Five:
"You'll never hit as hard as Buffy does, so please, don't be
tentative," Mr. Giles says.
"I'm just not--" Joshua shakes his head and punches the pad Mr. Giles
holds. "Not all that butch," Joshua mutters.
"It's not butch to hit people. Is it? I mean, not necessarily." Buffy
looks at Andrew wide-eyed.
"No, Slayer, I don't think so."
"I'm not co-opting your vocabulary, am I? Because I don't want to be
insensitive. If we're not sensitive and open and sharing then evil just
walks right in and steals our silverware!" Buffy says.
Mr. Giles and Joshua looks over. "What are you talking about?" Mr.
Giles says.
"Nothing!" Buffy says.
"Vampires stole your silverware?" Joshua says.
"Metaphorical silverware. Never mind! Are you ready to practice?" Buffy
asks Andrew.
Andrew nods.
"Great!" She bounces into the middle of the room. Andrew considers, for
a moment, and then takes a supernatural leap onto the top of the
chained heavy bag. It's safe; this is how he and Mr. Giles tested the
equipment when they installed it.
He shifts into his demon face and glares down at Buffy. "Oh, so we're
playing the tricky game," she says.
She raises her hand and her body says she's going to try to pull him
down by the ankle, so he shifts and raises his own hand as a claw. He
doesn't like to punch--he doesn't want to break any more fingers--but
he keeps his nails longish for a guy so he can scratch like crazy.
Buffy changes tactics and grabs a staff from the wall. Andrew leaps
down and picks up a chair from the worktable; there are swords, but
that's too easy. Buffy raises an eyebrow: "Did Sun Tzu say anything
about chairs?"
She feints at his head with the end of the staff and Andrew blocks it
with the leg and shoves the back at her stomach in the same movement,
using the body of the chair to shove the staff away from him. Buffy
lets go of the staff, grabs the chair with one hand and snatches at his
hair with the other. "Ow!" Andrew yelps. "That's not how Slayers fight!"
"Excellent move. Entirely unexpected," Mr. Giles says.
Andrew growls and twists out of Buffy's hands, leaving her holding the
chair. He dances around her, trying for a kick to her kidneys, but
she's too fast for him. She throws a couple of punches and he bends
backwards to duck them and snaps forward to tackle her to the ground.
But Buffy is the Slayer, so Andrew ends up with a Nerf stake in his
chest. "Achoo," Buffy says.
"Darn it. I thought I was getting better." Andrew pushes himself up and
gives Buffy a hand.
"You are," Mr. Giles says, "but Buffy is the Slayer."
"Do you want to go again?" Buffy asks.
"Sure."
Joshua is still there, studying, when Andrew comes back from patrol.
Buffy actually asked him on patrol. She's been asking him all summer.
It's been great.
It's probably just because Riley still isn't up to par.
Andrew spins the desk chair around and straddles Joshua's lap. "You'll
never guess who we saw on patrol," he says.
"Who?"
"Guess!"
"But you said I can't guess," Joshua says. The corners of his mouth
curl up.
"Dracula."
"No way!"
"He was all tall and pale and European with long hair and really great
cheekbones," Andrew says.
"He's Dracula and he's sexy? Are you leaving me for the king of
vampires?" Joshua says, running his fingers under Andrew's shirt.
"No! He's too Goth. It's a cliché." Andrew leans in and kisses
him hard.
"Well, okay," Joshua says. He kicks the floor and spins them as he
slips his tongue into Andrew's mouth.
Andrew slides down, kisses Joshua's chin and throat, and Joshua jerks
his head away. "Don't," he says.
"Don't kiss you?"
"Don't kiss me there. You know why," Joshua says. He takes Andrew's
shoulders and pushes him away.
Andrew feels himself flare up, feels the anger in his stomach like he's
been eating hot coals. "You don't trust me. How can you say you love me
when you don't trust me at all?"
"I don't trust you because you've been chewing on me all summer! Just
say it, Andrew! Say you want to bite me! Say you want my blood!"
Andrew takes a deep breath of air that feels like fire in his lungs. "I
want to bite you," he says, tasting Joshua's skin on his tongue,
smelling Joshua's blood on the air between them, "I want your blood.
