Thanks to Bogwitch and Sexymermaid for the betas.
Chapter 16
Tara ransacked her mind for facts about Adam. Giles had shown her sketches but they hardly prepared her for his appearance now. His shape was marred by the roughness where human met demon, where machine protruded from flesh, where his body was a cartoon mockery. He was marvel of science: man, machine and egg.
His bizarre appearance didn't fool her, but she'd let it take up her attention. She made herself listen to what he was saying.
"I'm surprised that The First has chosen you for the father of his race, Spike. I found you rather disappointing. No matter, though. Your children will be soldiers in an empire that spans time and space, and my vision of a logical order will be realized. Mother's concept was flawed. We attempted to incorporate three imperfect elements into one perfect whole. The process failed to erase all existing inefficiencies. Whereas your children will be born perfect, a genetic integration of man, demon, and the mechanistic organisms of Wonderland. Through the two of you, and the magic that links you, The First will create life. You are being given the chance to rise above your own capabilities, to become more than man, more than vampire, like unto a …"
"God. You're still full of it." Muscles worked in Spike's cheek. "Reckon The First better watch out, 'cause you'll be looking to run the show."
"You misunderstand. I will run the show. The First will have no desire to direct the day-to-day affairs of this world."
Spike snickered. "How about I do a little fortune-telling, seeing as how I remember the future? The First already has a General and a hellmouth full of toothy killer vamps back in our world. I give them all a nasty bit of sunburn, The First rabbits off to Its hidey-hole, and the world is safe for puppies and kittens, again." He sniffed. "This whole Susie Homemaker bollocks is meant to keep me here instead, happy and humping, while The First has his way back home. That makes you a glorified baby-sitter, changing nappies for Its second string."
"Interesting. Divide and conquer." Adam studied Spike intently. " Poorly conceived, as I would expect from you. Your surmise may indeed be correct. The First has vast resources. Why should It be satisfied with one world, one army, one plan?" Adam bared his teeth in a quick smile. "I appreciate the information, however. I'll be sure to use it to my advantage."
Tara averted her face, hoping that neither Spike nor Adam had noticed her expression. Spike remembered the future. Her future. That hadn't fully occurred to her until now. He knew the reality that would be replaced if they got back home.
Adam heaved himself to his feet, and Tara jumped. Now wasn't the time to worry about the future.
"Spike. Tara." Adam began pacing on top of the wall. "We do not need your active intelligence, merely your bodies. Nothing truly dies here, but death does produce change, and we can simply kill you over and over, until you are changed enough to suit our purposes. If you choose to join us voluntarily, however, I believe The First will be amenable, and allow you to keep your current lives, as well as your personalities." He stopped and faced them. "This is a one-time offer."
Spike looked at Tara for affirmation. She nodded, taking his hand, and he took a deep breath. "Kind of you, but we'll pass."
"I thought that would be your choice."
Adam launched himself from the wall. He jetted upward like a cannonball, arcing through the air, and he bounced.
"Okay." Spike said, his eyes wide. "That's something new for Humpty."
"Yes." Adam landed on the road. "Not the King's horses, but all the Queen's men were able to put Humpty together again. Into a far superior egg as you can see. I am indestructible." He bounced again, toward Spike.
"Pet, you ready?" Spike backpedaled, drawing Adam to her.
She lifted the bonnet, and saw the stains and fraying thread where the venom had worked through. Good. She'd been right. The tortoiseshell's magic lost potency away from Spike. Her glove bomb would go splat like a water balloon.
Adam advanced on her, his face filling her vision: his eyes black holes; his teeth slabs of stone; the irregular meeting of flesh and machine, a mountain ridge formed on a primordial plain.
Racing to meet him, she swung the bonnet-wrapped glove against his cheek, and the venom splurted free. Adam roared. Tara screamed as pain jetted across her arm. Spike grabbed her beneath the armpits, and boosted her clear as Adam bulleted through the dirt, attempting to scour the venom away.
Her hand clamped down on Spike's shoulder. She convulsed with pain, biting her tongue, and blood pooled in her mouth.
Spike examined the arm with care. "S'alright, love. Just the fumes. Hurts like a bitch, I know." He pulled her tight and she thrust her face against his neck, closed her eyes, and concentrated on him, his scent, the firmness of his body. Shock ran through her when he shoved her behind him.
"Fools. I may have miscalculated my vulnerability, but you also miscalculate yours." Adam no longer had a face: just metal, scarred and pitted; flesh and muscle hanging like meat from blackened bone. His voice bubbled up from deep in his throat.
