's never a thirteenth floor," she mused.
He slanted a look in her direction. "It's bad luck," he reminded her.
"Well, yeah, but--I mean, just because you skip from twelve to fourteen doesn't get rid of the thirteenth floor. Uh, the fourteenth floor *is* the thirteenth."
"People are idiots," he grunted as the elevator stopped on the nineteenth floor. "As long as it's not marked thirteen, they're appeased."
She didn't argue when he told her to ward the room this time, and Spike stashed the Bowl, the Onyx and Khentimentiu's knife under the bathroom sink.
"I need to get some blood," Spike told her. "Why don't you order room service or something? Bint down in the lobby said there's an English menu in here somewhere, and you didn't eat anything on the plane."
Her nose wrinkled. "It smelled weird," she confided, and he smiled. "Spike?" He looked at her expectantly. "I, uh, don't have any idea where to look for the Essence. Are we going to go to a demon bar again?"
Remembering the last jaunt, he wasn't eager to repeat it. "Maybe." He shrugged. "That's one of the things Olson's working on. I'll check in with him when I get back. If he doesn't have anything, we might have to hit the underground, but it won't be tonight." Then he stared at her. "Giles popped into town."
She frowned and sat on the bed to take off her shoes. "Oh."
"Dead set against the Cerno," he informed her casually. "Seems to think we'd be better off finding out who..."
"Oh," she repeated, her hands going still. She sat up and sighed. "There's...there's no way to, uh, track it. Magically, I mean."
"Yeah, we figured that, since the Arcepts aren't trying. But I think Giles is fancying himself a detective."
Her face paled, then. "The people that Glory, uh, brain sucked?" Spike nodded. "They won't be any help. It was...you're not really all in her, but you're, uh, not in your body, either," she said slowly, her voice shaking just a little bit. "You remember things you did, but it's all faraway, and everything else is all disjointed. Hazy."
Combined with the Sunnydale Denial Syndrome, Spike figured Glory's victims were going to be about useless. "Right then. Get some food. I'll be back in about an hour."
A spot of B and E later, he wandered back to the hotel with a cooler of human blood. There was a picked over tray of food by the door, waiting to be removed by the hotel staff, and the shower was running in the bathroom.
Spike downed two packets of blood, then called Olson's cell phone. He didn't want to come across Giles again and figured it was safer to stick to the mobiles. "It's Spike," he said when Olson answered.
"Tom, so good to hear from you," Olson replied, forced cheer evident in his voice.
Spike rolled his eyes. Since when had patrolling the Hellmouth turned into one giant mess of office politics? "Do yourself a favor and grow a pair, mate," Spike scoffed.
"That's good to hear," Olson said tightly. "What can I do for you?"
"Look, we're in Berlin and I want to know if you chaps found out where we should start looking for the Essence."
"I see. Actually, you'd be better off calling your sister for that."
Spike growled. "My sister? Is that your clever way of telling me to call the Slayer?" he ground out.
"Bloody Hell, Eric," Spike heard Giles snap in the background. "I'm not a fool, and I damn well know you're talking to Spike so just hand over the phone this instant."
There was a shuffling noise and then Giles was on the line. "Bring Tara home immediately," he hissed at Spike.
Spike lit a cigarette and sat at the desk across from the bed. "Yeah, that's not going to happen, Watcher."
"I'm warning you, Spike. Stop this stupidity at once."
It was a damn good thing he wasn't in Sunnydale at the moment. Less than a minute of Giles' nonsense was more than enough, and he didn't know how the others were putting up with the ponce. "She won't go back," Spike snapped. "But if you want, I can force her to. Of course, I'll have to keep her knocked out for the entire trip, and then you'll have to restrain her once we get there so that she can't take off again. I'll go slam her head into a wall and we'll be off. How's that sound?" he asked, his voice overly chipper and cheerful.
If Giles' long stream of loud curses was anything to go by, he didn't like the sound of it at all. "Would you please try to take this seriously?" Giles finally said.
"I *am* taking it seriously," Spike countered furiously. "You're the one who's not. You think just because you want her to stop that she's going to? Well, she's not, and if she does it alone she's gonna get herself killed."
"What I think," Giles bit out coldly, "is that you are not doing anything whatsoever to sway her from what she's doing."
Well, the git had him there. He wasn't doing any such thing, and he didn't plan to, either. "What's the issue here?" Spike asked cynically. "Pissed off because no one's falling in line like you think they should?"
"I'm pissed off, as you put it," Giles snarled, "because this ritual is not the answer, and no one seems to want to consider that fact."
"Yeah, well, until you have another solution in your musty little hands, this is all we've got," Spike said diffidently.
"Spike--"
"She's as stubborn as Buffy," he interrupted, and silence fell over both sides of the line for several minutes. "Never would have thought it," Spike went on eventually, clearing his throat, "but she is."
"Damn," Giles sighed. "How...how is she?"
Spike shrugged, even though the Watcher couldn't see him. "She's managed to stay in one piece."
"And mentally?"
"Got a ways to go, still," he said bluntly.
"Yes, I imagine she would." Giles cleared his throat and then said, "Spike, I need to ask you about...about that night."
He tensed. "Faith already filled me in, and I didn't see who killed the witch. It was chaos at that point, and I'd just taken a tumble." He frowned and thought of something. "And don't be upsetting the Bit with this, you hear? She's finally on her feet and I don't want you shoving her back down."
"I wouldn't do such a thing," Giles said haughtily. "Even if there was a need, which there clearly is not since Dawn was nowhere near anything that was going on." He paused. "But Tara was."
"And she is nowhere near ready to talk about that," he said gruffly. "Between you and me, I don't think that hospital was any help to her. You really should have badgered that Counsel of yours into sending a shrink who knew the deal; don't think that one nurse was able to do all that much."
"I badgered until they refused to even take my calls," Giles said tiredly. "Bloody hell, she must still be a mess."
"She's better," Spike reluctantly admitted. "But from what I've seen, she'll revert back to her formerly loony state if you start asking her if she saw who killed her lover. Why don't you talk to some others who were there? You know, people who aren't us."
"I've been trying, but there were a lot of people present, and I'm getting no cooperation from anyone here," he said, sounding more than a little aggrieved.
Spike snorted. "Maybe you should get off their cases. Might do wonders for getting them to help you." Giles started in with one of his lectures, and Spike was done He hung up on the Watcher again and called Faith's cell.
"We couldn't find squat about where you can get the Essence," Faith told him. "But Wesley came through. Said some crone has it, and you can find her in the catacombs under the city."
"Well, that narrows it down," Spike snapped. "The bloody catacombs are under every inch of the city and then some! Be sure and thank the useless wanker for me."
"Chill out there, fang. He wasn't pleased about the lack of details either, but he's waiting to hear from another contact of his. I talked to him about ten minutes ago, and he said he'd call back in a few hours. Why are you in such a bad mood, anyway?"
"Giles saw through Olson's brilliant little scheme," Spike snorted. "We had a lovely chat. You given up on redemption yet?" he asked hopefully. The laughter he expected didn't come and Spike scowled. "What the hell did Rupes do now?"
"Same shit, different day," Faith responded flatly. "Tenth different day in a row, actually."
Torture wouldn't get him to admit that he liked Faith, Olson and Josh, but he did. They were a solid lot and there was a tougher feel to them than there'd been to Buffy's group. Not that that lot hadn't been tough--he'd found that out the hard way, on more than one occasion--it just hadn't been as evident. But it just took a look, a single look, to know that Faith, Olson and Josh wouldn't be easy targets. It was nothing overt, just an edge to their eyes that only a blind man couldn't see, and predators were anything but blind.
That mess he'd caused during the whole Adam debacle? Never would have worked on Faith's crew. They'd have laughed in his face and walked away, never giving his words a second thought. They didn't share sappy words and hugs, but everyone knew where they stood with one another. They didn't pull punches, and no one cried foul about that fact.
Not to say there weren't weaknesses to exploit, but figuring out what they were was no easy task.
So he liked them, and they all worked together, and Spike realized he the tiniest bit possessive of them--a very vampiric trait--and not pleased about whatever the hell Giles had been spewing at them lately. Far as he was concerned, the Watcher could rip into him all he wanted. He always had, and Spike had never expected that to change even though everything else had. But the rest of them were another story. Worst part was that their hands were tied. With Faith's history, no one at the Counsel would take too kindly to her kicking Giles out of town and telling him not to come back.
"Fuck Giles," Spike snapped at Faith. "It's his problem, and you've got to stop making it yours."
"Like you do when Angel shows up with problems that aren't yours?" Faith asked cynically. "Vamps in glass houses, Spike."
He straightened up. "That's different. Hell of a lot more history there, you know." She didn't say anything and he frowned. A moment later the dial tone started ringing in his ear, and Spike's eyes widened. He was the one that did the hanging up, damn it.
***
There wasn't a whole lot to do while they waited to hear from Wesley. Spike killed a good ninety seconds when he called Olson and gave him the hotel's number so that someone could call them and let them know what the ex- Watcher turned up. After that, though, they were pretty much just stuck in the room. Tara didn't speak a word of German, so she didn't even bother turning on the television.
Spike had suggested they go out, but she'd insisted that they needed to be there when the call came in about the Essence. It was an obvious excuse to stay hidden away from the world and Spike wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not to force her out just yet.
He was sitting against the headboard of one of the beds, chain-smoking cigarettes that he didn't even like, and trying not to glance at the clock every five minutes. Tara was down near the foot of the bed, sitting cross- legged with rows of playing cards laid out on the bedspread between them. Spike had ventured down to the gift store in the lobby and picked the cards up, along with a set of dice in case she felt up to learning any games to pass the time. She'd passed on the dice games and had dealt out a hand of Solitaire instead.
He studied her as she absently counted out three cards and turned them over. The pseudo-corset shirt she was wearing had made him smile when she'd come out of the bathroom. With the lace-up front and the soft cotton material that didn't actually emphasize anything the way that type of top was meant to, the damn thing just screamed "Tara". Once again she was wearing pants. Jeans this time. Spike thought that her return to herself would be signaled by a skirt that was long, a little frumpy, and some absolutely hideous color. Despite his distaste at the idea of the skirt itself, he was hoping it would make an appearance sometime soon.
Her reluctance to go forth into the world for something other than the Cerno got him to thinking about where she'd spent the last few months of her life, and he narrowed his eyes on the blond in front of him.
"What was it like?" Spike asked curiously and he didn't need to clarify the "what" that he was talking about, despite the fact that the question had come entirely out of the blue.
Her hands stilled on the cards and then floated away from them. She looked down at her lap and shrugged. "It wasn't horrible or anything," she said awkwardly. "It was kind of...nice. I, uh, didn't have to think, you know? They brought me where I needed to be when I needed to be there, and told me what to do when we got there." She sighed, a deep frown wrinkling her forehead. "It was...easy."
Spike raised a brow. "Yeah? Surprised you left, then."
"I had to."
He cracked his neck and took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling slowly and watching her avoid his gaze. "If the Arcepts hadn't come into the picture, you would have stayed there even though your head sorted itself out." Tara stayed silent, and Spike shook his head and a long- standing question was answered. "It wasn't Glory's work after that night, was it? I'd wondered about that."
She shook her head slowly. "No. It--it was because of...what happened. It was...too much to, uh, absorb. Everything was wrong. It had been right, but then it was all wrong. Because of me."
Spike crushed out his cigarette and motioned her to him. "C'mere, pet," he said softly. She pushed the cards aside and crawled up the bed. Spike spread his legs so that she could sit between them, her back resting against her chest. "Blame's a tricky thing," he said after a few minutes. "You look objectively at everything that happened, and there's a million things that everyone involved could have done differently, or better, or not done at all. You can fling the blame every which way, and even some butterfly halfway across the world would catch some."
He closed his eyes and swallowed thickly. "But it can't be looked at objectively, can it? Because that's not how things work. It's messy and personal, and you're right there in the middle of it not knowing half of what's going on, and only guessing at the consequences of anything you do. Truth is, it's about intent, and you were no more responsible for anything you did after Glory scrambled your brains than Dawn was for being the Key."
"It's not that simple," Tara choked. "It can't be. I--"
"You were being controlled by her," Spike finished harshly.
"Did you...I mean, after that night? Did you think that you...?"
