The Blood Is the Life
by Nan Dibble

Chapter 5: Vigil

Greeted enthusiastically by everyone, settled in the big chair Spike had left so emphatically vacant, and provided with cookies and hastily made coffee, Oz blinked at them all happily.

“OK,” Buffy decreed, “meeting is officially adjourned, to be reconvened at a later date. So, Oz: you know all the obvious questions--spill.”

Oz held up a finger, giving notice that he was still occupied with chewing.

He looked fine, Buffy thought. A little more obvious muscle on him, visible in his shoulders and arms. Face heavier, too: less pixie, more wolf. Jaw more pronounced, more projecting, russet eyebrows thicker. Same short rough-cut duck-fluff dark auburn hair that seemed to call out to be combed flat with fingers. (Buffy shot a glance at Willow, but after the initial hopping group hug, Willow had resettled herself in the wood occasional chair, all smiling, cool, and attentive in the presence of the boyfriend-left-behind.) It was easier than it used to be to see, not a small man, but a very large and substantial werewolf in its human aspect.

“Music is fine,” Oz reported finally. “Did some club gigs in Seattle, Tacoma but then the band split. Guys wanted to do a demo. I didn’t. Getting into mandolin now.” His fingers demonstrated quick banjo-like plucking. “Whole new set of calluses.” His spread hands lifted to display the thick, toughened pad on each of his fingers. “Been mostly doing RenFaires, folk art festivals, Miss Fall Fruit celebrations, Antique Extravaganzas. Open air, healthy. Less smoke.” He threw a flashing glance at the front door. “Spike seemed fairly hot there. Think he’ll be back soon?”

Buffy caught something non-casual in his tone. “Why?”

“Well, it’s actually him I came to see. Looked first at his crypt, but there was a whole crowd of vamps there. They seemed pretty occupied and not too sociable. Spike not in attendance. I came on to Scooby Central. But he was on his way out.”

Till after we’ve talked with Giles. Spike’s remark popped into Buffy’s head, and she was suddenly sure that in keeping with only the letter and not the spirit of their compromise, furious Spike was making a bee-line for Restfield Cemetery in search of some unrestrained mayhem. Alone, as he’d wanted. With a twenty minute lead.

Begging Oz’s pardon with a glance, Buffy leaned past to grab the handset of the standard phone on the weapons chest and punched in numbers. No joy: as usual, Spike either had his cell turned off or, more likely, hadn’t taken it with him.

She dumped the whole phone on the floor and grabbed the keys to the SUV to clear and lift the lid of the chest. She started to grab a stake out of the bag, then changed her mind and took the whole bag.

Everybody jumped as the lid crashed shut.

“I’m sorry,” Buffy said to Oz. “I gotta go. Everybody, take care of Oz and Giles, all right?”

She headed for the door.

Oz offered alertly, “Want company?” and Giles asked, “Buffy, what’s wrong?”

Buffy just shook her head and kept going. No time to sort things out, explain, or plan. Twenty minute lead: it could be over already.

At best, Buffy was an erratic driver but not normally a reckless one. Tonight, she ran yellow lights, red lights, and stop signs, and bullied the sparse traffic she met out of her way with the SUV’s careening bulk and blaring horn. She saw three pedestrians jogging across the street ahead of her. Three tall girls, arguing and gesturing. Buffy slammed on the brakes and looked down into the startled faces of Amanda, Rona, and Kennedy.

“Get in.”

They did, in haste. Finding the bag of stakes, Kennedy started distributing them as the SUV jerked back into motion and Amanda started explaining anxiously, “We didn’t want to bother you, I’m sure we’ll find her all right.”

With difficulty, Buffy changed mental gears. “Find who.”

“Kim,” said Kennedy.

“It’s all my fault,” wailed Rona, in back, and burst into sobs.

“Amanda. Report. Make it fast,” directed Buffy grimly.

“’Manda doesn’t know it all,” said Kennedy, leaning forward between the seats. “Spike came and told me that something I’d hoped for hadn’t worked out. I went and told Kim and Rona, and Rona took off in a flaming snit.”

“My fault!”

