THIRTEEN

When the Scooby council convened (Harris had brought Danish) a little before noon, Spike found a place for himself in the armchair back in the corner, legs stretched out long, ankles crossed, arms folded, and tried to pay attention. Buffy would want him to take part, look sensible, say something from time to time. But he’d never been much for that, and no use pretending otherwise. He preferred Peaches’ style of management: aim him at something and he’d go kill it. Not real great for planning. That was his Sire’s department.

Besides, his focus was blown all to hell. Too much afoot and then the Never dream on top of it.

He’d gone out again last night, alone, and located the vamp nest off past the park: in the cavity dug for gasoline storage tanks at a burned-out service station. Caught one minion dumb enough to still be hanging about there and got out of him that there’d been three of ‘em, three preternaturally composed fledges: two women and a man. Fucking each other blind and the minions not getting any, in the usual incestuous tangle of vampire relationships. One of the women, Julia, he’d done in the park: the one Bit had taken down with the taser. So that left two. They’d drunk up the bloodcows, collected whatever emergency stash they’d had time to put together, and scarpered.

Maria and Bob.

Maria would look about thirty, long dark hair and dark eyes, roundish squinched-up face like a pug dog. Tiny Betty Boop mouth. Chicano bint, fireplug design: short and squat. Maybe 150, 160 pounds. He thought he remembered picking her up at an all-night carry-out place. All he had left were wisps of impressions, fragments, left from those nights when his demon had overcome him and hunted at will….

Bob had been a cop moonlighting as night security for a factory site under construction. Spike could recall the lights and jackstraw scaffolding and the big huddled earth-moving six- and eight-wheelers parked like sleeping black Ashokta demons. Bob was Caucasian, about six foot, maybe 210, bit of a beer gut on him, apparent age something like 40. Brown and brown.

Unremarkable people. Pass ‘em on the street and never spare a second glance. Remarkable vampires, cunning and ruthless from their orphaned rising, able to recognize one another by how they stood apart from the rest: the Line of Aurelius come into yet another generation. Spike listlessly did the Alien jaws-snapping thing with his hands. Dawn must have noticed because she came over and perched on the chair arm, and he told her to go, this wasn’t her place, and she protested that she lived there, for crap sake, and Willow let Kennedy come, and Spike said that didn’t signify, and Buffy just about glared holes in them both, and the Bit went off sulky, threatening unspecified doom. Everybody else carried on talking about something or other.

When he’d got out of the minion all there was likely to be, Spike had dusted him and stood awhile trying to memorize what scent traces were left in the nest, of who had been there. He’d boosted some kerosene and torched the nest, then circled back to Willie’s to connect with his minions, who’d about given up on him but not enough to actually leave. Willie’d been pissed off, of course, but admitted Spike had done good by him, tossed him safely outside before getting down to work, spared the bar mirror and all, and word of a really good fight attracted custom for weeks on the chance it might be repeated. That and the promise of $40 in cash or kittens, depending on which Spike could lay his hands on first, and some bartending on Saturdays (always a rowdy night) was enough to square him with Willie, at least enough that Willie wouldn’t cancel his privilege, as a regular, of running up a tab.

Spike had drilled his minions on the names and descriptions , that they’d probably retained for at least 10 seconds after he left, sprinting against the coming sunrise back to Revello Drive.

In the basement, he’d added the details to the profiles in his notebook knowing it was no good, no use. Maria and Bob were gone. Then he’d put his arms up behind his head and lain there waiting for the first sounds of the household waking.

He couldn’t have slept anyway. Didn’t want to. Because as soon as his head had hit the pillow, after parting with Buffy and locking up, he’d been attacked by the Never dream with its portent of devastating calamity; and of course he couldn’t sleep after that.