"Yeah," he said gruffly, his chest tightening. He laughed wretchedly. "Did my best and it wasn't good enough, and there won't be a day that goes by that I won't be angry about that. But it was one of a truckload of things that would've had to go differently for it to work out the way we wanted it to. Took me some time to realize that."
It had actually taken him until that exact moment to realize it, actually, because he'd done his best not to think about it much. But trying to explain the way of the world to Tara had forced him to acknowledge it himself.
She turned in his arms, and there were tears in her big blue eyes that threatened to spill down her face any moment. Spike brought his thumbs to her face and brushed them away before they could fall. "How did you do it?" she asked brokenly.
"It's not something you have to do, pet," he said gently. "Just happens naturally. You go about your life, even if that's the last thing you want to be doing, and it settles on its own." He laughed again, this time in amazement. "Just settles on its own."
She leaned forward and laid her head on his shoulder. "I guess you didn't really have much choice in that, huh?" she guessed. "Going on, I mean. We really, uh, took away any other option for you."
"Yeah," he admitted without malice.
"Just like you did when you sent us away, even if that's what you weren't trying to do," she mumbled against his shirt.
"I suppose," he conceded. "Doesn't seem to have worked for you, though. It's more like you went off to a place where you could get by without living at all." He pulled back from her and scowled. "You're going back, aren't you?"
"I can't escape any of it out here, Spike." Her eyes pleaded with him to understand, and he did, all too well.
"That's because you're not supposed to escape it," he said uncompromisingly. "It's not you in that grave, even if you think it should be. So you have to live or die. That hospital is neither, and it's just putting off the decision."
He waited for the inevitable question he saw swimming in her eyes. "What-- what if I decide I...can't live? What then?"
And he didn't have an answer for her because, really, he was a vampire who'd spent over a century killing people. What did he know about convincing a human to live?
So he reached out and flipped off the light by the bed, and they sat in the dark and drank up the nothingness that closed around them, and they didn't move until Olson called them four hours later.
***
"Might want to put a sweater on, luv," Spike suggested. "Catacombs are cold and drafty."
Tara automatically glanced down at the thin cotton of her top and nodded before rummaging through the small overnight bag that held her clothing. Spike shrugged his duster on and stared down at the map that Olson had faxed over to the hotel the previous night after he'd called.
Spike had managed to convince Tara that it would be better to wait until the following night to head out. They didn't know how long it was going to take them to get the Essence and he didn't want to be caught with his pants around his ankles--figuratively speaking--if dawn snuck up on them.
The map detailed the various access points of the Catacombs and he was trying to memorize as much as he could so that they could get the hell above ground in a hurry if they had to. They had lucked out in that there was actually an entrance located in the sub-basement of the hotel, but if they weren't near it, he wanted to know which way to go.
Tara slipped a white knit sweater on that fell to her waist, and Spike knew the damned thing was going to be dirty as hell when they were done crawling through the catacombs. "Is Wesley sure that a simple, uh, guiding spell is going to work?"
Spike shrugged and folded the map. "That's what I was told. According to his source, it's the only way to get to the crone." He shoved the map in his pocket, checked for his cigarettes and nodded towards the door. Tara checked the wards that were already in place without having to be asked, and set another one by the door. That was some kind of improvement, at least.
She was nervous and fidgeting as they strolled through a door marked "Authorized Personnel" in the lobby and Spike decided he wasn't going to translate any others sign for her when they were trying for subtle. They walked down a flight of stairs where the janitorial and security staff had offices and locker rooms. Passing by an equipment station, Spike stopped suddenly and took two large flashlights. He'd been in the catacombs only once, but he remembered just how dark the bloody things were.
It took some time for them to find the door that brought them down to the next level, with the furnaces and boilers, but they did find it. The entrance to the catacombs, on the other hand, wasn't so easy. They made their way down a cramped walkway surrounded by pipes and came to the spot where the entrance should have been. There was nothing but empty space.
"Damn thing should be right here," Spike exclaimed, turning in a circle. Tara was staring at the map, a frown on her face. "Shouldn't it be right here?"
"Yeah," she agreed. She tilted her head to the side and nudged him out of the way.
"Do you see a door or a cave or anything that goes anywhere?" he went on foully.
Tara dropped to her knees and began feeling along the floor. There was a coating of dirt and dust that no janitor's mop had ever seen, considering that the area they were in was tucked far away from everything important. She pulled a napkin out of her pocket and began clearing some of it away. Eventually Spike started to see that there was a small square of floor that was recessed from the rest.
He squatted down next to her and traced the outline with his fingers, finally finding a latch on the side nearest to him. "Take a step back, pet," he instructed Tara. She tossed the napkin aside and climbed to her feet, brushing the dirt from her pants. Spike grabbed hold of the latch and realized it was actually a ring. He gave it a pull and a trap door opened.
There was a set of stone steps that start just inches below the rim of the door. Spike counted ten of them before the darkness became so absolute that even his preternatural sight was useless.
"I'll do the spell now," Tara said thoughtfully. "There'll be a light? To follow."
She closed her eyes and started speaking, and Spike realized that when it was Tara's magic in the air, he *did* feel it despite the embossment. Not like he should have, but kind of like...same thing as when there's a bug crawling on you, and you see it and know that it's crawling on you, but damned if you can actually feel the creature's feet on your skin. In fact, if you weren't looking, you wouldn't even know it was there.
A small speck of green light appeared suddenly and danced in the air at the top of the stairs. Tara smiled wistfully at it before a stricken look entered her eyes and she looked away, swallowing and wrapping her arms around herself.
"I'll go first," Spike said brusquely. "Stay here 'til I tell you to come down."
He handed her one of the flashlights and turned his own on before he jogged lightly down the steps. At the bottom, he took a good look around, the light bouncing crazily around on the walls. It was pretty clean, for being set more than a few levels below the city, and he'd remembered the chilly breeze correctly. There wasn't sign of any other light besides the one he had brought, but there were old-fashioned torches set in the walls at regular intervals. He'd pass on those. Being highly flammable, he wasn't about to go prancing around with a burning stick in his hand, thanks. And he didn't really trust Tara to watch where she was wielding the damn thing.
He took a step forward and cursed when his foot twisted. Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the cobblestone that was the floor, the wall and the ceiling. This he had forgotten, the great uneven chunks of stone fitted together with half-a-mind and some kind of broken train of thought. "You got heels on your shoes?" he called up to Tara.
There was a pause, and he rolled his eyes. Damn girl was probably looking at her shoes like she hadn't put them on herself. "Uh, no. Why?"
"Come on down and you'll see."
The green ball of light must have been tuned in to Tara, because it preceded her down the steps and hovered impatiently while it waited for her. Spike pursed his lips and waited for her to touch down on the cobblestone. Sure enough, she pitched forward almost immediately, despite the sure-footed sandals she was wearing. He slung an arm around her waist and kept her from falling face-first to the ground.
"Look," he instructed, and turned the flashlight to the ground, showing her the ground. "It's pretty bad everywhere. Stay next to me, all right? Keep your light down and watch where you're going. I'll watch for everything else."
The guide fluttered in his face, somehow conveying its annoyance with Spike holding up its mission, and he swatted it away.
"Be nice," Tara chastised him. "Its helping us and I'm sure it has better things to do than wait for us to, uh, start moving." It bounced off her face a couple of times, in obvious agreement and gratitude for her understanding, and Spike snorted. Office politics in Sunnydale, and some kind of twisted Disney Adventure here in Germany. Damn chip.
"Fine then," he said, sounding as long-suffering as he felt. "Let's go. Remember what I said. If you start to fall or something, just grab my arm, right?"
She nodded her head, and then held out her hand palm up. The guide skittered to her outstretched hand and its ears perked up. Not that it had ears, or anything. For a featureless ball of light it was certainly expressive, that was for sure.
"We need a guide to the crone that lives here," Tara said softly. "We need to get the Immortal Essence from her. Show us the way."
The guide lifted from her hand, seemed to concentrate very hard, then floated to their right.
Their progress was excruciatingly slow at first, as Tara paused between steps to decide where to move her other foot next. But she got better as they went on and they were moving at a respectable pace as the light drew them through dark hallways with dripping ceilings and strange echoes of sounds that could have been coming from a foot or a mile away.
The acoustics were screwed up even at short distances. When Tara tripped at one point, Spike asked if she was all right. Even though he'd spoken normally, his voice sounded like nothing more than a whisper. When he slammed his arm hard against the uneven wall in a tight passage, Tara's soft-spoken sympathetic ouch sounded like it had come from megaphone.
They kept silent after that, winding further and further from their starting point at the whimsy of their guide. Spike was beginning to wonder if the damn thing knew where it was going. As though it knew what he was thinking, it skittered back their way and spun around his head in some kind of reproach before continuing on.
Spike estimated it was over an hour before they finally saw the door ahead of them. The guide was still, frozen in place before it. Tara and Spike paused, exchanged a look, and then walked quickly to the guide.
"Should I send it away?" Tara asked Spike uncertainly. "I mean, do we need it to find our way out or something?"
He shook his head. "Got a good head for direction when I pay attention," he dismissed. "Let the bugger go back where it came from."
She scowled at him, and then held out her hand once again to the guide. When it was perched in her palm, she smiled. "Thank you for your help. You can go now."
With a slight flare of light, it flickered out of existence, and all that was left was the two of them in front of a massive cobblestone door that began to open on its own. There was some kind of light on the other side, and Spike squinted around the shadows. It looked like a room of some kind, with a dirty single mattress on the wall opposite of them, and a table to the left. The same torches were in the room, but they were lit, unlike the ones in the hallway he was in.
Someone was sitting at the table, back to them. "You have business with me, yes?" an ancient and grumpy voice called out.
"You the crone?" Spike asked, even though the slight form he could make out through the thick, rough material of a brown dress was most definitely crone-ish. But no sense being stupid and just assuming. Too much at stake.
"No, I'm the maiden," the irritated voice hissed back. "Come or go."
Tara was shifted uncomfortably at his side, and he glanced down at her questioningly. "What do you say, pet?"
She shrugged. "I don't, uh, know. I didn't have a chance to research this like I did with...with the Keepers."
No matter. They didn't have any other options of leads. Wesley had passed along the fact that the Immortal Essence they were after could only be obtained from the crone in the catacombs, and only if the price was right. He'd said that the price didn't have anything to do with cash, but that no one seemed to know what, exactly, it was.
"Right," Spike said decisively and crossed the threshold. Then he froze, because a gasp had tumbled from Tara's lips. He jumped back to her side of the doorway and stared at her confused face. "What is it?"
"Wards," the crone answered from the room. "More powerful than even your witch. No magic but mine in here. That's the rules."
Spike ran a hand through his hair and stared up at the ceiling. "Liking this even less and less," he muttered. He nodded and faced the doorway again. "You expect us to walk into a place stuffed with your magic when ours isn't available?" he asked her archly.
The crone turned, but her face was cast in shadows from the flickering torches on the walls in the small room. "Nothing happens here against anyone's will. That's always been the case." She shrugged a small shoulder. "Come or go," she said again.
He cracked his neck and looked to Tara again. She was biting her full lip, more concerned than he really wanted to see. "You won't be able to break them if something goes wrong, will you?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
She shook her head. "No, they're...strong, and different than anything I know." Spike grimaced and she took a breath. "We don't have a choice though."
"True enough," he admitted. They turned off their flashlights and Spike shoved them into the deep side pockets of the duster. They stuck out and made his coat swing oddly, but they stayed put.
Then Tara's small hand took hold of his and they entered the room.
The crone was still in the shadows, but Spike saw her tilt her head. "The vampire and the witch, on the quest for the Cerno," she stated with a grunt. "Running here and there like chickens with no heads, missing all the points along the way."
Her tone was one of disgust when she uttered the last words and Spike was suddenly remembering what Khentimentiu had told him about gathering the components for the Cerno being a journey. He'd assumed the false god had been talking about some kind of metaphorical journey--and maybe he had been- -but Spike began to wonder if maybe it wasn't *all* metaphorical when the crone spoke so knowingly.
But then the crone got up from her seat and walked into the light, and Spike's thoughts abruptly cut off when he got a look at her, and Tara's hand tightened around his.
She was only about five-feet tall, and Spike thought he was being generous with that estimation. Couldn't have weighed more than eighty pounds at the most, even with that burlap sack she was wearing. Her skin was a bleached color, a sickly white that was testament to the fact that she lived well away from the light of the sun, and was so creased that it appeared her wrinkles had wrinkles. A few strands of long gray hair dangled pitifully from her mostly bald head. But as disgusted as all that was, when it was put together in such a manner, it was her eyes that made Spike's stomach spin.
