Disclaimer: I don't own or profit from BtVS.
Thanks so much to ObscureBookWyrm for looking this over. I also got a bit of medical advice from Sunalso, who's just awesome.
Awakening
Chapter Five
The sun rose high in the sky, yet Spike paced the confines of the cave, unable to sleep. All his instincts tingled. A beast prowled the woods, stalking them, and Spike didn't know its patterns, how it thought, when it slept, or when it hunted. The lack of knowledge left him extremely vulnerable. He didn't like it one bit.
A small fire flickered near Buffy, who lay on the shelf in a coma-like slumber. Centered in the campfire was the collapsible cooking pot atop a flat rock, an aromatic rabbit stew bubbling away. It would take hours for the rabbit to be tender enough for Buffy to eat, even cut into small chunks. The sound of her breathing, still labored and ragged after far too many hours of rest, warned him that at most she would only be able to sip the broth.
The entrance to the cave angled toward a southern exposure, leaving Spike safe, but trapped. From the granite overhang Spike could see the dappled shadows beneath narrow needle-fringed branches of the red fir and Jeffery pine. Tiny creatures scurried in the underbrush, going about their business of storing food for the fast-approaching winter snows, shying away from the cave and the predator within.
Spike tracked nearby heartbeats, noting that nothing larger than a doe bedded down by the lake. The knowledge both relieved and unnerved Spike, who was certain that the beast was much larger than a deer.
Subconsciously, Spike tuned into the unsteady thump of Buffy's heart, muscles tightening at every faltering beat of distress. It pumped harder than normal, desperate to push healing blood to her seeping injuries. Even now, twenty-four hours later, her wounds smelled fresh, if not a little putrid. Buffy's lauded slayer healing was falling down on the job, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.
When the whomp whomp of helicopter blades sliced through the air it took Spike a moment to register the sound, so in tune was he with Buffy's heartbeat. Right on time. It may have been predictable, but the US Armed Forces never left a man behind.
He couldn't wait to get his fangs into them, to get answers to his questions: who were they and what did they want with Buffy and him?
Spike hustled to the fire, removing the pot and stomping out the flames so as not to reveal their location to the soldier boys. Returning to the entrance, he slid into gameface, enhancing his senses to track their movements by scent and sound. As far as he could figure, a total of eight men disembarked from two Black Hawks, leaving two pilots and two co-pilots behind.
The force wasn't too large for him to overcome, but it wouldn't be easy either. If he didn't want to be drilled full of holes, it would be best to forgo a direct attack and engage in guerilla tactics once the sun went down.
So long as his hand wasn't forced. As he listened, they split into two-man sweep teams, one of which headed straight for him. Spike felt like a nit. He hadn't foreseen what he'd do if they found him in the full light of day.
Perhaps the situation wasn't as dire as it seemed. It may even be a boon. With his vampiric abilities, he could easily melt into the shadows of the cave, perhaps even find himself a crevice in the ceiling. People rarely looked up even while searching their surroundings.
Once they found Buffy, she would receive the first aid she needed and be carried to the transport. Although the idea of people putting their hands on Buffy while she was too weak to defend herself didn't set well with him. Worse was the sudden thought that they might put her on the helo and whisk her away before the sun set. He'd never see her again if that happened.
The two-man sweep team neared their position, yelling call signs to search for their men. Spike wondered at their stupidity. The blood painting the downed plane and the absence of corpses should have tipped them off that something bad lurked in the woods, but these men weren't hunters with predator instincts like Spike. They were men playing at being hunters while being hunted themselves.
And like a predator, Spike went on point, hackles rising when he scented unhallowed earth.
Screams ripped through the tranquility, startling birds and other animal life out of their dens. Shouted orders called the other teams to converge on their distressed comrades. Shouts devolved into screams and the rapid rat-a-tat-tat of frantic gunfire.
Spike's acute hearing made out the gush and splatter of blood spewing onto frozen ground, could scent the warmth and wet of it in the cold air. Beneath that was the unholy damp musk of the beast, its bovine cough echoing the cries of the soldiers.
Was the beast capitalizing on a free meal or was did it view Spike and Buffy as part of its larder that it needed to protect?
Too soon the screaming and gunfire rattled to a stop, and silence echoed in the woods. The lack of birdsong or hum of insects - just utter, impenetrable silence - told Spike the beast was near.
Spike tensed, unnaturally still in the shadows of the overhang as he watched the edges of the woods. A breeze ruffled the top fringe of pine needles; the undergrowth remained still.
A shadow moved in the woods. Tall, thin, swaying in sync with the windblown trees. Spike narrowed his eyes. His eyesight wasn't the best in the daytime, his eyes more accustomed to seeing acutely in the dark.
