Chapter 4.13
Wednesday, May 15th, 2002
Buffy turned back over in a bed
that suddenly seemed huge and empty. Her eyes flicked open, seeking
the illuminated display of her radio alarm. 2.04 a.m. Two minutes
since she had last looked. When she had made to follow Spike,
Lily's hand had fallen on her arm in the gentlest possible touch.
She could easily have shaken free and gone after him, but she'd
found that in a matter of days she'd come to trust the old demon
implicitly when it came to matters of the heart.
"Stay," she had suggested. "He
go. Blow smoke. No say things he no mean when he come home."
It had taken Buffy a few seconds
to realise that the empathic demon had meant that Spike was leaving
so that he could blow off steam. It was evident that they had
some serious talking to do, and apparently Spike had been trying
to avoid making the experience more unpleasant than was necessary.
That was just peachy, but even Spike had to have run out of steam
after three hours. Buffy threw back the freshly laundered bed
linens. She walked over to her wardrobe, and pulled out a pair
of sweatpants and hooded tracksuit top, pulling them on over the
camisole and boxers she had put on when she made her way to bed
over an hour ago.
Just in case, she scribbled a
quick note, setting it on her pillow and then shifting Mr Gordo
so that his weight would prevent it being blown away by a stray
breeze from the open window. She didn't dare shut it in case Spike
returned while she was away. Even though he apparently had had
a key to the house for some time, she knew that if he returned
in the early hours of the morning he'd choose the method of entry
least likely to disturb the house's other occupants. Slipping
on a pair of running shoes, whose Velcro fastenings seemed to
tear through the silence that enveloped their abode; she grabbed
a stake from the trunk beneath her bed and slipped out through
the window.
She didn't know if it was instinct
or habit that drew her steps to the cemetery that housed Spike's
old crypt. Pushing open the door, she found the upstairs much
as they had left it when they had cleared out the things that
Spike had considered worth taking to his new apartment. She drew
a gentle hand across the back of the armchair that Spike had favoured.
Still her slayer senses tingled and that part that was particularly
attuned to the blond menace told her that he was close by.
She crossed to the ladder that
led down to the area Spike had professed to be unsafe after the
blast she had set off on the occasion of Riley's last visit. Cautiously,
testing each step before she put her full weight on it she made
her way down into the lightless subterranean room. Her eyes failed
her. No matter how long she waited they were unable to penetrate
the gloom, so she relied on her slayer senses instead. No other
creature drew breath in the vampire's former lair, and her senses
told her that there was only one vampire here, and yet an unfamiliar
scent pervaded the entire cavern. She edged slowly toward the
area where her slayer sense told her the vampire was, never lifting
her feet merely sliding them forward meagre inches at a time.
After three or four feet she ran
into something solid. Reaching down, she felt with her hands until
she was able to confirm that she had reached the collapsed bed
that she and Spike had managed so conspicuously to avoid. A tentative
crawl across its surface confirmed that it was still empty. On
the far side, Buffy regained her feet and began to inch forward
once more, inwardly cursing her lack of foresight in not bringing
a flashlight or even some matches she could have used to light
the remaining candles. She fumbled blindly over piles of rubble,
reduced to crawling over the uneven surface until she was almost
at the edge of the room. Her senses screamed at her that he was
nearby and yet she couldn't find him.
And then, as she made her way
across the rubble on her hands and knees she felt something that
didn't seem to fit. Tentatively she probed the area that had given
beneath her before pulling away. Her hand was damp and not entirely
cold. Kneeling she sniffed until she was sure that the scent matched
that which now filled the lower area of the crypt. Her hand reached
out again, touching the foreign surface once more. The texture
was all wrong too. She imagined that this was what an elephant
would feel like if you were to feel it, not the flexible and tender
flesh of its trunk's underside, but the tough weathered hide that
protected its flanks. Moving her hand around, she found that, whatever
it was, only an area about twice the size of her fist was exposed.
The rest was covered by rubble.
Buffy sat back on her heels to
consider what she knew. Something that still retained some of
the warmth of life, but which no longer drew breath, was at least
partially buried under what had to be a fresh rock fall. Somewhere
nearby, her senses told her that Spike lay either passed out or
otherwise unable to contact her. Buffy began to peel away the
rocks one by one, throwing them as far behind her as she could.
Damn vampire!
Just when there's an argument
in the offing he goes and gets himself hurt.
It took Buffy twenty minutes to
clear the rocks that covered the demon corpse. Then, it took her
five minutes to drag it off to one side. The thing must have
been about eight and a half feet tall and weighed almost four
hundred pounds. If Spike wasn't under here she was so going to
kill him when she found him. Moving back she felt around the area
where the demon had originally been lying. The first touch of
denim had her working her way frantically up his body, brushing
aside the few rocks that remained to bar her way. Pulling him
up by the lapels of his coat, she managed to get him into a fireman's
lift, taking him up the ladder and outside into the moonlight.
When she laid him down on the
grass outside her crypt, she flinched at the trail of blood from
his temple back into his hair. A black streak amongst the silver
threads. Cursing herself for leaving the house so unprepared,
she searched his pockets, sending up a silent prayer that his
phone would be on him and working. When she found it she contemplated
her options. She was reluctant to ask Xander for help. Thankfully,
she now had another option. She dialled the number from memory,
not needing to consult the directory, which by all accounts would
be cryptic at best.
Unsurprisingly, since by her best
estimate it had to be at least quarter to three, the answering
machine kicked in. The pre-recorded message was the one that had
been on the machine when they bought it. Spike had refused to
be coaxed into recording one. "Wes, pick up. I know you're there."
Surprisingly enough even though
she waited there was no reply. Maybe the former watcher was a
really heavy sleeper, or Buffy smiled at the possibility that
he hadn't made it home yet. Lori and Marie had both still been
in Lily's apartment when the girls had left Wesley there. Maybe
the ex-watcher was going to end up with more reasons to stay in
Sunnydale than anyone had anticipated.
Buffy hesitated at her other possible
course of action. Anya did have the keys to the DeSoto, and unless
Wes had admitted to being able to hotwire the car, which she rather
doubted (where was Giles when you needed him?) Buffy had expected
to have to call her anyway. Nevertheless, there was a world of
difference between asking her to leave the passenger door of the
car unlocked and stick the keys in the glove compartment and why
was it a glove compartment? Why not a map compartment or a sweet
compartment? Okay. Focus. Asking Anya to get up at three, drive
a car with a blacked out windscreen to a graveyard and help her
carry round a literal dead weight probably wouldn't go down very
well.
That left just one option.
She got him back inside and stayed
put. If she texted Dawn she would get the message when she got
up. Of course, she wouldn't actually be there to make sure Dawn
got up. With a sigh she explored the options on Spike's phone
until she found how to set the alarm. She'd just have to call
the house early enough to make sure Dawn got to school on time.
She pushed the cell phone into the pocket of her sweatpants.
"What is it with you and the sleep
of the knocked unconscious?" she muttered as she hoisted him over
her shoulder again, thankful that this time she only had to get
him to the sofa. Laying him down on his side as near to the back
of the sofa as possible, she stripped off his duster. She curled
up next to him, pulling his arm around her waist and then draped
his coat over them both like a blanket.
If the awkward vampire wouldn't
wake up so they could go home she would just have to visit him
in his dreams instead.
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