He thought he was covering decently: even the Bit didn’t seem to have noticed anything off, except for him flapping his hands about like a git. Got through the hair business OK. So good enough, then. Maybe he could get in a few hours, since he understood Rupert had managed to change a connecting flight to arrive with the new children about eleven, after dark anyway, so Spike could lend a hand in collecting them. Departure point someplace near Pesht, the usual zig-zag route through Heathrow (where Giles had called from the first time) and then on, changeover at LaGuardia and another at O’Hare, then back to LAX and the shuttle to home sweet bloody Hellmouth and the newest pending apocalypse. Spike wondered what Prague was like now. He had the vague unexamined sense that the chair behind and beneath him was Dru, holding him, talking beloved nonsense in his ear about some dog and pony show she’d seen on the telly and decided was something else, animals being dissected and shown that way or who the hell knew what….

He startled at a touch on his arm and found the room empty and Buffy sitting on her heels in front of him.

“Wasn’t,” he said, straightening. “Just resting my eyes.”

Buffy didn’t buy that but didn’t argue. “We’re leaving at nine, both cars. You’re driving the station wagon. You, me, and Xander, who’s driving his truck. We’re taking Kennedy, Amanda, Meagan, and Kim. They’re with you. I’m inside, to meet Giles and the three Potentials. You and the SITs cover the landing area, the service road, and the drop-off pick-up area, in that order. Xander’s on the parking lot. Willow stays by the phone and I have the cellphone. Willow monitors the police and emergency bands and checks that they’re listed as boarding and that the arrival time hasn’t changed up until the shuttle is on the ground. Anya might teleport some Potentials in if we end up needing more bodies on the ground. If she feels like it. I couldn’t quite pin her down about that.”

Spike tried to shake some more alertness into himself. “Right. Sounds like a plan, then.”

Buffy was still looking at him. “Your hair looks good. Everybody agreed. You look like the real, old you. Genuine Big Bad, accept no substitutes. And we all know you’re not…. You miss Dru, don’t you.”

That told him he’d been babbling, which annoyed him. “Sometimes. I also miss the Great War and smallpox.” Catching her startled, injured look, Spike said wearily, “Pay me no mind, love. I’m just off, a bit. Nothing to do with you lot. Just something of my own. So no matter. If you got the dosh, I’ll see to it the car’s filled up, come last light.”

“Dosh?”

“Money, love. It’s--” She knew, she was just having him on. He was really off, not to catch that. He rubbed at his eyes. “What’s the gen on Rona?”

“Xander’s going to pick her up now.”

“Gimme a yell when they get back.”

“All right. Then get some rest…. Dawn says you have nightmares.”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Sometimes.” He’d have to have a talk with Dawn.

Dawn knew about the Never dream, no way to keep it from her, the fact of it, anyway. It’d started about the same time she’d got into the habit of climbing out her window and coming to his crypt, most nights, playing cards or watching Man U humiliate themselves yet again, tethering him down with looking after her, her seeing to him, and no way for her not to know: wake bolt upright in tears, crazy with grief, go on a three, four day bender until he could settle himself down again. On the conspicuous side. But he’d never told her what the dream consisted of, that much he’d been able to keep to himself, and he wasn’t pleased, her running off and blatting it to the Slayer. All well and good, the Bit giving the children a bit of a clue, so he and they wouldn’t rub at each other’s raw edges so hard. But that didn’t include tattling to big sis about things that were private.

He thought he knew what it was now, and how he’d meet it. That was settled and sure. So he could contain it, not come all apart like he used to, until he’d swallowed it down again. He could keep on keeping on. About the airport and all, and whatever else the Slayer wanted to throw him at.

Buffy waited in case he wanted to talk about it, which he didn’t. So she eased back, left him alone.

Spike rubbed his eyes. No point moving, if Rona was due back in a few minutes. Might as well just wait. No point in any of it. Maria and Bob were gone.