It's demon blood, it's not--"
"You can't have it," Joshua says. He shakes his head and all Andrew can
see or touch or smell is him.
"But I'm a vampire," Andrew says. "And I did this for you! When you
were in season I licked your pouch all night."
Joshua still shakes his head, slowly, almost hypnotically. "This is
different," he says, "it's so totally different, you have to see that."
"There was mucus. It was gross."
"Oh, fuck you!" Joshua shouts.
Andrew shakes his head. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just--" He leans in to
kiss Joshua's cheek and Joshua flinches away hard; he punches Andrew in
the shoulder with one of the moves Mr. Giles taught him.
Andrew grabs his wrist and Joshua claws at his face with his other
hand; Andrew grabs that too before he connects. "Let me go," Joshua
says breathlessly.
"You're hitting me!"
"You're scaring me."
He is. He can smell the fear rising from Joshua's body like tinfoil and
skunk. "Don't be stupid. It's me!"
"Acting like a huge freak," Joshua says as his smell intensifies.
He starts smelling really good. Andrew stands up, pulling Joshua with
him, so he can lean in and sniff at Joshua's body. Sweat and skunk and
all those wonderful warm smells, they're so--yummy. "Shit," Joshua
whispers, "Andrew, just let go, take your hands away."
"But then you'd go." He pulls Joshua in closer and inhales at the
crook of his neck.
"HELP!" Joshua shouts before Andrew can clap his hand over his mouth,
and with his free hand Joshua claws at his cheek and eye and ear and
tangles his fingers in Andrew's hair and pulls as hard as he can.
"Stop it!" Andrew snaps. He tosses Joshua down on the bed so he can pin
him against the mattress. "God, that hurts!"
Joshua bucks underneath him with all the strength he has but Andrew
rides it out. "You're acting like a total dick!" Andrew says. He shoves
Joshua into the bed until he goes limp, and then he lets go.
"Fine, do it," Joshua whispers, "just do it, and that's it."
"Just what?"
"Bite me." Joshua's eyes are opened all the way; he's breathing hard
and fast.
Andrew bites into his neck before he changes his mind.
It's easier than he thought. His teeth slice in like a knife into
butter. Joshua makes a small, pained noise and goes rigid under his
hands.
After that, it's just hanging on while the blood flows into his mouth.
It's kind of like when Joshua taught him to give a blow job. It's more
like when Mr. Giles split him open and showed him what he is.
Because he's a vampire, and he drinks blood. It's like a revelation,
like--duh: this is what you are.
His head hurts--Joshua's free hand is knotted in his hair so tight that
he's ripping strands out by the root. Their legs are tangled up and
he's digging his nails into Joshua's skin and Joshua's blood tastes
like Christmas, a really good Christmas with big presents and lots of
cookies.
Andrew wakes up feeling fantastic, all fizzy and happy and light. He
bounces out of bed wondering why he feels so good when he had such
weird dreams last night.
He goes to the computer to check his email and sees his hands.
He looks back at the bed. Blood. His hands. Blood. His mouth, his hair,
his face--it's Joshua's blood.
Joshua isn't there.
Andrew rips the sheets off the bed--there's blood on the mattress, but
he can flip that, and wash the clothes, and wash himself, and--where
is Joshua? He pulls his clothes off and scrubs the blood from his
face with his t-shirt.
The Slayer is going to kill him. As soon as she finds out.
She must not know, or they would have dragged him out of his bed.
There's no way she would leave him in the same house with Mr. Giles.
Andrew grabs his bathrobe and towel and creeps upstairs. He can smell
Joshua, smell his blood in the air still.
He can't hear Mr. Giles in the house. Maybe he's safe.
He runs up to the bathroom and washes his hair twice, scrubs his face
until it hurts, scrubs out his nails. He doesn't get out of the shower
until he can't smell the blood any more.
He wishes he could see himself in the mirror. But if he could, he
wouldn't be having all these problems.
He's walking down the stairs as Mr. Giles returns. Mr. Giles looks up
and nods. "Good morning, Andrew."
Andrew clutches the banister so hard his nails dig into his palm. "Good
morning."