“Shut up, Rona,” Kennedy snapped. “When she wasn’t back by supper time, we got worried went looking for her. There was going to be a Scooby council meeting, so we didn’t want to bother Spike about it. Or you, of course. Then I got the bright idea to call ‘Manda, to cover more ground. I named the mark, and Kim went on ahead, to meet at the mark in ten minutes. Come to find out, Rona had just gotten there. To Amanda’s, I mean. She’d been hanging at the mall all day, and ‘Manda lives by there. I told them to stay put and went to the mark to tell Kim. She wasn’t there. I waited half an hour. Still no Kim. So I went back to the pay phone and called ‘Manda again, they came, and we’ve all been looking.”

“Where was the mark?” Buffy demanded.

“Corner of Mulberry and Lucas, at the bus stop.”

Buffy shut her eyes for a second, then opened them in time to swerve and miss a wandering Golden Retriever. Mulberry Avenue, that she was driving down, bounded the south side of Restfield Cemetery. And cruising vamps just loved to find people waiting at bus stops.

Usually Buffy would have used one of the many trees with overhanging branches to get over the cemetery wall. But Oz’s report of seeing a bunch of vampires in the vicinity of Spike’s old crypt made her reluctant to leave behind whatever advantage the SUV’s tank-like weight, power, and headlights might grant. Pulling up to the next gate, she broke the chain with a tire iron. Amanda pulled the gate open, then shut it when the SUV was through and climbed back in.

Buffy slowed the vehicle to a crawl, scanning the familiar cemetery-scape for motion. She didn’t know where the two new vamp nests were located, but the most likely places were to the north, where most of the big mausoleums were.

The road was forced into a curve by the girth of an enormous oak. As the headlights swung around, illuminating the various headstones, monuments, and stands of assorted bushes and widely spaced trees, the light stopped on a low grassy mound above which was visible a wall topped with a two-tiered molding: the back of Spike’s crypt, the rear of which was built into the earth.

Buffy stopped and set the hand brake, checking the area. She couldn’t lock the SUV without turning off the engine. Nothing moving. She turned the key but left the headlights on. They all slipped out, Buffy retaining the tire iron. She signaled the SUV to lock itself and made sure the keys were securely stowed, then led off. The three SITs moved into practiced formation to either side and behind her, and Buffy couldn’t help but contrast that experienced discipline with their haphazard attempt to locate Rona.

Why they’d picked the vicinity of a known dangerous graveyard to look for her was an obvious question. For later. Now they moved silently, circling the mound, spread at the right distance to notice any threat within striking distance but not far enough to be easily separated, cut off.

Still nothing. They’d come far enough that Buffy could see that the crypt had been broken into: the heavy oak door had been broken from its top hinge and hung crooked, its weight straining the lower hinge. The interior was pitch black. When she advanced to the first of the three downward steps, Buffy made out a slightly lighter spot: the back of Spike’s head. He was sitting on the floor at the foot of the sarcophagus.

“Spike?”

No reaction.

The last time Buffy had been here, there’d been a candle set on the sarcophagus. She went down the steps and moved her hand slowly over the flat, chest-high surface. Locating the candle, she grasped it before it fell over, then realized she had no matches or lighter. She was about to ask Spike for his when the smell, already subliminally noticed, hit her: blood. Fresh. Lots of it. She passed the candle blindly backward, hoping one of the SITs would have a way to light it, and dropped onto her knees behind Spike, grabbing him in a tight hug.

“Are you OK?”

No answer, and she started patting at his chest to find any wet patches. Then he said hoarsely, “Fine,” in about the least fine tone she could imagine.

A point of candle light bloomed and steadied from behind. Buffy found she was looking over Spike’s shoulder at Kim’s corpse. The girl’s throat had been torn out. There was blood all over her chest and shoulders. The crypt floor near her head was black with it.

Rona screeched and somebody, probably Amanda, scuffed outside and began to heave noisily.

“I’ll see to her,” Spike said in that same emotionless voice.

“We have to take her home,” Buffy said, starting to rise.

“No!” Spinning around, Spike knocked her off balance and backward. He was poised on fingertips, staring at her with fierce, deranged blue eyes. Guarding the corpse. “I’ll have to see to her.”

Buffy clapped a hand to her lips, realizing he thought Kim might have been turned.

“Can’t you tell?” she asked shakily.

His eyes finally drifted away, and he turned back and settled as he’d been before. “No.”

“How long?”

“A day. Two. Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On who turned her. She’s just dead now. Can’t tell nothing from that.”

Kim’s head was nearly severed from her body. Not much would be needed to finish it and end the possibility now. But as Buffy started to get up, Spike said, quietly this time, “No. Let the child be. I’ll stay with her. If she rises… I’ll stay with her. You get the children home. Or wherever they’re to go. You see to that, Buffy. I’ll see to this.”