Her eyes were rotted. Two shriveled orbs that still moved and scanned the room sightlessly. "The vampire avoided the trial for the Onyx, and you--" she pointed unerringly at Tara with a gnarled bony finger. "You gained the affection of the God." She cackled, and the sound of it curdled Spike's stomach. "You can't avoid payment with me, and I have no finer emotions to appeal to. This is going to be such fun!"
"How--how do you know all that?" Tara asked tremulously, staring fearfully at the crone.
"I may be blind, but I'm all seeing, witch." A cruel smile pulled at her thin, wrinkled lips and Spike knew fear for Tara and for himself. The creature in front of them was cruel and vicious and because she was so frail, Spike knew there had to be other tricks up her sleeve. Tricks designed to inflict the damage she seemed to be anticipating and that they'd be ill equipped to defend against with Tara's magic not available.
"Such a pretty little picture in your head, girl," the crone cooed in a gravelly voice. "Blood and brains, and lovely red hair. So sweeeeeeeeeeeet."
Spike froze. Beside him, Tara gasped in pain or shock or both, and her bones seemed to melt. Spike grabbed her around the waist, keeping her on her feet. Bloody hell, it was going to be even worse than he'd thought.
"Oh!" the crone said almost gleefully. "And you tried to scoop her brains back into her head! How darling!"
Tara was sobbing now, her body shaking so badly that he had to lift her in his arms because his arm couldn't keep her upright any longer. "What do we have to do to get the Essence?" he snarled at the crone.
She smiled toothlessly at him, shriveled eyes seeming to sparkle maliciously. She walked to the dirty mattress, and eased herself down. Her legs crossed with loud creaking noises that bounced off the walls. "I want that scene in her head," she hissed, her back arching. "I want it here, and now. In this room that holds only my magic. Want it played out in every excruciating detail."
Spike's eyes widened. He wasn't sure exactly what she meant to do, but he knew that Tara would lose her tentative hold on her mind if it happened. She'd crumble into so many little pieces that she'd never be able to put herself back together again. She'd be like those Arcepts when they died-- constructed of millions of small bits of sand that couldn't keep a form for longer than an instant before it fell apart.
He spun on his heel, Tara still in his arms, and walked to the door. "It's a one time offer," the crone called out. "If you leave then you don't get a second chance, and there is no other way to get the Essence."
Changing tactics, Spike set Tara on the floor and then practically flew across the room, his hand wrapping around the crone's throat and pulling her up from the mattress. "You're not breaking her," he growled. "Give us the bloody Essence, or I'll spend the next few hours, or days, or weeks, torturing you until you're the one scattered to the wind." He tightened his grip. "Understand?"
She spat at him, and he tossed her across the room. There was a satisfying thud as her head slammed against the concrete wall, but the crone didn't even cry out. She got to her feet, nothing broken or bloody, and that feeling of apprehension crawled across his spine again when she issued another cackle.
"Typical vampire," she said through her laughter. "I hold the immortal Essence, and there is a price to be paid for it. There is no circumvention allowed."
"You don't feel pain," he realized, staring at her with narrowed eyes.
The crone gestured at Tara. "That memory is what it will cost her. She can take the offer or not."
His gaze slid to Tara. She was pressed against the back of the open door, her knees pulled to her chest. He remembered her like this, with her eyes feral and wild because she'd been stripped of everything except her instincts and her pain. He faced the crone again. "I'll pay."
Another toothless grin gaped at him, and he curled his lips in disgust. "You ask for the Essence for yourself, and will willingly pay the price?"
Again, that tickle against his spine. Spike knew there weren't any scenes she could reenact that would reduce him to Tara's current state. Not even the one from that night because while it had some power over him, he wasn't human and it didn't grab at him the same way it did for Tara. Which made him wonder just why the crone looked like a junkie who'd just been given a lifetime supply of her drug of choice?
"Spike?" Tara was sitting on her knees now, a semblance of awareness fading in and out of her eyes, her face ravaged like it hadn't been in months. He crossed back to her and crouched down in front of her. "It's about pain," she muttered absently.
He smoothed her hair away from her face awkwardly. "Yeah. Craves it because she can't feel it. S'allright, though. I'll take this one, right? You just...just calm down."
When he tried to stand, she shoved him backwards and crawled over him, her hair tickling his face. "She can't hurt you like she can hurt me," she whispered. "She'll--she'll--it'll be physical. And it won't end quickly."
"Tougher than I look," he said, and chucked her under the chin. Later he would think that if he hadn't done that, then things would have gone a lot differently. But he did do it, and her eyes shifted and slid and spun, and he knew she was remembering when his arms had been torn to shreds and he'd done the same thing.
"I'll do it," Tara practically shouted, still staring at something that had happened months ago. "Leave him out of it."
"Damn it, Tara," he snapped. He shoved her off of him, got to his feet, and pulled her up with him. Holding her by the shoulders, he shook her none too gently. She whimpered, but it just made him angrier. "Do you think I don't know what this is about? You want to be punished, think you deserve it. That's crap."
She squeezed her eyes shut and when they opened, he watched everything shift and slide yet again, until most of Tara was there. "That's--maybe I do think I...deserve it, but it's--there's more. You--you were the walking wounded that summer." Her voice grew frantic and intense, and her eyes got clearer and clearer. "You tried to hide it, but I always noticed. Ripped open and swollen and cracked; limping and wincing and stinging. And I know that Giles wasn't--he wasn't paying attention, and you could have...you could have gotten human blood. But you didn't, and I know why. But I hated it, Spike. I won't let you do it again. I won't!"
He glared down at her, refusing to let her words get to him. "I can take the damage. It wasn't a big deal then, and it's not a big deal now."
She pushed his hands from her shoulders. "Yes it was, and it is. You're not a...thing, and I won't let you act like you are. Not again."
Spike drew in a shocked hiss of air. Oh, that had hit a little too close to home. But this wasn't about him being made to feel like a man again. It was about the blond in front of him that he was about to pick up and toss out the bloody door for her own damn good. "You're barely keeping it together," he reminded her harshly. "Hanging on to the edge by the tips of your fingers and about to let someone stomp on them."
And her response? A simple, "I know."
He stared at her for what felt like hours, and he remembered that she was from the old group, filled with stubborn females. The group that had been stronger than they'd looked, stronger than everything that had come their way except the Hell goddess that the woman in front of him had survived. Part of the group that had been infused by the Hellmouth with a double dose of obstinacy.
"Fuck," he said with feeling.
"Yeah."
***
The crone was shivering in pleasure, and Spike was shaking with barely repressed rage. This wasn't the goodbye he'd promised her months ago--that he'd sworn to give her. Not by a long shot, and it was harder than he'd thought to just standby and watch as Tara straightened her shoulders and nodded to the crone.
The cobblestone door swung shut, and then the room darkened, until it was utter blackness, and Spike could no longer see the crone. But he could see Tara. Yes, he could see her. Backlit as the hazy and indistinct scene from that night gradually faded into the peripheral of the room. It was sideways and upside down; twisted and warped. Because this was Tara's point of view, and when she'd come back to herself there had only been the spot four feet to her left. The spot she was staring at, face pale, eyes coming loose, and knees threatening to give out.
The crone was drawing it out, setting the stage one small piece at a time instead of just thrusting Tara right into it. Because there was more to pain than the actual pain. There was the anticipation of it, and Spike knew from experience that it sometimes tasted even sweeter than the actual thing. And even though he would have gladly let the crone have her way with him so that this could have been avoided, there was still something...beautiful about Tara's agony. It flowed through him and he could feel it filling his head, clouding his thoughts.
The air in front of her shimmered and she changed. The cast was on her arm, and her clothes were the same as from that night. Her hair was shorter, her curves a little rounder. There were scratches and small bruises on her exposed skin, from the fall she'd taken when she'd been pushed away from Willow, from the panicked motions of all of those in Glory's thrall. The only thing that ruined the illusion of it being that night was that she was still the Tara of now where it counted.
But then, four feet to her left, a red mist gathered into a recognizable shape, holding the teasing illusion for one long moment before it abruptly settled into the flesh and blood of Willow Rosenberg. Spike looked away, settling his gaze on Tara, whose eyes grew wider and then, somehow, faded from the now. Everything in her lost touch with her and she was the Tara from before, all twitching limbs and jerky hand gestures.
"Baby?" she whispered, tears falling from her eyes and tracking pretty little lines through the dirt on her face. "Baby?"
She took two awkward steps forward, then collapsed face first to the ground. There was the sound of sobbing. Broken, shattered sobbing that continued when Tara began to drag herself to Willow, the movements laborious because of the cast and her violent crying.
But then she had reached Willow's feet, and her uninjured hand feathered over Willow's calf. "Sweetie, please," she cried out. "Willow. Willow, please. Please, Willow. I'm better, Willow. Talk to me, baby."
Tara slumped to the side and got to her hands and knees, crawling up and up and up so that she could touch Willow's face. Green eyes that had always been so expressive were now empty and blank, fixed sightlessly on the night sky above. That colorless skin of hers was streaked with dripping lines of blood, mottled with bits of pale mush.
Spike swallowed thickly, wanting to look away, but his only other option was to peer into the peripheral, twist it around in his head until he was seeing what *he* didn't want to see, so he watched Tara run her hand through the mess on Willow's face. Saw Tara try to wipe it away, then bring her fingers close to her face and stare until it sunk in, until she realized what she was looking at.
It seemed like her eyes expanded focus then, like a camera, and she took in the fact that Willow's hair was settled...unnaturally on the ground. Tara scurried around, and the room moved so that Spike didn't miss any of it. Tara reached out a tentative hand towards the battered and shattered remnants of Willow's skull. She caught something as it slid out, and then she mewled and curled in on herself, rocking and rocking, her eyes squeezed shut so tight that nothing could get it. They opened abruptly, a flicker of hope in them, but Willow's brain was still leaking out of her head.
Her arms flew out and she scraped her hands and fingers along the ground around her, gathering the blood and brains, and probably gravel and glass, into a pile just under the wound. She even dragged her fingers carefully through Willow's hair and wrung out what had stuck to it, then shook her hands clean over the pile.
Spike closed his own eyes then. He didn't want to see that poor girl try to put everything back. He bit back a bark of laughter. No, the problem was that he *did* want to see it, because everything about this was pulling at the demon side of him, urging him to enjoy the show with a malicious grin and a predator's eyes. But he wouldn't, because as delicious as this was on a certain level, he'd made the witch a promise.
He didn't look again until Tara started screaming. That sound drove away any possible enjoyment he might have found, because he remembered the screams. They had startled Dawn, had forced her out of the hold he'd had on her, and she'd tried to go towards them. But Spike had pulled her from Anya and Xander's bodies and shouted at Giles until the Watcher had blinked and been able to see again, and then he'd had Giles take Dawn so that he could follow the screams.
For Tara, it was like he just...appeared in a sitting position a foot away from her. In reality, he'd limped and staggered drunkenly through the chaotic frenzy of running humans, following those damn screams. He'd seen her, curled into a fetal position by Willow's head, and he'd made his slow and painful way to her. When he'd tried to crouch down next to her, his body had protested by collapsing under him so that he'd landed on his arse with a thud.
It had taken him a moment to register what exactly had happened to Willow and he'd sighed, knowing that he'd have to tell Dawn that someone else had been taken. But for the woman in such pain next to him, he hadn't known what to do. His tank had been empty and he'd been running on fumes, because they were supposed to have won, weren't they? Buffy and the others, they'd always won, and this just...hadn't...made...sense. And he'd barely even looked at Tara before, much less spoken to her.
Spike pulled his eyes away from himself, sitting helplessly next to the witches, and instead looked at Tara, watched as she screamed and cried and raged and blamed and freed a thousand other emotions in primal eruptions of sound that said more than words could have.
The Spike from that night finally touched her shoulder, and she looked up at him, raw anguish on her face. The same anguish was on Spike's face, too, and they recognized one another beyond just Spike and Tara. They recognized the pain that ripped their hearts out and slashed their wills and her screams faded away. Heartbeats passed as they stared, just stared at one another, two sets of blue eyes that were different by just a shade of gray, and then Spike opened his arms to her at the same time that she grabbed hold of his duster and pulled herself up.
