A Raising in the Sun

by Barb Cummings

 

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: All belongs to Joss and Mutant Enemy, and naught to me.

Summary: Post "The Gift", spoilers for everything under the sun; Pairing: None, 'cause of that inconvenient Buffy being dead thing, but it’s S/B in spirit



Chapter 2

Half an hour later, Willow was setting up her laptop on the kitchen table, Spike was pouring himself another helping of Dawn's science project, and Tara was sitting cross–legged on the couch listening intently to everyone else.  Hank Summers was fighting a growing sense of unreality with stronger coffee while Dawn gave him the Dealing With Vampires 101 lecture.  Dawn was obviously enjoying finally having someone less clueful than herself to instruct in the ways of the supernatural.

"...the most important thing to remember in Sunnydale is never, ever invite a stranger into your house, especially at night.  And keep a cross on you.  You can't ever trust a vampire."

Hank regarded his daughter for a long moment, looked over at Spike, and coughed.  Three pairs of eyes fixed him with reproachful looks of varying intensity.  "Except Spike," Dawn qualified.  "He's cool."

Doing his best to live up to the description, Spike abandoned his inspection of the refrigerator and sauntered over to set his cup of blood on the coffee table.  He dropped down on the couch between Dawn and Tara, casually draping his arms along the back, not quite touching their respective shoulders.  Tara rolled her eyes at the possessive male vibes, but there was a very slight smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and she didn't move away.  Hank's frown deepened, and Spike returned the favor with a smirk a notch or two further down the nastiness continuum.

He seldom needed to look for reasons to dislike someone, but Hank Summers came with an oversupply.  That the man had left Joyce, the first person to whom Spike had applied the term 'friend' in over a hundred and twenty years, was enough in itself to get him permanently inscribed on the vampire's shit list.  He'd compounded the initial faux pas by disappearing into the ether as completely and mysteriously as a fledgling's soul for months when Buffy and Dawn had needed him.  Beyond all that, there was just something about the man that rubbed him the wrong way.  Dawn, oblivious to the tension, continued, "And Angel, he's OK most of the time but you have to be careful of him 'cause he loses his soul sometimes, and he's in L.A. anyway so forget him."

"Hear, hear."  Dawn elbowed him in the ribs.  Spike gave her an entirely ineffectual evil glare and she grinned smugly at him.  Her father looked on, disturbed at the byplay, until the vampire turned the million mile stare on him and the man's eyes dropped. Wanker.  Buffy must have been created parthenogenetically.

Tara, apparently deciding that the pissing contest had gone on long enough, twisted a strand of long sandy hair around her fingers and dragged the conversation back to the point.  "So these guys with the van––is the Initiative back in town?"

Spike’s unbandaged hand involuntarily strayed to the back of his skull.  There was no scar beneath the white–blond hair to show where the chip had gone in, nor any evidence of his subsequent efforts to have it taken out.  "Not bloody likely.  First thing I thought of, but these buggers weren't that well–equipped.  That was no military van, and no trained driver."  He frowned.  "But the big pile of dead demon in the alley didn't phase 'em, and it sounded as if they were picking and choosing older vampires.  Or as old as they come in Sunnydale these days."

"That's weird.  If I were capturing vampires I'd go for little baby ones."  Willow, fiddling with the laptop's adapter, matched his frown.  "Unless they need the old ones for some reason because they're more powerful?  But that can't be right if they only wanted you 'cause you saw them take the other one out, you're about the oldest vamp in Sunnydale now, plus inconspicuousness is not a thing of Spike.  Double plus it's gotten around that you can't hurt humans so you'd think they'd think you were easy pickings."

"Maybe they didn't recognize him?" Tara suggested.  There was a general disbelieving silence.  She spread both hands.  "It could happen!"

"Bastards'll recognize me from now on," Spike growled, nettled.  It might have altered in substance slightly over the last several years, but he bloody well still had a reputation.

"Oh, you the vamp," Willow said with a little grin.  The laptop beeped.  "Here we go, all powered up."

"What are you doing?" Hank asked, sounding as if he didn't really want to know.

The hiss and crackle of the modem connecting filled the room.  Dawn said, "We’re gonna track them down, Dad.  Willow and Tara are witches, but Willow's kind of a hacker, too."