Venom formed trenches in his chest, new channels forming as Tara watched.
Spike sneered. "You're talking the talk, but you're walking dead. Just got to wait for the venom to finish you off."
"You are correct. But I can still kill you before I die." Adam bounced over Spike's head. He landed and his shell cracked, the top of him shearing away from the bottom. A black mess slopped over, and his shape lost all cohesion, imploding into a pile of seething shell and fluid. The ground sputtered around his remains.
Tara sucked in a deep breath, as much sob as sigh. Her arm flamed. She dropped her head against Spike's shoulder, allowing herself just a moment, and then pulled herself straight. "Okay. I'm ready. What's left of Adam?"
"Wouldn't think anything."
"There has to be. We get something from each opponent. We have to." She took his hand, and pulled him with her over to the charred ground and black muck that had been Adam.
He made a scornful sound and kicked dirt over the mess. "Nothing here but fluid."
Tara clutched her arm, trying to ignore the pain. The rules kept changing. She wanted to forget the quest. Wanted Spike to hold her. "We've never really talked about the Vorpal Blade for some reason. We're on this quest, and we don't even know why we need this particular sword."
Spike shrugged. "It's a sword. The First doesn't want us to have it, and that's enough for me."
She hesitated, and danced around the question she really wanted to ask. "What happens if we get it?"
"I kill the Jabberwock, and The First loses his physical contact with Wonderland, I suppose. Everyone here goes back to being chess soldiers and whatnot…eventually. And we go home."
"And?"
Spike looked away. "And we do the happy ever after."
"Oh. Good. Because…The Master, and the Mayor, and Adam? They all talked about dying, and I got the strangest feeling. You'd tell me if I was dead, wouldn't you? Back in the other world?"
Tara put her hand to Spike's face, attempting to sooth his stricken expression. He seemed to be taking the idea harder than she was, and that confirmed her impression. "It's all right, Spike. I'm not afraid of dying. I just need to know. It's true? I'm dead?"
His mouth pinched around his response. "No."
He stepped closer to Tara, putting his hands on her shoulders. Face solemn, his lashes drooped down, framing the blue intensity of his eyes; it was the face of a man about to kiss a woman. She tilted her head back, and met him halfway.
Their lips ghosted against one another, brushing across as though measuring width and breadth. Spike took her lower lip gently between his teeth. His growl vibrated down her body, stiffening the tips of her breasts, intensifying the throbbing between her thighs. He released her and their mouths locked together. The kiss was harder than she was used to, aggressive, verging on painful. Spike moved; shoulders twisting, muscles flexing, stomach rubbing against hers; he lifted on his feet and came down, altering the angle and thrust of the kiss; his tongue swept, and probed, and tasted. His hands slid along her arms, her breasts, cupped her bottom.
She decided she liked it, and met him with aggressiveness of her own. Scraping her teeth across his tongue, she wrapped her hands around the base of his head, holding him still, and taking the kiss for her own. He broke free and their heads twisted and bobbed and Tara wasn't sure if this was fighting or making love. She supposed for Spike both were the same, in a way. She liked it.
Heat rose in her face, and body, and melted thought until sensation was everything. The armor did have give, and her hands explored fearlessly, learning the shape and length of this male body.
Sound without and sound within became one: the wet suction of lips, the velvety shush of her tunic sliding against his armor, the pulsation of her blood.
The pressure from her own heat expanded inside her like steam.
And the earth magic came boiling up into her brain, smashing its way through the barrier she'd set against The First, and they were linked.
She felt tiny.
His passion was animal. She'd thought the kiss a fight, and to him it was a devouring. She'd seen the stars inside him, controlled the earth magic with him, touched the darkness of him but now it surrounded her. Ravenous bloodlust, rampant fury, destruction, carnage, death, rage, hate, love, hate, love…
Tara hammered at his chest, shoved at him. His hold tightened, and she thrashed in his arms, afraid he wouldn't let go. The earth magic was a rock; he was a hard place, and she couldn't tell which was more frightening. She felt Spike's presence shoving through her mind, slamming the link shut, and pain ripped through her head, leaving numbness in its wake. She wondered if he'd destroyed that part of her brain.
He pulled free, releasing body and mind, his face stony. "Bit too much, am I?"
She struggled to form words. How had he moved from such passion to such cool civility so quickly? She'd felt how wild he was. She'd felt it!