If there was one thing Buffy was certain of, it was that she wasn’t going to leave him alone with a corpse stinking of blood in a wide-open crypt in a cemetery where at least a dozen vampires laired. Standing, Buffy got out the key bundle and exchanged it for the pillar candle Kennedy was holding. She told the girl, “Take Amanda home. Then you and Rona go back to Casa Summers. Tell them what’s happened. See that Rona gets to sleep. Willow can do that. Then tell Willow I need her here in the morning for a heavy-duty protection spell. Can you do that?”

Big-eyed and swallowing convulsively, Kennedy nodded and got sobbing Rona turned around and out the broken door.

Buffy paid no more attention but went immediately back to Spike, settling behind him, her back against the sarcophagus. She placed the candle arm’s reach away, on the floor. She tried out, in her mind, various things she might do or say and ended up discarding them all. She just waited. Until her back began to ache and her butt was numb from the cold stone. When Spike could break out of the rigidity of his grieving, he’d notice that she was there. Of course, he knew now on some level. But in his mind, he was alone with the dead SIT, and Buffy didn’t try to intrude on that. She’d ceded responsibility for the SITs to him. She understood that they were his still. All of them. In death as in life.

After several hours, he said abruptly, quietly, “If she’s turned, this is my fault.”

“Why, Spike?”

“She bore my mark. Any vamp might have come across her, eaten her, by chance. But she…. She was caught and brought here. Killed here. Turned, maybe. With my mark set on her, saying she was mine and under my protection.”

“Oh, God: the territorial claim,” Buffy realized.

“Yeah. Figure so. Poor little cow walked right into it. So they used her to play me. The insult direct. Answering move, opening gambit. Fool’s chess…. If she’s been turned, and because she was mine…. Have to do ‘em all, Buffy. Nothing else for it. Three of ‘em still here when I came. Thought-- Thought I’d collect a weapon or two I still have put away here. An’ they were here, playing with her. She was already gone, though.”

No need to ask what’d happened to the three vamps. It was quite likely Buffy was sitting on their dust. And she’d arrived all ready to tear into Spike about the utter stupidity of taking on the Restfield vamps on his own. She probably would never do that now, even though he richly deserved it. This had intervened, rendering all lesser matters petty and irrelevant.

“Oh,” he said, in a tone of recollecting something. Fumbling in a pocket, he came up with the cellphone and punched in a number. After a moment, he said, “Spike. I default.” He listened, then said, “Can’t help that. Dock my odds. Take me off the fucking board, for all I care. Willy, I don’t give a damn.” He shut the phone and tried to put it away but instead dropped it. She could hear him pulling in deep breaths. She reached out then, stiffly uncurling, and pulled him unresisting back against her. Buffy held him tight against the shaking.

She thought about repeating to him Kennedy’s account of how Kim had come to be here: how it’d been Rona who’d bolted and Kim part of the small and badly organized search team. But there was still the question of why Rona had bolted in the first place and the fact that the other SITs hadn’t brought the matter to her or to Spike but instead tried to handle it themselves. Too much still undetermined. And even if it were to be all untangled and explained, detective style, it would still leave Spike where he was: confronting the death of a girl for which he felt responsible.

When the candle had burned nearly to its base, she told him quietly, “They’re all civilians now. Most have gone home. And they were alive to go home because you brought them through and didn’t lose a single one. Not one, Spike. Whatever started this, they got into it by themselves and handled it in the stupidest way possible. Kids like Kim die in Sunnydale every day. From being stupid. Or careless. Or just unlucky. You got them through to the jumping-off point. Not one was killed by Bringers or by Turok-han. They weren’t your responsibility anymore. If they’d had the sense to come to us, or to Willow, this could have been avoided. But they didn’t. They were dumb. We protected them the very best we could. You’re not responsible for this.”

She waited for his response. The shaking had passed, or he’d controlled it. After awhile he said, “That was that Oz: Willow’s mutt, from before. The werewolf. Got him placed now. What’d he want?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, they’ll take care of it until we can go back.” Through the open door, the sky was lightening. “Spike.” She nudged him, rocked him a little. “We’ll have to move. The sun’s coming.” When Spike didn’t respond, Buffy said, “The door’s broken. The sun will come in. We could take her down to your basement.”

“Bed’s gone.”

“At least it’s dark there. The two of us could take her down easy. We can’t stay here. C’mon, Spike. I’ll hand her down to you.”