She fell onto him, and he was so weak that it flung him onto his back, and he remembered that it had hurt his ribs and head, but the pain...the pain had been real and he'd tightened his arms around her to press her harder against him, making everything flare, and she pressed face against his throat and cried into his neck.
Spike saw his mouth moving, and knew that was when Dawn and Giles had been calling his name, and he'd had to swallow several times before he could yell back that he was fine and to give him a few minutes. Dawn understood what he hadn't said, and there were new screams in the air. But all of that was in Tara's peripheral, and there was only the silent moving of Spike's mouth to give credence to it.
Spike sat up, taking Tara with him and shifting her sideways on his lap, his lips once again speaking without sound. He'd been trying to tell her that they had to leave, because the police would be showing up and they needed to get out of there, the four of them needed to leave, and there would be a fifth but not really. But nothing penetrated for Tara until he pushed her back and forced her to meet his eyes. "Say goodbye, pet," he told her gruffly.
Tara jerked this way and that, flinging away from him to lean her forehead against Willow's and mumble incoherently. It was when Spike took hold of her shoulders to pull her away that she noticed it. The piece of pipe a few feet away, one end covered with blood, strands of red hair and white fragments of bone and dead gray matter stuck to it; the other hand smeared with the bloody handprints of the wielder. At the time, he didn't notice, and his hold was gentle, so when she yanked herself out of his grip she actually got away from him.
The Spike in the scene sighed and crawled after her, finding her staring, horrified, at the business end of the pipe. Trailing the tips of her fingers through it, collecting what she could and trying to rush back to Willow. But Spike wrapped his arms around her waist and held the struggling woman, fighting to get to his feet and finally succeeding.
He took her away from it. Walked her straight towards the jumbled peripheral, but instead of the scene clearing up and zooming out, it tightened. Closed more and more around her until there was only Tara hanging from Spike's arms, and absolute darkness and silence everywhere else.
***
Light flashed, and Spike shielded his sensitive eyes with a hand, lowering it only when he could see. Tara had her back against a wall, leaning on it and crying. Not sobbing, just crying. The crone had gotten up off of the mattress, and was heading in Tara's direction, a spring in her step and a small vial in her hand. Spike stepped in front of her and stared down at her, knowing that his face was a mask of nothing.
"Do you want the Essence or not?" the crone asked lightly, raising an eyebrow.
He walked with her to Tara, watching closely as she brought the vial to Tara's face and let a stream of tears fall inside. When she reached up to touch Tara's face with her other hand, Spike negligently slapped it aside and then followed her as she practically skipped her frail, creaking body to the table along the opposite wall.
Once there, she took hold of a small straight pin, muttered an incantation of some sorts that was spoken too quickly to be anything more than a sibilant rush of breath, then absently pricked her finger. Three drops fell into the vial before the small wound closed, and then she screwed a cap on it and handed it to him.
Spike shoved the thing in his duster pocket and went back to Tara. She was still on her feet, still crying. He tilted her face up by way of a finger on her chin. "Look at me, luv," he said quietly, and her lids rose so that her eyes could meet his. He'd seen them look better, but he'd also seen them look ten times worse. He smiled at her and put a hand at the back of her head, pulling her forward to lean on her chest.
"We done here?" Spike called to the crone over his shoulder.
"She paid, and she has the Essence. It's finished."
Tara walked of her own accord, stiff and tired, but on her own two feet. It was something. The crone's voice crackled through the room to them just as the door swung open. They paused but didn't turn around. "Don't worry, sweet witch. You kept your grip, but there will be other chances. You'll be your own worst hurdle."
The door crashed closed behind them, and Spike cursed while he fumbled for the flashlights. Tara's hand was limp when he tried to press a one in it, so he finally tossed it aside and used the one he was holding to light the corridor. She was pulled tight into herself, not even reaching out to him as she had so often done since that night, so he slung an arm around her shoulders while he thought. He didn't want to spend another damn hour in the catacombs, didn't think the dank darkness would be all that good for her.
That little instinct in him that knew when the sun was out told him that they still had plenty of time before dawn. He reached into Tara's sweater pocket with his free hand and pulled out the map, clumsily unfolding it, then studying it in the dimly lit corridor.
The paper was balled up and shoved into his jeans pocket, and then he urged her the opposite way they'd come. He was gentle at first, and when she didn't move, he forcefully pulled her along by way of the arm around her. It took them only ten minutes to get to the nearest exit, which brought them into a park on the edge of the city, amid a circle of high bushes. Spike lowered the trap door and then took a deep breath. The night smelled of greenery and beer and food that was too stupid to be safely shut in houses.
And it also smelled of Tara, who was standing a bit away from him. Tara was...she was soothing lavender and luscious hyacinth, and it brought to mind thickly humid climates full of knowing smiles and swinging hips and soft women glistening with light sheens of sweat that soaked into cotton clothing.
But there was also another scent in the air that was also Tara, one that he hadn't smelled since that last night before she'd left Sunnydale for Wildwind. His lips parted and his eyes fell on her clenched fists, and he knew that her nails had broken her skin.
He'd tasted her blood that night, quite accidentally. Her fingers had pressed passed his lips, and there'd been a small scrape on one of them. He remembered the taste of her beyond just the copper. Her blood had awash in innocence and grief, in insanity and guilt. And the magic, of course. The power of her magic.
As the wind brought the scent to him more directly, Spike's nostrils flared. It was different, now, changed. There was something new wound through it, something that was dense and eclipsing. He knew what it was: rage. Pure rage that had no target and gave no hint of itself on her wretched features. That was why she was on her feet, still mostly whole. It had sunk its hooks into her, sewn her back together as quickly as everything had ripped her apart, and it had come into her when the Arcept minion had shown up at the hospital. He didn't know how he knew that last part, but he did.
He touched the embossment at his collarbone. Her power had impressed the covens that had been helping Giles research, had cowed every mystical being they'd come across. It had even scared Tara, hadn't it? In Cairo, when she'd stammered about her lack of control.
His hand fell away and his eyes lost focus. Rage could be a weakness, a monumental weakness, because it left you open to the clear-minded strategy of someone who was calm. But sometimes rage could take such firm root in someone that it was cold and controlled while it demolished everything in its path and gave you no opening to stop it.
"Spike." The word was said softly, but it still made him jump. His eyes went back to her, and saw that she was facing him now, eyes dark and pained by what she'd been through, her arms at her sides. She looked so lost there, standing so close that he could see her and smell her and hear her.
Last summer he'd learned her secrets and he'd tasted her blood. In Cairo he'd come to understand that she was untouchable by the darkness. Tonight he'd watched make it through the one thing she shouldn't have been able to make it through.
And in between all of those moments, he'd seen other things, too. She'd protected herself not by attacking anyone, but by deterring anyone from coming near her. She had set about keeping everyone from that night safe with the embossment. She'd chosen not to physically hurt the Emling when it had come after her. She'd kept the Marpel from getting blasted by its own attack.
The rage inside of her, it should have had her firmly in its grip, should have made her irrational and unpredictable. But the rage was doing *her* bidding and all she'd ordered it to do was to keep her on her feet--in all ways--until she could finally sit.
He held out his hands and she tripped to him and fell against him and stretched up to wrap her arms around his neck and he lifted her so that her legs could settle around his waist.
And his arms were across her back and his lips were against the pulse point in her neck and she was all that he could smell and just like the night that had been replayed by the crone, there was nothing except the two of them as he carried her back to the hotel.
**
Spike was on his back with Tara curled on her side next to him, watching his face. He snaked an arm out and pulled her to him, and she twisted and shifted until she was lying flat on top of him, her forehead pressed to his neck, their bodies touching down to their feet, and the tears she'd been crying since the catacombs finally slowed and stopped.
"I missed this," Tara said eventually, her voice hushed. "I thought...I thought when I was away? From there? I thought I wouldn't need...."
Spike quieted her, and tilted his face to kiss the top of her head. "No explanations, right?"
"No secrets, either," she finished for him, and he smiled sadly. "It doesn't hurt here."
"Never has."
He snuck out around noon, when he was sure Tara was deeply asleep and his moving from the bed wouldn't disturb her. The catacombs entrance was easier to find this time, and he clambered down the steps and retraced the path from the previous night.
The crone's door was open, and she was smiling coldly when he stepped through into her small room. "You know something about the ritual," Spike growled immediately.
"I know many things about it," the crone replied in a singsong voice. "But it's not my place to give you everything you need to know." She cast a sly glance in his direction, and it was creepy, with the unseeing eyes. "There is one thing I can tell you."
Spike looked upwards and clenched his hands into fists. "What?"
"One of the reasons it fails. Would you like to know that? Will you pay the price to know it?" she trilled, and Spike took a breath that he didn't really need, to compose himself, and then turned icy eyes to the crone.
"Yes."
***
There were too many questions to count in Tara's eyes when he returned, but she chose not to voice any of them. The white washcloth was red when she finished cleaning him off, and she helped him to the bed and tucked the blanket around him. When she would have walked away, he took her arm and pulled her on top of him, feeling the warmth, god, she was so warm, and listening to the small sounds she made at the back of her throat.
It was just getting dark when he woke, and Tara was sitting up, back against the wall behind the bed, with him cradled against her chest. She was running her hands through his hair.
"Nightmares," she said absently when he frowned at their new position. He wasn't surprised about that. "I'm mad at you."
"I'm sure," he said, but she didn't try to move out from under him, didn't take his head from her chest.
"I should probably ask you if there's anything else you let her do besides what I saw, but I think that I don't really want to know." Spike laughed harshly and she tugged at his hair reproachfully. "Why would you let her carve you up like, like a piece of meat or something?" she demanded quietly, an ache in her voice.
"We need to go back to Paris," Spike answered incongruously. Tara stilled, then resumed running her fingers through his hair. He answered her unspoken question. "If you're going to do the Cerno, then you have to be the one to get what's needed."
"All right."
Then she twisted and turned until she was flat on her back. Her legs were spread and he lay between them, his head just under her breasts and the thudding of her heart reverberating through his body.
There'd been nights that summer when he'd found himself at the house on Revello, not even realizing he'd gone there in the first place until Tara had wafted into Buffy's bedroom. The room where the scent of her was trapped by closed windows and a latched door.
On those nights he'd lain on top of Tara, just like he was now, face buried against her chest as he shook and trembled. Those quick hands of hers had touched him everywhere, reassuring him with butterfly caresses that followed no pattern. He'd get distracted trying to anticipate where they would land next, and the shaking would subside and then she would take him by the hand and lead him back to the apartment and they'd miss the sun by minutes.
Spike turned his head, nose brushing her breast and she began to hum a soft and calming melody that he'd never been able to place.
"I know it never would have worked out," Spike said eventually, his voice quiet, and Tara's humming drifted off. "Even if she'd given me the chance."
Once again she wasn't surprise by where his thoughts had gone. "Not really the point, is it?" Fly-by-night caresses changed in favor of firm circles between his shoulders.
"Guess not," he admitted, sighing.
***
They left two hours later, neither one of them wanting to keep going, but both of them desperate to leave this place, and needing the entire ordeal to be over with as soon as possible. Spike demolished the rest of the blood he'd gotten the previous night and ignored the concerned look on Tara's face when he winced while putting a clean shirt on.
The gathering of belongings was done in heavy silence, the checking out with terse words to the cheerful concierge, and the booking of a flight at the airport with drawn faces.
When they boarded the plane, Spike pulled the in-flight phone from the chair back in front of him. He called Josh's cell phone because the boy perpetually forgot to turn the thing on and Spike didn't wan to talk to anyone in Sunnydale right then. His message was short and to the point.
"Done in Berlin. I'll call from Italy."
***
End Part Four
Tara had been mildly amused when Spike had donned the medic alert bracelet at the airport in Egypt. The amusement had grown only slightly when the stewardess got on the speaker and asked all passengers to close their shades to accommodate a fellow traveler suffering from a rare light- sensitive medical condition.
But when they were preparing to disembark in Berlin, and Spike dug through his small bag, Tara had to cover her face so that the obliging stewardess didn't see her laugh when he pulled out a long swath of black material and wrapped himself up from head to toe.
Airline officials led them quickly to a windowless inner room of the airport, where they waited until the sun had set before finally leaving. They hailed a cab, and Spike used his rusty German to direct the driver to a hotel that the stewardess had suggested.