"I heard last night was interesting." Mr. Giles sits at the worktable
and pulls books from a paper bag.
"Interesting? No!"
"Dracula isn't interesting?" Mr. Giles asks, smiling a little.
Oh. Oh. Andrew clutches his towel to his chest. "He was pretentious and
creepy. The Slayer will defeat him."
"Yes, I'm sure she will. We're all researching the man--I've been
elected to reread Stoker." Mr. Giles looks at one of the books with
clear disgust. "Lurid trash, but it might hold some clues. There's
ample work to be done if you're not busy."
Andrew shakes his head. "I'm not busy. Uh--did you see Joshua leave
this morning?"
"No, I'm afraid not. Is something wrong?"
He left. He just left. He didn't tell anyone. Andrew presses his towel
to his mouth and shakes his head. "No, I just--no. I'll get dressed."
He's not going to die. He almost laughs as he hurries back to the
basement--but then he closes the door and Joshua's smell is all around
him and he collapses down onto the top step and cries, because he
fucked this up so much and Joshua is never ever going to forgive him.
Joshua's blood circulates under his skin, petting him from the inside,
telling him things are going to be all right when they're really not.
Bed.
Bed good. Bed still smells a little like Joshua, even after he's washed
the sheets and flipped the mattress.
"Oi. Wake up."
Andrew cracks his eyes, then screws them closed. "Go away."
"It's ten o'clock at night! Are you going to sleep forever?" Spike
says.
Bed is good. He wants to sleep a lot. "What are you doing in my room?"
"Looking for you. Need a little mumbo-jumbo."
Andrew sits up and glares at Spike. "I can't do magic. Get Willow."
"Willow. This is vampire business," Spike says. "Family business.
Besides, she'd tell me to get lost."
"Get lost."
"Not so fast, pup. Better listen. I want to off Dracula."
Andrew rolls his eyes. "Buffy already staked him."
"Sure. Everyone's staked him. I staked him once. Flash bastard, he's
got his tricks," Spike says, shaking his head. "We need to trap him,
see, break up his whaddyercallit--thing that keeps his dust together."
Andrew blinks. "I don't think there's a word for that," he says.
"No?" Spike looked puzzled. "You sure? Seems like there should be."
"No. And--why should I do this with you? You're just trying to get on
Buffy's good side and make her forget what a treacherous, sneaky,
cowardly evil thing you are."
"I am not cowardly!" Spike shouts. He grabs the neck of Andrew's shirt
and his mouth works for a second--then his nostrils flare and he looks
around. "My. My, my. Someone's been a bad dog."
"I'm not a dog."
"Someone's been naughty... and I bet someone doesn't want the Slayer
to know. Where's that little boyfriend of yours, hm, pup?"
Their eyes meet. Andrew can't speak, because he's right, he's right,
he's so so right--"I didn't do anything!" Andrew blurts out. "I didn't
do anything wrong. I'll help because we have to stop Dracula, and
that's--"
"Brilliant!" Spike leaps up from the bed. "Teach him to ignore his
nemeses. What do you need--grave dirt, newt's breath?"
"All I can do is blood magic. For that, I just need blood." Andrew
slides out of bed and looks for his pants.
Spike wanders around, looking at Andrew's bookshelves while Andrew gets
dressed. Fortunately, he doesn't touch the Star Wars figures, or Andrew
would have to stake him. He watches the screen-saver on Andrew's
computer for a few minutes before looking back at him. "Blood
magic--isn't that black magic? Form of chaos and all that?"
Andrew yanks at the laces of his army boots. "Depends on how you use
it. Using it to kill a vampire makes it white magic."
"Nooo... I seem to remember Rupert having quite a go at little Red on
this subject. Seems she was inclined to dabble in forces beyond her
ken."
Andrew ties a careful knot and pulls the cuff of his jeans over the
top. "Mr. Giles and I tested what I can and can't do when I first
became a vampire. We tried spell magic, natural magic, and blood magic,
and blood magic is what I could do. It's not evil."
Spike stands and smirks at him.
"I'm not evil," Andrew says.
"Right. White magic and spotless souls all around, except--oh! No souls
in either of us and no chip in you, and your boy found that out the
hard way what that means, now didn't he?"
