Chapter 9

Spike, with a groggy Dawn in his arms, threaded his way through the tangle of old machinery on the warehouse floor, trying to stick to a path that wouldn't give his night-blind compatriots too much trouble. They couldn't risk the flashlights now, as Vespasian's men were entering the factory. Buffy followed right behind him, keeping an anxious eye on her sister, and Xander came after carrying Willow. Tara, Giles and Anya brought up the rear, having grabbed as much of Willow's magical apparatus as they could. They’d been forced to leave the hibachis, which wasn’t going to make Mr. Rosenberg happy. Willow's duffle bumped at Tara's side. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and possibly trapped, and he couldn't stop grinning.

Buffy. Buffy. Buffy's back. He could smell her, pure unadulterated Buffy-scent, hear her heartbeat and the faint scuff of her bare feet on the dusty floor. Yeah, she was a little confused, but it was Buffy in there, looking out at him through those gorgeous hazel eyes. She'd be back, full strength. He was as irrationally certain of that as he'd once been that Drusilla’s health could be restored. That had meant traveling across an ocean, finding a Hellmouth, and tracking down Dru’s sire to steal his blood--all in a day's work, wasn't it? This was no different.

A small hand grabbed him by the belt loop of his jeans, slowing him down so that the rest of them could catch up. Buffybuffybuffy. Damn, he was glad it was dark; he must look like a right loon. Badass vampires did NOT do the Snoopy dance, no matter how much they felt like it.

He set Dawn down when they reached the narrow stairs that led up to the catwalk. She rubbed her forehead and put out a hand to steady herself against the metal railing. Spike could sympathize; he felt as if his brain had been put through a clothes wringer, and he found himself casting occasional envious looks at the unconscious Willow. "Think you can manage the stairs, Bit?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

Dawn made a face. "I'll be fine." She still looked pale and shaky, and though Buffy followed close behind her as she began to climb, Spike didn't relax until the both of them were safely at the top. He stood at the foot of the stairs as the rest of them went up one by one, shooting jittery looks over his shoulder. Vespasian's men were quartering the factory now, shining big industrial-sized flashlights into every dark corner and pawing through the detritus of Willow's spell.

Spike grabbed Willow's duffle from Tara as she reached the ladder and slung it over his own shoulder. He might not be feeling anywhere near a hundred percent yet, but it would still be easier for him to carry up a rickety staircase. Tara was climbing intolerably slowly; he reined himself in from reaching up and giving her a good push. Then at last they were all up on the catwalk, trying their best to walk softly on the clanging metal grating. Xander led the way to the freight platform. The door was still hanging ajar from their previous entrance, and Buffy practically ripped it off the hinges in her haste to get Dawn outside.

From the look of the sky outside, it still wanted an hour or more till sunrise. From their vantage point on the freight platform, they could see the two cars parked in the factory yard below, and three more dark, anonymous vehicles huddled together nearby. Each vehicle sported an equally dark, anonymous driver, waiting stolidly in the front seat. Another pair of men stood on either side of the Corvair, where someone, probably Hank, was hunched behind the wheel. Spike would have laid money on there being someone staking out the driveway and the door to the factory as well. "Ten to one they're carrying more than a few nancy little air guns," he muttered.

"We've got to find someplace less exposed," Giles said. "They’ve only to look up at the wrong moment to spot us here."

Buffy looked down at the field, made an unhappy noise, and sat down on the platform. She started to tug on the laces of Willow’s sneakers, and Tara helped her get them off; if Willow was being carried she wouldn’t need them. While Buffy put the shoes on, Spike pointed to a line of trees in the distance. "There's an irrigation ditch in the field behind the factory."

Ten minutes later, the vampire handed Dawn down to her sister, collapsed onto the sloping earthen bank of the ditch, and exhaled the breath he'd been holding ever since they'd left the freight platform. Xander and Tara were trying to make Willow comfortable in the rank growth of weeds in the bottom of the ditch, which was no easy task--at this time of year they'd died back to dry yellow-brown straw, and any which were inclined to go to prickly seed had done so. Willow was past noticing the accommodations; when Spike concentrated on picking her heartbeat and breathing out of the half-dozen others thumping away around him, both were steady enough, but slowed in deep sleep. Their big gun was going to be short on ammunition for quite awhile.

He pulled the half-crushed pack of Marlboros out of his duster pocket and lit a much needed cigarette. He lay there luxuriating in the smoke for several minutes. Yeah. Flat on his back was good. He could just lie here and sleep for a week. Or for three or four hours, until the rising sun hit the bottom of the ditch and turned him into vampire flambee. No rest for the wicked. He rolled over and crawled up to the top of the embankment.

