Chapter 9
"Carry the quotient load across the remainder.. support the imbalance with Lumirea's fourth constant.." Fred murmured.
Buffy sat on a counter watching Fred do her calculations. Usually she would have forgiven Angel for being so snippy at her, but she still wasn't feeling well and she was in a sullen mood. Spike still hadn't shown up and Fred seemed worried. "I knew it."
"Knew what?" Buffy asked.
"Damn, I'm good!"
"You are?"
"A frickin' genius! Just cancel out the radical.. which causes a feedback wave that liquefies half of Los Angeles."
"You're still a genius though."
"Who am I kidding? Oh! I'll never figure this out!"
"Of course you will!" Buffy said. "You can't give up." Suddenly something touched Buffy's arm and sent a shock of electricity. The Slayer jumped and looked at Fred. "What the.."
"Spike? Spike, if it's you, give us some sort of.." Fred looked around the room. She was startled when she saw Angel standing there. "Oh! Would everybody please stop doing that?"
"Sorry. I just wanted to let you know.." Angel started.
"Angel, something was in the lab." Buffy said, suddenly clinging to his arm. "It-it touched me. I think maybe it was.."
"We did another sweep with the mystics. They didn't find anything."
"Screw the mystics. I know what I felt. We have to find a way to contact him before he's really gone."
"Buffy.."
"Please Angel. Spike's my friend and I don't have many here. No offense to Lorne, Wesley, Gunn, and Fred, but my best friends are all in Europe. I usually don't have time to talk to anybody but Spike because he follows me around."
Angel sighed. "All right. We'll call in our best psychic."
"Thank you."
Wesley and Gunn sat at the conference table with Fred, Buffy, and Angel. "Perhaps we should reconsider this." Wesley said.
"You think? Seen enough horror flicks to know these things always turn out ugly." Gunn stopped when Eve escorted a pretty blonde woman in a red dress into the room. "I stand corrected."
"All right. Let's get to it." The blonde said. "Eve tells me that you've lost a ghostie."
"Well, he's not actually a ghost technically. More of a.." Fred said.
"Yeah, whatever." She sat at the head of the table. "Now, I have pilates at the crack of why-am-I-awake? So we're gonna move this right along. I will mutter a few calming words to get us into the zone, and then we'll see if we can scare up your missing spook. Ok. Clear your minds.. which, judging by the looks of you, won't be that hard."
"Should we hold hands?"
"Only if you're lonely. Now, zip it and let me do my sweet funky. I call upon the guardian of souls, the keeper of the passage. Let our breath flow from what is to what has passed. Bless us with the presence of the lost. Grant us communion with the world beyond our reach. Give voice to those who can no longer be heard. I beseech you, open your gates.. reveal your secrets." Her eyes opened with a start. "I sense a presence. Very close. So much pain.."
"He's in pain?" Buffy asked.
"The dark soul.. so much suffering. It's coming.. it's coming.. Oh, God. I can feel it. The dark soul.. it's here. It's.. it's the R.. It's the.." The woman grabbed her own throat, trying to pull at her necklace. "Aah!"
"Whoa!" Gunn said.
"What's happening?" Fred asked.
"Spike, stop it." Angel said. "Let her go!"
The woman sat up and gasped as if she was regaining her composure. She had a slight nosebleed. She exhaled. "Are you all right?" Fred asked. The psychic woman exploded in blood all over Fred, then collapsed.
Angel grabbed Buffy and pulled her away before the blood could touch her. "Oh God!" Buffy said. "That couldn't have been Spike. He wouldn't.."
"Shh. Come on." Angel wrapped his arm around Buffy's waist and led her into the office. Fred decided to go take a shower and Wesley and Gunn stayed behind to cover the body. They walked out of the conference room into Angel's office to talk.
"Oh, what the hell was that?" Gunn asked. "I know they used to call Spike 'William the Bloody,' but why would he go all Scanners on her?"
"He wouldn't." Buffy said.