A blue jay chattered, griping its irritation, and Spike could feel the rest of the woods fall back into its natural rhythms.
Spike glanced over his shoulder, yellow eyes meeting the ethereal gaze of the Slayer, the moment breathless between them as neither supernatural creature moved.
"Not me you need to worry about," Spike murmured, almost afraid to break the heightened tension.
The uberbitch didn't respond, and eventually Spike turned back to keep his vigil.
When night fell, Buffy slept, and Spike crept from their shelter. He easily found the site of the massacre, the blood still wet and rank on the hard ground and splattered like crimson holly on the dark green huckleberry leaves. No bodies were tucked into the brush. Nor was there any sign of the beast. No prints, no drag marks. Not even blood from a bullet wound.
On the unevenly textured bark of a pine tree, blood was smeared in an unnatural way. Spike hunkered down, taking a closer look. A downward triangular shape, two crescents sprouting from the top. It looked like a child's rendering of a cow face or maybe a goat.
Shuddering, Spike quickly made his way to the crash site. He approached cautiously, sniffing the air heavy with the musk of the beast.
Spike lost hope as soon as he saw the wreckage. The electronic guts of the Black Hawks were torn out, one, five ton helo, tipped on its side, the blade of the rotor dug deeply into the black earth. Communications were trashed; Spike couldn't even call up static.
Pitching the headset away in disgust, he scrounged for any handheld radios and found only a map of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, a red circle noting their location along with the coordinates of their crash site.
With the map he could find his way off the mountain, instead of wandering blindly. By his reckoning they were a night's walk from a fire service road; from there it would take him another half a night to connect with State Route 4. After that it would be no problem to hitch a ride, get a warm meal and a new car.
He folded the map, tucking it in his waistband at the small of his back. An hour had lapsed since he left Buffy. He hurried back, stopping only to fill the canteen with fresh water from the lake.
The scent of death struck him hard only because he wasn't expecting it at his shelter. Ten feet in the air, in the branches of the junipers next to the cave entrance, two bodies hung, limbs gnawed off, gutted of all their organs.
Hardened as he was, Spike was taken aback for a moment. He rocked on his heels, strangely reluctant to walk beneath them and into the cave.
Their mouths were wrenched open in silent screams, or maybe in frantic, unvoiced warning. Inside their mouths were frosted blue lumps. At first Spike thought it was their swollen tongues, but as he drew closer he realized they were stuffed with juniper berries.
"Fuck me," he muttered, casting quick glances around, searching for any hint of the beast.
The blind eyes of the soldiers watched him as he carefully approached, searching the ground for tracks. There was nothing. Not even scuffed bark on the trees from where the beast must have climbed to hang its kill.
Moonlight didn't reach the depths of the cave, leaving it a dark, yawning maw in the quartz-speckled granite. He stood in the entrance, head cocked as he listened. He couldn't explain the relief he felt when he heard Buffy's rattling breaths, nor his skin-tingling fear when he thought he might not find her waiting.
Hearing no other sounds, he entered the cave and quickly lit the fire with his lighter. No use keeping it doused. The beast knew where they were. It was playing with Spike. Baiting him. One predator teasing another.
Except while the beast had no discernible weakness, Spike had a very blatant one. She lay not five feet away upon the rock shelf. As long as he stayed to protect her, he'd be vulnerable. Easy prey.
Spike inhaled deeply, scenting wood smoke and vanilla. The beast hadn't breached their shelter. Hadn't slunk in and put its claws on Spike's prize. He growled deep in his chest, only biology winning out against the primal urge to whip out his dick and piss in the corners of his home, even on Buffy herself.
Sweat darkened Buffy's hair, her cheeks still pale with blood loss. Needing to touch her, he disguised his unnatural urges by changing her blood-soaked bandages instead.
She wasn't healing.
Certainly she was dying.
He should leave. Save his own skin. Buffy wasn't Dru. Not his ladylove to live and die for. She was the slayer. His enemy. If she were well, she wouldn't hesitate to stick a stake through his heart.
She was the One. His only natural-born predator. His destined killer.
The One.
The One.
The thought echoed continuously in his head, seemingly taking on other connotations that he stubbornly refused to acknowledge.
He brushed his hand through her damp hair, expecting some sign she sensed him – a moan, a fluttering of her lashes – but only death showed on her slack, waxy face.
Throwing her old bandages into the fire, he wiped his hands on his trousers. Realizing what he'd done he raised his hands, palms up to look at them. Faint traces of her blood seeped into the lines of his hands, soaking into him as if his entire being craved her, right down to his very pores.
Why hadn't he been tempted by her scent? By her blood? Sure he was still full from gorging the day before, but her blood should have been an irresistible temptation. Disgusting as it may be, he should have been sucking on her bandages like they were rock candy. Yet it hadn't even occurred to him.
