In a way it was just as well that she was now the head of the Summers household, Buffy thought to herself as she paced before the windows, hands clasped behind her back. At least now she didn't have to think up complicated excuses for not coming home before dawn, and she certainly didn't have to worry about her mother worrying about her. Still—especially now—she wished her mom was there; wished anyone could be there to tell her what to do and who to run to, when all the aces were down and nothing made any sense anymore.
She and Giles, with the help of Xander, had moved Spike to the house on Revello Drive; he'd not woken since he collapsed in the doorway of the Magic Box, and his fever was only getting higher. Willow and Tara were working on a few spells to try and figure out what was wrong with him. Currently, however, Spike was about number three on her list of priorities: first, find out where the Eye of Ahriman had got to; second, get it back; third, fix Spike. And then wait for Dawn to get home from her friends' house and try to hide the whole sick-vampire-down-the-hall thing from her, which would be oh so much fun.
But was it really in that order?
Buffy wished she smoked, for a moment. There was something right about lighting up while she was pacing, something that resounded with all the stupid action movies she'd ever seen. She really, really wished she'd never met the damn blonde vampire, never listened to a word he'd said, never had a good look at those cheekbones or those eyes which could be either molten-metal yellow or deep cerulean blue. He has no soul. The only thing keeping him from utter carnage is the chip in his head, and we all know how reliable that stuff is. She pushed away the memory of Riley's tachycardia and the desperation it had caused, and then the memory of Riley himself. I can't think about that now. I can't.
But there had been something that closed in her chest tonight that she couldn't ignore, a feeling like an iron hand gripping her insides; the way he'd looked at her with those smoky feverish eyes and told her he had to warn her....she couldn't quite put it out of her mind. They'd put him to bed in the guest bedroom and turned him on his side with a towel under his face, so that if the blood put in another appearance he wouldn't choke on it: neither she nor Giles had wanted to think too much about that, since he didn't actually breathe per se; it was too complicated, and neither of them had time to really think about the logistics of the situation. The Eye of Ahriman was their priority now. Not Spike.
Every Slayer has a deathwish, he'd said that night outside the Bronze. She was beginning to think that perhaps he might be right.
A noise from upstairs jerked her out of her reverie, and she hurried up the steps, still in her leather coat and long scarf; she'd been expecting to be out on patrol, until Spike had chucked a large wrench into her plans for the night. Sighing, she shrugged out of the coat and hung it over the edge of the banister before going into the spare room.
He was lying curled up in a knot, the comforter thrown to the floor, sweating and shivering at the same time. As Buffy came around to the side of the bed, he moaned and curled up tighter, shaking violently; she was surprised to see how slender he was, how thoroughly vulnerable he looked with his shirt off and his ribs exposed to the halflight of the bedside lamp.
Buffy sat down beside the bed, pulling the comforter back over him; at her touch, he shuddered and coughed himself awake. She pulled her hand back as if she'd touched something hot; he jerked, staring up at her.
"Slayer," he managed, in a voice reminiscent of NyQuil commercials. "I didn't know you cared."
"I don't," retorted Buffy. "You just barged into the Box and totally collapsed all over the floor. What were we supposed to do?"
"I dunno," said Spike..."leave me there? I suppose I'd be in the way, yeah?"
Buffy swiped her wet hair out of her eyes. "Look, Spike. I don't want you here any more than you want to be here, okay? Let's just be civil. What were you doing at the Box, and what was it you wanted to warn us about." She sat back, hands clasped on her lap.
Spike struggled to sit up and eventually achieved a sort of verticality. "There's a demon. Someone's got the Eye of Ahriman, Buffy, they're going to raise something, or free something, that din't ought to be freed. You lot have to stop it."
"Yeah, I know," said Buffy, getting up. "You mean that's it? That's what all this Chopin stuff is about? We knew, Spike. We already knew."
He sighed and nodded, making as if to get out of the bed and out of her hair, when another apocalyptic coughing fit seized him; he turned away from her, burying his face in the crook of his arm, desperately choking for breath. Despite herself, Buffy sat down on the edge of the bed and put an arm around his shoulders, supporting him as he coughed miserably. The sheets bloomed red, despite his attempts to muffle the coughing, and she found herself becoming afraid for a vampire for the second time in her life.
Spike, still hacking, tried to dislodge her. "Go 'way, Slayer," he choked, "you got better things t'do...."
"Shut up," said Buffy, and tightened her arm around him; eventually the spasms eased, and she let him lie back against the pillows. He had gone greyer, and the blood stood out like a neon light against his pale lips. She bit her own lip, frightened despite herself. "Hang on, Spike," she told him, and hurried downstairs, fishing in the fridge for some uncouth leftovers and firing up the microwave. She returned to the guest room with a steaming mug of something that looked like best Beaujolais.
"Spike...want something to eat?" she asked, quietly. The vampire rolled over and regarded her with flinty eyes.