"Sometimes the old ways are best." Willow graced Dawn's father with a beaming smile over the screen of the laptop.  "I can't tell you how cool it is you being down with the slayage concept, Mr. Summers.  Buffy's mom was always great about it.  I was so jealous!  My mom's still in denial, and the whole secret identity thing––well, it's fun for awhile but then you just get to the point where it's like 'Aunt Miriam's birthday party, or saving the world?' and the world has seniority even though you wouldn't think it to look at Aunt Miriam.  Spike, you have that license plate number?"

Spike took a meditative sip of blood and stared at the ceiling, calling up the brief glimpse he'd gotten of the van's plates.  "It began with... 4KEM2.  Next number might’ve been a five.  Couldn't make out the last one at all."

Willow nodded.  "OK, better than nothing.  Hold on and I'll see if I can get into the DMV database."

For several minutes there was an awkward lull enlivened only by the tap of Willow's fingers on the keyboard.  Hank sank deeper into his funk. Spike nursed his blood and wondered if he were going to get any more sleep today.  "Here we go." Willow reached up and tapped at something on her screen.  "There’re eight plates that match those numbers registered to addresses within twenty miles of that alley.  Darn, no printer... Dawn, do you have a notebook or something?"

"Yeah, in my room.  You want the purple one or the green one? Hold on."  She bounced to her feet and ran off down the hall.

“Purple!” Willow called after her.  At Spike and Tara’s bemused looks she said, “Notebook color is fairly vital.”

"All right," Hank said as soon as she'd left the room.  "Suppose I believe all this bullsh... stuff.  God knows it would explain a few of the wilder things Joyce dropped on me over the last couple of years.  That doesn't mean I'm 'down with slayage'.  It may be shallow of me, but finding out that Buffy supposedly died to save the world instead of in some stupid college dare doesn't make me feel any better.  She's still dead, and damned if I'll lose another daughter the same way.  Dawn's coming back to L.A. with me as soon as we can get a buyer for the house, and she'll be well out of this.  I want all of you to know..." He stopped and rubbed the bridge of his nose, obviously hunting for words.  "Willow, I'm grateful to your family and Mr. Giles for taking care of Dawn till I could get back to the States, but for her sake I'd like to ask that you stop involving her in this business once we've moved.  I'm going to try to give her a normal life––"

"Too late, Summers."

"Shut up, Spike," said Willow, but she didn't look particularly happy herself.

Dawn breezed back in with one of her school notebooks, ripping out a page of blue–lined paper and handing it to Willow.  "Here's a pen too.  Are we gonna go check them out?"

Spike and Willow each opened their mouths, exchanged looks, and thought better of it.  Spike made an 'after you' gesture to the witch.   "Not today," Willow said.  "Spike needs to heal up, and he can't leave till sunset anyway.  Plus Xander’s working overtime today, and Anya won't get off work till after three, so why don't we meet at the Magic Box after hours to strategize?"  She wrote down the last address with a flourish and folded the paper up carefully and handed Dawn her pen back.  “Thanks, Dawn.”

Tara nodded.  "That's a great idea.  'Cause we have to talk about... stuff."

"Right."  Spike finished the last of his blood in a gulp.  "Stuff."

Dawn gave the three of them the once–over.  "You're trying to ditch me again."

Hank interrupted, "Dawn, you know we’ve got an appointment with the probate lawyer at ten.  That’s the only place you’re going today, and you’re not going to be running around through alleys getting shot at with dart guns tonight, either.  Now, I have to get dressed, so I'd appreciate it if..." He stood up and made vague shooing gestures in the direction of the front door.

Willow shrunk in on herself slightly.  It never failed to amaze Spike that someone who could blast hellgods with lightning bolts without blinking an eye still retreated so readily into mousiness when confronted by an ordinary human being.  "We'll just be going," she said, flipping the laptop closed. 

“Horned toads,” Spike whispered.  He couldn’t be certain, but he thought that a wistful look flicked into Willow’s eyes for a moment.

"Remember I told Spike he could stay here," Dawn said.  "If we're going to be out all day anyway, you won’t be bothered if he sleeps on the couch."

Her expression was hopeful, but as her father’s hesitation to consent lengthened, it began to slip towards the mutinous.  The vampire gave Hank a charming and completely untrustworthy smile.  "You'll never know I was here.”  He glanced around the room.  “Nothing worth nicking."