Giles was already up there, peering across the field through the fringe of dead foxtails and pigweed at the impromptu parking lot in the factory yard. "Put that thing out," he said.

"We’re too low to the ground for them to see it unless they’ve got someone on the roof." Spike stubbed the cigarette out anyway. He propped himself up on his elbows and gestured over at the cars with the butt. "I'd suggest we all make a run for my car and cram in--boot's roomy enough to hold a couple of bodies--but I expect you lot feel obligated to save that git Summers just because you happen to share a species--ow!" Dawn had punched him in the leg, which he barely felt, but Buffy had wormed her way up beside him and smacked him in the shoulder at the same time. He turned and glared at her. "Nibblet, you've got an auntie, haven't you?"

"Yeeaaah," Dawn said.

"Can you introduce me, then? I'd like to meet just one Summers woman who doesn't have an irresistible urge to pummel me."

Dawn snorted callously. "You love it. Now go save my Dad."

Buffy gave him another smack, gentler this time, and Spike gave up on the glare, which was on the verge of dissolving into another goony grin anyway. "Anything you say, pet."

"Whoa, there, pilgrim." Xander joined them on the embankment. "People. Many. Carrying guns."

"Mmm," Giles agreed. "The vast majority of us are not immune to bullets. Some strategy is in order."

"And Spike’s just not big enough for all of us to use him as a shield at once--ow!" Xander rubbed his shoulder. "Well, all of Buffy’s muscles seem to be working just peachy."

"We already have a strategy, don’t we?" Anya said from the bottom of the ditch. "We certainly spent enough time arguing about it. Why waste all that good argument?" After a moment of confused silence on everyone else’s part, she added impatiently, "The disguise spell. Remember? Why can’t we use that to get someone in there to rescue Xander’s car? And Mr. Summers too, since he’s in Xander’s car."

Tara looked up from Willow’s still form with a morose shake of the head. "The disguise spell which Willow and I never got around to putting together because she was too busy raising the dead, you mean?" She looked back down at her lover in mixed worry and frustration, the ends of her long hair brushing Willow’s cheek. Willow stirred slightly, but didn’t wake. "I could try... it’s a pretty basic glamour. Only visual, and not making any big changes. The major problem we were going to work on was making it undetectable to Vespasian’s staff wizards, and without Willow’s help..." She trailed off, lips parted, obviously thinking. "Except... the Raising’s got the ether all jangled up. The... the echoes are swamping out everything else. Any mages they’ve got over there probably won’t be able to tell they were bespelled, even if they try."

She looked up at the three of them, a crease forming between her brows. "I won’t be able to make this a tactile spell--that’s the most difficult type of glamour, and I’m sorry, but I’m just..." she spread her hands and sighed. "Spike, you can be the driver--you’re really close to his size, and you even look like him a little bit. I guess Xander can be Broom Guy. Giles..." She bit her lip. "Paint Guy was really short, so don’t get too close to anyone. If someone tries swinging something through what they think is the empty space where your head is...it could hurt."

"Rapture," Giles muttered. "Are there any materials you need?"

Tara was already rummaging through Willow’s duffle. "Let’s see what’s in here. We were trying to make this into a magical first aid kit, a little of everything... I don’t know how much Will took out to make room for the stuff she used in the Raising..." She pulled out a small bundle of greyish wrinkly-looking things and stared at them. "Salamander tails? I thought we’d lost these..."

Spike was still trying to decide if he was insulted at being compared to Driver Guy when Buffy tugged at his sleeve. "Yeh, love? What is it?"

Buffy pointed at Giles. "Tall." At herself. "Not. I can... I... make... see... small! Arrgh!" She pounded her fist into the dirt in frustration, then swiped her hair out of her eyes and looked up at him in tight-lipped determination. "I go!"

Spike pursed his lips and cocked an eyebrow at her, then turned to Tara. "Slayer’s got a point, Kitten."

"Um?"

Spike sighed. Surely it was obvious. "She’s a lot smaller than Rupert here is. Not to mention stronger, faster, and better-looking. Do her up as the runty one."

Tara considered this. "I guess that would work. Making Buffy look male isn’t that much harder than making Giles look eight inches shorter."

Spike opened his mouth, took note of the warning glint in Buffy’s eyes, and decided he wasn’t in the mood to get punched into next Tuesday just yet. On the other hand, the glint was accompanied by a very slight upwards twitch of the corner of her mouth. Maybe only next Monday. He chuckled and kept his peace while Tara dug more spell ingredients out of the duffle.