"Porphyria?" Tara commented idly once they were on their way.
"Sod off," Spike grumbled, opening the window and lighting a cigarette. "Was Olson's idea and it's come in damn handy."
The hotel was of the luxurious chain variety, and Tara raised her brow at the ornate lobby, only lowering it when Spike produced a credit card and handed it to the concierge.
Spike had gotten them a suite, not because they needed the extra room, but because he knew that Tara had been staying in utter crap holes due to her cash situation. No sense in roughing it if they didn't have to.
During the ride up in the elevator, she frowned at the number display. "There's never a thirteenth floor," she mused.
He slanted a look in her direction. "It's bad luck," he reminded her.
"Well, yeah, but--I mean, just because you skip from twelve to fourteen doesn't get rid of the thirteenth floor. Uh, the fourteenth floor *is* the thirteenth."
"People are idiots," he grunted as the elevator stopped on the nineteenth floor. "As long as it's not marked thirteen, they're appeased."
She didn't argue when he told her to ward the room this time, and Spike stashed the Bowl, the Onyx and Khentimentiu's knife under the bathroom sink.
"I need to get some blood," Spike told her. "Why don't you order room service or something? Bint down in the lobby said there's an English menu in here somewhere, and you didn't eat anything on the plane."
Her nose wrinkled. "It smelled weird," she confided, and he smiled. "Spike?" He looked at her expectantly. "I, uh, don't have any idea where to look for the Essence. Are we going to go to a demon bar again?"
Remembering the last jaunt, he wasn't eager to repeat it. "Maybe." He shrugged. "That's one of the things Olson's working on. I'll check in with him when I get back. If he doesn't have anything, we might have to hit the underground, but it won't be tonight." Then he stared at her. "Giles popped into town."
She frowned and sat on the bed to take off her shoes. "Oh."
"Dead set against the Cerno," he informed her casually. "Seems to think we'd be better off finding out who..."
"Oh," she repeated, her hands going still. She sat up and sighed. "There's...there's no way to, uh, track it. Magically, I mean."
"Yeah, we figured that, since the Arcepts aren't trying. But I think Giles is fancying himself a detective."
Her face paled, then. "The people that Glory, uh, brain sucked?" Spike nodded. "They won't be any help. It was...you're not really all in her, but you're, uh, not in your body, either," she said slowly, her voice shaking just a little bit. "You remember things you did, but it's all faraway, and everything else is all disjointed. Hazy."
Combined with the Sunnydale Denial Syndrome, Spike figured Glory's victims were going to be about useless. "Right then. Get some food. I'll be back in about an hour."
A spot of B and E later, he wandered back to the hotel with a cooler of human blood. There was a picked over tray of food by the door, waiting to be removed by the hotel staff, and the shower was running in the bathroom.
Spike downed two packets of blood, then called Olson's cell phone. He didn't want to come across Giles again and figured it was safer to stick to the mobiles. "It's Spike," he said when Olson answered.
"Tom, so good to hear from you," Olson replied, forced cheer evident in his voice.
Spike rolled his eyes. Since when had patrolling the Hellmouth turned into one giant mess of office politics? "Do yourself a favor and grow a pair, mate," Spike scoffed.
"That's good to hear," Olson said tightly. "What can I do for you?"
"Look, we're in Berlin and I want to know if you chaps found out where we should start looking for the Essence."
"I see. Actually, you'd be better off calling your sister for that."
Spike growled. "My sister? Is that your clever way of telling me to call the Slayer?" he ground out.
"Bloody Hell, Eric," Spike heard Giles snap in the background. "I'm not a fool, and I damn well know you're talking to Spike so just hand over the phone this instant."
There was a shuffling noise and then Giles was on the line. "Bring Tara home immediately," he hissed at Spike.
Spike lit a cigarette and sat at the desk across from the bed. "Yeah, that's not going to happen, Watcher."
"I'm warning you, Spike. Stop this stupidity at once."
It was a damn good thing he wasn't in Sunnydale at the moment. Less than a minute of Giles' nonsense was more than enough, and he didn't know how the others were putting up with the ponce. "She won't go back," Spike snapped. "But if you want, I can force her to. Of course, I'll have to keep her knocked out for the entire trip, and then you'll have to restrain her once we get there so that she can't take off again. I'll go slam her head into a wall and we'll be off. How's that sound?" he asked, his voice overly chipper and cheerful.
If Giles' long stream of loud curses was anything to go by, he didn't like the sound of it at all. "Would you please try to take this seriously?" Giles finally said.
"I *am* taking it seriously," Spike countered furiously. "You're the one who's not. You think just because you want her to stop that she's going to? Well, she's not, and if she does it alone she's gonna get herself killed."
"What I think," Giles bit out coldly, "is that you are not doing anything whatsoever to sway her from what she's doing."
Well, the git had him there. He wasn't doing any such thing, and he didn't plan to, either. "What's the issue here?" Spike asked cynically. "Pissed off because no one's falling in line like you think they should?"
"I'm pissed off, as you put it," Giles snarled, "because this ritual is not the answer, and no one seems to want to consider that fact."
"Yeah, well, until you have another solution in your musty little hands, this is all we've got," Spike said diffidently.
"Spike--"
"She's as stubborn as Buffy," he interrupted, and silence fell over both sides of the line for several minutes. "Never would have thought it," Spike went on eventually, clearing his throat, "but she is."
"Damn," Giles sighed. "How...how is she?"
Spike shrugged, even though the Watcher couldn't see him. "She's managed to stay in one piece."
"And mentally?"
"Got a ways to go, still," he said bluntly.
"Yes, I imagine she would." Giles cleared his throat and then said, "Spike, I need to ask you about...about that night."
He tensed. "Faith already filled me in, and I didn't see who killed the witch. It was chaos at that point, and I'd just taken a tumble." He frowned and thought of something. "And don't be upsetting the Bit with this, you hear? She's finally on her feet and I don't want you shoving her back down."
"I wouldn't do such a thing," Giles said haughtily. "Even if there was a need, which there clearly is not since Dawn was nowhere near anything that was going on." He paused. "But Tara was."
"And she is nowhere near ready to talk about that," he said gruffly. "Between you and me, I don't think that hospital was any help to her. You really should have badgered that Counsel of yours into sending a shrink who knew the deal; don't think that one nurse was able to do all that much."
"I badgered until they refused to even take my calls," Giles said tiredly. "Bloody hell, she must still be a mess."
"She's better," Spike reluctantly admitted. "But from what I've seen, she'll revert back to her formerly loony state if you start asking her if she saw who killed her lover. Why don't you talk to some others who were there? You know, people who aren't us."
"I've been trying, but there were a lot of people present, and I'm getting no cooperation from anyone here," he said, sounding more than a little aggrieved.
Spike snorted. "Maybe you should get off their cases. Might do wonders for getting them to help you." Giles started in with one of his lectures, and Spike was done He hung up on the Watcher again and called Faith's cell.
"We couldn't find squat about where you can get the Essence," Faith told him. "But Wesley came through. Said some crone has it, and you can find her in the catacombs under the city."
"Well, that narrows it down," Spike snapped. "The bloody catacombs are under every inch of the city and then some! Be sure and thank the useless wanker for me."
"Chill out there, fang. He wasn't pleased about the lack of details either, but he's waiting to hear from another contact of his. I talked to him about ten minutes ago, and he said he'd call back in a few hours. Why are you in such a bad mood, anyway?"
"Giles saw through Olson's brilliant little scheme," Spike snorted. "We had a lovely chat. You given up on redemption yet?" he asked hopefully. The laughter he expected didn't come and Spike scowled. "What the hell did Rupes do now?"
"Same shit, different day," Faith responded flatly. "Tenth different day in a row, actually."
Torture wouldn't get him to admit that he liked Faith, Olson and Josh, but he did. They were a solid lot and there was a tougher feel to them than there'd been to Buffy's group. Not that that lot hadn't been tough--he'd found that out the hard way, on more than one occasion--it just hadn't been as evident. But it just took a look, a single look, to know that Faith, Olson and Josh wouldn't be easy targets. It was nothing overt, just an edge to their eyes that only a blind man couldn't see, and predators were anything but blind.
That mess he'd caused during the whole Adam debacle? Never would have worked on Faith's crew. They'd have laughed in his face and walked away, never giving his words a second thought. They didn't share sappy words and hugs, but everyone knew where they stood with one another. They didn't pull punches, and no one cried foul about that fact.
Not to say there weren't weaknesses to exploit, but figuring out what they were was no easy task.
So he liked them, and they all worked together, and Spike realized he the tiniest bit possessive of them--a very vampiric trait--and not pleased about whatever the hell Giles had been spewing at them lately. Far as he was concerned, the Watcher could rip into him all he wanted. He always had, and Spike had never expected that to change even though everything else had. But the rest of them were another story. Worst part was that their hands were tied. With Faith's history, no one at the Counsel would take too kindly to her kicking Giles out of town and telling him not to come back.
"Fuck Giles," Spike snapped at Faith. "It's his problem, and you've got to stop making it yours."
"Like you do when Angel shows up with problems that aren't yours?" Faith asked cynically. "Vamps in glass houses, Spike."
He straightened up. "That's different. Hell of a lot more history there, you know." She didn't say anything and he frowned. A moment later the dial tone started ringing in his ear, and Spike's eyes widened. He was the one that did the hanging up, damn it.
***
There wasn't a whole lot to do while they waited to hear from Wesley. Spike killed a good ninety seconds when he called Olson and gave him the hotel's number so that someone could call them and let them know what the ex- Watcher turned up. After that, though, they were pretty much just stuck in the room. Tara didn't speak a word of German, so she didn't even bother turning on the television.
Spike had suggested they go out, but she'd insisted that they needed to be there when the call came in about the Essence. It was an obvious excuse to stay hidden away from the world and Spike wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not to force her out just yet.
He was sitting against the headboard of one of the beds, chain-smoking cigarettes that he didn't even like, and trying not to glance at the clock every five minutes. Tara was down near the foot of the bed, sitting cross- legged with rows of playing cards laid out on the bedspread between them. Spike had ventured down to the gift store in the lobby and picked the cards up, along with a set of dice in case she felt up to learning any games to pass the time. She'd passed on the dice games and had dealt out a hand of Solitaire instead.
He studied her as she absently counted out three cards and turned them over. The pseudo-corset shirt she was wearing had made him smile when she'd come out of the bathroom. With the lace-up front and the soft cotton material that didn't actually emphasize anything the way that type of top was meant to, the damn thing just screamed "Tara". Once again she was wearing pants. Jeans this time. Spike thought that her return to herself would be signaled by a skirt that was long, a little frumpy, and some absolutely hideous color. Despite his distaste at the idea of the skirt itself, he was hoping it would make an appearance sometime soon.
Her reluctance to go forth into the world for something other than the Cerno got him to thinking about where she'd spent the last few months of her life, and he narrowed his eyes on the blond in front of him.
"What was it like?" Spike asked curiously and he didn't need to clarify the "what" that he was talking about, despite the fact that the question had come entirely out of the blue.
Her hands stilled on the cards and then floated away from them. She looked down at her lap and shrugged. "It wasn't horrible or anything," she said awkwardly. "It was kind of...nice. I, uh, didn't have to think, you know? They brought me where I needed to be when I needed to be there, and told me what to do when we got there." She sighed, a deep frown wrinkling her forehead. "It was...easy."
Spike raised a brow. "Yeah? Surprised you left, then."
"I had to."
He cracked his neck and took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling slowly and watching her avoid his gaze. "If the Arcepts hadn't come into the picture, you would have stayed there even though your head sorted itself out." Tara stayed silent, and Spike shook his head and a long- standing question was answered. "It wasn't Glory's work after that night, was it? I'd wondered about that."
She shook her head slowly. "No. It--it was because of...what happened. It was...too much to, uh, absorb. Everything was wrong. It had been right, but then it was all wrong. Because of me."
Spike crushed out his cigarette and motioned her to him. "C'mere, pet," he said softly. She pushed the cards aside and crawled up the bed. Spike spread his legs so that she could sit between them, her back resting against her chest. "Blame's a tricky thing," he said after a few minutes. "You look objectively at everything that happened, and there's a million things that everyone involved could have done differently, or better, or not done at all. You can fling the blame every which way, and even some butterfly halfway across the world would catch some."
