Disclaimer: I don't own a thing.
Summary: Post AtS and BtVS, Faith and Xander are approached by a secret government agency. Surprises all around.
Rating: PG-13
Chapter 20: Assassin
They left the hotel quickly, searching for another vehicle. Spike led the way, the bag he'd carried in over one shoulder. He was carrying a shotgun in his left hand and a sword in his right, glaring around the foggy parking lot foully.
Xander was behind him, holding only a stake he'd fashioned out the bed's headboard.
Faith followed them, holding the other sword, the match to the one Spike held. "Where are we going?" she asked, all too aware of the noise they were making.
Especially Xander.
Spike stopped at the end. "Looks like a pretty bad patch for a fight," he sighed. "The sun will give us some cover against vampires, but only till sunset."
"What?" demanded Faith. "Come on, let's get out of here!"
Spike shook his head, pointing. "They're here," he said darkly.
They were.
Dark forms were moving in the mist, tall demons with green scaly skin and long claws. Faith could hear something distant howling, and she felt her stomach turn over. She glanced at Xander, who was looking balefully at the stake in his hand.
She grabbed it from him quickly, sticking it into her waistband. "I'll need that later, I guess," she said, trying to gauge how many they were facing. They seemed surrounded already.
"Can you still shoot straight, wanker?" demanded Spike.
"Mostly," said Xander nervously.
Spike tossed him the shotgun. "I have more weapons in my bag," he said shortly. "You run short, just yell. Slayer, concentrate on those green demons. They pack a nasty punch, whatever they are."
Faith glowered at him. "Oh, that's helpful. It really is."
Spike smirked. "More than you know, love," he said, twirling in a circle. "Last time I saw them, I died."
Then the demons charged forward, roaring.
Spike spun into action, the sword in his hand dancing. Faith felt something hit her from behind, and she fell down, face-first. She groaned, feeling something gritty sticking to her face, but managed to roll over, slashing with her sword.
She felt hot wet blood splatter on her face, and the thick, tangy smell of something foul filled her nostrils. She spluttered and choked, but kept moving.
She could hear gunfire, and knew that Xander was still standing—for now. She felt a small panic strike her as she remembered that he was here. He would try to get into the hottest fighting, and probably get killed, if she couldn't stop him.
She spun, striking out at the demons around her. They were fast, faster than anything that big should be. As Spike had said, lethal.
But she was a Slayer, not just some vampire fighting the good fight. She used her off-sword hand to pummel one while impaling another neatly on her sword. She heard a noise behind her and whirled, kicking, while pulled her sword free, searching for another target.
She couldn't see any more, besides the ones still wiggling on the ground. Nearby Spike was finishing off another one, slashing bits off it with a furious expression on his face. Xander was standing behind him, watching with a neutral expression while he reloaded the shotgun.
"Did that pea-shooter do any good?" spat Faith, lopping the head off one of the demons on the ground.
"Better than I would have thought," said Xander.
"The bullets are blessed, etched with crosses, doused in holy water, and all those other beautiful things," grumbled Spike, finally finishing the demon in front of him. "These lot came in on motorcycles," he added.
"How can you tell that?" asked Faith. She glanced back at what was left of the ugly green demons at her feet, finishing the last of them with a quick jab in the back of his head. The bones turned her sword, but he still stopped wriggling.
"The bikes are over there," said Spike, nodding at them. "We've got to get a move on, before the next bunch show up. Now that they know I'm here, it's going to be pretty hard to get out of here."
Faith glared at him skeptically. "Says you," she pointed out.
Xander glanced at her in surprise. "Aren't the demon hordes that follow him everywhere proof enough?" he blurted out. "I mean, much as I hate to admit it, if they're that mad at him, doesn't that kind of prove he did something right?" He stopped, thinking about that for a minute. "No, no it doesn't, does it?" he said softly, remembering another time Spike's actions had brought demons down on them.
"Sod it!" growled Spike. "I've had enough of you lot and your suspicions! I'm going, before the bloody cavalry gets here."
He strode off towards the motorcycles. Faith glanced at Xander. "Can you drive one?" she asked.
He winced. "Driving's kind of chancy, since the eye," he reminded her. "Balance-based driving, even more so."
Faith considered his options for a second, hoping like hell that he wasn't thinking as fast as she was. "Well, I can't drive a bike that well," she temporized quickly. "You'd probably drive me right off the road."
Spike turned around. "He is NOT riding with me!" he said angrily.
"Well, he's not riding with me!" Faith shot back.