"I didn't do anything wrong," Andrew says, way too quiet.
Spike smirks harder. Andrew grabs his grimoire and backpack and goes
upstairs.
In the end it's simple, though it takes forever to set up: Andrew makes
a double circle of his blood while Spike chases Dracula around his big
fancy castle. Finally, Spike tosses Dracula into Andrew's arms, and
Andrew holds Dracula in the circle while Spike stakes him with the leg
of a chair.
Andrew flicks blood over the ashes. "I bind you," he says.
Now Dracula is trapped in dust form and can't waft out of the circle.
Andrew isn't sure if he has consciousness or not. It doesn't really
matter, because Spike has fired up the Dustbuster and is sucking up the
Dark Prince.
"Let's see how you like modern plumbing," Spike chortles.
"Uh, that might not be a great idea. Think about all the stuff in
Sunnydale sewers," Andrew says.
Spike glances at him. "Oh. Well. What, then?"
"Stand back," Andrew says.
"I'm already back," Spike says from the living room. "You ever got
splashed in the face with that stuff, you'd be over here as well. Why
can't your tweedy master do this?"
"Mr. Giles is still asleep and we should hurry." Andrew's heart is
racing and he's actually breathing, he's so nervous. But he has gloves,
he's got his apron, he's got Dracula's ashes decanted into a Mason jar:
all he has to do is lift the jug of holy water and pour.
He breathes. He lifts. He pours. He doesn't splash himself. "Done!" he
calls to Spike as he screws the lid onto the Mason jar. He tears off a
piece of masking tape and labels the jar "DRACULA" with a Sharpie.
Spike creeps back into the kitchen. "Looks like pond water. Going to
put him on your mantel?"
"Mr. Giles knows some witches in England. They've been guarding unholy
things for something like 800 years, so I bet they can keep Dracula
bottled up too."
"Really?" Spike sucks in his cheeks and looks thoughtful. "Powerful,
unholy things? All in one place? Guarded by women?"
Andrew glares at him. Spike widens his eyes unconvincingly.
"'M starved," Spike says, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his
pocket and looking in the fridge. "Slaying takes it out of you."
"If you light that in here you'll regret it," Andrew says, capping the
holy water jug and shaking it meaningfully. He still has his gloves
and apron on. Spike just has his coat.
Come to think of it, it would be really funny to soak the lining of
Spike's coat in holy water. Let it dry and put it back in his crypt so
it burns him when he puts it on in the morning--Andrew would laugh and
laugh and laugh.
Spike's eyes are riveted to the holy water jug until Andrew puts it
back under the sink. He puts the cigarettes away without comment.
"Heat me up some blood too," Andrew says.
Giles is moving around upstairs; it must be early. Andrew checks his
watch as Spike carefully pours blood into two glasses. "Sun's up," he
says.
"What? Can't be." Spike tosses the empty carton down on the counter and
twitches the blackout blinds away from the window. He yelps and jumps
back, sticking his fingers in his mouth. "Bloody hell!"
Andrew throws away the empty container and puts the glasses of blood in
the microwave. "I guess you're sleeping in the tub today. Stupid."
"Like hell I am!"
"The couch gets direct sun," Andrew says, watching the glasses orbit
each other on the microwave turntable. It's like meditation.
"I'm the senior vampire here. I get your bed."
"That whole sire-spawn thing didn't work last time," Andrew says, "I
don't know why you keep trying it."
Spike grabs his arm and spins him around, slamming him hard into the
countertop. "It's because like it or not, you're a member of the Order
of Aurelius, and that means something. It means you're part of a long
line of master vampires that burn, kill and attempt to end the world on
an epic bloody scale, you got it? I may have come down in the world,
but that doesn't mean I'm about to let some whippersnapper disrespect
the ancient customs." He leans painfully into Andrew's body, hand
clamped to Andrew's chin so he can't even whimper. "Not when they work
in my direction for once," Spike says, and he lets Andrew go.
"You're still sleeping in the tub," Andrew chokes out, and Spike takes
a swing that Andrew ducks. Spike is chasing him into the living room
when they hear feet on the stairs and a key in the lock.