He closed his eyes and swallowed thickly. "But it can't be looked at objectively, can it? Because that's not how things work. It's messy and personal, and you're right there in the middle of it not knowing half of what's going on, and only guessing at the consequences of anything you do. Truth is, it's about intent, and you were no more responsible for anything you did after Glory scrambled your brains than Dawn was for being the Key."
"It's not that simple," Tara choked. "It can't be. I--"
"You were being controlled by her," Spike finished harshly.
"Did you...I mean, after that night? Did you think that you...?"
"Yeah," he said gruffly, his chest tightening. He laughed wretchedly. "Did my best and it wasn't good enough, and there won't be a day that goes by that I won't be angry about that. But it was one of a truckload of things that would've had to go differently for it to work out the way we wanted it to. Took me some time to realize that."
It had actually taken him until that exact moment to realize it, actually, because he'd done his best not to think about it much. But trying to explain the way of the world to Tara had forced him to acknowledge it himself.
She turned in his arms, and there were tears in her big blue eyes that threatened to spill down her face any moment. Spike brought his thumbs to her face and brushed them away before they could fall. "How did you do it?" she asked brokenly.
"It's not something you have to do, pet," he said gently. "Just happens naturally. You go about your life, even if that's the last thing you want to be doing, and it settles on its own." He laughed again, this time in amazement. "Just settles on its own."
She leaned forward and laid her head on his shoulder. "I guess you didn't really have much choice in that, huh?" she guessed. "Going on, I mean. We really, uh, took away any other option for you."
"Yeah," he admitted without malice.
"Just like you did when you sent us away, even if that's what you weren't trying to do," she mumbled against his shirt.
"I suppose," he conceded. "Doesn't seem to have worked for you, though. It's more like you went off to a place where you could get by without living at all." He pulled back from her and scowled. "You're going back, aren't you?"
"I can't escape any of it out here, Spike." Her eyes pleaded with him to understand, and he did, all too well.
"That's because you're not supposed to escape it," he said uncompromisingly. "It's not you in that grave, even if you think it should be. So you have to live or die. That hospital is neither, and it's just putting off the decision."
He waited for the inevitable question he saw swimming in her eyes. "What-- what if I decide I...can't live? What then?"
And he didn't have an answer for her because, really, he was a vampire who'd spent over a century killing people. What did he know about convincing a human to live?
So he reached out and flipped off the light by the bed, and they sat in the dark and drank up the nothingness that closed around them, and they didn't move until Olson called them four hours later.
***
"Might want to put a sweater on, luv," Spike suggested. "Catacombs are cold and drafty."
Tara automatically glanced down at the thin cotton of her top and nodded before rummaging through the small overnight bag that held her clothing. Spike shrugged his duster on and stared down at the map that Olson had faxed over to the hotel the previous night after he'd called.
Spike had managed to convince Tara that it would be better to wait until the following night to head out. They didn't know how long it was going to take them to get the Essence and he didn't want to be caught with his pants around his ankles--figuratively speaking--if dawn snuck up on them.
The map detailed the various access points of the Catacombs and he was trying to memorize as much as he could so that they could get the hell above ground in a hurry if they had to. They had lucked out in that there was actually an entrance located in the sub-basement of the hotel, but if they weren't near it, he wanted to know which way to go.
Tara slipped a white knit sweater on that fell to her waist, and Spike knew the damned thing was going to be dirty as hell when they were done crawling through the catacombs. "Is Wesley sure that a simple, uh, guiding spell is going to work?"
Spike shrugged and folded the map. "That's what I was told. According to his source, it's the only way to get to the crone." He shoved the map in his pocket, checked for his cigarettes and nodded towards the door. Tara checked the wards that were already in place without having to be asked, and set another one by the door. That was some kind of improvement, at least.
She was nervous and fidgeting as they strolled through a door marked "Authorized Personnel" in the lobby and Spike decided he wasn't going to translate any others sign for her when they were trying for subtle. They walked down a flight of stairs where the janitorial and security staff had offices and locker rooms. Passing by an equipment station, Spike stopped suddenly and took two large flashlights. He'd been in the catacombs only once, but he remembered just how dark the bloody things were.
It took some time for them to find the door that brought them down to the next level, with the furnaces and boilers, but they did find it. The entrance to the catacombs, on the other hand, wasn't so easy. They made their way down a cramped walkway surrounded by pipes and came to the spot where the entrance should have been. There was nothing but empty space.
"Damn thing should be right here," Spike exclaimed, turning in a circle. Tara was staring at the map, a frown on her face. "Shouldn't it be right here?"
"Yeah," she agreed. She tilted her head to the side and nudged him out of the way.
"Do you see a door or a cave or anything that goes anywhere?" he went on foully.
Tara dropped to her knees and began feeling along the floor. There was a coating of dirt and dust that no janitor's mop had ever seen, considering that the area they were in was tucked far away from everything important. She pulled a napkin out of her pocket and began clearing some of it away. Eventually Spike started to see that there was a small square of floor that was recessed from the rest.
He squatted down next to her and traced the outline with his fingers, finally finding a latch on the side nearest to him. "Take a step back, pet," he instructed Tara. She tossed the napkin aside and climbed to her feet, brushing the dirt from her pants. Spike grabbed hold of the latch and realized it was actually a ring. He gave it a pull and a trap door opened.
There was a set of stone steps that start just inches below the rim of the door. Spike counted ten of them before the darkness became so absolute that even his preternatural sight was useless.
"I'll do the spell now," Tara said thoughtfully. "There'll be a light? To follow."
She closed her eyes and started speaking, and Spike realized that when it was Tara's magic in the air, he *did* feel it despite the embossment. Not like he should have, but kind of like...same thing as when there's a bug crawling on you, and you see it and know that it's crawling on you, but damned if you can actually feel the creature's feet on your skin. In fact, if you weren't looking, you wouldn't even know it was there.
A small speck of green light appeared suddenly and danced in the air at the top of the stairs. Tara smiled wistfully at it before a stricken look entered her eyes and she looked away, swallowing and wrapping her arms around herself.
"I'll go first," Spike said brusquely. "Stay here 'til I tell you to come down."
He handed her one of the flashlights and turned his own on before he jogged lightly down the steps. At the bottom, he took a good look around, the light bouncing crazily around on the walls. It was pretty clean, for being set more than a few levels below the city, and he'd remembered the chilly breeze correctly. There wasn't sign of any other light besides the one he had brought, but there were old-fashioned torches set in the walls at regular intervals. He'd pass on those. Being highly flammable, he wasn't about to go prancing around with a burning stick in his hand, thanks. And he didn't really trust Tara to watch where she was wielding the damn thing.
He took a step forward and cursed when his foot twisted. Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the cobblestone that was the floor, the wall and the ceiling. This he had forgotten, the great uneven chunks of stone fitted together with half-a-mind and some kind of broken train of thought. "You got heels on your shoes?" he called up to Tara.
There was a pause, and he rolled his eyes. Damn girl was probably looking at her shoes like she hadn't put them on herself. "Uh, no. Why?"
"Come on down and you'll see."
The green ball of light must have been tuned in to Tara, because it preceded her down the steps and hovered impatiently while it waited for her. Spike pursed his lips and waited for her to touch down on the cobblestone. Sure enough, she pitched forward almost immediately, despite the sure-footed sandals she was wearing. He slung an arm around her waist and kept her from falling face-first to the ground.
"Look," he instructed, and turned the flashlight to the ground, showing her the ground. "It's pretty bad everywhere. Stay next to me, all right? Keep your light down and watch where you're going. I'll watch for everything else."
The guide fluttered in his face, somehow conveying its annoyance with Spike holding up its mission, and he swatted it away.
"Be nice," Tara chastised him. "Its helping us and I'm sure it has better things to do than wait for us to, uh, start moving." It bounced off her face a couple of times, in obvious agreement and gratitude for her understanding, and Spike snorted. Office politics in Sunnydale, and some kind of twisted Disney Adventure here in Germany. Damn chip.
"Fine then," he said, sounding as long-suffering as he felt. "Let's go. Remember what I said. If you start to fall or something, just grab my arm, right?"
She nodded her head, and then held out her hand palm up. The guide skittered to her outstretched hand and its ears perked up. Not that it had ears, or anything. For a featureless ball of light it was certainly expressive, that was for sure.
"We need a guide to the crone that lives here," Tara said softly. "We need to get the Immortal Essence from her. Show us the way."
The guide lifted from her hand, seemed to concentrate very hard, then floated to their right.
Their progress was excruciatingly slow at first, as Tara paused between steps to decide where to move her other foot next. But she got better as they went on and they were moving at a respectable pace as the light drew them through dark hallways with dripping ceilings and strange echoes of sounds that could have been coming from a foot or a mile away.
The acoustics were screwed up even at short distances. When Tara tripped at one point, Spike asked if she was all right. Even though he'd spoken normally, his voice sounded like nothing more than a whisper. When he slammed his arm hard against the uneven wall in a tight passage, Tara's soft-spoken sympathetic ouch sounded like it had come from megaphone.
They kept silent after that, winding further and further from their starting point at the whimsy of their guide. Spike was beginning to wonder if the damn thing knew where it was going. As though it knew what he was thinking, it skittered back their way and spun around his head in some kind of reproach before continuing on.
Spike estimated it was over an hour before they finally saw the door ahead of them. The guide was still, frozen in place before it. Tara and Spike paused, exchanged a look, and then walked quickly to the guide.
"Should I send it away?" Tara asked Spike uncertainly. "I mean, do we need it to find our way out or something?"
He shook his head. "Got a good head for direction when I pay attention," he dismissed. "Let the bugger go back where it came from."
She scowled at him, and then held out her hand once again to the guide. When it was perched in her palm, she smiled. "Thank you for your help. You can go now."
With a slight flare of light, it flickered out of existence, and all that was left was the two of them in front of a massive cobblestone door that began to open on its own. There was some kind of light on the other side, and Spike squinted around the shadows. It looked like a room of some kind, with a dirty single mattress on the wall opposite of them, and a table to the left. The same torches were in the room, but they were lit, unlike the ones in the hallway he was in.
Someone was sitting at the table, back to them. "You have business with me, yes?" an ancient and grumpy voice called out.
"You the crone?" Spike asked, even though the slight form he could make out through the thick, rough material of a brown dress was most definitely crone-ish. But no sense being stupid and just assuming. Too much at stake.
"No, I'm the maiden," the irritated voice hissed back. "Come or go."
Tara was shifted uncomfortably at his side, and he glanced down at her questioningly. "What do you say, pet?"
She shrugged. "I don't, uh, know. I didn't have a chance to research this like I did with...with the Keepers."
No matter. They didn't have any other options of leads. Wesley had passed along the fact that the Immortal Essence they were after could only be obtained from the crone in the catacombs, and only if the price was right. He'd said that the price didn't have anything to do with cash, but that no one seemed to know what, exactly, it was.
"Right," Spike said decisively and crossed the threshold. Then he froze, because a gasp had tumbled from Tara's lips. He jumped back to her side of the doorway and stared at her confused face. "What is it?"
"Wards," the crone answered from the room. "More powerful than even your witch. No magic but mine in here. That's the rules."
Spike ran a hand through his hair and stared up at the ceiling. "Liking this even less and less," he muttered. He nodded and faced the doorway again. "You expect us to walk into a place stuffed with your magic when ours isn't available?" he asked her archly.
The crone turned, but her face was cast in shadows from the flickering torches on the walls in the small room. "Nothing happens here against anyone's will. That's always been the case." She shrugged a small shoulder. "Come or go," she said again.
He cracked his neck and looked to Tara again. She was biting her full lip, more concerned than he really wanted to see. "You won't be able to break them if something goes wrong, will you?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
She shook her head. "No, they're...strong, and different than anything I know." Spike grimaced and she took a breath. "We don't have a choice though."
"True enough," he admitted. They turned off their flashlights and Spike shoved them into the deep side pockets of the duster. They stuck out and made his coat swing oddly, but they stayed put.
Then Tara's small hand took hold of his and they entered the room.
The crone was still in the shadows, but Spike saw her tilt her head. "The vampire and the witch, on the quest for the Cerno," she stated with a grunt. "Running here and there like chickens with no heads, missing all the points along the way."