Choking down his self-disgust, he placed the stew back on the rock to reheat and returned to his vigil at the entrance. Exhaustion weighed him down, tempting him to lie next to the fire and rest, but Spike couldn't draw his eyes away from the shadows swaying under the pine trees. Part of him watched; the other part plotted a path to freedom.
The stew was boiling when Spike felt the air charge with predestination, the sensation familiar but no less awe-inspiring. He refused to turn to look at her, just as he fought the urge to kneel, an urge that was easier to fight each time she appeared.
"If you leave, this vessel will cease to be."
Spike shrugged, not wanting to admit his thoughts on abandoning Buffy. Instead he concentrated on his own survival. "Might not be able to go to ground before daybreak."
"You are old and resourceful."
"Maybe."
It would be easy to leave Buffy behind. Leave her to be meat for the beast. One day, maybe two he'd have to go to ground, but it wouldn't take him long to make his way back to civilization, to where he belonged, not this nightmare of sticks, and thorns, and beasts too smart for men.
The Slayer began to chant, a rhythm in an ancient, foreign tongue that was somehow familiar to him. He was certain it wasn't a language he knew, neither human nor demon, yet the words emblazoned themselves into his mind, searing themselves there, so they could never be forgotten.
When the words died away, Spike turned around, but it was only Buffy staring back at him.
"Spike?"
"Back in the realm of the living, are you, luv?"
She licked her chapped lips, her eyes slightly unfocused.
"What smells so good?"
Instead of answering her, he moved to fill the soup cup he'd recovered from the survival pack with brothy stew. He set the cup aside as he tried to sit her up.
"I can't," she gasped, her breath hot against Spike's face. "It hurts."
Spike couldn't tell if she was warmer than normal beneath his hands. He wasn't sure, but he thought so.
"Here." He brought the cup to her lips, holding her head so she could sip. She took barely a swallow before she tilted her face away.
"It's good. What is it?" The slayer lying to be polite; what a novelty.
"Rabbit. And if it's so good, you won't mind takin' another swallow."
She grimaced, doing as he asked. He was able to get a quarter cup down her gullet before she collapsed in exhaustion.
"Did they come?"
Spike busied himself by pouring the uneaten stew back in the pot, unable to look at her pale, brave, frightened face. She knew she wasn't healing. They both knew it.
"Not yet," he lied. He couldn't understand why he wanted to protect her from the truth, only that she didn't need to be more frightened than she already was. Or worse, feel like she had to fight her way to her feet so she could defend her precious humans from the beast hunting them.
The choking sound coming from the rock shelf had him dropping the mug into the fire and darting to her side. In her sleeping bag, Buffy convulsed, yellowish bile streaming from the corner of her mouth. Spike grabbed her by the arm, ignoring her pained yelp as he maneuvered onto her side so her head hung over the edge of the shelf. Vomit splattered the ground and over his black boots. The acidic stench was abominable.
He held her hair as her entire body shook and shuddered until she was empty. When she was done, she tried to roll onto her back, but Spike positioned her on her side instead. The way she had choked while on her back had terrified centuries of unlife out of him.
Vomiting wasn't something vampires did. Wasn't something he'd truly been up close and personal with since his human years.
Bugger that.
He smoothed her hair back into place, noticing the warmth of her brow. Her breathing was ragged, her little heart thumping along in her chest like a jack rabbit. Uncertain, and a little repulsed, he backed away.
"Thanks, Spike. I'm glad it's you with me." Her words were barely a whisper of sound, but they carried to where he stood at the entrance.
Stunned, he whipped around to look at her, but she was unconscious again, her breathing shallow.
Unable to bear being in her presence a moment longer, he walked out of the cave, only to be bombarded by the scent of death. Growling low in his throat, he climbed the trees, tearing down the bodies and dragging them far away where they wouldn't attract more predators. Not that he needed to worry about something as mundane as a mountain lion when something far worse knew where they bedded down.
After burying the last body under several seasons of dead pine needles and rot, he stared up at the bright moon hanging low in the sky. This high up, the moon was impossibly large, almost like he could reach up and pull it down if only he could leap high enough.
He wouldn't leave her.
He didn't understand why. Maybe it was his caretaker complex. He'd always been a sucker for ailing women. Buffy needed him, and deep down, Spike needed to be needed.
He closed his eyes, opening senses that had never been used. Not his predator senses, those that allowed him to suss out his environment, but his supernatural ones. Ones gifted to him by his bloodline.
He concentrated on his hated grandsire, opening pathways that had resolutely remained closed even in Spike's direst moments. Pride had stopped him in the past. But pride wasn't a deterrent now, because this wasn't a situation he could fight or scheme his way out of.
Not while Buffy's life remained in the balance.