Hank retreated into stone–faced irritation.  No fun at all, this one.  "Dawn, I'd like to talk to you in private for a moment.  Willow, glad to see you again, and pleased to meet your, um, friend."

Willow looked as if she were about to correct him, but Hank turned away with a distracted air and herded Dawn off towards the back of the apartment.  Willow watched them go with a little shake of her head, then stuck the laptop back in its case, leaned over to Spike and whispered, "You sure you're gonna be OK here?"

Tara nodded.  “We c–could put you up if he kicks up a fuss.”

Spike regarded Hank's plaid terrycloth back with a curl of his lip.  "If I can't handle 'im I deserve to be staked.  Though you might leave the blanket on the landing in case of emergencies."  He hesitated.  "Thanks."

She smiled at him again, that eminently biteable Willow–grin, and took Tara's hand as they went out the door, opening it carefully so the sunlight didn’t hit the couch and closing it behind them.  Spike settled back thoughtfully on the couch, arms crossed behind his head.  The witches' concern was balm to some deeply–buried part of him which had gone shivering and untended for years before his death.  Willow was just like that, he knew, impulsively warm in liking, impulsively fiery in anger, and Tara would follow her lead.  Still... knowing that the two of them cared whether he lived or died was a bit of all right.

His eyelids began to droop.  He was still a little hungry, but that was a sign that he was healing quickly.  His hand had settled down to a bearable throb, and with any luck he’d sleep through the maddeningly itchy phase where the bones realigned themselves.  Sleep wasn’t in the cards yet, unfortunately.  The voices from Hank's bedroom probably would have been audible without too much straining even without the advantages of vampiric hearing; the apartment walls were thin and Dawn wasn't trying to keep it down.  He eavesdropped, of course; his current set of eccentric, hand–tailored ethics didn’t extend to denying his curiosity about what other people were doing behind his back.

"...dangerous," Hank was saying. 

Too right, mate.

"Not to us!" Dawn shot back.  "He wouldn’t do anything--not without a really good reason anyway, and I told you that with the chip in his head he can't hurt you. "

Not quite, Little Bit.  Depends on how much I feel like taking for the privilege of dishing it out.

"Dawn, you just can't go around letting vagrants stay in our house."

"This isn’t our house.  And he's not a vagrant!  He has a... place over by the cemetery."

"Then he should be staying there."

"Maybe I should be too!  It'd be better than staying in this shitty apartment and way better than moving to L.A.!"

"Young lady, I’m not going to stand for that tone of voice––"

Spike rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow, a citrine flicker in his eyes and a low growl building in the pit of his stomach.  He half expected to hear the sound of a slap in there, but it didn’t come.  Whatever Hank Summers’ faults, smacking his children around didn't appear to be one of them.  Dawn’s voice rose to a shout.

"I haven't seen you for over a YEAR, Dad!  Forget that he's saved my life three or four times, Spike's been here!  When Mom died, he was here.   When Buffy died, he was here.  Whenever I needed someone to talk to or a shoulder to cry on or... whatever, he was here!  Even when he was busy or––or had other things on his mind––"

You give me too much credit, Nibblet.  That's the nicest way anyone's ever phrased 'drunk off his arse'.

"––he never walked out on me and I'm not going to walk out on him!"

"'Whatever?'"  Hank wasn’t quite shouting, but he sounded extremely upset.  "Dawn, you haven't been... going out with this Spike, have you?"

"Going out?  Dad, ew!  Tacky much?"  Dawn's voice dripped disdain.  "I’m so over him.  He's my friend.   Even if I was interested, he was totally in love with Buffy and it would be majorly crass of me to take advantage of him when he's all heartbroken."  A pause, then the anger left her, replaced by something stiff and brittle.  "It's almost nine.  Shouldn't we be going?"

Spike, torn between amusement and a tiny bit of lingering Victorian shock at the idea of Dawn taking advantage of him, lowered himself back to the couch as she came storming out of her father's room, her mouth a thin hard line and her eyes flashing lightning.  She looked very little like her sister, but there were times when the resemblance was so close that it hurt.  "Oi, Nibblet."