"Ah! Here it is," Tara said with obvious relief. She pulled out a folder full of more of the ubiquitous computer print-outs, a roll of scotch tape, and three small cheap plastic-backed mirrors of the sort that came with a child’s toy make-up set. She sorted through the print-outs and passed one of each item to Spike, Xander and Buffy. Spike studied his; it was a small overexposed photo of Driver Guy, wearing the deer-in-the-headlights look common to passports, driver’s licenses, and employee photo IDs. Looked like Willow had gotten some use out of the data she’d downloaded from the Van Guys’ computer after all. Tara flipped open the compact and handed it to Xander. "Tear out the photo and..." she tore off a piece of tape, "stick it onto the compact mirror. Look into the mirror while I recite the charm, then rip off the photo. You should see your face change to the illusion face in the mirror. When that happens, break the mirror. That will set the spell for about an hour."

Spike raised a hand. "Eh... small problem with the methodology here."

Tara looked nonplussed for a moment. "Oh. Right." She scratched her head. "Um... I guess we’ll just have to wing it. Buffy, do you understand what you need to do?

Buffy nodded. Spike shrugged and began ripping the excess paper away from his photo. The spell was a simple one, the sort of low-powered cantrip just about anyone could pull off. Tara handed out more tape. He pasted the photo into place and held up the toy mirror as Tara began the chant.

"May the shadow become flesh

As through the veil we go

May the eye be deceived

May the seeming be made so!"

Spike tore the photo off; as expected, the mirror showed nothing but the bank behind him. He almost dropped it when a strange face coalesced out of the nothingness in the glass a moment later. He wasn’t as unfamiliar with the current state of his own appearance as people generally assumed; contrary to popular belief, vampires photographed perfectly well, and he’d seen himself in dozens of security cameras over the years. Seeing someone else’s reflection was weirder than seeing his own would have been. He resisted the temptation to play around making faces, dropped the mirror to the ground and ground it under his heel. Beside him Buffy did the same.

"It worked!" Tara sounded as much surprised as pleased.

Spike turned to Buffy and found the thin, rabbity features of Paint Guy looking up at him. For a second blind she’s gone! panic shot through him, until his other senses ganged up on his eyesight and gave it a stern talking-to. She still smelled like Buffy, and Tara’d said she’d still feel like Buffy, but he wasn’t going to try that one out because a bloke only had so much self-control, and touching Buffy at this point would just lead to more touching Buffy...holding Buffy...nuzzling Buffy... getting punched into next Tuesday by Buffy... He was grinning again. Get a grip, mate.

"Remember, we want to avoid provoking a fight," Giles said. "All you need to do is ascertain the status of the unfortunates they planned to sacrifice, and divert attention away from the rest of us while we get to Spike’s car. Get the keys to Xander’s car if possible, or failing that, get Mr. Summers out of it."

At the word ‘sacrifice’, Buffy looked startled. "Sacrifice? We’re here... to stop one?" She touched her forehead gingerly. "Giles... I don’t remember. What happened to Willow? Why’s Dawn here? My head’s all... fuzzy." She looked down at her hands, her lips moving, trying to put the shreds of her memory into order. "Dad," she said, still frowning. "You said Dad was here? How... when did he..."

Giles looked pained, and began fiddling with his glasses. "You’ve... not been... well... for some time. You--" His voice broke imperceptibly. "You shouldn’t be here at all, I’m afraid."

"Bit harsh, Rupert," Spike drawled, folding his arms and lounging back against the embankment. "I’d say the Slayer’s exactly where she’s supposed to be, saving some clueless tosser’s arse from the forces of unrighteousness."

"We can talk about whether Buffy should have stayed where she was later," Dawn said, very tightly, and that ended the subject for the moment.

"Bring the cars to the gate," Giles said as they set off towards the factory yard. "We’ll be a bit down the road, out of sight of anyone guarding the gate."

Spike led them around anything that would have required tetanus shots if stepped on, keeping to the cover of the rusting hulks which dotted the field. The dew was starting to settle on the long grass, and everyone’s ankles were soon soaked. Buffy matched his pace easily, but the others, lacking their superhuman agility, lagged a little behind on the rough ground. Spike paused at the edge of the field to let them catch up. The factory yard itself had once been divided from the rest of the field by a chain-link fence, but it had fallen into disrepair long ago. The posts were bent and the chain-link was sagging, and in several places it was torn entirely away, replaced by makeshift plywood patches which were themselves sagging and rotting. Spike crept silently up to one of the patches and stood behind it, listening. "Clear," he whispered after a moment.

