FOURTEEN


Although it was late, going for midnight, Dawn didn’t think anybody had gone to bed--or to sleep, more accurately, because it was sleeping bags on the floor all over the house every night, there didn’t begin to be enough beds, and the new SITs were going to have to move in with Xander, which Xander had been making eyebrow-waggling jokes about for days, big hairy deal, who cared.

Everybody was gathered in the front room, Command Central, with Fort-Holding Commander Willow, waiting for everybody else to get back from the airport. Rona, who had trouble sitting for any length of time because of her embarrassing injury she was so proud of, was wandering around sucking ginger ale through a straw and kibitzing on the Monopoly game Anya had started with five of the others, all laid out on the floor. Anya, intent, already had two hotels on Park Place and was gleeful that Chloe had landed there and had to pay her a fortune in fake money as rent. Anya also had the bank: stacks of fake money in front of her, neatly sorted by denomination.

Dawn wouldn’t play Monopoly with Anya anymore: Anya enjoyed it too much, and always won. The SITs would play because they were “fish”: new gullible victims to be fleeced. Fish fleece: funny. OK, a little funny. OK: lame. Dawn thought she’d ask Spike how you went about cheating at Monopoly. When she saw him again. Maybe.

Dawn was glum because they’d both been off today and snapped at each other. Then he’d gone downstairs and slept till dark--so weird: like a normal vampire--and there’d been no chance to make it right before the airport expedition left. Not that he hadn’t been unreasonable: Willow did let Kennedy sit in on the Scooby sessions when none of the other SITs were allowed, and that wasn’t fair, everybody knew it; and it was Dawn’s house too and Dawn therefore had a right to be wherever she was; but Spike was often or even mostly unreasonable and if she was going to get mad at him for that, she’d be mad all the time and she didn’t like how that felt. Her stomach all twisted up and everything tasted like pennies.

She thought he’d had the Awful Dream again that he would never talk about: he was like that afterward when he wasn’t worse. He’d managed all right through the haircut and all, but he still didn’t like the bathroom and no wonder it put him right off, and after that he’d just gotten more and more off and couldn’t pretend properly anymore. It was best to leave him alone then, but Dawn hadn’t noticed until too late, and then she’d been off too for not having noticed and then getting thrown out when if she’d just kept still, she could have stayed.

If she understood the Awful Dream she’d know better what to do, but he’d never told her the truly awful stuff: the merely gross and disgusting stuff, he hadn’t known was awful when he’d told it to her. Now he wouldn’t even tell her that, because he knew now. The soul had cost him his demonic innocence.

Dawn wasn’t sure the soul was a good thing. She had the right to be skeptical because as an ex-Mystical-Key-thingy, like Anya was an ex-Vengeance (excuuuse me: Justice!) Demon, Dawn wasn’t sure she herself had one and maybe it was all over-rated, you could be people without it, there’d never been a time when Spike wasn’t people.

After Buffy and the airport team left, Dawn had slunk downstairs and snuck his notebook, to see if he’d written anything about the AD there, but she’d leafed through it now and found it wasn’t like a diary. Maybe vampires didn’t do diaries, that was a long time to keep up a habit. Nothing there but the stuff about the fledges and some of it new, so she realized he’d gone back and found the nest all by himself, without her, last night.

And after the new notes about Bob (Bob, the Vampire: how excessively dorky!), in Spike’s odd lovely precise old-fashioned handwriting, that wasn’t at all like how you’d think he would write, there was: they’re gone what the hell what the hell.

That made her feel even worse, knowing how much it meant to him, Line of Aurelius an’ all, vague despairing Alien gestures with his hands when he thought nobody was looking, when he wasn’t looking, all off, careless, and unfocused: figuring it didn’t matter because nobody would see or, seeing, understand….

Dawn wondered if that’s what people meant when they said something was enough to break your heart. She wondered if that’s what this feeling was, a heart breaking. It should make some kind of a noise, so you’d know and could tell it right away from a stomach ache or cramps.