She turned, hand on the doorknob of her own room.  "What?"  Now that she was no longer facing down her foe, her voice shook and tears threatened to spill over.  She was getting so tall... she could almost look him in the eye now.  Wouldn't be able to call her ‘little bit’ with a straight face much longer.  Not like her sister.  The top of Buffy's head had hit him just about in the chin, even with those incredible heels she was always wearing, and he wasn't particularly tall himself.  Buffy... Stupid name.  God, he missed her.

"Not like yours truly has a steady job pinning me to Sunnydale, pet.  Been awhile since I gave the L.A. nightlife a look.  In fact, the chance to make Grand–sire's unlife miserable again might be worth the relocation all by itself.”  He cocked his head and gave her the grin.  “You're not getting rid of me that easily."

Dawn said nothing for a moment, her mouth working, and then she dashed over to the couch and dropped to her knees, giving him a quick, hard hug, all mortal warmth and impulse.  He hugged her back, a little clumsily; he wasn't really used to this yet.  "Can I get you anything before I go?" she whispered.

"As long as you're offering, I'm still a bit peckish..."  She jumped to her feet and in a moment he heard her rummaging around in the kitchen, the opening and closing of the refrigerator door.

"You want this heated up?"

"Yeh, sure."   That Dawn had been keeping a plastic milk carton of blood on hand for him, without knowing exactly when or whether he'd turn up here, touched him no end.

"Here you go," Dawn said, handing him a mug full of warm blood.   "This is it, I'm gonna have to pick up more while we're out, if I can get Dad to stop at the butcher's.  The remote’s over on the TV if you want to watch anything.  And no smoking."   She scrutinized him for a moment, then added, "You look a lot better.  When was the last time you ate?"

Spike looked down at his half–empty mug and realized that he'd gotten outside of a gallon of blood in the last three hours.  Not to mention the donuts.  "Er...”  Today was Saturday, he’d first gotten wind of the Ghora on Thursday night... “Two days ago?"

Dawn planted one fist on her hip disapprovingly.  "Geez, no wonder you looked half–dead."  He raised an ironic eyebrow. "You know what I mean.  You've got to take better care of yourself."

"All right, cross my heart, Nibblet."  He thought longingly of the man whose arm he'd split open with the axe.  Life had been so much easier... and tastier...when people were nothing but Happy Meals on legs.  Pig’s blood was revolting no matter how you drank it, but it kept him alive.  So to speak.  Thank God he'd retained his taste for normal food; most vampires didn't, and even if it didn't nourish it kept him from pining away of culinary boredom.  He remembered Darla and Dru's bemused looks the time he'd dragged them to his favorite fish and chips place.  They'd gone and eaten the fish–and–chips man instead, which had irked him, especially as they hadn't saved him any.  Best damned chips in London, just the right amount of grease and no stinting on the salt...

On the other hand, it had been brought forcibly home to him in the last two years that with very few exceptions, vampires were so utterly sodding boring that he had difficulty seeing how he’d managed to put up with them as long as he had.  Once you were off killing people, and if your opposite number wasn’t interested in a shag, there simply wasn’t anything to do with another vampire, whereas humans frittered away their time with all sorts of fascinating rubbish.  He sighed and took a philosophical swallow of second–best.  It was much better warmed up.  Maybe he could nick a microwave somewhere for the crypt. 

He looked up at Dawn with a roguish glint in his eyes.  "Be a love and see if your Dad will stop at Willy's and get me a pint or two of the real thing?"

She laughed.  "As if!  He'd roll over and die if he knew Willy's existed."  She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of her father's door opening.  "Bye, Spike.  I'll see you later."

When they'd both left he pulled the duster over his shoulders again and settled down to get some more sleep.  He did feel better.  Better than he’d felt in quite awhile, actually.  Buffy.  He closed his eyes and imagined her sitting on the end of the couch, there by his feet, small and golden and tougher than nails.

He'd dreamed about her for years, almost from the first time he'd seen her––first of killing her, later of shagging her senseless and then killing her, still later of them shagging each other senseless and... well... not killing each other.  He’d never been very clear about what would happen after the not killing each other part, because he was perfectly aware that it was pathetic and ludicrous that he'd fallen in love with the Slayer, and doubly ludicrous that he should be making fumbling attempts to impress her with his virtuous behavior.  Vampires weren't made for virtuous behavior, that mopey pseudo–Byronic poof Angel notwithstanding.