Buffy ducked through the gap in the fence and Spike and Xander followed behind her while the others waited behind the cover of the plywood. Once a safe distance from the fence, the infiltrators straightened up and adopted a purposeful stride, the walk of people who knew where they were going and had every right to go there. The headlights of the newcomers’ cars crisscrossed the yard in a web of light, and Vespasian’s people in their dark conservative suits moved along the strands like spiders. Several of them were holding long slender wands of wood or metal, carrying them slowly about the yard and sweeping them back and forth as if dowsing for something. The tips of the wands quivered erratically. Others, in coveralls reminiscent of the Van Guys’, were carrying boxes of magical equipment into the factory--or they had been; the discovery that someone else had been there before them had thrown the whole project into disarray, and the workers had set down their crates around the main door to the warehouse and were taking the opportunity to stand around and smoke.

"I don’t see any vans or stretch limos or anything that screams ‘prisoners in here’," Xander said. "Can the Inhuman Bloodhound here tell...?"

Spike shook his head. "Way too many people about, and I don’t know who to look for."

A slender, dark-haired man in a suit an order of magnitude more expensive than those adorning the middle-management minions in the yard came striding out of the warehouse, cell phone glued to his ear. He appeared to be in his early forties: his hair had exactly enough grey at the temples to register as distinguished, and his face was only faintly lined, in the manner of someone who enjoyed the dual benefits of favorable heredity and an excellent health club. A hovering crowd of half a dozen aides and flunkies followed him at a safe distance. Buffy’s eyes narrowed. "He looks important."

They edged closer, on the pretext of inspecting the crates piled by the door. Spike picked up the thread of the conversation easily. "...yesterday night? Has he been conscious since? No, no need for that yet. And there’s no sign of the other two? Ah. No, Danner checked in as usual... have Beckman analyze the headers on his last few messages and see if he comes up with anything interesting, and have Enderby alert the local police that the van’s been stolen. Call me immediately if you get more news." He hung up, punched another number into the phone and stood there waiting impassively for whoever was on the other end to pick up.

Now that wasn’t a good sign. In Spike’s considerable experience, the ones who turned to ice under pressure were a damned sight more dangerous than the ones who exploded. "Mr. Bryce? Extremely bad news. We’ve been compromised." A pause, in which his face went noticeably paler. "One of our people here was admitted to the county hospital as a John Doe Monday night with a severe concussion. He’s in a coma. The other two appear to have left town."

Spike snorted. Well, there’s a waste of uplifting moral sentiment for you. Should have gone ahead and eaten him.

Vespasian was silent for a moment, the corners of his mouth twisting with the muted resentment of a man being chewed out for circumstances beyond his control. "No, I hadn’t realized. This complicates... no, it wouldn’t be impossible for us to secure more subjects, sir, even at this point. This is a Hellmouth, after all. But if the living subjects have been waylaid..."

Xander grinned. "Score one for Giles Lite!"

"We have one possible substitute available now, sir. We found an intruder at the warehouse, and though we haven’t had the time to interrogate him thoroughly... No. I’d suggest that you call Lilah Morgan immediately and have her people deal with Immigration. That could be extremely embarrassing... no, I realize that." One Italian-leather shod foot began tapping. "Here? My assumption would be that this Spike whom Danner reported interfering with them last week took them out. According to our local sources he was Master in Sunnydale for a short time in 1998 before the Slayer disabled him..."

"The Slayer cheated," Spike grumbled under his breath.

Buffy snickered. "I bet the sun was in your eyes, too."

"Least I’ve never been saved by my mum."

Xander made a hushing noise. "Can you two postpone the walk down memory lane?"

"...and he may still consider the place his territory," Vespasian continued. "He also had an ongoing feud with the Slayer, and from all accounts was involved in her death, so presumably he’d be very eager to prevent her return--"

Spike growled in pure fury, but Buffy and Xander had both seen the yellow flicker in the vampire’s eyes in time and each clamped a hand on his shoulders before he could start the lunge at Vespasian. A second later the hand which was doing the most towards restraining him dropped nervelessly away and Spike spun round, forgetting all about Vespasian. Buffy had gone white as the impact of the words sank in. "Death?" she whispered. "My death?"