All at once, she thought, It’s all in the blood, like my Keyness. The blood that made them. The blood they share. The Blood of Aurelius, down from forever. What about a locater spell? and was all excited and about to ask Willow when Willow yelled really loud and scared everybody practically out of their skins.

Anya hopped up and darted among SITs to the big chair where Willow sat with the laptop and maps and notes and everything deployed on a small folding table in front of her, and the phone right beside her on the weapons chest, demanding sharply, “What is it? You made me spill my money!”

Willow’s eyes hadn’t gone all black or anything, but she looked as though they could, any second. She was locked, clenched, staring straight up, as though she was either having a seizure or seconds from exploding. Without looking Willow grabbed Anya’s wrist and still without looking slammed Anya’s hand down on the diagram of the airport laid out flat on the little table. “He’s there. Go get him. Now!”

“Xander?” shrieked Anya, already yanking her wrist free, whirling away.

“Spike! Now, Anya!”

Anya vanished.

Dawn was frantic. It was so hard to find out what had happened or was happening. When Kennedy showed up, moving crooked and sobbing with a dislocated shoulder and bad burns on her right shoulder and upper arm, encrusted with something black and tarry, and on the whole side of her left leg below the knee, Dawn didn’t understand how Kennedy had been injured or where she’d come from. The airport of course, but it was too hard with everybody flocking around and getting Kennedy laid down on the couch and Willow sternly naming off the spell ingredients she needed from upstairs with tears steadily rolling down her face, to understand anything and where was Spike? Where was he?

Everybody running in forty directions, Kennedy wailing insanely, “He didn’t change! He didn’t change!” like that was the worst thing in the world or an insult, flailing around and not letting anybody try to lock her shoulder and pull it straight, screaming while Willow cleared them all away from the couch and set out the ingredients and made the spell, Sumerian by the sound, babbling, “It will be OK, baby, just be quiet, baby,” in between as though it was part of the spell, and Dawn clutching the notebook tight against her chest and backed against the wall, getting more and more scared and at the same time more and more quiet until people’s mouths were moving but there was nothing and no spell either, no sound at all. Just a sort of vibrating high-pitched whine that went on and on.

And then somehow Amanda was in front of her, frowning, and more people, Buffy, barging in and adding to the confusion, Xander and Anya hugging hard out in the hall, some way Anya was there again, and nobody would tell her where Spike was, nobody was making any sound or any sense, just the lone white keening in her head.

Amanda jerked at her until she unlocked, and Dawn stumbled and moved where Amanda pulled her and made her go, and now Kim had her arm around Dawn’s back and was helping Amanda steer her into the kitchen. While Amanda made Dawn sit on one of the tall chairs, Kim shut the hall door.

Amanda was saying something to her, frowning, very serious, but Dawn still couldn’t hear her and she wasn’t breathing, she’d forgotten how.

Then suddenly all the sounds rushed back, Amanda’s solemn voice saying slowly, “--all right, he’ll heal, he’s a vampire,” and Dawn started choking as she remembered how to breathe. Amanda and Kim hugged her until the choking became breathing and the shaking began, as though she’d frozen solid and was starting to thaw.

“But where is he?” Dawn said in some tiny squeak that didn’t sound like her voice at all.

Amanda and Kim exchanged a glance. Kim said, “I’ll find out. I’ll be right back. Don’t be scared, Bit. We’ll see to it.”

When Kim called her by the name nobody else called her, the thaw ran through her and she was all liquid and hurting, sobbing against Amanda’s neck with Amanda hugging her even harder and patting her back.

Kim returned, shutting the door and setting her shoulders against it. “He’s downstairs. Anya teleported straight there. Buffy--”

Dawn started fighting to get free, to get down there, but Amanda and Kim wouldn’t let her, held tight against her flailing punches and only turned their faces aside when she struck at them, and still hung on, and they were stronger that she was and it wasn’t fair.

“He’s there?” Dawn asked tremulously. “He’s alive?”

As Kim started explaining that nobody was allowed in the basement, Buffy was down there, like before, Dawn heard in her head Spike’s voice saying, Wouldn’t be there if I’d dusted, pet, now would I? And alive, sure, except for the being dead an’ all.