Nowadays he dreamed about talking to her.  Just talking, for hours and hours, telling her all the things she'd never given him a chance to say, or which he hadn't found the right words for while she lived.  The way they'd been starting to talk, ever so tentatively, in those last few days before her death... before he'd failed her.  Telling her about his life.  Telling her about his death––the real story this time, not the farrago of half–truths and braggadocio he’d cobbled together the first time she’d asked.  Telling her about an existence which had spanned almost thirty living years and a hundred and twenty unliving ones in little scraps and pieces, and discovering to his chagrin how very little in either life or undeath he could find to be proud of.

Hello, love.

She didn't answer.  She never said anything in his dreams.  He had no idea what she could say to him that she hadn't already said.  Buffy had never been one for talk.  She acted, and if her words had been few and far between in those last few days, her actions had spoken volumes that he had yet to decipher.  So in his dreams she only watched him with those grave, beautiful hazel eyes that seemed to take up half her face, and listened. 

Funny thing happened today, and I hope you can forgive me for it.  You've forgiven me worse, I promise.

It wasn't that he'd ever stopped wanting her.  He still wanted her: her scent, her every turn of expression, the color of her eyes, the cant of her nose, every curve of her deceptively slender, gloriously strong body, all were burned indelibly into his brain.  But the wanting that had begun there had grown to encompass much more than just her body, and perhaps more than just her.  She was beautiful, but no more beautiful than any one of a hundred other girls.  It was the flame that burned within her that drew him, moth to her candle, the flame that had almost guttered out there at the end before exploding in one last all–consuming bonfire.  He could have warmed himself in the fire of her soul for eternity.

You know I've been hunting for trouble since you died, love.  I kept hoping I'd find some big enough to take me down for good.  No such luck, eh?  You wouldn't think it from all the times you and Angel kicked my arse, but when I'm not fighting the Slayer I'm pretty damned good, and I've still got too much pride to give Death less than my best fight even when I'm looking for it.

Will asked if I'd be all right today.  And you know what, love?  I will be.  I dunno what happened, but for the first time in my life I've stopped wanting to die.  I still miss you.  The place in my heart where you were is still a hole a thousand miles deep and I don't know if anything'll ever fill it up again, but Little Bit needs me, God knows why, and Will asked me if I’d be all right.  And it felt... good.

Your Dad's wanting to take Little Bit with him to L.A.  I'll probably tag along, once we suss out those wankers in the van.  I promised you I'd take care of her, and I will.  I let you down once, love, but never again.  If she wants to take up the world–saving business, I can't think of a better memorial for her big sister.  I'll give her a hand, if she'll have me.  That should put the poof's knickers in a twist.  I'm looking forward to that.

G'night, Buffy.



Around five-thirty in the afternoon, Xander Harris pulled up outside the apartment building where Hank Summers and Dawn were staying.  The sun was heading for the horizon as he got out of the car and squinted up at the second-floor apartment.  One of the windows looked odd, and a moment later he spotted a mangled-looking window screen lying in the privet hedge nearby.  Bits of stucco still clung to the frame.  "The guy couldn't knock?" Xander muttered, shoving his car keys in his pocket and starting up the stairs two at a time.

He'd only been here once before, when he and Anya had helped Dawn carry her suitcases over from Giles' apartment two weeks ago.  Mr. Summers had been polite but curt, and Xander, foreseeing possible disasters when Anya's terrifying frankness next chose to surface, hadn't pressed to hang around.  When he got to the landing he stopped for a moment to catch his breath.  From the sound of it, the television was on inside, so he grabbed the insufficient little regulation issue apartment doorknocker and rapped it as sharply as he could.

After a moment the door opened a crack.  Xander waved.  "Hey, Mr. Summers, can li'l Spikey come out to play?"

Mr. Summers, he decided, wasn't as appreciative of Xander humor as Mrs. Summers had been.  Dawn's father shot the bolt back with a grunt that might have been "Come in," and opened the door all the way with an expression of grudging relief.  "He's just leaving."