They both run back into the kitchen and Spike grabs Dracula's ashes.
"Anyone home?" Buffy calls out. "Hey, Giles!"
"Sorry, I'm running a bit late," Mr. Giles says. "Let me pack us some
breakfast and a thermos of tea and we'll be off."
Andrew pats down his shirt and jeans and glares at Spike, who's
practicing his big Bambi eyes.
"Ooh, breakfast! Do you have English muffins? Because I--" Buffy stops
as she sees Andrew and Spike in the kitchen. Mr. Giles follows her in.
"What are you two up to? Together? In a not-fighting way?" Buffy says.
Spike holds up the jar of ashes and water. "I slayed your baddie, old
Drac. You didn't know how to keep him dead, but look, I've got him in
this jar. What do you say to that?"
Buffy looks at him. She looks at Andrew.
"It really is Dracula. I used a spell on him to keep him contained and
then we vacuumed up his ashes and put them in holy water," Andrew says,
pointing to the jar. "I don't know if he's dead or not."
Mr. Giles and Buffy both regard the Mason jar. "You performed a spell?"
Mr. Giles asks.
"Blood containment."
"Ah." Mr. Giles doesn't seem mad, so Andrew must have done that right.
Andrew smiles.
"Strawberry jam, pickles, and vampire preserves," Buffy says. "Neat."
"We'll have to keep it in a safe place... the Furies up in Los Angeles
should be able to help, I think. Thank you," Mr. Giles says to Andrew.
"That was good thinking."
Andrew beams. "Was my idea," Spike says. "My plan."
"Of course," Mr. Giles says, and it's a totally different kind of voice
than he used for Andrew. Dismissive. He's not saying thank you to
Spike.
It doesn't even bother him when Buffy points out that the sun is up and
Mr. Giles invites Spike to stay.
It doesn't even bother him that Spike takes the bed and shoves Andrew
onto the floor.
Andrew proved that he's on the right side, that he's competent, that
he knows what he's doing. Nothing can kill that glow.
Not even the lingering scent of Joshua's blood.
...and a quarter:
"Maybe I should start keeping blood in the fridge. Where do you get
yours, Andrew?" Joyce turns around with a quart of tangerine juice in
one hand and milk in the other.
"You don't need to do that, Mrs. Summers. Juice is fine."
"But it seems so inhospitable," she says. "Between you and Spike and
Angel when he's in town--it feels so closed-minded just to have human
food on hand."
Andrew shakes his head. "We don't mind. Honestly. And blood goes bad
really, really fast."
"Oh? I didn't know that." She tilts her head, apparently thinking it
over. "Juice, you said?"
"Yeah. Thank you."
Andrew props his chin on his hands and watches her pour him some
tangerine juice. He likes it here. It smells like home, all pancakes
and mom-perfume. Giles's house smells like old paper and incense and
tea. "I saw your mother in town the other day," Mrs. Summers says.
"Tucker's gone off to college now--she seems a little lonely. She said
she and your father miss you and wonder what happened to you."
Andrew looks down.
"You never went home?"
Andrew shakes his head. "Tucker knows. I think he told them I ran away."
She sets the glass of juice in front of him. "Speaking as a mother of
two who had one run away for a very long summer? She'd be very happy to
see you again."
"My mom isn't you."
Mrs. Summers pats his shoulder. "She's a mom. We're not that different."
"Yes you are." He's not doing it. He has nothing to say to his mom.
Besides--his real mother now is Drusilla. He's a monster. He proved
that with Joshua.
"Hey!" Dawn runs in sucking on her finger. Andrew can smell the slight
tang of blood--she must have cut herself. "We'd better get going! Is
Buffy coming with?"
"No; apparently seeing the movie once was enough for her," Mrs. Summers
says.
Andrew shakes off the moodiness and smiles at Dawn. "Silly Slayer. You
can never see Gladiator too many times."
"Russell Crowe," Dawn agrees.
"Are you kids..." Mrs. Summers' voice trails off and she clutches the
countertop. "Oh, I feel a little..."
She falls to her knees, smelling suddenly of illness. Andrew jumps out
of his chair and Dawn dives across the kitchen, landing on her knees;
Andrew touches her throat, checking her pulse, wanting to know what's
wrong, and Dawn's hand lands on top of his.