"She's right." Wesley said. "No advantage in it to kill someone trying to help him."
"You saying it was an accident?" Gunn asked.
"Whatever she contacted wasn't the 'dark soul' we were expecting." Buffy said.
"So if she wasn't talking about Spike.."
"Then there's something else here at Wolfram & Hart. Something else a lot worse."
"Wes and I'll get to work." Gunn hauled Wesley out of the office.
"Are you ok?" Angel asked Buffy.
"It wasn't Spike. He wouldn't."
"You don't.."
"No. I do know that he wouldn't kill someone like that. Angel, he's been my best friend since he got back. I don't have many people to talk to."
"That's not true. You have Dawn.. And what about Lorne and Wesley and Gunn.. Fred's a girl.. Fred can talk. You also have me."
"I know, but everyone's so busy. Spike's the only one I can talk to."
"Why? I'm sure anyone of them.."
"He's the only other one that knows about Connor."
"Eve knows.."
"I'm not friends with her. I don't like her."
"Ok. But how does Spike know?"
"I told him. It was a night or two before he died. I was sitting out on the porch and he came out and we started talking. I just.. I spilled everything to him. He believed me."
"Is that why you're so protective of him?"
"I guess in a way.. Yeah. I trust him. I KNOW him. He wouldn't kill that woman in there. He didn't."
"Ok. I believe you. Gunn and Wesley will find out what it is."
"Got it. The dark soul." Gunn said, holding up a book from Wesley's desk.
"What's it say?" Buffy asked.
"A lot. There are over 3,200 different references. 4 of them are about you." Gunn said to Angel.
"What? Give me that." Angel took the book possessively and stared at it.
"This is getting us nowhere." Wesley said.
"Let me see this. Well, that's not fair. I didn't even have a soul when I did that."
"Angel, shut up." Buffy snapped. "There has to be a way to narrow down the search."
Fred ran into the room, her hair still wet from her shower. "Reaper. Cross reference with the word 'reaper.'"
"Where'd you pull that?" Gunn asked.
"It came to me in the shower."
"Here it is." Angel said. "Matthias Pavayne, dark soul number 182."
"Pavayne.." Wesley stood and went to his computer.
"Well, there's not much here. European aristocrat, 18th century. He was a doctor, nicknamed 'The Reaper' for performing unnecessary surgery on his patients."
"I dread asking.. What kind of surgery?" Buffy asked.
"The kind you don't recover from." Wesley said. "There's a file on him in internal archives, classified histories."
"He worked for Wolfram & Hart?" Gunn asked.
"Not exactly. 'Word spread of his unorthodox practices.. fled to California, still under Spanish rule at the time. His arrival coincided with a rash of brutal, ritualistic murders. Pieces of the victims placed in a manner suggesting an intimate knowledge of the dark arts.'"
"Pieces?" Fred asked.
"'The slaughter continued for the better part of 20 years. The perpetrator was never caught.' At least.. not by the authorities."
"What, you're saying Wolfram & Hart took this guy out?" Buffy asked.
"Why would they do that?" Fred asked.
"Sounds like their idea of employee of the month." Gunn said.
"Because they needed his blood. 'Representatives from Wolfram & Hart were looking to build a new branch in what would eventually become Los Angeles. Unfortunately a Spanish mission was already resting on the site their seers recommended.' They needed an appropriate sacrifice to deconsecrate the grounds."
"So this place is built on the blood of a mass-murdering psychopath?" Fred asked.
"It would appear so."
"But if Pavayne's half as bad as he sounds, he should've been roasting his chestnuts in hell centuries ago." Gunn said.
"You said something about the dark arts, right?" Angel asked. "Maybe he knew enough to figure out a way to stick around."
"That might explain why the mystics can't get a bead on him, too." Buffy said.
"What I still don't get are all the ghosts at Wolfram & Hart."
"But there aren't any." Wesley said.
"Except Spike." Buffy put in.
"That's what I mean. High-risk employment. People die here all the time. This place should be full of spooks. So what happened to them?"