That made sense. She should have known that herself. She was just being stupid. She reached and tore a paper towel from the roll and began scrubbing at her eyes. “I’m sorry I was dumb. I was just so scared.” She blew her nose loudly.

“You don’t begin to be dumb compared to what Kennedy pulled,” Kim said flatly.

Amanda said, “Leave it alone.”

“You didn’t see it. I did.”

“It’s not the time, Kim. Let’s put it all together another time.”

“No,” said Kim, and folded her arms. “She should know. Nobody’s telling her anything, like when your parents fight, and nobody will say why, and she needs to know something.” Short chubby Kim stared down tall skinny Amanda, then turned to Dawn.

“So there’s this middle-sized tanker truck. Big, but not like an eighteen-wheeler. All stinky and black, got messy dripped stuff all over it. Bringer driving, OK? And another at shotgun. It was blocking Xander’s truck. Spike sent us to deal with it. Me and Meagan take the shotgun guy, Ken takes the driver because she has the taser. So she drags him out and does him, then she gets up behind the wheel and hollers she’s gonna back the tanker out, clear the way. Only she’s never driven shift, she gets all messed up with the shift lever and she’s fighting it, grinding the gears, and the tanker’s not moving, and I’m yelling at her to get out, we’re going, everybody else is running for the car, OK? So she slams both doors, she’s gonna get that tanker moving or else because now she’s too stubborn to back off. And I’m runnin’ for the station wagon, everybody piles in and there’s no room for me, so I step on the back bumper and I make this terrible leap, sprawl on the top, and I’m tryin’ to hang on, and the car’s moving, OK? And this whole big mob of Bringers is chasing after us. And back by the terminal there’s a Bringer we didn’t see, or one new, I dunno, on top of the tanker, got one of the hatches open. And then it blows. Like chucking a big rock into mud. If the mud caught fire and burned. Like what you see about lava. All over the place. And Ken’s stuck inside, can’t get the doors open now because of the burning crud all running down all over it. And then Spike turns and sees it. And he just went after her, like he goes after everything, headfirst slide only it isn’t, not a slide, OK? So he rips the door off, flings Ken the hell way into the air back behind him, just when the station wagon makes the turn to the street and I have to hang on and I don’t see any more. But here I’m bangin’ on the roof, banging like a maniac, and when we get a few blocks off Manda finally stops, and no Bringers, so I can slide down and say we left some behind.” The remembered chase suddenly halted, Kim hitched her shoulders uncomfortably, frowning. “But we had the new SITs with, and Mr. Giles, and that was the mission, and I think the Slayer was on the cellphone. To get something done. Send somebody. But I had to get in and we came back. Spike would never do that. No matter who it was, he would’a come for us. If he came for Ken.”

“Yeah,” said Amanda soberly. She had her arms folded and was looking at the floor. “Yeah, he would.”

Maybe not once, Dawn thought, but now he would. He’d do that now, not think twice. You’re mine. I’ll keep you from death. Even Kennedy, who’d been nothing but spiteful and mean. Probably the soul. Maybe there was some use to it.

Opening the notebook to a clean page, she held it out to Kim. “I want you to write it down. Just what you saw. Just like you said it.”

Kim hesitated, then came and took the notebook. “OK. I guess. Put it down while it’s fresh. I’ll do it.”

Dawn went on, “Kennedy was yelling that he didn’t change. What does that mean.”

Kim made a noise she instantly muffled behind a fist, as if ashamed it was funny, which was stupid. If it was funny, then it was, no matter if awful things were part of it.

Amanda decided to field that one. “It was…. Ken said that if she made him mad enough, he’d turn. She wanted to make him turn. ‘Show his true face,’ was what she said, which is so űber-dumb because it’s not like he made any secret about it. Hello: vampire here! So I guess…he didn’t. Even when he went after her.”

There was a silence. Then Dawn slid off the chair. “Yeah, that’s dumb. It’s all Spike. Always.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Amanda agreed uncertainly.

Dawn told Kim, “Bring me the notebook when you’re done.”

Then she went to see if Willow needed help, or what else she could do to make herself useful.