"You're gonna feed me now?" he asked.
She proffered the mug. His eyes widened, and flicked from blue to gold and back, and he went a shade paler. "Oh, fuck," he muttered. "I can't. I'll be sick."
Buffy set the mug down, confused. "Wait," she said, "don't you guys have this bloodlust thing?"
Spike shuddered and turned away. "I can't. I don't feel good, okay?"
Buffy frowned. "It's the same stuff you always have. From the butcher."
Spike groaned. "Please.....just take it away...."
She carried the mug back and shoved it in the fridge, running through all Giles's vamp lore in her head. There must be something seriously wrong with Spike if he couldn't drink blood, even pig blood....he looked so ill, and he had asked for their help...
By the time she returned to the guest bedroom, Spike had lapsed into an uneasy, feverish sleep. She took her time taping the curtains and making sure no sunlight would enter the room, part of her hoping that he'd rouse again and give her some information, and part of her longing to hide his presence from her younger sister, who had a thing for him.
**
"This," said Giles flatly, "is ridiculous."
"No argument here," Xander said, with a shrug. Buffy thwacked him with a copy of Moxibustion and Crystal Therapy, and he subsided.
"What is?" she asked. Giles held up a printout, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
"This. It's a complete blood workup: there's no sign of TB bacilli, or any of the pneumoniae, or anything that might cause these symptoms. Totally clean." He paused and perched on the edge of the table, shaking his head. "Of course there's no reason he should have any somatic pathogens running around in his blood, inasmuch as he's already dead...oh, this makes no sense."
"Could a curse do it?" Buffy asked. Xander and Giles turned to her in a move so coordinated it might have made her laugh, if she hadn't felt so old and worn and weary.
"A curse?" Giles took off his glasses and began to polish them, a sure sign that he wished he'd thought of something before the others had. "Well...I don't know..."
"Well, vamps are vulnerable to some mystical poisons, right? There could be some sort of curse that makes them sick."
"Great," said Xander, "somebody cursed Mr. Clairol, fine, can we go find out who it was and maybe take them out to dinner?"
"Xander," Buffy said, sounding dead tired, "I think Anya's rubbing off on you. What am I gonna tell Dawn when she gets home from her friend's house? Hi, how was school, have you done your homework, there's leftovers in the fridge, oh and don't go into the guest bedroom cause it's got a vampire in it?"
"Works for me," Xander said, "only I'd suggest that maybe you leave the vampire part out entirely. How come he's here anyway? Why can't he go back to his nice dank crypt?"
"Look, I don't want him here any more than you do, but I can't just walk away," Buffy said. "He's...well, he's dying."
"And that would be a bad thing?"
"Buffy's right," said Giles, putting his specs back on. "Spike has been helpful recently, and he did make an effort despite his illness to warn us about the Eye."
"Which we already knew about, so it cuts no ice with me," Xander returned. "Aah, forget it. Buff, you going out on patrol tonight?"
She sighed. "I'm not wild about leaving Dawn alone with him, but I guess I don't have a choice. Giles, have you heard anything from Willow and Tara?"
"Not yet. They're working on some spells to try and trace the Eye's energy signature." Giles paused. "And to see if they can figure out what's doing this to Spike."
Buffy nodded. "Okay, guys. I'm going. Keep in touch," she added, and slipped her cell phone into the pocket of her leather duster. "The show must go on."
**
The wreck of Sunnydale High School, normally a haunt for disgruntled street people and the young vamps who fed on them, was eerily deserted this particular night. Even the rats and similar denizens of the ruins seemed to have upped stakes and moved on; it was utterly silent and dark in the rubble of the old library.
Well, almost utterly.
Ayesha, in a T-shirt that said "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me" and a pair of seven-hundred-dollar leather pants, sat crosslegged next to the rift of the Hellmouth itself and held up the ruby on its golden chain. It was dark red, the colour of slow-flowing venous blood, cut and faceted in a rough egg-shape; the chain ran through a hole drilled in its center. It had originally been set into a statue of Ahriman, the Persian devil, and had been stolen around the time of Alexander the Great; a hell-god had managed to get hold of it and use it as a vessel for some of his power, which was why it had promptly been stolen again and passed from demon to demon down the ages. It could do a lot of amusing things, but the reason Ayesha wanted it was simple: she was thoroughly tired of being a vengeance demon, subject to the whims of jilted lovers, and she wanted out of the gig. It had been good fun, back in Kor, messing about with Kallikrates and being worshipped, but over the centuries it had gotten stale.
She let go of the chain, which swung back and forth a few times and stilled; the Eye hung in midair, turning gently. The light from Ayesha's eyes lit a dim fire inside its facets. She smiled to herself and began to chant the words that would unlock the power of the Eye and break the limitations on her own power, freeing her to be what she had always wanted to be: a pure demon, without qualifiers or duties, able to do as she pleased.