He said, “There are no children like Kim.”

Only later, passing the stiffening body to his upraised arms and the crypt’s lower level, did Buffy realize his comment was in belated answer to her try at consolation. So she guessed it hadn’t worked. She hadn’t really expected it to.

**********

It was very simple: if she rose tonight, it was Michael. If she didn’t, it was not. The second night, if she rose, any mature vamp might have turned her, and she might be able to say which. If she didn’t rise the third night--and it might take as long as that--she was merely dead, perhaps by intent, perhaps by mischance. The others could have her then, to do whatever they considered seemly.

Waiting occupied the whole of Spike’s attention except for what was focused rigidly on the blood.

It had dried. On her, and above. What little remained within her was as dead as she was, spoiled. No life left in it. If she’d been turned, whatever blood her sire had forced on her was working undetectably to transform the whole, open the way to the demon that would inhabit this flesh. Nothing left that even remotely could constitute food anymore.

But the smell of it was still present--to him, if not to the others who came and went. And it was their blood he was chiefly aware of. That lived and moved in them, on the level above. If he’d been attending to voices, he could have named them. Willow, he supposed, since Buffy had summoned her, and later reported that she’d put a protection on the crypt no vamp could pass until a certain word was said, He didn’t remember the word. There’d been one or two others up above, as well. Dawn, he thought. And something inhuman, whose blood he nevertheless could have fed on. That Oz, he supposed.

Buffy was kind and strict: she allowed nobody else to come down and went above when others were present. Was away, sometimes, because she had to be: to eat, rest, shower, do human things. Then came back, and down, and was with him again, mostly silent, patient with what must seem to her his inattention. He wasn’t sure whether her absence or her presence was worse. When she was away, he felt desperate, frantic, adrift, certain she’d made the choice and severed herself to some different life. And when she returned and was present, it was impossible he’d ever reveal to her how he perceived her then: what she meant, what he wanted from her.

It was almost three days since he’d fed from the drunk in the alley, and that hardly more than a snack. His demon was in deep need--restless and intent, demanding to hunt. He ignored it, controlled it. Blessedly she hadn’t realized, hadn’t offered. If he stayed very still and didn’t look at her, she wouldn’t notice. And he wouldn’t see a blur unfocused except for the shining heat of her exposed skin and the visible beat of her pulse.

He’d done without before. Even into the extreme of starvation, of which he was in no danger yet, merely by willing himself still. It would take at least a couple of weeks to reach the point where his control of his demon might slip and it might get past him and take whatever it found and could get at. This would be long settled then. He’d manage.

Unless Michael had taken her as defiance, if she rose, Kim was dead because Spike had set his mark on her. To feed from her. By her consent. After that, the SITs had spilled their blood into cups for him. It died a little, being away from the source, but still good and sweet and strong. Barely diminished. So the only one marked was Kim.

Not acceptable.

Fasting while he kept vigil seemed an appropriate penance. Not sufficient, but fitting. The soul approved. It would help him keep clear in his mind what he’d set himself to, and why.

After a time and because the crypt was now protected, Buffy went away: to rest, to be able to watch with him through the night. Although all his dread of her choosing otherwise and never returning flared up again, it was still easier when she was gone. Day was his time to sleep, and he let himself be overtaken by it, a dreamless blank. Nothing would happen before nightfall, and he doubted anything would happen then.

Buffy could be present on the first night. Nothing would happen and she therefore wouldn’t try to interfere.

Spike’s demon woke him quite sharply when Buffy dropped down from the upper level rather than bother with the broken-rung ladder. Spike remembered and kept it all contained and still.

Only the Old Blood would rise the first night. All the same, Spike moved to a new place with a wall at his back and took Kim’s body into his arms, across his lap. Rigor was passing off. Little pressure was needed to fold her close, in something like a human posture. Buffy brought him water in a dish, and a cloth, and he cleaned Kim’s face and the edges of the gaping, ragged wound. Buffy helped unbutton and cut away the child’s stained blouse that contained a woman’s contours: large, heavy breasts, a belly rounder than current fashions dictated. She’d have been a beauty much sought after, many places he’d known. But she’d never know that; and if she rose, the change would shed her of that padding soon enough. Spike had never seen a fat vampire although some, like Angel and like Mike, were surely big enough…. Not fat, though. Buffy helped him wipe and rinse all the crusted blood away. Then they dressed Kim’s corpse in a clean blouse Buffy had brought from Casa Spike: carefully buttoned and smoothed, without folds.