 

Kennedy had been issued one of the tasers. Amanda had the other. That was a reasonable distribution: of the SITs, they’d shown the most natural weapons aptitude. All the same, having Kennedy at his back with a taser made Spike edgy. Finishing the sweep of the single landing strip and finding nothing of note, Spike set Kennedy at point and Amanda at rearguard to do a slow sweep of the service road connecting the landing strip with the baggage and maintenance area of the terminal. Again, a reasonable assignment: put the best fighters first and last, with the less dependable between to assist as needed. But that wasn’t why Spike did it.

He wanted to keep her under his eye.

Having by far the best night-sight, Spike ranged around the squad of four, pacing them on one side, then crossing their course to the other side to investigate anything that could conceal attackers--the standing fixtures and gear of a fueling station, a parked emergency vehicle, an empty three-car baggage truck, a small private jet near the shut maintenance bay.

The whole landing area, naturally flat, was spongy-swampy at its edges: host to clouds of mosquitoes the children were beginning to find annoying despite being liberally smeared with stinking repellant that certainly would make any vampire want to keep his distance. Certainly had it all over garlic as far as Spike was concerned; but then again, he liked garlic. He wondered how Bringers reacted to appalling smells and to mosquitoes. The mosquitoes bypassed Spike for the tastier SITs, which was fine with him.

Most of the landing area was well lighted: around the periphery by highstanding sodium lights like skinny giants with bright, protuberant noses, and down both sides of the angled runway bisecting the space by rectangular light plates embedded in the ground. Good visibility. Few obstructions or places to hide. Near the top of the service road, Spike stood upwind of the squad, shut his eyes, and concentrated on sounds, smells, and that unnamed sense attuned to the body warmth of creatures that could bleed. Away off to his right, a human wandered seemingly at random. A visual check identified a uniformed groundskeeper or maintenance worker collecting debris into a sack. Nothing else bigger than a rat, of which there were a fair abundance. From time to time, Spike caught the quick small shine of their eyes as they scavenged the area by twos and threes. Since there were rats, there were almost certainly cats, foxes, and coyotes, but he didn’t sense any. Maybe they were wary of the lights and didn’t converge to hunt until the airport closed for the night.

Where there was prey, there would always be predators whether you spotted them or not, Spike reflected with a certain wryness.

Satisfied that the area was clear and couldn’t be invaded except in a way that would rouse his attention from a considerable distance, he walked back to the waiting squad. “Settle here until the plane comes in. Then we’ll flank passengers into the terminal and move on to the pick-up place in front.”

“What if something’s already in the terminal?” Kennedy demanded.

For about the fifth time since setting out, Spike reminded himself of the unpleasant consequences of tearing her face off, among them that Buffy wouldn’t like it. “Kind of think the Slayer might have noticed, if there was, don’t you?”

“There’s probably lots more places to hide in there,” Kennedy persisted. “And we’re all stuck out here.”

“And the minute the passengers get inside, Slayer’ll have three of your lot and a Watcher with her, makes five. And I count five of us here. Sort of balances out, now doesn’t it? Just how would you like it organized, pet?”

“If there’s fighting, I want to be where it is, that’s all.” Kennedy shifted and gripped her upper arms with the opposite hands.

“Oh, you’ll get over that,” drawled Kim, about the first thing she’d said all night. Having, like Amanda, taken part in the park patrol last night, Kim apparently now fancied herself a veteran, but mostly good-natured about it, with a slightly sardonic edge.

Spike kept his smile to himself. Settling into a comfortable crouch, he listened to the night and reminded himself four or five times why the coal of a lit cigarette was not a good idea when you were trying to remain unseen in a big flat open space with fine visibility.

“Never have liked open country,” he remarked quietly, passing the time. “Take a nice slum over any patch of green you care to name. Parks are nice, though: good hunting in parks.”

Kim stifled a burst of what she tried to make sound like coughing.

“Vampire humor,” said Kennedy sourly. “Just what we needed.”

“Now, you never know what you’ll need, pet.”

“I am not your pet!”