Red light spilled from the ruby, flaking off in slow glints and gathering like mist on the floor of the chamber. Ayesha's voice took on a fuller timbre, as though more than one person was speaking the words; the air felt closer, charged with energy, as in a lightning storm. The ruins of Sunnydale High shuddered and settled, sending down showers of dust and chunks of plaster, as the red-lit words went on and on.
From outside, it appeared as if something in the wreck was on fire; the light didn't flicker as flames do, however, and it grew stronger by the minute. Ayesha's chant reached its climax as a massive shaft of scarlet light shot up from Sunnydale High, reaching up through the clouds that had begun to mass, and red lightning struck down, scorching the ground in thirteen points describing a wide circle. There was a deafening crack; every light in Sunnydale flickered off and on again, and the red light vanished.
The only sound was the ticking of cooling metal and tile.
Inside the library, Ayesha opened her eyes again; the Eye, cooling from white heat, still hung in the air. She reached out and closed her fingers around it, took her hand away unscathed, and then put the chain around her neck. The ruby promptly burned a hole in her shirt, ruining the word "clowns," which she ignored; grinning happily, she got to her feet and stretched, enjoying the feeling of unlimited power.
"Well," she said out loud, her voice almost half an octave lower, "that was fun."
**
"I'm hooooome," Dawn called out as she tossed her bookbag on the kitchen table. "Guys? Buffy? Anyone here?"
Xander appeared from the kitchen, string cheese in hand. "Hey, Dawnster. Buffy's patrolling, left me in charge."
Dawn raised an eyebrow. "Where's Anya?"
"With the rest of the Scoobies. Uh, there's kind of this evil demon amulet thing at large. Nothing to worry about."
"Oh, man," she sighed, rummaging in the fridge for a Coke. "Is this another of the world's-gonna-end things?"
"Nah, just your everyday supernatural emergency," Xander told her, peeling off another string of cheese. Dawn was staring at something in the fridge.
"Xander, since when do we have pig blood in the house? Ew." She pulled out a bag containing dark-red liquid. "This is totally gross."
"Um," said Xander.
"Buffy's not a vampire or anything now, is she?" Dawn asked, looking up at him with her eyes narrowed. Xander snorted.
"The Slayer a vampire? Yeah, right. And I'm totally fang-free, before you ask." He exhibited his teeth. "See, no fangies."
Dawn looked skeptical, shutting the fridge. "Okay, who's this for then?"
Xander scowled. "Spike."
"Is he coming over?" Dawn asked excitedly. "He tells the coolest stories."
"He's kind of already here," said Xander, focusing intently on his string cheese. "It's a long story, Dawnie. Uh, don't you have homework to do or something?"
Dawn fixed him with a slightly younger version of the Buffy Stare. "Xander."
"Oh, all right," he groused, sitting down at the kitchen table. "Spike'sreallysickandBuffythinksitmightbeacurseorsomethingandshe'slettinghimstayinthe guestbedroombecauseshe'stooniceforherowngood."
"What?" Dawn shook her head. "Try saying that a lot slower."
"Spike," said Xander, looking sour, "is sick. Something weird is wrong with him. Your sister has put him up in the guest bedroom against my better judgment because apparently she's forgotten the whole "he's evil" part."
"Spike's sick?" Dawn put down her Coke. "But he's a vampire. How can he get sick? I thought they were all immune and stuff."
"Apparently not," said Xander. "Okay, homework now. Homework is good." He paused. "I can't believe I just said that." He looked up to see Dawn disappearing up the stairs, and half-rose to follow her, but sighed and slumped back in the chair. Summers women were not to be argued with.
Dawn knocked tentatively on the door. "Spike?"
No answer. She knocked again, then opened the door a little, peering in. It was dark except for a nightlight beside the bed, which dimly revealed a dark shape curled under the covers. Dawn tiptoed into the room, shutting the door behind her, and approached the bed.
"Spike?" she asked again, quietly.
The covers moved a bit, and revealed the top of his head. "Sod off, Harris..."
"Spike, it's me, Dawn."
A hand emerged, black nail varnish chipped a bit on the edges, and pulled the blankets down further; he blinked at her in the dimness, grey-white and sweating, his eyes entirely too bright. "...Nibblet?" he croaked.
"Yeah....Spike, are you okay? What's going on?"
"I dunno," he said. "I seem to be dying again, which is a bloody nuisance, I can tell you."
"You can't die," Dawn protested. "No dying."
"Not sure I can oblige, nibblet..." he croaked, and began to cough; awful, choking coughs that brought up spatters of blood, black in the half-light. Dawn stared.
"Oh my God, Spike," she said. "I'll...I'll call someone, stay there..."
He reached out a hot hand, the spasm passing, and grabbed her wrist. "No," he managed. "Dawn...there's sod-all that can be done. Don't worry."
"Don't worry?" she demanded. "Spike..."
"It's all right, nibblet," he said, with the hint of a smile. "It's going to be all right."