As Xander had halfway expected from past personal experience, what the vampire was actually doing was making himself completely at home in the place where he was least wanted.  Dawn was sitting on the couch watching the Cartoon Network with a plate full of Spaghetti-Os (Mr. Summers was also apparently not as good a cook as Mrs. Summers).  Spike was emerging from the bathroom in a cloud of steam and a borrowed sweatsuit that was rather too large for him, rubbing his wet hair vigorously with a towel.  "Is there some sort of cosmic law which decrees I can only be trapped for the day in places where no-one has a decent wardrobe?" he asked bitterly of the room at large.  He let the towel fall to his shoulders and Xander choked on a snicker.

"Hello, Fluffy.  Ready to roll?"

Spike glowered and made a futile attempt to get his hair to lie flat sans gel.  "We're stopping by my crypt first.  I'm not going anywhere looking like this."

"I'm with you, bro.  God forbid we head out to fight the forces of evil without Vidal Sassoon."  Xander paused, attention momentarily snared by the television.  "Ooh, Dexter's Lab.  Is this a Justice Friends episode?"

Dawn shook her head.  "It's the one where Dee Dee breaks Dexter's invention."

"Oh.  Darn."  He snapped his fingers.  "Never seen that one.  Hey, Dead Boy, sun's down, get a move on."

Spike tossed the towel over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, retrieved his duster and shrugged into it.  He and Dawn shared an enigmatic look.  "I'll be in touch, Nibblet," he said.

“You’d better.  You have to bring Dad’s clothes back.”

"What's with Dawn and the looks of angst?" Xander asked as they clattered down the stairs outside.

"Daddikins is takin' 'er back to bright lights, big city with 'im."

"Eerg."  Xander made a face.  "Well, that's somewhat sucky, but not the end of the world."

"Is when you're fifteen."  Spike hopped over the railing and dropped the rest of the way to the ground in one jump, apparently just because he could.  Xander heaved an exaggerated sigh and continued to descend the hard way while the vampire stood impatiently on the oil-spotted asphalt of the parking lot, waiting for him to catch up.  "As I'd think you'd remember, bein' a hell of a lot closer to fifteen than I am."

"Just goes to show which of us is more mature."  Xander unlocked the Corvair and swung inside.  He threw the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot and turned the car's nose in the direction of the cemetery that housed Spike's crypt.  Spike turned up the radio, switched it over to the local indie/punk station and slouched in the passenger seat, tapping his good hand on one knee and singing along with Radiohead in a surprisingly tuneful baritone.  "What, no snappy comeback?  You're in a good mood all of a sudden."

"Clean living agrees with me."

"I'd take your temperature if I thought it would do any good."  He switched lanes and turned down the quiet tree-lined street that ran by the cemetery’s front gates.  "Willow wants us to pick up some burgers or something on the way to the shop.  Strategizing food."

Spike snorted.  "Brilliant.  Be seen in your company once or twice and I’m consigned to donut patrol."  He produced a wallet from his hip pocket and pulled out a couple of bills at random, tossing them in Xander's direction.  "Here, I'm buying."

Xander did a double-take and stuck a finger in one ear.  "Excuse me?  I thought I just heard you say...  Hey!  That's my wallet!  Gimme!"

"You have a sad fixation on petty details, Harris."

Xander snatched his wallet back and stuffed it into his pocket.  "I think I preferred you depressed."

Despite his sarcasm, it was something of a relief to see Spike starting to bounce back to his old ball-of-nervous-energy self, though Xander had been expecting it for a while now.  Spike wasn't a brooder by nature, unlike certain other vampires Xander could have named.  In the past, his method of dealing with personal disasters had been to go on an extended bender and then rebound with a fierce determination to fix the problem, whatever it was.  Of course, in the aftermath of said bender, Spike didn't always hit on something intelligent as a solution. Kidnapping Xander and Willow after Drusilla had dumped him had not exactly been the height of non-dumb planning, and having Warren build that robot... less said about that the better.  With any luck, this time around the insane plan stage of Spike-recovery had been circumvented by the necessity of looking after Dawn and the fact that in this case, there just wasn't anything that could be done...

Xander swallowed hard.  The massive unfairness of a Buffy-less world still blindsided him occasionally.

