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Chapter 4.08
Sunday, May 19th, 2002
Willow preceded the group into the
house and Buffy took care to position herself between
the bitter witch and her Watchers. Willow seemed to
be helping them but Buffy didn't want to take any
chances.
"I guess you're not in your
old room, then?" the blonde asked.
"What gave it away?" Willow
countered sarcastically, as she pushed open a door
on the corridor that ran through from the front door
to the kitchen. Pulling a cord to put on a light,
she led the way down a set of cold, concrete steps
into the house's basement. Looking around the cramped
room, Buffy could see that much of the room's content
had been hastily stacked against one of the walls,
making barely enough room to accommodate the witch's
old bed and desk. "Maybe it was the fact that
Mom told you she'd converted my room into a study
when you came snooping round the other night, huh?"
"Actually, I'd kinda forgotten,
or at least I thought if you moved back in they would
shuffle stuff round again."
"Well, you thought wrong."
"Willow..." The blonde
shook her head, at a loss for words. "Really,
if the situation were different I'd love to sit here
and let you vent and get whatever is bothering you
off your chest, but right now I need to know what's
going on with Spike. He's really ill and I'm scared
I'm going to lose him and you seem to know more about
what's going on than any of us."
"The mighty Slayer reduced to
begging—" the witch drawled before Giles cut
her off.
"Willow, this behaviour is—"
"Yes, Will, if that what it
takes, I'll beg." Buffy overrode the oncoming
lecture. "If that is what it takes, I
will get down on my knees and beg you to
tell me what's wrong with Spike." To Giles and
Wesley's shock, she matched gestures to her words,
kneeling on the cement floor.
"Buffy..." Willow's facade
of indifference cracked at the sight of her friend
humbling herself in a way she should never have needed
to and her tears fell like the first trickles of water
seeping through the cracks in a dam before it disintegrates
completely. "Buffy." the witch took her
friend's hands and pulled her from the floor to a
sitting position on the bed, taking a seat facing
her. "I don't know. I'm sorry. I just don't know."
"Hi," Tara's greeting betrayed
a certain nervousness. "It's Tara. We met last
night. I didn't get you up, did I?"
"Not yet. The phone's next to
the bed. What time is it?"
"A little after nine."
Bee groaned and pulled her quilt
with its broderie anglaise cover back over her somewhat
tousled head but kept the phone to her ear. There
were whole mornings when the Barbie pink of her bedroom
walls was too much to bear.
Rupert gave a small "rowl"
in protest at being woken by anything other than breakfast
before he settled back on the pillow opposite Bee's.
"This isn't just about going out for a drink
or helping you prep for your Art History, is it?"
"No, sorry, it's not. I need
some help on the research front. So far, I haven't
been able to come up with anything here and I wondered
if perhaps you might have any books over there that
might help."
"That watcher isn't there, is
he?"
"Giles? Not at the moment...
No."
"And it's really urgent? It
couldn't wait until... say noonish?"
"Spike's been poisoned. He's
hallucinating and running a fever. He's lost a good
deal of his body weight overnight and however much
we feed him it doesn't seem to help. I can't find
an exact match for his symptoms in any of the references
we have here, and Wes has gone with Buffy to check
up on a lead so if he has any others we can't get
to them."
"Give me the address. I'll be
there in half an hour with any books I have that might
help."
Bee pushed the duvet back and padded
to pull open the room's white curtains which did little
to block the morning sun in any case. Picking up a
pencil she scribbled the slayer's address on the inside
cover of a sketchbook that lay on a table. Rupert
followed her, brushing in between her legs until she
opened the fridge, removed a braised chicken breast
she had prepared the previous evening and sliced it
up to go in his bowl.
She threw aside the black knee-length
nightshirt she'd been wearing, tossing a pair of slacks
and a tailored blouse on the bed. By the time Rupert
had finished his breakfast she was dressed, wearing
her trademark red lipstick and black eyeliner and
had a stack of half a dozen books, ready to take with
her. She jingled the metal on
the strap she held in her hand and Rupert trotted
over, waiting patiently at her feet as she made her
final preparations to leave before he stalked downstairs
at her side.
Rogue backed away as Buffy lay down
on the bed. The dog kept her head down low, her growling
more pronounced than ever, and as she shuffled back
her hindquarters nudged the fevered vampire further
away from his mate.
"Shhh, you dumb dog!" The
slayer held out a hand toward the growling bitch as
if to let her sniff it and check her scent, but it
did nothing to calm the beast, who backed away further,
torn between her apparent fear of the woman on the
bed and her need to defend her master. Buffy still
wore the boots and jacket she had donned for her trip
to Willow's, not even bothering to take them off before
she made her way to Spike. "I'm not going to
hurt him.
Will, you don't look good. How do
you feel? Did the blood help any?"
"Buffy?"
"Right here, baby. I'd give
you a hug, so that you could feel that it's me but
your new girlfriend seems a bit jealous this morning."
"I'll get rid of her."
Spike tugged at the dog's collar, but in his weakness,
for every inch he pulled her back the dog struggled
forward another so he couldn't shift her from her
self-appointed guard post. "Sorry, love."
"It's okay. Nothing matters
except making you better and I have to say you don't
look any better."
"Sorta think that's a bit of
an understatement, kitten."
"It's the blood. You need something
stronger."
"Buffy!" The vampire's
tone held as much exasperation as he could muster.
"I already told you..." Spike's eyes changed
to swirls of gold as his anger brought on the change
to demon form that in his debility he was unable to
prevent.
"Wait! Not me. Just listen...
You can smell it, can't you? She's just the other
side of that door, changing the dressing on her leg."