Meagan started, “Ken, put a sock--” and then hushed, seemingly alert enough to spot the slight change in Spike’s pose as he caught a faint whine pitched lower than the drone of mosquitoes.

“Down, children,” Spike advised, with no change of tone. “Don’t skyline yourselves, that’s the way. Best if you don’t fall down, Kim.”

“Yeah,” whispered Kim, recovering noisily. “Got that.”

Spike thought of mentioning that snakes were among the predators drawn to open places with abundant rats, but the cool air would have them torpid by now, not actively hunting and slithering around; and no purpose, beyond amusement, in making the children any more nervous than they already were. Still, he thought about it.

Wingtip lights blinking, the LA shuttle circled once high overhead before descending and tilting into its landing approach. Propeller craft, by the sound: twin engine, a stuttered double vibration not precisely synchronous. Didn’t see them much anymore, it’d all gone private jets except for starvation suburban runs like Sunnydale, where any old thing that could get itself up would do.

A pair of uniformed workers came out of the terminal and laid hands on a tall triangle of boarding steps on wheels, walking it slowly away from the wall as the plane’s fore wheels hit and complained loudly at being forced into a fast spin on contact. Then the tail wheel was down, slight bump and shudder. The propellers slowed a bit, brakes catching hold, flaps already down and changing how the air moved past. The plane nosed toward the terminal at no more than a walking pace, toward where the stair crew waited.

They’d chosen the correct side, Spike noted, noting the outline of the recessed door hatch. They’d see the passengers coming out. A plane that size, couldn’t be many more than seven or eight people inside, total. He doubted they’d have been served snacks.

Still nothing stirring on the field except the trash collector, far distant now, and the rats.

The propellers thwopped a few last times, then stilled. The stair was rolled into place against the plane. The hatch swung up. Behind the patrol, one of the maintenance bay doors rattled up and a tanker truck ground slowly out, dwarfed by the large opening. Spike returned his attention to the hatch.

An unfamiliar face, then another--flight crew, most likely, something of that sort. Then Rupert himself, halting and looking around before consenting to budge, typically wary, and well he should be. Following Rupert tight, two girls in similar blue dresses, good for keeping track of who was on whose side. Have to hand it to Rupert, he had this business of collecting Potentials down to a bloody science. No, there was the third, in the middle: so tiny only the top of her head was visible past the side of the stair.

You had your look, Rupert, now move the feet, get off the steps, you great git, you’re a bloody standing target, Spike thought. Aloud, he murmured, “Kim, watch the side, that’s the girl. Mistress Kennedy, if you’d be so kind…. The idea is not to be noticed, pet. Stoop down, you’ll find you can still walk if you really try. Just quietly now.”

A distant escort, the squad moved from the vicinity of the plane to where Spike gestured them to a halt, watching Rupert and the Potentials pass into the terminal. A motor starting was the baggage truck, whose trailing carts then rattled into motion.

The last Potential was inside. “Three quarters to gone, children. Around front now. Kennedy, swing by the car park, say hullo to Harris.”

“That’s not what--”

“Off you go, then. I don’t like Harris so long on his own, he’s apt to get into mischief. Or fall asleep. Tell him get the engine going, our birds have landed.”

“He has the pager--”

“I’ll go, Spike,” put in Amanda: poised, waiting.

At least somebody knew how to mind. Spike nodded, and Amanda trotted off, keeping beyond where the terminal lights extended onto the macadam.

With Kennedy leading off, the patrol ran toward the terminal’s front doorway and drop-off pick-up circle. There should be time to check the immediate area before baggage collection was complete and the passengers reached the same mark from the inside.

That was when Spike noticed the red brake lights of the vehicle disappearing, ahead, around the corner of the building, belonged to the tanker truck. Which had no business being headed toward the front entrance.

“Nasties in the truck, children. Go.”