"Maybe this Pavayne character's munching on them." Gunn said.
"Whatever he's doing to them, we need to get Spike back.. before he's next." Buffy said.
Wesley, Gunn, Buffy, and Angel walked into Fred's office. She was writing formulas on the windows. "That's never good." Wesley said.
"What? Oh, no, I.. I just ran out of white board. I'm not crazy. Again."
"Just scary smart." Gunn said.
"You really think this will bring Spike back?" Angel asked.
"Well, I had to extrapolate a new variation on interdimensional plasma dynamics on the fly, but.. if the math holds.."
"'The Fly?' I saw that movie. Just make sure there aren't any cause I don't really want Spike all decomposing like Jeff Goldblum." Buffy said.
"All right." Angel said, stifling a chuckle. "First we'll try to get Spike back, and then we'll deal with Pavayne."
"Wait. For this to work, it's going to require a massive surge of dark energy to catalyze the process." Fred said.
"How massive?"
"The equivalent of nuclear evil."
"Well, where the hell are we supposed to find that?"
"Well.. there is a legend that tells of a volcano deep in the forbidden jungles of South Africa." Wesley said.
"Or.. I might know a place a little closer to home." Gunn said.
Buffy, Angel, and Gunn stood in a huge warehouse-sized room that was painted entirely white. "The white room?" Buffy asked.
"Why do you think they call it that?" Gunn asked. "And how are we still in the building, when we're standing in a place that technically doesn't exist."
"So this is your brainstorm." Angel said. "You want to try and to snip off a piece of the conduit that connects Wolfram & Hart to the other dimensions."
"'Want' may be a hair strong."
"Last conduit took the form of that creepy little girl." Buffy said. "No telling what the new one's decided to look like."
"Actually, it's not that bad.." Gunn was cut off by an animal growling and snuffling. "If you like cats."
"I'm kind of a dog person." Angel said. The thing growled.
"Ix-nay on the og-day."
"I'm both, does that count?" Buffy asked.
"Um.. look, we're not here to ruffle anything." Angel said. He held up an empty flask. "We were just wondering if we maybe could borrow a couple of whiskers or.."
The animal snarled and Gunn took the flask from Angel. "Whoa. Hey, easy. It's me. Charles Gunn. You know I wouldn't be here if the situation wasn't heavy. Just asking for a little help: Me to you, personal favor. What do you say?" There was a soft growl and then a black panther appeared in the room. "Yeah." Gunn smiled and the leopard purred. "Who's a good kitty?" He pet the leopard.
"Oh, he's pretty." Buffy said. The leopard looked at her. "Or handsome. Whichever you prefer seeing as how you're the big kitty."
"It's ok. He likes you." Gunn said with a smirk. "He thinks your brave, pretty.. And amusing."
"Gee thanks."
Fred and Wesley were working in the lab on an elaborate machine when Gunn, Buffy, and Angel walked in. "Make sure it's calibrated to minus .058." Fred said to Wesley. She turned to Gunn. "Did you get it?"
Gunn handed Fred the flask containing about a liter of a dark liquid. "Make it count. Told me we ain't getting anymore."
"I still didn't hear it talk." Angel said.
"Maybe you weren't listening right."
Fred put the flask in the machine. "All right, I think we're almost ready."
"How do we let Spike know?" Buffy asked.
"Won't have to." Wesley said.
Fred started the machine. "This baby puts out enough juice to light up ghost city. Anything remotely spectral around here is about to get the tinglies."
"Fun." Buffy said.
Fred looked down at her scanner. After a minute, the thing beeped. "He's here. Spike, step into the circle! Hurry! We've only got one chance at making you corporeal agai.." Fred's sentence was cut off when she started choking. She put her hands to her throat.
"Fred!"
"It's Pavayne!" Gunn said.