After a brief stop at Spike's crypt (from which he re-emerged with pale hair slicked ruthlessly into order, and clad in black jeans and T-shirt distinguishable from the first set only by the lack of demon-induced gouges) they were sitting at the window of the In-And-Out Burger drive-through while the vampire turned the charm on the waitress ("Does it look like I care about E. bloody coli, luv?  I want it rare, and by rare I mean I want it to scream in agony when I bite into it") when Xander saw the van.  It was a nondescript dark blue Chevy with a crumpled front bumper, and it wasn't until it pulled to a stop at the corner light that the sight of it sparked a faint memory of Willow saying that the mystery van had been blue.  He reached over and whacked Spike on the shoulder.  "Psst!  Does that look familiar?"

Spike looked in the direction of Xander's pointing finger, and his eyes flickered gold for a second.  "Bloody hell, yes!   Move over, Harris, you drive like my grandmother."

Xander's brain conjured up a wild image of a nineteenth-century little old lady from Pasadena whipping a horse and buggy madly through the streets of Sunnydale.  "Oh, no you don't!"  He clung tenaciously to the steering wheel with one hand and grabbed the bag of burgers from the drive-through window with the other.  "Run your own car over the median and play chicken with a semi all you want, you're not getting your chilly paws on mine."

"I never!  Not sober, anyway!  Step on it, then, the light's changing!"

Flinging change at the confused waitress, Xander threw the car into gear and roared out of the drive-through with all the massive power that six cylinders could muster.  Saturday night traffic was heavy, but the Corvair was smaller and more maneuverable than the van, and Xander swerved from lane to lane, trying to catch up to their elusive quarry.  The fact that Spike was now sitting in the open window of the passenger side door, hanging onto the side view mirror with one hand and leaning half-way into the next lane of traffic to keep the van in sight didn't help much.

"Get back inside, you idiot!  They'll see you!"

"All the better!  Stop clucking and drive!"

A large pickup truck zoomed by within six inches of the vampire's platinum head, horn blaring.  Spike flipped the driver off and yelled an anatomically impossible suggestion.  Xander hunched over the steering wheel and reflected upon the mildly terrifying fact that Spike's control over his temper really had improved considerably over the last two years.  At the next light he reached over and grabbed the vampire by his shirt-tail, dragging him back into the car.  Spike was yellow-eyed and grinning like a maniac.  "I definitely prefer you depressed."

Luckily none of their antics were anything particularly out of the way for a Saturday night in Southern California, and the drivers of the van didn't appear to pay any more attention to the honks and shouts behind them than to any other road-rage altercations that happened to cross their path.  Ahead of them the van made a sudden swerve into the left lane and Xander gritted his teeth and cut off a beer truck to follow it.  He scraped through the left turn as the light went from yellow to red and barely made it through the intersection ahead of the voracious horde of oncoming cars.  "Yeeeeeeaow!" Spike whooped, halfway out the window again.  "Turn off your headlights!"

"Like hell!"

Traffic had thinned out, and Xander hung back, trying to keep at least two cars between them and their prey and stay inconspicuous, which wasn't easy with Spike determined to play Road Warrior.  "Wait a minute, this is familiar," he muttered after a mile or so.  "This is the way to the abandoned warehouse, isn't it?  We're just coming in from the other side."

Spike craned further out the window and then dropped back inside.  "Cor, Harris, think you're right.  There's the turn-off."  He looked indignant.  "Some nerve they've got, usin' my old lair."

The van, indeed, turned off on the disused road leading to the warehouse.  Xander drove on by and kept going for several hundred yards before pulling over and turning off his lights.  "So... we know where's they're holed up.  Do we go get the big gun?"

"I'd like to 'ave a bit more to say to the big gun than 'Ooo, they're at the old warehouse'," Spike groused.  "Every bloody black hat in Sunnydale ends up there sooner or later."  He opened the car door and stood up, gazing over the dark, overgrown fields.  Xander got out rather more slowly, feeling a little peculiar.  There was enough light to see the broken hulks of rusting, abandoned cars scattered here and there among the long grass, not enough to see the treacherous shards of glass and torn metal lurking to trip up the unwary.  The last time he'd covered this ground, almost three years ago now, he'd been Spike's captive.

The vampire, who'd started off across the uneven ground with the total unconcern of one who could see in complete darkness, turned round with a questioning look.  "You coming, Harris?"

Xander shook himself.  "Yeah.  Just... happy memories."

Spike actually looked... not guilty exactly, but somewhat sheepish.  "Ah."  He ducked his head and ran a hand through his hair, noticed it was the left one, flexed it a couple of times and began undoing the bandage with perhaps more attention than the task deserved.  "Right then.  Nasty bit of ground 'ere.  Watch where I step and maybe you won't end up down a well."