Suddenly Andrew can see. He can see Mrs. Summers sickening and dying
from a tumor that neither magic nor science can cure. He can see Buffy
fighting, struggling, grieving--and dying. He can see Dawn, who's--not
real? He can see her dissolving into light.
He can't--that can't be right. That can't happen.
But at the same time, there's another reality, connected through
Dawn--Dawn is the Key, he hears Buffy saying in a universe far far
away, and that means something very important--and in that, Dawn is a
real live girl and always has been, Mrs. Summers is well, Buffy doesn't
die.
It's better. And if he wants it badly enough, he can reach out and
make it real.
And he reaches out, and everything shifts, and changes, and settles
again.
When he opens his eyes, he has a moment where he doesn't know who or
what or where he is--but then he blinks and he knows: he's Andrew. He's
a vampire. He's in Sunnydale, where he's lived for his entire life.
He's in the kitchen of Joyce Summers kneeling next to Dawn Summers and
he's known them since he was fourteen.
Duh.
"Ooh," Mrs. Summers says, "I don't know what happened."
"You fell!" Dawn says.
"Just lie still for a minute," Andrew says. "Do you want an ambulance?"
"Oh, no, no, I'll be fine." She props herself up and rubs her head.
"I'm just a little--woozy."
"You should rest," Andrew suggests. There's a smudge of blood on the
back of his hand. He licks it off absently and feels warmth tingle over
his tongue; it tastes like Dawn.
"No, I absolutely don't think you should quit school. Your mother is
fine," Giles says into the phone. He must be talking to Buffy.
He spots Andrew in the door and waves him over. "Give it a few days,"
he says. "Yes. Yes, the grand opening is next week. All right." He
hangs up.
"Buffy's thinking about quitting school?" Andrew says.
"It's not easy, balancing Slayer duties with homework." Giles takes off
his glasses. "How are things on the, er, demon front?"
Andrew thinks of Joshua and has to look at the floor. "Mostly quiet.
Spike keeps yammering about something big at Willy's, but I can't tell
how much is actual talk and how much is, you know. Yammer."
"Yes, Spike. I don't think we need to worry about him. Anything else?"
"There's a bunch of weird gray guys running around buying designer
clothing," Andrew says. "I saw a whole pack buying shoes at April
Fools." He and Dawn were shopping for leather jackets. She was his
mirror. She thinks he looks good in black too.
"Buying? Shoes? With actual money?"
"Yeah, uh--designer heels, the expensive ones, all the same size."
"How odd."
"Yeah." The clerk didn't even blink, but she was in Andrew's class in
high school; she's probably used to it.
Giles crosses his arms, tapping the stem of his glasses against his
shirt, and looks sideways at Andrew. "And on the boyfriend front?"
Andrew doesn't say anything.
"I haven't seen him around lately."
Joshua is screening his calls and not answering his emails. Andrew went
over to his dorm, but there was holy water on the doorknobs and he
burned his hand. "We sort of--we broke up."
"I am sorry," Giles says. "I liked him."
"It wasn't working. I didn't--he didn't like the blood," Andrew says.
It's not really a lie.
He didn't break the rules--he hasn't taken human blood. Joshua is a
demon. He didn't hurt a human person.
Andrew slides his hands into his pockets. "I miss him," he says.
Giles sighs. "Well. I've found that one's love life generally turns out
precisely the way it should. Best to accept the loss, grieve, and move
on."
Andrew nods. "I'm going to alphabetize my bookshelf. And then maybe
bake something."
"Good man." Giles pats his shoulder.
The phone rings twice. Andrew rolls out of bed and picks up his
extension. "Rupert Giles residence, this is Andrew."
"Is it, now? Well, I'm calling for the man himself. Is he in?" It's a
British guy who sounds kind of familiar. The connection isn't great so
Andrew doesn't recognize him.
He hears someone else pick up. "Hello?" Mr. Giles on the extension
upstairs.
"It's for you, Mr. Giles," Andrew says, and drops his phone back onto
the cradle--only not, because he misses and it slips off onto the desk.