When Spike rounded the corner several yards ahead of Kennedy, he found the tanker slowly approaching Xander’s parked truck nose-to-nose, blocking the truck’s passage. Stood to reason something else would be coming in behind, then, to block off the circular drive on the other side. He waved the squad to see to the tanker and kept moving, surprised to find Rupert and the new children in blue already standing by the truck and Buffy handing out weapons from the back. Then he spotted Amada coming from the parking area, across the circle. He dug for the car keys. Seeing Amanda had already spotted him, he mimed once, then threw the keys high and hard, bright in the tall area lights. She didn’t quite catch them but had grabbed them up in a second and jerked her head toward the parking area. He pointed, confirming her guess, and she turned and ran off the way she’d come. Spike headed in the other direction.

“Leave that, Slayer. Amanda’s gone for the car. They’ll be coming from the back now. Hullo, Rupert.”

Off the startled flash of Giles’ glasses, Spike kept moving. The baggage truck was coming around the far corner of the terminal. The following carts were full of Bringers. Thirty or more. But only one driver.

Make it a foot race, maybe.

Worth the chance>, Spike thought, flicked the axe up on its loop into his hand, and stepped into a flying dive at the open cab. Did the driver quick, grabbed the ignition key, rolled off and whacked two tires flat with the axe before the bringers piled off the carts and were upon him. A burning pain in his shoulder told him at least one had swapped his knife for a stake. He cut low, trying for legs, but with the robes that was chancy and a couple had nearly got a solid grip on him. And he was only holding a dozen or so. The rest were past, almost to the truck. Harris had tried to turn it across the circle but only succeeded in hanging up the undercarriage on the curb. Buffy and the rest had made it to the far side of the circle, and here came Amanda with the car, gonna be like a circus, that lot all trying to pile into the one car, but they should have the car before the Bringers had them, so time to depart.

Spike rolled and slashed until he could get his feet under him, then sprinted to the truck, that Harris was still trying to rock over the obstruction, grinding through the gears.

“Harris, you git, go! They don’t want your bloody truck now it’s empty, leave it!”

“Then they won’t want my bloody truck with just me in it, either.” Spike was hauling at the door to yank Harris out, and Harris hit the button to lock it, continuing, “First rule of construction: don’t lose the truck.”

That was when the tanker blew up.

Not airline fuel, not that kind of explosion. More WHUMP. Slow-motion splash. Burn. Some kind of lubricant, maybe, that didn’t catch fire all at once but splattered out as airborne debris, beginning to ignite in long thick gobs almost like tar. Liquid asphalt, maybe: for patching the runway.

Spike hung onto the door as the truck rocked and the thick, burning stuff started raining down. Harris just about knocked him down, shoving the door open. Staggering back, Spike went down on one stiff arm braced behind him, a bad position to rise quickly from. He flipped onto his knees and then up, in time to see the wildly overburdened station wagon, several pairs of waving legs out the back hatch, Harris half in and half out the swinging back door, and Kim scrabbling around on top, pull away and start rolling, a whole pack of Bringers not quite in grabbing distance. None left near him--all in flailing pursuit across the circle and into the road.

Well, that had been interesting, Spike thought, dusting his hands together, backing a few paces.

He didn’t know what brought his attention around.

It was a very simple image. Burning sludge was cascading slowly over the tanker cab and behind the windshield, Kennedy was struggling and screaming without sound.

Ah, hell.

Moving, accelerating, Spike considered. Nothing to hand to break the windshield and it would take too long to kick it in. Done it before, Spike thought, I can do it again. And closed both hands onto and through the burning sludge on the passenger side door handle. He ripped the door off and flung it wide. Most of the skin of his hands went with it. It’d been worse. He’d had worse pain than this. Lots of times.

The child was struggling to get out but had got hung up on the gear shift. Not a whole lot of good choices left. Spike tried to grab at the shoulder, where there was something to hold onto and her sleeve would keep some of what was on his hands from transferring to her skin. Couldn’t be sure if he had hold or not, but he hauled backward as hard as he could.

Spike wasn’t sure how that came out.