Her tone was one of disgust when she uttered the last words and Spike was suddenly remembering what Khentimentiu had told him about gathering the components for the Cerno being a journey. He'd assumed the false god had been talking about some kind of metaphorical journey--and maybe he had been- -but Spike began to wonder if maybe it wasn't *all* metaphorical when the crone spoke so knowingly.
But then the crone got up from her seat and walked into the light, and Spike's thoughts abruptly cut off when he got a look at her, and Tara's hand tightened around his.
She was only about five-feet tall, and Spike thought he was being generous with that estimation. Couldn't have weighed more than eighty pounds at the most, even with that burlap sack she was wearing. Her skin was a bleached color, a sickly white that was testament to the fact that she lived well away from the light of the sun, and was so creased that it appeared her wrinkles had wrinkles. A few strands of long gray hair dangled pitifully from her mostly bald head. But as disgusted as all that was, when it was put together in such a manner, it was her eyes that made Spike's stomach spin.
Her eyes were rotted. Two shriveled orbs that still moved and scanned the room sightlessly. "The vampire avoided the trial for the Onyx, and you--" she pointed unerringly at Tara with a gnarled bony finger. "You gained the affection of the God." She cackled, and the sound of it curdled Spike's stomach. "You can't avoid payment with me, and I have no finer emotions to appeal to. This is going to be such fun!"
"How--how do you know all that?" Tara asked tremulously, staring fearfully at the crone.
"I may be blind, but I'm all seeing, witch." A cruel smile pulled at her thin, wrinkled lips and Spike knew fear for Tara and for himself. The creature in front of them was cruel and vicious and because she was so frail, Spike knew there had to be other tricks up her sleeve. Tricks designed to inflict the damage she seemed to be anticipating and that they'd be ill equipped to defend against with Tara's magic not available.
"Such a pretty little picture in your head, girl," the crone cooed in a gravelly voice. "Blood and brains, and lovely red hair. So sweeeeeeeeeeeet."
Spike froze. Beside him, Tara gasped in pain or shock or both, and her bones seemed to melt. Spike grabbed her around the waist, keeping her on her feet. Bloody hell, it was going to be even worse than he'd thought.
"Oh!" the crone said almost gleefully. "And you tried to scoop her brains back into her head! How darling!"
Tara was sobbing now, her body shaking so badly that he had to lift her in his arms because his arm couldn't keep her upright any longer. "What do we have to do to get the Essence?" he snarled at the crone.
She smiled toothlessly at him, shriveled eyes seeming to sparkle maliciously. She walked to the dirty mattress, and eased herself down. Her legs crossed with loud creaking noises that bounced off the walls. "I want that scene in her head," she hissed, her back arching. "I want it here, and now. In this room that holds only my magic. Want it played out in every excruciating detail."
Spike's eyes widened. He wasn't sure exactly what she meant to do, but he knew that Tara would lose her tentative hold on her mind if it happened. She'd crumble into so many little pieces that she'd never be able to put herself back together again. She'd be like those Arcepts when they died-- constructed of millions of small bits of sand that couldn't keep a form for longer than an instant before it fell apart.
He spun on his heel, Tara still in his arms, and walked to the door. "It's a one time offer," the crone called out. "If you leave then you don't get a second chance, and there is no other way to get the Essence."
Changing tactics, Spike set Tara on the floor and then practically flew across the room, his hand wrapping around the crone's throat and pulling her up from the mattress. "You're not breaking her," he growled. "Give us the bloody Essence, or I'll spend the next few hours, or days, or weeks, torturing you until you're the one scattered to the wind." He tightened his grip. "Understand?"
She spat at him, and he tossed her across the room. There was a satisfying thud as her head slammed against the concrete wall, but the crone didn't even cry out. She got to her feet, nothing broken or bloody, and that feeling of apprehension crawled across his spine again when she issued another cackle.
"Typical vampire," she said through her laughter. "I hold the immortal Essence, and there is a price to be paid for it. There is no circumvention allowed."
"You don't feel pain," he realized, staring at her with narrowed eyes.
The crone gestured at Tara. "That memory is what it will cost her. She can take the offer or not."
His gaze slid to Tara. She was pressed against the back of the open door, her knees pulled to her chest. He remembered her like this, with her eyes feral and wild because she'd been stripped of everything except her instincts and her pain. He faced the crone again. "I'll pay."
Another toothless grin gaped at him, and he curled his lips in disgust. "You ask for the Essence for yourself, and will willingly pay the price?"
Again, that tickle against his spine. Spike knew there weren't any scenes she could reenact that would reduce him to Tara's current state. Not even the one from that night because while it had some power over him, he wasn't human and it didn't grab at him the same way it did for Tara. Which made him wonder just why the crone looked like a junkie who'd just been given a lifetime supply of her drug of choice?
"Spike?" Tara was sitting on her knees now, a semblance of awareness fading in and out of her eyes, her face ravaged like it hadn't been in months. He crossed back to her and crouched down in front of her. "It's about pain," she muttered absently.
He smoothed her hair away from her face awkwardly. "Yeah. Craves it because she can't feel it. S'allright, though. I'll take this one, right? You just...just calm down."
When he tried to stand, she shoved him backwards and crawled over him, her hair tickling his face. "She can't hurt you like she can hurt me," she whispered. "She'll--she'll--it'll be physical. And it won't end quickly."
"Tougher than I look," he said, and chucked her under the chin. Later he would think that if he hadn't done that, then things would have gone a lot differently. But he did do it, and her eyes shifted and slid and spun, and he knew she was remembering when his arms had been torn to shreds and he'd done the same thing.
"I'll do it," Tara practically shouted, still staring at something that had happened months ago. "Leave him out of it."
"Damn it, Tara," he snapped. He shoved her off of him, got to his feet, and pulled her up with him. Holding her by the shoulders, he shook her none too gently. She whimpered, but it just made him angrier. "Do you think I don't know what this is about? You want to be punished, think you deserve it. That's crap."
She squeezed her eyes shut and when they opened, he watched everything shift and slide yet again, until most of Tara was there. "That's--maybe I do think I...deserve it, but it's--there's more. You--you were the walking wounded that summer." Her voice grew frantic and intense, and her eyes got clearer and clearer. "You tried to hide it, but I always noticed. Ripped open and swollen and cracked; limping and wincing and stinging. And I know that Giles wasn't--he wasn't paying attention, and you could have...you could have gotten human blood. But you didn't, and I know why. But I hated it, Spike. I won't let you do it again. I won't!"
He glared down at her, refusing to let her words get to him. "I can take the damage. It wasn't a big deal then, and it's not a big deal now."
She pushed his hands from her shoulders. "Yes it was, and it is. You're not a...thing, and I won't let you act like you are. Not again."
Spike drew in a shocked hiss of air. Oh, that had hit a little too close to home. But this wasn't about him being made to feel like a man again. It was about the blond in front of him that he was about to pick up and toss out the bloody door for her own damn good. "You're barely keeping it together," he reminded her harshly. "Hanging on to the edge by the tips of your fingers and about to let someone stomp on them."
And her response? A simple, "I know."
He stared at her for what felt like hours, and he remembered that she was from the old group, filled with stubborn females. The group that had been stronger than they'd looked, stronger than everything that had come their way except the Hell goddess that the woman in front of him had survived. Part of the group that had been infused by the Hellmouth with a double dose of obstinacy.
"Fuck," he said with feeling.
"Yeah."
***
The crone was shivering in pleasure, and Spike was shaking with barely repressed rage. This wasn't the goodbye he'd promised her months ago--that he'd sworn to give her. Not by a long shot, and it was harder than he'd thought to just standby and watch as Tara straightened her shoulders and nodded to the crone.
The cobblestone door swung shut, and then the room darkened, until it was utter blackness, and Spike could no longer see the crone. But he could see Tara. Yes, he could see her. Backlit as the hazy and indistinct scene from that night gradually faded into the peripheral of the room. It was sideways and upside down; twisted and warped. Because this was Tara's point of view, and when she'd come back to herself there had only been the spot four feet to her left. The spot she was staring at, face pale, eyes coming loose, and knees threatening to give out.
The crone was drawing it out, setting the stage one small piece at a time instead of just thrusting Tara right into it. Because there was more to pain than the actual pain. There was the anticipation of it, and Spike knew from experience that it sometimes tasted even sweeter than the actual thing. And even though he would have gladly let the crone have her way with him so that this could have been avoided, there was still something...beautiful about Tara's agony. It flowed through him and he could feel it filling his head, clouding his thoughts.
The air in front of her shimmered and she changed. The cast was on her arm, and her clothes were the same as from that night. Her hair was shorter, her curves a little rounder. There were scratches and small bruises on her exposed skin, from the fall she'd taken when she'd been pushed away from Willow, from the panicked motions of all of those in Glory's thrall. The only thing that ruined the illusion of it being that night was that she was still the Tara of now where it counted.
But then, four feet to her left, a red mist gathered into a recognizable shape, holding the teasing illusion for one long moment before it abruptly settled into the flesh and blood of Willow Rosenberg. Spike looked away, settling his gaze on Tara, whose eyes grew wider and then, somehow, faded from the now. Everything in her lost touch with her and she was the Tara from before, all twitching limbs and jerky hand gestures.
"Baby?" she whispered, tears falling from her eyes and tracking pretty little lines through the dirt on her face. "Baby?"
She took two awkward steps forward, then collapsed face first to the ground. There was the sound of sobbing. Broken, shattered sobbing that continued when Tara began to drag herself to Willow, the movements laborious because of the cast and her violent crying.
But then she had reached Willow's feet, and her uninjured hand feathered over Willow's calf. "Sweetie, please," she cried out. "Willow. Willow, please. Please, Willow. I'm better, Willow. Talk to me, baby."
Tara slumped to the side and got to her hands and knees, crawling up and up and up so that she could touch Willow's face. Green eyes that had always been so expressive were now empty and blank, fixed sightlessly on the night sky above. That colorless skin of hers was streaked with dripping lines of blood, mottled with bits of pale mush.
Spike swallowed thickly, wanting to look away, but his only other option was to peer into the peripheral, twist it around in his head until he was seeing what *he* didn't want to see, so he watched Tara run her hand through the mess on Willow's face. Saw Tara try to wipe it away, then bring her fingers close to her face and stare until it sunk in, until she realized what she was looking at.
It seemed like her eyes expanded focus then, like a camera, and she took in the fact that Willow's hair was settled...unnaturally on the ground. Tara scurried around, and the room moved so that Spike didn't miss any of it. Tara reached out a tentative hand towards the battered and shattered remnants of Willow's skull. She caught something as it slid out, and then she mewled and curled in on herself, rocking and rocking, her eyes squeezed shut so tight that nothing could get it. They opened abruptly, a flicker of hope in them, but Willow's brain was still leaking out of her head.
Her arms flew out and she scraped her hands and fingers along the ground around her, gathering the blood and brains, and probably gravel and glass, into a pile just under the wound. She even dragged her fingers carefully through Willow's hair and wrung out what had stuck to it, then shook her hands clean over the pile.
Spike closed his own eyes then. He didn't want to see that poor girl try to put everything back. He bit back a bark of laughter. No, the problem was that he *did* want to see it, because everything about this was pulling at the demon side of him, urging him to enjoy the show with a malicious grin and a predator's eyes. But he wouldn't, because as delicious as this was on a certain level, he'd made the witch a promise.
He didn't look again until Tara started screaming. That sound drove away any possible enjoyment he might have found, because he remembered the screams. They had startled Dawn, had forced her out of the hold he'd had on her, and she'd tried to go towards them. But Spike had pulled her from Anya and Xander's bodies and shouted at Giles until the Watcher had blinked and been able to see again, and then he'd had Giles take Dawn so that he could follow the screams.
For Tara, it was like he just...appeared in a sitting position a foot away from her. In reality, he'd limped and staggered drunkenly through the chaotic frenzy of running humans, following those damn screams. He'd seen her, curled into a fetal position by Willow's head, and he'd made his slow and painful way to her. When he'd tried to crouch down next to her, his body had protested by collapsing under him so that he'd landed on his arse with a thud.
It had taken him a moment to register what exactly had happened to Willow and he'd sighed, knowing that he'd have to tell Dawn that someone else had been taken. But for the woman in such pain next to him, he hadn't known what to do. His tank had been empty and he'd been running on fumes, because they were supposed to have won, weren't they? Buffy and the others, they'd always won, and this just...hadn't...made...sense. And he'd barely even looked at Tara before, much less spoken to her.