Which wasn't exactly an apology, Xander thought as they picked their way cautiously towards the warehouse, but it might pass for one in a dim light.

The warehouse loomed against the night sky, even more dilapidated and skeletal than Xander remembered it.  "Weird to think that in another year or two the subdivisions are gonna swallow this place up," Xander whispered.  Spike shrugged.

"’appens.  Last time I went home there was a McDonalds where the house I was born in used to be.  Couldn't even be a sodding British chain."

Xander spent the next few moments trying to wrap his head around the bizarre concept that Spike had been born instead of popping into existence full-fledged, duster, bleached hair and all.  He hadn't made much progress when the vampire's cool hand touched his shoulder, bringing him to a halt.  "They're in there all right," Spike said softly, dropping into a feral crouch.  His nostrils flared.  "Four of 'em."

"The van guys?"

"Vampires."  He tipped his head back, eyes half-lidded, inhaling deeply the better to catch the scents on the breeze.  Satisfied with the information, he casually left off breathing again.  "And two blokes."

The walls of the warehouse rose sheer and grey overhead, broken panes of glass opening into the deeper darkness within.  A rickety metal staircase led upward to a winch platform.  Xander tugged at it dubiously, and a shower of rust flakes shivered to the ground.  Without comment, Spike took hold of the railing and started up the stairs.  Xander didn't argue; the vampire was smaller and lighter than he was, not to mention much stronger and much less vulnerable to physical damage; if the thing was going to collapse with someone on it, better Spike than him.  Spike skinned up the staircase with inhuman speed and leaped lightly over to the winch platform.  He turned and crouched down.  "Feels solid.  Come on."   Xander followed as quickly as he could, wondering why it was that he always ended up tagging along after someone who moved like a big jungle cat... or in Spike's case, something that hunted big jungle cats.

The door behind the winch platform was locked, or maybe just crusted shut, but Spike broke it free without much effort, and the two of them slipped through.  They were standing on the catwalk that ran around the perimeter of the interior.  Down below, the floor of the warehouse was illumined by a forest of candles that rivaled the bank Spike kept in his crypt.

In the dim yellowy light Xander could make out four heaps of rags on the floor--no, one of the heaps had just moved.  The vampire sat up groggily, its demonic visage turning blindly from side to side as if searching for something... or someone.  It stared up at the catwalk.  Xander stood stock still.  Could the thing sense his heartbeat even at this distance?  After a moment it slumped back to the grimy cement again.  Now that he was looking he could see the other three twitching now and again.  "Drugged?"

"Must be.  Not enough time to starve 'em that stupid."  Spike's voice held a tinge of disgust.

The two men who'd been in the van came into sight, carrying...  buckets of paint?  Man and vampire watched in mutual confusion as one of the men produced a push broom and began sweeping the area of the floor around the drugged vampires.  His right forearm was heavily bandaged; he must have been the one Spike had hit with the axe earlier.  In the process it became obvious that the vamps were chained as well as drugged; the rattle of metal links on concrete was clearly audible when the push broom man moved one of them aside.

The second man was prying open the bucket of paint, and (after stirring it properly, the professional part of Xander's mind noted) dipped a brush into it.  In front of the first vampire, he began marking out the outlines of an elaborate symbol on the floor.

"Don't get too fancy," the man with the broom said, his voice echoing hollowly through the expanse of the warehouse.  "They'll do the details when it's time for the blood."

The paint man grunted and moved on to the next vampire in line.  One by one, a sketchy symbol in red paint was inscribed on the floor in front of each of the vampires, and at the last, a fifth symbol.

The first man leaned on his broom and surveyed their work critically.  "We still need one more."

"We'd have our quota already if that blond asshole hadn't broken Number Four's neck," the second man said.

Xander looked at Spike.  "Sure they don’t know you personally?"

"Well, hell, why not take him, if we can find him?”  Broom Man said.  “According to the amulet he fit the criteria."

Paint Man grunted again; it seemed to be a favored mode of expression.  "He exceeded the criteria.  We’ll find another one, and exactly which one isn’t important.  You can't spit without hitting a vamp in this town, and we're running on a... deadline."

Continue to Part 3

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