And it all hit. Spike could see it in her wide stricken eyes, all the little pieces coming together, remembering Glory, and the tower, and how he’d failed Dawn and failed her and how she’d made good that failure with her own life. She crumpled, sagging against the crates and gripping their corners hard enough to leave finger-shaped impressions in the wood, staring fixedly at nothing. "I--I died. D-died. I died. I--"

Spike squeezed his eyes shut for a second, schooled every scrap of sympathy out of his voice and snarled, "We haven’t got time for waterworks, Slayer, unless you want your Dad to go the same way your sis almost did!"

"Back off, Spike!"

"Sod off, Harris." Ask him to be kind, to be comforting, and he had to stumble in the dark. Compassion didn’t come naturally to his kind, and he had to struggle for it, fight for the right gestures, search for the right words. For her the fight was worth it; he would rather have taken a stake than see that hurt, shocked look in her eyes. But there was no time for struggle, no time at all.

"I died," she whispered, as if repetition could leach the words of horror.

Ask him to piss someone off, on the other hand... that he could do in a heartbeat. "Yeh? Well, join the bloody club. Unless you’re keen on a repeat performance I’d suggest you get off your delectable arse and help us get out of here in one piece."

Buffy stared at him, and her eyes flickered, banked coals suddenly fanned into flame behind Paint Guy’s illusory features. She straightened and pushed herself upright, shooting him a look of loathing. "Let’s go, then," she said, heading for the cars. As she brushed by Spike she said, low enough that only he could hear, "Right now I hate you."

The muscles in his jaw twitched. So do I, love.

"But... thanks."

Spike stared after her, not quite believing that he'd just heard Buffy Summers say 'Thank you'--to him--for the second time in one night. She'd never thanked him for anything before, not in so many words. It had always been I'm depending on you, Spike, or Spike, you're the only one who can... whatever it was she'd wanted him to do. He hadn't minded much. Gratitude was an emotion that tended to go sour. Knowing that she relied on him had been satisfaction enough, or so he'd thought then--now with two little words she'd set him looping off through the clouds.

No time for that, either. Spike pulled himself back to earth, aided by Xander's dagger glare, and followed Buffy down to the end of the stack of crates. She stopped, hands on hips, her eyes taking in the factory yard and the positions of everyone in it.

The DeSoto and Xander's Corvair were parked about fifty feet from the main doors to the factory. The three dark shiny rental cars Vespasian's people had arrived in were ranked at an angle off to the right, their headlights trained on the main doors to the factory. The beams from the headlights of the nearest one clipped the right front fender of the DeSoto, but the rear ends of the cars were in darkness. A fourth rental, a brand new Caravan so sleek it was hard to tell from one of the cars, was backed right up to the main doors so the magical supplies could be unloaded. Seeing the sheer amount of junk they'd brought for their ritual gave Spike a new appreciation for Willow’s ability to cut a spell down to the bare necessities.

The two men guarding their cars and the three more waiting beside Vespasian's vehicles were the most immediate danger; several of them sported tell-tale bulges in the lines of their jackets which signified a shoulder holster, and the one standing beside the DeSoto was carrying something that looked like a double-barreled shotgun. Spike wasn't too worried about the guns; taking a few bullets might hurt, but it wouldn't kill him. As long as they didn't have anything fully automatic--a whole lot of bullets fired in the right places could potentially chop him to messes, and discovering just how well vampires healed from being ripped in half on the dotted line was not on his to-do list for the winter.

The four men who'd been unloading the Caravan were still milling around in the factory doorway, awaiting further instructions, and Vespasian and his little coterie of followers stood about ten feet away from the door, even with the stack of crates off to one side. The two women with the strange-looking wands had left the yard for the inside of the factory. Occasional shouts and moving lights from within signaled the continued efforts of Bryce's staff wizards to determine what exactly had occurred in their ritual space. It wouldn't do to assume that none of the three flunkies hovering at Vespasian's side had any magical training, either.

"How many do you make it?" Buffy asked.

Spike squinted into the darkness; the headlights were interfering with his night vision. "A dozen out here, half a dozen in there, give or take," he whispered. "Half with guns or magic enough to make our lives unpleasant. The blokes inside won't be able to get out here very quickly."

Buffy nodded. "So--what are we doing here? I've been out of the loop." She sounded resigned, grim... tired. Deathly tired. He wanted to hold her so badly...

Xander crouched down to get a better look around the crates. He pointed to Vespasian, who was still talking to Bryce. "He's trying to cast a spell to, uh, bring you back from the dead. We’re trying to stop him." He glared at Spike. "Or some of us are. Were."