Xander sighed. "I can drive myself," he said. "But it means we'll go slower."
"Bloody hell!" snarled Spike. His glare cut through Xander and Faith like hailstones through a tissue-paper tent, shredding their defenses. "I am not letting your issues with each other destroy a perfectly good escape attempt, you got that?"
He climbed on a bike, starting it fast. "You ride with me or you ride with her, monkey-boy!" snarled the ex-vampire in his hard, rough voice that felt like sandpaper over all of Xander's wounds.
Xander gritted his teeth and climbed on behind Spike.
As they roared away, Faith close behind them, Spike chuckled. "Look at the pair of you, acting like a bunch of middle-school gits," growled the vampire, loud enough that Xander was able to hear him.
"Shut up!" snarked Xander, leaning back so he wasn't touching the vampire. This made his position on the bike precarious, but he didn't care.
Spike was silent, keeping a careful watch out all around them for more demon hordes. Now that they'd found the scent again, the head honchos would be all over him.
Or, rather, those left on earth. A slow smile curved around his face at the memory of his big victory—Angel's big victory—against Wolfram and Hart.
That he had done what Angel could not was a victory so sweet he almost wanted to cry. That he had managed to save Angel, make Angel the damsel in distress, was icing on his cake.
That Xander was behind him, his ugly, knobby knees pressing against Spike's legs, was just another irritation in the millions he had absorbed.
Spike pulled over when they were a few miles away from the motel, choosing a greasy spoon that looked remote and seedy. Places like this wouldn't attract the sort of attention they were trying to avoid now.
Xander got off the bike first, quickly. "Oh, great," he said sarcastically. "The bistro from hell."
Spike shot a glare at him. "It's food, isn't it?" He glanced to Faith, who was managing her motorcycle pretty well for somebody who'd claimed Xander on her back would drive her off the road. "Come on, we're eating," he said shortly.
They moved inside quickly. Faith glared around, wondering how Spike had managed to stow his weapons without her noticing. He still had the bag, though. Apparently that never left his side.
She glanced down at the bag as they picked a booth. "You sleep with that?" she asked.
Xander followed her gaze, and frowned. He could only think of one reason to always carry a bag of weapons, and it wasn't a good one.
Spike glowered at them both. "Order, eat, leave," he snapped. He glanced to the waitress who wandered over to them. "Coffee, black, and a bagel." He glanced at the other two expectantly.
"Uh, Coffee, cream, two sugars, bacon and eggs," said Xander mournfully.
Faith glared at them both. "Coffee, black." She didn't add anything else. The waitress nodded and wandered off.
Faith stood, heading towards the back. Spike and Xander watched her go, Spike with a flat, appraising gaze, Xander with a clenched jaw.
Spike noticed first and quickly moved, uncomfortable with the mirroring of their actions. "That's the bint you lot called the Evil Slayer?" he asked, tapping the table's cheap linoleum top with his right hand. "She's no more evil than a bunny rabbit."
Xander laughed. "You would be the expert," he said sarcastically.
"Oh, come on. How many did she kill?" asked Spike, pressing the point.
"One," said Xander darkly.
"One man," said Spike, laughing. "One bloody nitwit, and you lot go off on her! I can imagine the self righteous smugness on your faces as you drove her away for one mistake!"
Xander glared at Spike. "Yeah, project much?" he asked darkly.
"Come on, I bet you were the first in line to tell her how evil she was," smirked Spike.
Xander shook his head, looking away. "Yeah, I sure did," he muttered. There was a catch in his voice, a reservation. Spike pounced on it.
"Come on, wanker, what'd you do?" he taunted. "Run out and get a gun? Threaten to kill her?"
"I went to her hotel room and tried to tell her that it was okay, and that it didn't matter," muttered Xander. "I tried to… I thought we had a connection, see, just because we'd slept together. I tried to save her. And I failed." His eyes were blank, and he didn't look back at Spike as he said it.
What he wasn't saying dawned on Spike instantly, from his previous conversations with Faith. She'd tried to kill him for his trouble.
Which had no doubt set off every protective instinct the other Scooby's possessed.
"But she didn't kill you, obviously," he pointed out tersely. "Couldn't have been trying that hard." He still wanted to find a reason that Faith was right and Xander was wrong.
"Angel snuck up on her, knocked her out," said Xander. He barked a laugh. "Saved my life!" he added ironically.
Spike chuckled, appreciating that irony. "Saved by the poofter…I know that feeling! Did you know he rescued me from a crazy Slayer who'd cut my hands off?" He held up his arms, gesturing towards the thin white scars around his forearms. "Then he patched them up proper."