"He's killing her." Angel said. They charged toward Fred to try and help her, but Pavayne knocked them all across the room. Pavayne was suddenly knocked into the machine's ring just as it activated. Pavayne was now corporeal. Angel got to his feet and walked up to the machine's ring, while Gunn and Wesley go to Fred's side.
"No. No! Defilers! I'll.. cut you into nothing! I'll feast on your brains. I'll swim in lakes of your own blood." Pavayne yelled.
Angel punched Pavayne, knocking him down. "You'll shut the hell up."
"Don't kill him. If he becomes a spirit again, we'll never stop him." Spike said, suddenly appearing.
"Fine. No killing. Just a whole lot of bruisin'." Angel punched Pavayne again.
Buffy sighed as she got to her feet and looked at Spike, thankful that he was all right.
After checking the office the next day, Spike headed to Buffy's weapons office. She wasn't in the big lab-like area, but he heard sniffles coming from the private office with the Slayer's favorite weapons. He knew it was Buffy. Instead of knocking, he walked through the door and found the Slayer sitting in a corner, knees up to her chest and her forehead laying on one knee, sobbing.
"Hey ducks, what's wrong?" Spike asked, squatting in front of her.
"It wasn't.. I'm not.." Buffy sobbed.
"What's the matter? You're not what?"
"Oh God, I can't ever tell him now."
"Tell who what?"
"I can't tell Angel."
"Ok, sense is coming. Now what's to tell?"
Buffy held out her hand and showed Spike the pregnancy test. It was negative. "Oh Buffy, you thought.."
"I've been sick the past couple of weeks. It was exactly like before.. I missed my period last month and it got me thinking, you know? Then I kept getting dizzy and having hot flashes.. I threw up a few times.. It was only natural to think.. Jasmine said that Angel and I were supposed to have more and I guess I clung to that hope." Buffy let out a sob. "I can't tell him because it'll break his heart to think that.. Oh God, Spike.."
"Shh." Spike touched Buffy's cheek and wiped away her tears and moved her hair out of her face. She laid her forehead back on her knee and wept while Spike stroked her long hair. It was all he was able to do to comfort his best friend.
"Carry the quotient load across the remainder.. support the imbalance with Lumirea's fourth constant.." Fred murmured.
Buffy sat on a counter watching Fred do her calculations. Usually she would have forgiven Angel for being so snippy at her, but she still wasn't feeling well and she was in a sullen mood. Spike still hadn't shown up and Fred seemed worried. "I knew it."
"Knew what?" Buffy asked.
"Damn, I'm good!"
"You are?"
"A frickin' genius! Just cancel out the radical.. which causes a feedback wave that liquefies half of Los Angeles."
"You're still a genius though."
"Who am I kidding? Oh! I'll never figure this out!"
"Of course you will!" Buffy said. "You can't give up." Suddenly something touched Buffy's arm and sent a shock of electricity. The Slayer jumped and looked at Fred. "What the.."
"Spike? Spike, if it's you, give us some sort of.." Fred looked around the room. She was startled when she saw Angel standing there. "Oh! Would everybody please stop doing that?"
"Sorry. I just wanted to let you know.." Angel started.
"Angel, something was in the lab." Buffy said, suddenly clinging to his arm. "It-it touched me. I think maybe it was.."
"We did another sweep with the mystics. They didn't find anything."
"Screw the mystics. I know what I felt. We have to find a way to contact him before he's really gone."
"Buffy.."
"Please Angel. Spike's my friend and I don't have many here. No offense to Lorne, Wesley, Gunn, and Fred, but my best friends are all in Europe. I usually don't have time to talk to anybody but Spike because he follows me around."
Angel sighed. "All right. We'll call in our best psychic."
"Thank you."
Wesley and Gunn sat at the conference table with Fred, Buffy, and Angel. "Perhaps we should reconsider this." Wesley said.
"You think? Seen enough horror flicks to know these things always turn out ugly." Gunn stopped when Eve escorted a pretty blonde woman in a red dress into the room. "I stand corrected."
"All right. Let's get to it." The blonde said. "Eve tells me that you've lost a ghostie."