Buffy's luminous hazel eyes were unreadable. Xander licked his lips nervously and continued, "They were gonna be bringing in some human sacrifices from L.A. for the ritual, but it sounds like Angel and his band of Merry Men were able to mess that part up. All we need to do is make sure they don't try to run out and grab a few ringers and go ahead with the spell anyway. With you not being dead and all, it would probably fizzle in some entertaining way I'd really love to watch, but their lucky volunteers would end up just as dead."

"And my dad's in your car?"

"Number one on the ringer list." Xander peered round the corner of the crates again. "Will guessed they had a copy of this scroll... Azi-something. Sounded like a Harry Potter title. If we can get hold of that it should slow them down."

"We don’t even know who’s got the sodding thing. Just smashing up some of their tackle should slow 'em down." Spike slapped the crate in front of him. "No toys, no spell."

"We get Dad out first." Buffy's tone brooked no argument. "We'll have to cross right in front of him to get to the cars." Her eyes moved to Vespasian; he was still talking to Bryce about the technical difficulties of re-scheduling the spell. "Xander, you'll have to do the talking when we get over to the guards," she said, clipped and businesslike. Of course, the whelp would have to be the one to do the talking, Spike thought. The spell didn't affect voices, and Buffy would sound like a girl and he'd sound British. "Draw their attention. Find out who's got the keys. Spike, when he does, get them. Quietly." She paused, a worried look overtaking her for a moment. "Uh... you’re Larceny Guy, right? You can pick pockets, can't you?"

"He can pick pockets," Xander said darkly, one hand going protectively to his wallet. Spike smirked at him.

"Good. Let's go." Buffy left the shelter of the crates and strode boldly out across the yard, right past Vespasian, with the other two trailing her. Halfway to the cars, Spike fell back a few steps and headed off at an angle to the other two. As Buffy and Xander drew closer to the cars both guards straightened suspiciously. Spike kept walking, circling behind their cars until he was past them and out of the glare of the headlights. He took a look over at the gate. It was open, and from the look of it he wasn’t sure it could be closed--there were so many layers of weeds, and old trash drifted about the bottom. If anyone were stationed there, they were outside the fence and invisible from here. The air was dead still, and the tangle of scents in the yard made it impossible to tell anything by that route.

Xander shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled over to the guard by his own car, gawking around him open-mouthed, the perfect image of local talent overawed by the arrival of the big boys. Buffy stopped beside the DeSoto. The two of them kept just far enough away from one another to make it difficult for either guard to keep both of them in sight at once. "Hey there," Xander hailed the guard on the Corvair. "Where did the big boss want us to take these cars?"

The guard adjusted his cap and looked Xander up and down. Mostly up. Broom Guy being a big Neanderthal lug was finally to their advantage. One corner of the guard’s mouth twitched scornfully, and his wary stance relaxed a trifle. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The cars," Xander repeated, with the air of someone talking to a rather dim child. "We can't leave them here. Where's the keys?"

"Who's asking for them to be moved?" the second guard asked, suspicious.

Spike observed the second guard's hand twitch slightly in the direction of his jacket pocket as he spoke, and began drifting silently forward between the two cars. He wondered if the Initiative doctors who'd saddled him with the chip would have appreciated the irony: in preventing him from being an effective killer, they’d forced him to become a much more effective thief. Aside from the occasional necessity of nicking things from Angelus or Darla back in the old days, he'd never had much reason to play Artful Dodger before the chip. If he wanted anything, it had been much easier just to kill the owner and take it. Nowadays having cash on hand made his unlife a lot easier, so he'd worked his way up from palming people's tips to lifting wallets. It kept him in blood and fags... and besides, it was fun.

Not a skill he expected the Scoobies to commend him for any time soon, he thought with a mirthless grin--unless they needed him to employ it in their behalf, of course. He moved into position behind the guard and nodded to Buffy. While Xander kept talking, and the guard failed to be convinced, she began wandering around the hood of the DeSoto, gradually edging towards the second guard. She bent over by the front driver’s side window, shading her eyes as if trying to see through the cloudy glass.

"Quit messing with the car," the second guard snapped.

"Sorry!" Buffy said, with none-too-convincing gruffness. She stepped back hurriedly, faked a stumble, and fell awkwardly towards the guard. He stepped back to avoid her and bumped into Spike. The vampire caught him and shoved him forward again, slipping one nimble hand into the man's pocket and extracting the keys to the Corvair as he did so.

Spike tucked the keys into his own pocket and stepped back, trying for a note of injured surprise. "Hey! Watch it, ma--dude!"