Coming back from disposing of the spoiled water, down the tunnel where Spike had tapped into the city system and put in two faucets, one high enough for showering, the ruddy shimmer of heat and life that was Buffy handed something toward him: a mug filled with water for him.

He considered a moment and decided that was allowed. When he handed the mug back empty, she returned it refilled, or maybe it was another one, and he drank that too but placed it on the floor to mean that was enough.

She set a hand on his shoulder. It felt hot enough to burn. He flinched enough that her hand lifted, and he was sorry to have shown such an obvious reaction. But she didn’t seem annoyed, asking him in a quiet, steady voice how he was holding up.

Starting to answer, he had to clear his throat because no voice was there. Then he remembered to breathe. “Well enough.” He shut his eyes, to not see her. Not the way he was seeing her.

“I didn’t know you were so attached to her,” Buffy’s voice commented carefully: a question.

“There were a lot of children. Kim, I knew. Too many hostages.”

“What?”

Spike only shook his head. He didn’t want to tell her about the Powers, lumber her with that. His to see to. As this was.

Dylan Thomas knew: After the first death, there is no other.

There was only the one death, the one victim. All others were merely repetition.

Patiently, Spike kept vigil for all his dead.

**********

The afternoon of the second day, when Buffy had gone away to sleep, Spike laid Kim’s body gently aside and checked the tunnel passage. As he’d thought, it was open to him: Willow had never been to the lower level of the crypt and hadn’t realized another entrance was there. It wasn’t blocked by her spell.

Probably, if he’d really tried, he could have called up the password he’d been told. But he didn’t need to.

He lifted Kim’s body, then hesitated, frowning. He should leave a note, so Buffy wouldn’t worry and imagine horrible things. But there was no way to do that. A pace toward the tunnel opening, and then he thought of the cellphone. But it wasn’t in his pocket. Must have forgotten it somewhere.

He stood swaying, undecided. Then he again put Kim down and climbed to the upper level. Bright sunlight was blazing in the broken doorway, splashed halfway across the crypt. But the head of the sarcophagus was still safe. Wiping the smooth stone clean with his arm, he allowed the demon to show forth to let fangs tear the side of a finger and drew uneven letters with the blood: DONT FRET.

That should do.

That was all right, then.

He took Kim away through the tunnels, a mile or more: westward, away from the houses, where he knew there was an alcove were tools were kept. The sewer line was an offshoot, led nowhere of interest, and was lit by grates during the day. Going as slowly as he was, the light was gone before he reached the final stretch. Noplace he judged they were likely to be disturbed. At least the best place he’d been able to think of.

He let Kim down, broke into the alcove with a couple of solid kicks, and took her inside. A quiet, private place and a hell of a lot better than clawing your way out of a coffin, however shallowly buried. He settled more or less as he had been, cradling Kim, and resumed his wait.

After an uncounted time, he was aware of a pair of eyes at the far side of the tunnel. Yellow. Because he hadn’t bothered to shift aspect, he could discern the outline. Tall, broad, unmoving. He shut his eyes and turned his head tiredly. Night one was past: not the Line of Aurelius. Not Michael.

“You stood me up,” Michael said in no particular tone of voice. “Defaulted.”

A distance of maybe twenty feet was no barrier to conversation between a pair of vampires.

“Sue me.”

“That means I win.”

“Congratulations. Fuck off.”

“Dawn said it was Kim.”

Bit talks too much, Spike thought, leaning his head back against the tiles. “Surprised you didn’t fetch her along.”

Silence. Apparently unworthy of comment. Then Mike said, “Spike, sometimes you’re a total asshole.”

“Only sometimes? Must be losing my touch. Go away, Michael. Tisn’t none of your concern, an’ talking to you isn’t worth breathing for.”

Mike ambled closer until he was standing just outside the alcove. Looking down. Studying Kim. Good they’d cleaned her up then. She would have been mortified to have Mike see her the way she’d been.

Mike asked abruptly, “You fed?”

“Hell with you, Michael.”

“You fed, you idiot?”

Spike clenched and almost moved. Then he remembered Kim and stilled. Mike didn’t speak or stir for long enough that Spike forgot about him, slowly stroking Kim’s hair.

“I’ll take her away,” Mike said. “Someplace. You’d never see her again. Stay a week or so, to get her settled. Maybe find somebody to look after her so she wouldn’t be all on her own, not knowing nothing nor how to do.”