"Well, he's not actually a ghost technically. More of a.." Fred said.
"Yeah, whatever." She sat at the head of the table. "Now, I have pilates at the crack of why-am-I-awake? So we're gonna move this right along. I will mutter a few calming words to get us into the zone, and then we'll see if we can scare up your missing spook. Ok. Clear your minds.. which, judging by the looks of you, won't be that hard."
"Should we hold hands?"
"Only if you're lonely. Now, zip it and let me do my sweet funky. I call upon the guardian of souls, the keeper of the passage. Let our breath flow from what is to what has passed. Bless us with the presence of the lost. Grant us communion with the world beyond our reach. Give voice to those who can no longer be heard. I beseech you, open your gates.. reveal your secrets." Her eyes opened with a start. "I sense a presence. Very close. So much pain.."
"He's in pain?" Buffy asked.
"The dark soul.. so much suffering. It's coming.. it's coming.. Oh, God. I can feel it. The dark soul.. it's here. It's.. it's the R.. It's the.." The woman grabbed her own throat, trying to pull at her necklace. "Aah!"
"Whoa!" Gunn said.
"What's happening?" Fred asked.
"Spike, stop it." Angel said. "Let her go!"
The woman sat up and gasped as if she was regaining her composure. She had a slight nosebleed. She exhaled. "Are you all right?" Fred asked. The psychic woman exploded in blood all over Fred, then collapsed.
Angel grabbed Buffy and pulled her away before the blood could touch her. "Oh God!" Buffy said. "That couldn't have been Spike. He wouldn't.."
"Shh. Come on." Angel wrapped his arm around Buffy's waist and led her into the office. Fred decided to go take a shower and Wesley and Gunn stayed behind to cover the body. They walked out of the conference room into Angel's office to talk.
"Oh, what the hell was that?" Gunn asked. "I know they used to call Spike 'William the Bloody,' but why would he go all Scanners on her?"
"He wouldn't." Buffy said.
"She's right." Wesley said. "No advantage in it to kill someone trying to help him."
"You saying it was an accident?" Gunn asked.
"Whatever she contacted wasn't the 'dark soul' we were expecting." Buffy said.
"So if she wasn't talking about Spike.."
"Then there's something else here at Wolfram & Hart. Something else a lot worse."
"Wes and I'll get to work." Gunn hauled Wesley out of the office.
"Are you ok?" Angel asked Buffy.
"It wasn't Spike. He wouldn't."
"You don't.."
"No. I do know that he wouldn't kill someone like that. Angel, he's been my best friend since he got back. I don't have many people to talk to."
"That's not true. You have Dawn.. And what about Lorne and Wesley and Gunn.. Fred's a girl.. Fred can talk. You also have me."
"I know, but everyone's so busy. Spike's the only one I can talk to."
"Why? I'm sure anyone of them.."
"He's the only other one that knows about Connor."
"Eve knows.."
"I'm not friends with her. I don't like her."
"Ok. But how does Spike know?"
"I told him. It was a night or two before he died. I was sitting out on the porch and he came out and we started talking. I just.. I spilled everything to him. He believed me."
"Is that why you're so protective of him?"
"I guess in a way.. Yeah. I trust him. I KNOW him. He wouldn't kill that woman in there. He didn't."
"Ok. I believe you. Gunn and Wesley will find out what it is."
"Got it. The dark soul." Gunn said, holding up a book from Wesley's desk.
"What's it say?" Buffy asked.
"A lot. There are over 3,200 different references. 4 of them are about you." Gunn said to Angel.
"What? Give me that." Angel took the book possessively and stared at it.
"This is getting us nowhere." Wesley said.
"Let me see this. Well, that's not fair. I didn't even have a soul when I did that."
"Angel, shut up." Buffy snapped. "There has to be a way to narrow down the search."
Fred ran into the room, her hair still wet from her shower. "Reaper. Cross reference with the word 'reaper.'"
"Where'd you pull that?" Gunn asked.