Unfortunately for their hopes for a quiet getaway, the guard wasn't an idiot. He could tell he'd been set up, even if he wasn't sure exactly what for. He thrust the butt of the shotgun back, driving it hard into Spike's stomach. The vampire grunted, but the human's strength wasn't enough to hurt him badly. The ominous ka-click of the gun being cocked hadn’t entirely died away before the vampire's fingers were locked around the guard's arms.

He couldn't hurt the bugger, but he didn't have to. Buffy lunged forward, batted the barrel of the gun aside as if it were a toy, and drove one small fist into the guard's jaw. The man’s head snapped back and his eyes rolled up. He slumped back against the vampire’s chest. Spike and Buffy both froze, the guard sandwiched between them, and glanced warily around to see if any of the drivers over in the rental cars had noticed the altercation. There were no shouts, no running. Spike draped the guard up against the side of the car and pried the shotgun out of his fingers. He got a good grip on one of the barrels and cocked his head to one side, holding the gun up with a smile. "Make a wish, luv?"

Buffy grabbed hold of the other barrel and pulled. Both of them threw their shoulders into it, and the metal made tortured little spanging sounds as both barrels parted ways. There was a good three or four inch gap between the barrels when Buffy let up the pressure. Spike examined their handiwork with pleasure and set the shotgun on the ground beside the guard’s feet.

"Look, all I know is I was told to move them," Xander was saying loudly. His guard was looking antsy; they’d have to move fast.

Spike fished his own keys out of his duster and made a quick check that all the doors of his car were unlocked. "Harris! Catch!" He held up Xander's keyring and tossed it in Xander’s direction. They arced over the Corvair’s roof, flashing briefly as they passed through a headlight beam, and Xander, looking up, reached up and grabbed them out of the air.

"Hey!" Xander’s guard yelled, going for his pistol. Xander dropped to the ground like a rock, and Buffy tore around the front of the Corvair, grabbing the guard’s shoulder and spinning him around. The pistol went off with a muffled crack as she twisted it free of the guard’s grasp, and the heady scent of Slayer’s blood filled the air like perfume as the gun went spinning away into the night.

Her blood.

Spike’s mind went utterly blank, no thoughts, nothing but flame-colored rage. He was over the Corvair’s hood with an inhuman roar--you heard panthers scream like that--vaulting through the air, face reverting to fangs and twisted snarling demon-ridges you couldn’t see through the illusion, and it wasn’t that he’d lost the balance he’d sought and found in the grip of the spell, oh no, not at all: man and demon were screaming for his foe’s blood with one voice. Through a scarlet fog he saw the guard’s confused face as the man went down beneath him, and William the Bloody laughed as his fangs closed on the man’s throat and oh yeah there were times when it still felt good, still felt absofuckinlutely great--

In the corner of his eye, Buffy staggered over to Xander, clutching her arm where the bullet had creased her.

Alive.

In the space of a heartbeat the single-minded fury that had allowed him to ignore the fact that his brain was exploding dissolved into abject relief. Pain hit him like a freight train to the head. Spike keeled over, fangs tearing free of the guard’s neck. Black spots rimmed with gold crawled before his eyes like a resurgence of the vortex, and if he’d eaten anything in the last twenty-four hours, it came up. The guard lurched backwards with a hand clapped to his bleeding throat, realized that whatever the hell had just hit him was no longer a threat, and began laying into the vampire with both fists.

Spike had been living with the chip for two years. He was used to it, as much as one could ever get used to something that shot a few hundred volts through you every time you lapsed into doing what came naturally. Given a few moments to plan, he could work around it a bit, come up with things to do in a fight which would keep his own hide in one piece without directly harming his opponent. Problem was, people he wanted to beat the crap out of were so sodding unreasonable about giving him those few moments. Spike flung both arms over his head in equal parts pain and fury, trying to roll out of the man’s reach. He managed to scramble back around to the passenger side of the car on hands and knees, the guard stumbling after in hot pursuit and both of them looking as bloody stupid as it was possible to look in a fight to the death.

Xander, on the other side of the car, had clawed his way to his knees and jammed the key into the Corvair’s door lock. He ripped the door open and shoved Hank unceremoniously aside. "Don’t shoot!" Hank yelled, fumbling with the lock on the passenger door and swinging it open with the force of terror. Spike saw it coming and plastered himself flat to the ground with every bit of speed he could wring out of his supernatural reflexes. He felt the door graze his shoulders. A second later it slammed into the pursuing guard’s gut. Another second later Buffy’s good hand latched onto a fistful of the guard’s hair and cracked his head into the top of the door. He collapsed with a groan.