It slowly sank in that Mike was talking about Kim, not Dawn. Spike thought of about twenty reasons, explanations, then simply said, “No.”

“It was the Restfield pack, wasn’t it. One of ‘em. So it was my fault, shooting off my mouth about you claiming that ground. Wasn’t sure if that was what you meant, just me banned or everybody. Took the worst interpretation. Because I was mad. Also stupid. Never knew Sunnydale when it had stable territories, under the Master that was. Didn’t know what kind of a flap a claim could stir up. Let me take her, Spike.”

“Go away, Michael. This is mine to see to.”

“You ain’t fed. Bet I could beat you for her.”

Spike slowly raised his head. “You piss off or I will tear your fucking throat out.”

Kim stirred. At once, Spike attended only to her, held her close and strong as the change came upon her, the ghastly neck wound filming over and then suddenly whole, healed without a mark. All the skin smoother, denser, so pale as to seem nearly luminescent. No sudden breath, no cry to this birth. Only the features of her round face shifting from within to the aspect she’d display perhaps forever.

The newly risen demon opened golden eyes.

“Kim, love. Don’t be afraid, I got you. How are you, treasure?”

“Spike. It was so strange…. I was looking for Rona. Is she all right? Is she…here?” Kim began looking around her. In case Rona was nearby.

“She’s fine. I sent her home. Just us. How do you feel, pet?”

Kim stretched languorously. “I feel…fine! Strong!” She sounded surprised. “Why are you holding me? Was I hurt?”

“Some, but you’re better now. Have to make sure everything works right before you get up. Might be a bit dizzy. Just lie still now till I’m sure. A vamp got at you, took a bite out of you. Do you remember?”

“I want something,” announced Kim, frowning. Game face made that a savage expression. “What is it, that I want? Who’s that?” She twisted to see, faster than Spike could hold her still with one hand. “Mike. Hi!” She smiled--a mouthful of fangs. “You smell good. Much better than Spike. Why is that? Come closer. Let me smell.”

Mike raised his eyes to Spike’s and backed a step. He began rolling up a sleeve to bare his forearm.

Spike said, “It’s important, pet, to know which vamp…hurt you. If you can remember. You seen lots of vamps. All sorts. You’re not a girl to get all terrified in a fight and not notice the details for the log. What did the vamp look like?”

“Let me up,” Kim said, starting to struggle. “I’m hungry. I need…something. I want--”

Spike’s free hand brought the stake down. Kim looked briefly surprised before she collapsed into dust. Spike leaned slowly forward into the space her form had vacated. Folding his arms across his knees, he bent his forehead against them.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when Michael shook his shoulder roughly and roused him. When he lifted his head, drifty and disoriented, Michael had opened his own arm and presented it, bleeding, right in front of Spike’s nose. Spike’s demon had no scruples and no reservations. It wanted and took, in great gulps, worrying at the flesh to make the blood come faster, pulling hard. There was nothing else but the thirst and its slaking. Just as if he were only a fledge, consumed by appetite.

It wasn’t until the worst of the bloodthirst was eased, and Spike pulled violently away, that he truly tasted the blended blood and caught the strong undertone of Summers. Without which Mike’s blood could not be food to him. Which, when he’d been thinking, he’d known would be there, and refused.

“It wasn’t for me anyway,” Mike said, licking up the last of the blood, closing the wound.

Spike just stared dazedly at a wall as Dawn’s second-hand blood worked through him, easing exhaustion, replenishing his strength, clearing his mind. Doing nothing whatever about the sorrow or the weight of the soul’s revulsion.

“You fit to get back on your own?” Mike asked, buttoning a cuff.

“In a while.”

“C’mon. Bike’s not far.” Mike hauled him out of the alcove, stood him up. The tunnel blurred and swooped before Spike’s eyes. The focus, the concentration he’d maintained for Kim’s sake seemed to have gone with her. He had no firm conviction of what he should do, and wandered along because Mike kept pushing at him. Mike kept talking: “I’ll stand you to a rematch in a week. I’m on the board now, at Willy’s. At the bottom, at lousy odds, but I figure to better that. C’mon, move yourself. Not much farther, and I’ll let you drive. Should be steady enough to hold the handlebars.”

“Is Bit all right?”

“Was when I left her. Can’t answer for now. You’d best get home and ask her yourself.”

That seemed to make sense.