"It came to me in the shower."
"Here it is." Angel said. "Matthias Pavayne, dark soul number 182."
"Pavayne.." Wesley stood and went to his computer.
"Well, there's not much here. European aristocrat, 18th century. He was a doctor, nicknamed 'The Reaper' for performing unnecessary surgery on his patients."
"I dread asking.. What kind of surgery?" Buffy asked.
"The kind you don't recover from." Wesley said. "There's a file on him in internal archives, classified histories."
"He worked for Wolfram & Hart?" Gunn asked.
"Not exactly. 'Word spread of his unorthodox practices.. fled to California, still under Spanish rule at the time. His arrival coincided with a rash of brutal, ritualistic murders. Pieces of the victims placed in a manner suggesting an intimate knowledge of the dark arts.'"
"Pieces?" Fred asked.
"'The slaughter continued for the better part of 20 years. The perpetrator was never caught.' At least.. not by the authorities."
"What, you're saying Wolfram & Hart took this guy out?" Buffy asked.
"Why would they do that?" Fred asked.
"Sounds like their idea of employee of the month." Gunn said.
"Because they needed his blood. 'Representatives from Wolfram & Hart were looking to build a new branch in what would eventually become Los Angeles. Unfortunately a Spanish mission was already resting on the site their seers recommended.' They needed an appropriate sacrifice to deconsecrate the grounds."
"So this place is built on the blood of a mass-murdering psychopath?" Fred asked.
"It would appear so."
"But if Pavayne's half as bad as he sounds, he should've been roasting his chestnuts in hell centuries ago." Gunn said.
"You said something about the dark arts, right?" Angel asked. "Maybe he knew enough to figure out a way to stick around."
"That might explain why the mystics can't get a bead on him, too." Buffy said.
"What I still don't get are all the ghosts at Wolfram & Hart."
"But there aren't any." Wesley said.
"Except Spike." Buffy put in.
"That's what I mean. High-risk employment. People die here all the time. This place should be full of spooks. So what happened to them?"
"Maybe this Pavayne character's munching on them." Gunn said.
"Whatever he's doing to them, we need to get Spike back.. before he's next." Buffy said.
Wesley, Gunn, Buffy, and Angel walked into Fred's office. She was writing formulas on the windows. "That's never good." Wesley said.
"What? Oh, no, I.. I just ran out of white board. I'm not crazy. Again."
"Just scary smart." Gunn said.
"You really think this will bring Spike back?" Angel asked.
"Well, I had to extrapolate a new variation on interdimensional plasma dynamics on the fly, but.. if the math holds.."
"'The Fly?' I saw that movie. Just make sure there aren't any cause I don't really want Spike all decomposing like Jeff Goldblum." Buffy said.
"All right." Angel said, stifling a chuckle. "First we'll try to get Spike back, and then we'll deal with Pavayne."
"Wait. For this to work, it's going to require a massive surge of dark energy to catalyze the process." Fred said.
"How massive?"
"The equivalent of nuclear evil."
"Well, where the hell are we supposed to find that?"
"Well.. there is a legend that tells of a volcano deep in the forbidden jungles of South Africa." Wesley said.
"Or.. I might know a place a little closer to home." Gunn said.
Buffy, Angel, and Gunn stood in a huge warehouse-sized room that was painted entirely white. "The white room?" Buffy asked.
"Why do you think they call it that?" Gunn asked. "And how are we still in the building, when we're standing in a place that technically doesn't exist."
"So this is your brainstorm." Angel said. "You want to try and to snip off a piece of the conduit that connects Wolfram & Hart to the other dimensions."
"'Want' may be a hair strong."
"Last conduit took the form of that creepy little girl." Buffy said. "No telling what the new one's decided to look like."
"Actually, it's not that bad.." Gunn was cut off by an animal growling and snuffling. "If you like cats."
"I'm kind of a dog person." Angel said. The thing growled.
"Ix-nay on the og-day."
"I'm both, does that count?" Buffy asked.