"Ew," said Xander, leaning in and examining the scars. "Crazy Slayer? Well, you had all that experience with Drusilla…should've been a cake walk."
Spike pulled his arms back. "You'd think," he groused. "All the bint could think about was her borrowed memories of me killing two Slayers."
Xander's mouth dropped open. "Ooohhhh," he said knowingly, drawing the word out as long as possible. "So, in a way, it was just what you deserved, wasn't it?"
Spike smirked. "That it was," he said lightly, ignoring the urge to slap Xander. "One innocent, abused thing taking it out on another."
"How are you an abused innocent thing by any definition?" asked Xander, outraged.
Spike glowered at him. "Every predator was a prey at some point," he growled, his eyes narrowing in anger. "And at some point, far, far, in the past, before I was a vampire, I was just another kid with a soul, just waiting to be victimized by Angelus and Darla."
"And Drusilla," added Xander.
Spike shrugged. "Whatever."
"But we know all about the fact you were name William the Bloody before you got your soul!" said Xander quickly.
Spike smirked. "Okay, I'll cop to that one," he admitted. "I'm bad to the bone. But nobody's born bad." He turned his gaze after the departed Slayer again. "What drove her bad?"
Xander snorted. "Yeah, ask what drove her bad," he said, just a little bitterly. "What kind of poor parenting and abuse led to that? I wonder if her parents drank…if they beat her." There was a dark irony in his words that Spike understood too well. He'd met Xander's parents, tied up in the boy's basement.
He shook his head. "Well, at least you didn't kill a man over it," he pointed out.
"No, I just screwed up the one good thing that ever happened to me, which ended with An dead, by the by," said Xander, a tight grin that wasn't happy at all stretching across his face. "I might as well have killed her."
Spike didn't argue with that. If the whelp wanted to have a guilt trip, he'd be more than happy to let him. In his opinion, none of the Scoobies had ever suffered nearly enough.
Of course, he still hated them all, so maybe his opinion wasn't completely unbiased.
Faith returned, sitting next to Spike. She chose it because she definitely did not want to sit next to Xander. Unfortunately, now they were more or less seated opposite, and she had to go to great lengths to avoid eye contact.
Spike leaned forward. "This might be our last chance to stop today, whelp," he said. "You might want to hit the little boy's room."
Xander glanced from Faith to Spike, shrugged, and moved away.
Spike poked Faith in the arm as he walked away. "I cannot believe you lot," he said, his tone aggrieved. "We're on the run from dangerous demon assassins, who, by the way, come in a lot more dangerous varieties than the buggers we hacked up today, and you're all obsessing over your little crush."
Faith tried to escape him, but he grabbed her arm, holding her. "Look, I know your little kiss-and-kill history pretty well by now, having heard both your sides. Buffy and I did far worse things to each other, and managed to wrinkle it out into at least a friendship. She actually sent the great poof to hell once, and he still loves her! Just work it out. I don't want to die because you were too busy trying to convince yourself there's no such thing as 'twue wuv.'"
Faith sneered at him. "Quit butting your big nose where it isn't wanted," she warned him.
"Fine!" snapped Spike. "The demons aren't after you two. I'll just split, then, head for Africa."
"Why Africa?" asked Faith.
"Just a little investigation into long-distance soul-giving," he said sourly. "Of course, with her visions, she's gonna be one step ahead of me, so it's gonna be hard, but I can manage alone."
Faith winced. She'd hate to ever think of this annoying ex-vampire as a friend, but the truth was that he had managed to weasel his way into her life and her confidences in a very short time. She couldn't stand him, but she also couldn't just stand by and send him off to a near-certain death alone.
She wondered briefly if this was some sort of maternal thing.
"Fine!" she snapped. "I'll take some time tonight, iron things out. Talk to him. But it'll just make things worse."
She stood up and moved away, heading back for the motorcycles. She was a vision of beauty, a curvaceous Slayer without any of the inhibitions that had driven Spike mad in the last Slayer. In theory, she was perfect for him.
If she didn't annoy him so much he wanted to tear her spine out.
"Bugger," he muttered, glancing at Xander, who was returning. The food arrived at the same time, and they both dug in, not bothering to speak. They really had nothing to say to each other.
Xander finished first, pushing his plate away angrily. "Don't think I don't understand what you're doing," he snarled.
"What's that?" asked Spike, amused.