Buffy nodded toward the bathroom, smiling like the
cat that got the cream when Spike responded with a
feral growl. "You said it sings. Her blood calls
out to you to take it. She's made from me you said.
It's not like you'd be hurting a real person. She's
just a part of me, like an extra limb or something.
Just slayer blood in human form. She doesn't even
have a soul..."
Spike struggled to regain his human
form as his hands reached up to cover his ears. For
an instant as he shook his head in denial, he managed
to shrug off the ridges that had risen on his brow.
Mere seconds later, they returned.
"...Only real humans have souls.
There's no way those monks could give her one. All
she is is an extra bit of me. If you won't do it for
yourself, then do it for us. We should be free. You
could show me the world while I'm still young enough
to enjoy it. New York... Europe... Asia... a never-ending
honeymoon. We could have it all if we didn't have
to play mommy and daddy. She's stealing away my youth,
just like she killed mom. They made her live and Mom
paid the price. The cosmic scales had to be balanced.
I'm a slayer. There's almost no hope that I'll survive
long enough to see her through college. We're never
going to be able to have time for ourselves. If you
don't do this my whole life is going to be used up
looking after her..."
Buffy dripped one poisoned thought
after another into his fevered brain, using just enough
truth to stop him from being able to come up with
a convincing argument against her.
"Perhaps you could tell us what
exactly you do know, then," Giles suggested softly,
taking over as Buffy seemed to have been stopped in
her tracks by Willow's denial.
The onetime redhead looked slightly
embarrassed as she watched her questioner through
her eyelashes, gauging his response to her reply.
"When Xander brought me over to pick up my stuff,
I sorta listened in on what you were all saying inside...
even after we left. I guess I was feeling... well...
victimised. I was sure that you were all going to
be talking about me behind my back, so I listened
in... When you were talking about this guy from Willy's..."
she clarified, noting their lack of comprehension
as to what she was implying.
"I guess I probably wouldn't
have bothered too much about what you were saying,
but there's not a lot to do down here of an evening
and I was bored. I guess it sort of let me test myself
as well. I mean it wasn't much of a description but
I managed to find your guy just the same." For
an instant a look of pride settled on Willow's face
before she saw the disapproving look both the former
watchers treated her to.
"It wasn't all magic."
The witch tried to justify herself. "He was mentioned
in the council minutes and stuff. That's how I found
his address."
"You have access to Watchers'
Council minutes?" Wes interrupted, sounding slightly
concerned at the apparent breach in security.
"Not the Watcher's Council.
Sunnydale City Council. Robin Wood is Snyder's replacement.
When the High School re-opens, he's going to be the
one in charge. According to the minutes I read, his
contract began early, to give him a chance to recruit
the staff he needs over the summer. What I don't understand
is how he managed to get the job, considering I can't
find any record anywhere of him ever having got so
much as a teaching certificate."
Buffy blanched visibly. "You
mean I'm supposed to send my sister to a school where
the principal has a grudge against my family?"
"Well, I guess with Spike helping
out you could send her to Miss Porter's..." Wes
suggested.
"I'm not sending my sister to some girls'
school. She's a kid, not some proto-watcher."
"Buffy... Perhaps for now we
could hear the rest of what Willow has to say."
"There's not much more to tell.
I thought I'd check the address from the council's
HR records. They have him listed as staying at a motel
not far from the centre of town and I thought he might
have moved on. So just in case maybe he had found
something more permanent I figured I should check
it out. I was hoping if he was still there
and he'd been going round bars checking up on Buffy
and Spike that I'd see him when he was coming back.
As it turned out I guess he'd been having a quiet
night in. I'd almost given up when he decided to go
for a midnight stroll." The witch shrugged. "I
figured there could only be one reason why he would
be visiting all the butchers' shops and packing plants
when they were all closed for the night, but I couldn't
risk getting close enough to see what he was doing."
Willow looked Buffy straight in the
eye as she finished speaking. "I know since we
started college we haven't been as close as we were
in high school. I mean, Spike pulled all our strings
back when he sided with Adam and we all said we were
going to work things out and make things better again,
but then with your mom and stuff and then... And well,
me and Spike, not exactly best buds... especially
the last couple of days, but it's not like I could
ignore what he was doing. He-Wood-he, not he-Spike-he. And it's not like I could pick up a phone and
warn you either. I suppose I was still ticked at Spike,
too, so I didn't want you to know I sorta helped him.
I mean Spike. I didn't help Wood. I mean with the
making the blood go off so Spike wouldn't drink it.
It was only later that I realised
whatever he was doing, it might not be the first time
he had tried it."
Dawn had just finished taping down
the fresh dressing on her leg when the shrill chirp
of the phone had her dashing into the room now occupied
by her sister and her boyfriend. Snatching the handset
from its cradle without so much as a glimpse in the
direction of the bed, she couldn't prevent her voice
from betraying her anxiety and impatience.
"Buffy? Is that you?"
"No," a rich male voice
replied. "I'm guessing by now that you've got
one sick vampire on your hands. If you want to know
what's wrong with him, I suggest that he comes alone
to 1570 Maple. You've got a hour and, if anyone else
interferes, you'll never find out what's wrong with
him... At least, I suppose you might eventually, but
by then it'll be too late for him."
"Who—"
"1570 Maple. One hour. Him.
Alone." The words were immediately followed by
a sharp tone. Dawn looked at the receiver in panic
as if it could provide an answer to her dilemma.
A squeaky mattress spring made Dawn
turn as she called Tara's name. She stared straight
into a pair of golden eyes from less than a foot away
and the Wiccan's name died on her lips.
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