Buffy pushed her father back inside the car and slammed the door on him. "Get back in there, you’re being rescued!" She reached down and yanked Spike to his feet; he swayed for a moment, trying to shake off the chip-induced wooziness, and grabbed the door handle of the DeSoto to steady himself. Now there were yells aplenty, as the other three drivers, alerted by the gunshot, left their stations to see what was the matter. All three of them were racing towards the two cars, pistols drawn. Spike slid into the DeSoto and gunned the engine. Xander was already pulling his car into a hard left to circle back out to the drive as Buffy jumped into the passenger seat of the DeSoto. As the engine roared to life the vampire hunched forward over the steering wheel with blood in his eyes, gauging the distance to the factory doors. Growling deep in his throat, Spike slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the DeSoto rocketed forwards, tires screeching. The unfortunate guard who’d been propped up against it rolled off and bounced to the ground--and that didn’t produce a single twinge from the damned chip; Spike had honestly forgotten the wanker existed.

"What are you doing?" Buffy yelled. She sounded more brassed off than anything else. Her voice was drowned out by a crash as the car's front end plowed into the pile of crates outside the warehouse, and a series of crunching, snapping noises as the contents of the crates went flying.

"Smashing things, pet," Spike growled through clenched fangs, punching the car into reverse. It would delay the spell a bit, which was fine, and after that fiasco with the guard he bloody well deserved to smash something.

Buffy wasn’t paying attention. Her eyes had narrowed. "Wait," she said before he could hit the gas. She was out of the car and racing across the pavement like a tigress. One of the drivers was taking aim at the departing Corvair; the other two had returned to their cars to chase after it. The web had been shredded, and the spiders were in a panic. Buffy wove in and out, a mote in the beams of moving headlights. Again like a tigress she pounced, and then she was running back, dragging a dark shape with her. She flung Vespasian through the open door of the car and jumped into the back seat. Half a second later Spike was peeling out towards the ramshackle gates, swerving to avoid the limp form of guard number two at the last moment. He didn't know if deliberately running someone down would make the chip activate, and he didn't want to find out.

The Corvair was already through the gates, having pulled up for only a moment outside the fence to load Willow, Tara and Anya inside. Spike slammed on the brakes just outside the gates, and Giles and Dawn flung the back doors open and swarmed inside. "Buffy!" Dawn cried, flinging her arms around her sister.

"Buffy, are you all right?" Giles asked.

Buffy glanced down at the blood-soaked rip in her shirt and nodded. "Flesh wound. Xander’s shirt is toast, though."

Two shots rang out behind them, followed by the metallic whine of a ricochet. Spike didn’t even bother to flinch. Couldn’t be more than twenty-two calibre. God, he could stand out there and let the bastards use him for target practice if he felt like a laugh, but he couldn’t take chances with the humans; shock was tricky and he’d seen a man die of an apparently superficial wound more than once in a long and violent life.

The other cars were rumbling to life behind them. Pity they hadn't had the opportunity to slash all the tires, Spike thought, flooring the gas pedal again and taking off down the road in a squeal of burning rubber even before Giles had the door closed. Ahead of them the road distorted and wavered like a heat mirage, and the hot tingle of magic scorched the air. Spike had a split second to decide whether to drive through or try to go around; recalling the condition of the field, he grit his teeth and plunged forward. There was a fizzling noise and the illusion of Paint Guy in the rear-view mirror was replaced by Buffy’s pale, strained face. If they’d had any magical defenses, that had probably been a spell designed to neutralize them. His own disguise must have disappeared at the same moment, for Vespasian suddenly registered the fact that the person driving the car was a vampire in full game face and a very bad mood.

Vespasian flung himself into the door, scrabbling for the handle. It came off in his hand. Spike was about to add that to his list of things-to-be-killed-for when he remembered he’d taken the thing off himself to prevent Dru from getting out on the way to South America, and never tightened it up again properly after he’d put it back on. Never mind, he’d blame Vespasian for it anyway. Buffy's left arm snaked around Vespasian’s throat from the rear and pulled him back against the car seat. "Dawn, get the phone out of his pocket," she said.

Dawn rummaged through Vespasian’s coat for the cell phone. She handed it to Buffy, who shook it in front of his face. "Call them," she said. "Call them and tell them to leave us alone. Now. I’m back, your spell won’t work, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll take your sorry asses back to L.A. on the next bus because I am NOT a happy camper."

Vespasian's eyes were rolling wildly in his head as he tried to get a look at the woman who was half-choking him. "You--you're..."

"You wanted the Slayer," Spike said with a fangy grin. "You got her."

Continue to Part 10

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