"Force me to patch things up with Faith, by making me realize she's not that bad," said Xander. "She's not! I accept that! But do you think just because I forgive her for all she's done I can stop seeing her choking me whenever her hands come near my neck? You think just because I know how hard she's worked to be different I can forget how scary she can be? I can't. I'm not that good."
Spike glared at the boy. "Can you blame me? The tension between you two is thick enough to cut with a knife!"
"Some forced confrontation isn't going to fix it!" hissed Xander. "Isn't that shiny soul supposed to make you smarter or gooder or something?"
Spike stalked out, not bothering to finish, leaving Xander to pay.
-
Angel had spent the day talking to Buffy, and was exhausted. If not physically, then mentally. She'd taken him through the ringer on everything, from his knowledge of Spike's being alive to his willingness to shed human blood to defeat the Circle of the Black Thorn.
He was a little annoyed. What gave her the right to judge him?
Okay, that was a defensive response, one cultivated by the quick-to-claim-the-right-to-judge Spike. Maybe being the woman he loved did give her that right. But it still stung a little bit.
He'd been to places that nobody but Spike could understand (Spike, who hadn't hesitated to torture a man for information when it had been for a good cause). He'd done things nobody but Spike could understand.
He realized he was grinding his teeth, and forced himself to stop. Thinking about Spike always ticked him off so badly that he needed a little time just to readjust and start trying to think about something less … Spike.
Buffy had left to go get some food, and Angel thought that Dana was reading. Or pretending to. She was glancing at him curiously, watching him.
"What is it?" he asked crankily.
"You're a vampire, in love with a Slayer?" she asked, frowning. "That seems…perverse."
"It is," said Angel, sighing heavily. "Not the only one, either. Spike fell in love with her too."
Dana stared at him. "Spike? Handless Spike? Loved her?"
"Yeah," said Angel. "Of course, I think we've both managed to move on from that." His voice sent the unmistakable message that no matter what he thought, they hadn't.
Dana was silent, trying to wrap her mind around the triangle. "So you're both rejecting her?" she asked.
"It's not that simple," said Angel. "She has a boyfriend. The Immortal, from Rome. He's…well, he's the only man on this planet I hate worse than Spike. But he's…good to her, I guess." His voice was beyond skeptical, and into the land of wildest imaginations.
"Uh-huh," said Dana. Her knowledge of human beings and their ways was limited enough. She had no idea what vampires and Slayers considered normal relationships. Even so, she was pretty sure that this wasn't it.
"Yeah, it's all gone to—AARGGH!" Angel screamed, cutting himself off and flinging himself against the bars, clutching his head. He banged his forehead against the bars again and again, howling.
Dana could hear an alarm going off quietly, and Slayers were rushing in, pointing crossbows at Angel, who finally stopped, gasping for air as if he actually needed it, clinging to the bars and sagging low.
When his head snapped up his eyes were glowing a dull, dirty yellow, and his forehead was ridged, the demon underneath the surface coming out. Dana stared, fascinated.
"Buffy," he groaned, his voice raspy.
Giles rushed up, a notebook still dangling from one hand, unnoticed. "What happened?" he asked. "I heard the alarm," he added, as nobody moved to answer him.
Angel shook his head, his demon face slipping away only from a supreme effort. "Giles… there's, um, there's something I need to do," he said.
Giles was frowning, his distrust obvious. "Does this have something to do with Buffy's visit earlier?" he asked, his voice suspicious and ominous.
"Not one thing," replied Angel. "I just…"
He couldn't think of words to describe what he knew now, or how he knew it. How could he describe the way Doyle's visions had come to him, how Doyle had set him on the path towards goodness?
How could he explain the way a single kiss had transferred those prophetic powers to Cordelia, starting her on the murky road of pain and suffering that led to her death?
How could he explain the single kiss she'd given him when she was dying, the single kiss that had given him the vision of the Circle of the Black Thorn? A vision that had set him on his own path, one that led to the eventual destruction of Wolfram and Hart.
By Spike, added the obnoxious Cockney voice in the back of his head.
"Xander, Spike and Faith are in danger," said Angel. "I… I've had visions, Giles. I can see the future, glimpses…flashes…" He trailed off, staring at the skeptical face of the older man he had once tortured.
The man Spike had eventually saved from death.
Angel started again. "You don't have to let me go, you can just call Xander. You know his number! Call him, and warn him…you can send more Slayers to help him out. They've found him again!"
"Who?" asked Giles coldly.
"Wolfram and Hart!" yelled Angel. "They've found him, and since he destroyed the Senior Partners they'll be after blood, Rupert! They're heading right into a trap, and they don't even know it!"