"Um.. look, we're not here to ruffle anything." Angel said. He held up an empty flask. "We were just wondering if we maybe could borrow a couple of whiskers or.."
The animal snarled and Gunn took the flask from Angel. "Whoa. Hey, easy. It's me. Charles Gunn. You know I wouldn't be here if the situation wasn't heavy. Just asking for a little help: Me to you, personal favor. What do you say?" There was a soft growl and then a black panther appeared in the room. "Yeah." Gunn smiled and the leopard purred. "Who's a good kitty?" He pet the leopard.
"Oh, he's pretty." Buffy said. The leopard looked at her. "Or handsome. Whichever you prefer seeing as how you're the big kitty."
"It's ok. He likes you." Gunn said with a smirk. "He thinks your brave, pretty.. And amusing."
"Gee thanks."
Fred and Wesley were working in the lab on an elaborate machine when Gunn, Buffy, and Angel walked in. "Make sure it's calibrated to minus .058." Fred said to Wesley. She turned to Gunn. "Did you get it?"
Gunn handed Fred the flask containing about a liter of a dark liquid. "Make it count. Told me we ain't getting anymore."
"I still didn't hear it talk." Angel said.
"Maybe you weren't listening right."
Fred put the flask in the machine. "All right, I think we're almost ready."
"How do we let Spike know?" Buffy asked.
"Won't have to." Wesley said.
Fred started the machine. "This baby puts out enough juice to light up ghost city. Anything remotely spectral around here is about to get the tinglies."
"Fun." Buffy said.
Fred looked down at her scanner. After a minute, the thing beeped. "He's here. Spike, step into the circle! Hurry! We've only got one chance at making you corporeal agai.." Fred's sentence was cut off when she started choking. She put her hands to her throat.
"Fred!"
"It's Pavayne!" Gunn said.
"He's killing her." Angel said. They charged toward Fred to try and help her, but Pavayne knocked them all across the room. Pavayne was suddenly knocked into the machine's ring just as it activated. Pavayne was now corporeal. Angel got to his feet and walked up to the machine's ring, while Gunn and Wesley go to Fred's side.
"No. No! Defilers! I'll.. cut you into nothing! I'll feast on your brains. I'll swim in lakes of your own blood." Pavayne yelled.
Angel punched Pavayne, knocking him down. "You'll shut the hell up."
"Don't kill him. If he becomes a spirit again, we'll never stop him." Spike said, suddenly appearing.
"Fine. No killing. Just a whole lot of bruisin'." Angel punched Pavayne again.
Buffy sighed as she got to her feet and looked at Spike, thankful that he was all right.
After checking the office the next day, Spike headed to Buffy's weapons office. She wasn't in the big lab-like area, but he heard sniffles coming from the private office with the Slayer's favorite weapons. He knew it was Buffy. Instead of knocking, he walked through the door and found the Slayer sitting in a corner, knees up to her chest and her forehead laying on one knee, sobbing.
"Hey ducks, what's wrong?" Spike asked, squatting in front of her.
"It wasn't.. I'm not.." Buffy sobbed.
"What's the matter? You're not what?"
"Oh God, I can't ever tell him now."
"Tell who what?"
"I can't tell Angel."
"Ok, sense is coming. Now what's to tell?"
Buffy held out her hand and showed Spike the pregnancy test. It was negative. "Oh Buffy, you thought.."
"I've been sick the past couple of weeks. It was exactly like before.. I missed my period last month and it got me thinking, you know? Then I kept getting dizzy and having hot flashes.. I threw up a few times.. It was only natural to think.. Jasmine said that Angel and I were supposed to have more and I guess I clung to that hope." Buffy let out a sob. "I can't tell him because it'll break his heart to think that.. Oh God, Spike.."
"Shh." Spike touched Buffy's cheek and wiped away her tears and moved her hair out of her face. She laid her forehead back on her knee and wept while Spike stroked her long hair. It was all he was able to do to comfort his best friend.