Spike pulled his eyes away from himself, sitting helplessly next to the witches, and instead looked at Tara, watched as she screamed and cried and raged and blamed and freed a thousand other emotions in primal eruptions of sound that said more than words could have.
The Spike from that night finally touched her shoulder, and she looked up at him, raw anguish on her face. The same anguish was on Spike's face, too, and they recognized one another beyond just Spike and Tara. They recognized the pain that ripped their hearts out and slashed their wills and her screams faded away. Heartbeats passed as they stared, just stared at one another, two sets of blue eyes that were different by just a shade of gray, and then Spike opened his arms to her at the same time that she grabbed hold of his duster and pulled herself up.
She fell onto him, and he was so weak that it flung him onto his back, and he remembered that it had hurt his ribs and head, but the pain...the pain had been real and he'd tightened his arms around her to press her harder against him, making everything flare, and she pressed face against his throat and cried into his neck.
Spike saw his mouth moving, and knew that was when Dawn and Giles had been calling his name, and he'd had to swallow several times before he could yell back that he was fine and to give him a few minutes. Dawn understood what he hadn't said, and there were new screams in the air. But all of that was in Tara's peripheral, and there was only the silent moving of Spike's mouth to give credence to it.
Spike sat up, taking Tara with him and shifting her sideways on his lap, his lips once again speaking without sound. He'd been trying to tell her that they had to leave, because the police would be showing up and they needed to get out of there, the four of them needed to leave, and there would be a fifth but not really. But nothing penetrated for Tara until he pushed her back and forced her to meet his eyes. "Say goodbye, pet," he told her gruffly.
Tara jerked this way and that, flinging away from him to lean her forehead against Willow's and mumble incoherently. It was when Spike took hold of her shoulders to pull her away that she noticed it. The piece of pipe a few feet away, one end covered with blood, strands of red hair and white fragments of bone and dead gray matter stuck to it; the other hand smeared with the bloody handprints of the wielder. At the time, he didn't notice, and his hold was gentle, so when she yanked herself out of his grip she actually got away from him.
The Spike in the scene sighed and crawled after her, finding her staring, horrified, at the business end of the pipe. Trailing the tips of her fingers through it, collecting what she could and trying to rush back to Willow. But Spike wrapped his arms around her waist and held the struggling woman, fighting to get to his feet and finally succeeding.
He took her away from it. Walked her straight towards the jumbled peripheral, but instead of the scene clearing up and zooming out, it tightened. Closed more and more around her until there was only Tara hanging from Spike's arms, and absolute darkness and silence everywhere else.
***
Light flashed, and Spike shielded his sensitive eyes with a hand, lowering it only when he could see. Tara had her back against a wall, leaning on it and crying. Not sobbing, just crying. The crone had gotten up off of the mattress, and was heading in Tara's direction, a spring in her step and a small vial in her hand. Spike stepped in front of her and stared down at her, knowing that his face was a mask of nothing.
"Do you want the Essence or not?" the crone asked lightly, raising an eyebrow.
He walked with her to Tara, watching closely as she brought the vial to Tara's face and let a stream of tears fall inside. When she reached up to touch Tara's face with her other hand, Spike negligently slapped it aside and then followed her as she practically skipped her frail, creaking body to the table along the opposite wall.
Once there, she took hold of a small straight pin, muttered an incantation of some sorts that was spoken too quickly to be anything more than a sibilant rush of breath, then absently pricked her finger. Three drops fell into the vial before the small wound closed, and then she screwed a cap on it and handed it to him.
Spike shoved the thing in his duster pocket and went back to Tara. She was still on her feet, still crying. He tilted her face up by way of a finger on her chin. "Look at me, luv," he said quietly, and her lids rose so that her eyes could meet his. He'd seen them look better, but he'd also seen them look ten times worse. He smiled at her and put a hand at the back of her head, pulling her forward to lean on her chest.
"We done here?" Spike called to the crone over his shoulder.
"She paid, and she has the Essence. It's finished."
Tara walked of her own accord, stiff and tired, but on her own two feet. It was something. The crone's voice crackled through the room to them just as the door swung open. They paused but didn't turn around. "Don't worry, sweet witch. You kept your grip, but there will be other chances. You'll be your own worst hurdle."
The door crashed closed behind them, and Spike cursed while he fumbled for the flashlights. Tara's hand was limp when he tried to press a one in it, so he finally tossed it aside and used the one he was holding to light the corridor. She was pulled tight into herself, not even reaching out to him as she had so often done since that night, so he slung an arm around her shoulders while he thought. He didn't want to spend another damn hour in the catacombs, didn't think the dank darkness would be all that good for her.
That little instinct in him that knew when the sun was out told him that they still had plenty of time before dawn. He reached into Tara's sweater pocket with his free hand and pulled out the map, clumsily unfolding it, then studying it in the dimly lit corridor.
The paper was balled up and shoved into his jeans pocket, and then he urged her the opposite way they'd come. He was gentle at first, and when she didn't move, he forcefully pulled her along by way of the arm around her. It took them only ten minutes to get to the nearest exit, which brought them into a park on the edge of the city, amid a circle of high bushes. Spike lowered the trap door and then took a deep breath. The night smelled of greenery and beer and food that was too stupid to be safely shut in houses.
And it also smelled of Tara, who was standing a bit away from him. Tara was...she was soothing lavender and luscious hyacinth, and it brought to mind thickly humid climates full of knowing smiles and swinging hips and soft women glistening with light sheens of sweat that soaked into cotton clothing.
But there was also another scent in the air that was also Tara, one that he hadn't smelled since that last night before she'd left Sunnydale for Wildwind. His lips parted and his eyes fell on her clenched fists, and he knew that her nails had broken her skin.
He'd tasted her blood that night, quite accidentally. Her fingers had pressed passed his lips, and there'd been a small scrape on one of them. He remembered the taste of her beyond just the copper. Her blood had awash in innocence and grief, in insanity and guilt. And the magic, of course. The power of her magic.
As the wind brought the scent to him more directly, Spike's nostrils flared. It was different, now, changed. There was something new wound through it, something that was dense and eclipsing. He knew what it was: rage. Pure rage that had no target and gave no hint of itself on her wretched features. That was why she was on her feet, still mostly whole. It had sunk its hooks into her, sewn her back together as quickly as everything had ripped her apart, and it had come into her when the Arcept minion had shown up at the hospital. He didn't know how he knew that last part, but he did.
He touched the embossment at his collarbone. Her power had impressed the covens that had been helping Giles research, had cowed every mystical being they'd come across. It had even scared Tara, hadn't it? In Cairo, when she'd stammered about her lack of control.
His hand fell away and his eyes lost focus. Rage could be a weakness, a monumental weakness, because it left you open to the clear-minded strategy of someone who was calm. But sometimes rage could take such firm root in someone that it was cold and controlled while it demolished everything in its path and gave you no opening to stop it.
"Spike." The word was said softly, but it still made him jump. His eyes went back to her, and saw that she was facing him now, eyes dark and pained by what she'd been through, her arms at her sides. She looked so lost there, standing so close that he could see her and smell her and hear her.
Last summer he'd learned her secrets and he'd tasted her blood. In Cairo he'd come to understand that she was untouchable by the darkness. Tonight he'd watched make it through the one thing she shouldn't have been able to make it through.
And in between all of those moments, he'd seen other things, too. She'd protected herself not by attacking anyone, but by deterring anyone from coming near her. She had set about keeping everyone from that night safe with the embossment. She'd chosen not to physically hurt the Emling when it had come after her. She'd kept the Marpel from getting blasted by its own attack.
The rage inside of her, it should have had her firmly in its grip, should have made her irrational and unpredictable. But the rage was doing *her* bidding and all she'd ordered it to do was to keep her on her feet--in all ways--until she could finally sit.
He held out his hands and she tripped to him and fell against him and stretched up to wrap her arms around his neck and he lifted her so that her legs could settle around his waist.
And his arms were across her back and his lips were against the pulse point in her neck and she was all that he could smell and just like the night that had been replayed by the crone, there was nothing except the two of them as he carried her back to the hotel.
**
Spike was on his back with Tara curled on her side next to him, watching his face. He snaked an arm out and pulled her to him, and she twisted and shifted until she was lying flat on top of him, her forehead pressed to his neck, their bodies touching down to their feet, and the tears she'd been crying since the catacombs finally slowed and stopped.
"I missed this," Tara said eventually, her voice hushed. "I thought...I thought when I was away? From there? I thought I wouldn't need...."
Spike quieted her, and tilted his face to kiss the top of her head. "No explanations, right?"
"No secrets, either," she finished for him, and he smiled sadly. "It doesn't hurt here."
"Never has."
He snuck out around noon, when he was sure Tara was deeply asleep and his moving from the bed wouldn't disturb her. The catacombs entrance was easier to find this time, and he clambered down the steps and retraced the path from the previous night.
The crone's door was open, and she was smiling coldly when he stepped through into her small room. "You know something about the ritual," Spike growled immediately.
"I know many things about it," the crone replied in a singsong voice. "But it's not my place to give you everything you need to know." She cast a sly glance in his direction, and it was creepy, with the unseeing eyes. "There is one thing I can tell you."
Spike looked upwards and clenched his hands into fists. "What?"
"One of the reasons it fails. Would you like to know that? Will you pay the price to know it?" she trilled, and Spike took a breath that he didn't really need, to compose himself, and then turned icy eyes to the crone.
"Yes."
***
There were too many questions to count in Tara's eyes when he returned, but she chose not to voice any of them. The white washcloth was red when she finished cleaning him off, and she helped him to the bed and tucked the blanket around him. When she would have walked away, he took her arm and pulled her on top of him, feeling the warmth, god, she was so warm, and listening to the small sounds she made at the back of her throat.
It was just getting dark when he woke, and Tara was sitting up, back against the wall behind the bed, with him cradled against her chest. She was running her hands through his hair.
"Nightmares," she said absently when he frowned at their new position. He wasn't surprised about that. "I'm mad at you."
"I'm sure," he said, but she didn't try to move out from under him, didn't take his head from her chest.
"I should probably ask you if there's anything else you let her do besides what I saw, but I think that I don't really want to know." Spike laughed harshly and she tugged at his hair reproachfully. "Why would you let her carve you up like, like a piece of meat or something?" she demanded quietly, an ache in her voice.
"We need to go back to Paris," Spike answered incongruously. Tara stilled, then resumed running her fingers through his hair. He answered her unspoken question. "If you're going to do the Cerno, then you have to be the one to get what's needed."
"All right."
Then she twisted and turned until she was flat on her back. Her legs were spread and he lay between them, his head just under her breasts and the thudding of her heart reverberating through his body.
There'd been nights that summer when he'd found himself at the house on Revello, not even realizing he'd gone there in the first place until Tara had wafted into Buffy's bedroom. The room where the scent of her was trapped by closed windows and a latched door.
On those nights he'd lain on top of Tara, just like he was now, face buried against her chest as he shook and trembled. Those quick hands of hers had touched him everywhere, reassuring him with butterfly caresses that followed no pattern. He'd get distracted trying to anticipate where they would land next, and the shaking would subside and then she would take him by the hand and lead him back to the apartment and they'd miss the sun by minutes.
Spike turned his head, nose brushing her breast and she began to hum a soft and calming melody that he'd never been able to place.
"I know it never would have worked out," Spike said eventually, his voice quiet, and Tara's humming drifted off. "Even if she'd given me the chance."
Once again she wasn't surprise by where his thoughts had gone. "Not really the point, is it?" Fly-by-night caresses changed in favor of firm circles between his shoulders.
"Guess not," he admitted, sighing.
***
They left two hours later, neither one of them wanting to keep going, but both of them desperate to leave this place, and needing the entire ordeal to be over with as soon as possible. Spike demolished the rest of the blood he'd gotten the previous night and ignored the concerned look on Tara's face when he winced while putting a clean shirt on.
The gathering of belongings was done in heavy silence, the checking out with terse words to the cheerful concierge, and the booking of a flight at the airport with drawn faces.
When they boarded the plane, Spike pulled the in-flight phone from the chair back in front of him. He called Josh's cell phone because the boy perpetually forgot to turn the thing on and Spike didn't wan to talk to anyone in Sunnydale right then. His message was short and to the point.
"Done in Berlin. I'll call from Italy."
***
End Part Four