His face twisted. "Wouldn't have hurt you."
"I…it wasn't you. The magic. You know how I feel about the magic." She blushed.
"You saying that for me, or for yourself?"
Her mouth worked. "It's too dangerous. Evil."
Spike smiled, sourly. "Like me." He moved his face close to hers. "You enjoy the heat, but you back off soon as you feel the burn. News, love. This all seems like a game but the bad guys aren't playing, and we will need that magic. You think we're just searching for some Holy Grail object? Find the sword, kill the dragon, and everything's happy in la-la land?" Spike waggled his fingers at his head. " I remember the mish-mash The First made with my brains. If we lose here, we will be zombies. Meat-puppets. I've been trusting you. Letting you call the shots but you aren't being honest anymore. You're running scared from the only real weapon we have."
"Honest. That's funny coming from you. I'm not dead back home? Honestly?"
"You're trying to change the subject."
"And what were you just doing?" A flush of anger refreshed Tara's blush. "You weren't trying to distract the little lady with a little hubba-hubba?"
Spike rubbed at his forehead and she waited patiently. Let him deny it.
"I wasn't there." His voice was so low she could barely hear him.
Tara shook her head in confusion.
"When you die. Wasn't the spell. Happens later." He paused as if searching for words. "I was off getting all soul-having. When I came back you were … gone. Nobody ever told me much, except Willow went Darth Vader. I wasn't there." His voice rose, speeded up. "This time I will be. Got my soul already, haven't I? And I'll be there, and you won't die." He glared at her, as if hoping to frighten her into believing his assurance.
Her anger faded. "It's all right. That part's all right. Dying's just part of living. At least, in the real world."
"Wouldn't know about that, would I?"
She hesitated, trying to understand her own feelings well enough to explain them. "The magic does scare me, and you…you're both so powerful."
"I can control myself, love."
"I know. It isn't you. It's me." She threw a hand up to stop his interruption. "We've been changed somehow. I might have learned to love you, but I couldn't have lusted for you—not back in Sunnydale. And you. You were all about Buffy."
Spike's voice was hoarse. "We were children. Like growing up all over again. Didn't follow in the same footsteps."
Tara shook her head. "No. You know it had to be more than that. The…the second childhood was just the way the changes were integrated." She placed her hands around his.
He looked at her with weary eyes. "When Buffy treated me like a man, it always made me feel like I could be something more, something grand. I love her for it, and loving you hasn't changed that. But you make me feel like I am something grand. S'pose I've been fooling myself, though. Why would you want someone like me?"
"Don't make this into a self-hatred thing." Tara sighed. She just wasn't good at explaining. "I don't regret loving you for an instant. Love is love. When you give your heart, it doesn't matter who you give it to." She felt herself trembling. "We've been changed without a choice, and we don't know where it will end. I liked who I was, Spike. How do I know I'll like who I've become? How can I trust myself with the power of the magic…or the power of you?"
He took a sharp breath, pulling his hand free, and used it to point. "Look's like time is up for all things philosophical, love."
Something large and wasp-shaped zipped through the sky. It seemed to grow in size even as she watched, an illusion created by its speed.
The Mayor.
Spike gestured toward Adam's remains. "See that? Don't know what it is but it wasn't there a moment ago." He worried at a piece of his armor, where the venom had frayed it. "Might be the weapon you were looking for."
Tara's heart beat faster. "I can see eggshell reforming." She grabbed at Spike. "What if Adam turns whole when you're standing in the middle of him?"
Spike stepped into the mess. "Guess the yolk'll be on me, then." He smiled. "No choice, pet."
Venom sizzled against Spike's boots.
"Tin man's heart." Spike held the object so she could see it throbbing in the slow, rhythmic pulse of a heart. A ring protruded from the top, attached to a pin. Tin man's heart, indeed. A living grenade.
"So. Nice evening for some fireworks." Spike's voice was thin, all the warmth and color of it absorbed by the buzzing of wings. The sound vibrated in her ears, made them itch.
She shook her head. "Come out of there first. Let's get away from the venom."
"No time." He pulled the pin, and cocked back his arm. "Run."
The Mayor's wings shuddered violently; the heart looping through the air. Tara watched, struck with the fancy that her heart beat in rhythm with the grenade. Ka-thump. Spike was too close. Ka-thump. Too close. Ka-thump.
Too close.
She never heard the explosion, never saw it. Just felt the heat pulsating through her as if she were being microwaved.
TBC…