Sometimes it seems like every single thing he does, no matter how
little, goes wrong. Andrew sits and closes his eyes for a second before
he moves to pick up the phone again.
But then the other guy is talking again. Andrew can hear clear as
day--vampire hearing. "It seems I remember Andrew. A sweet creature.
Blond. Lithe."
"Ethan," Mr. Giles says, "I wouldn't expect you to use something so
banal as a telephone."
"Innocent and evil at once, which is quite intoxicating. Terribly
powerful, and young, so very young. What are you doing with him,
Ripper?"
Andrew rests his cheek on the desk and stares at the phone. He
remembers Ethan Rayne. He remembers his glittery black eyes and the
things he showed Andrew.
How can someone be innocent and evil at the same time? That doesn't
make any sense.
"I'm teaching him and protecting him," Mr. Giles says to Rayne. "What
do you want?"
"Merely to chat?"
"We've never chatted."
"Well--isn't it time we started?"
"No," Mr. Giles growls. He sounds really mad. Andrew's hardly ever
heard him get mad.
"And yet you're not hanging up--oh, don't hang up on me now, Ripper.
You haven't interrogated me yet."
"Are you in Sunnydale?"
"No. Far from it, in fact, as you would know if you put your mind to
it."
"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about."
"We'll never be parted," Rayne purrs, "we'll always be connected."
"Oh, stop it with that pretentious crap," Mr. Giles snaps, "I'm
tired of it!"
"Crap?" Rayne says. Then it sounds like he's giggling. "Crap! What
would your maiden aunt say to hear you so American?"
Mr. Giles sighs and Rayne laughs and laughs.
"Ethan," Mr. Giles says, not sounding irritated at all.
"I ring you hoping for the sylvan sound of home and you assail me with
'crap'? My dear love, the California youth have your brain."
"Wanker. Prat. Pillock," Mr. Giles says. Rayne sighs--kind of a happy
sigh, Andrew thinks, like Willow sighs when Tara brings her tea--and
Mr. Giles chuckles a little. "Have a digestive biscuit and some milky
Lapsang Souchong and you'll feel yourself again."
"No more abuse?"
"I'm tired of that too."
"Mm. You're pleasant when you're tired."
"Come to town and I'm sure I can work up a good beating," Mr. Giles
says with an edge in his voice. "Especially if you interfere with my
Slayer or her friends again."
"Oh dear, oh no, I have bigger fish to fry--and doesn't that sound
lovely? Proper fish and chips." Rayne sighs again.
"Goodbye, Ethan."
"Goodnight, Ripper."
They both hang up.
Andrew stares at the phone for a long time, missing Joshua hard,
before hanging it up.
To: Andrew Wells <andrew@demonsdemonsdemons.org>
From: Joshua K. <j.kariakanit@ucsunnydale.edu>
Subject: Closure.
No, I'm not telling the Slayer. You need confess yourself.
I know you love me and I still love you but you have some serious
unresolved issues about your vampirism that you need to take care of
before you can be in a relationship.
When I woke up in bed with you the morning after, you were smiling in
your sleep. That was the first time I'd really seen you smiling in a
long time, maybe all summer. If the only thing that makes you happy is
to hurt me then things are really wrong.
So I'm taking the semester off and leaving Sunnydale. Don't try to
visit--I don't want to talk. I'm staying with Uncle Tuaro and he will
kill you if he sees you.
Goodbye.
Joshua
Andrew wakes up mid-afternoon. He lies in bed for a moment, wondering
how much time he's saved in his unlife by not having to use the
bathroom.
Then he gets out of bed and checks his email and the Demons, Demons,
Demons forum. He posted a message to the forum asking about the warty,
gray demons; Wesley Wyndam-Pryce up in LA has suggested Cratchler
entities, and someone he doesn't know suggested Firack demons. He'll
look them up.
Joshua's message is still sitting there in his inbox. He's not going to
answer it--Joshua is so, so wrong about him, but every time he tries to
write a response it turns into either begging or threats--but he can't
bring himself to delete it either.
He looks up Cratchler entities in Malegg's Demonology. It's still his
favorite reference. Regency English makes even descriptions of mucus
sound nice.
"Cratchler entities hie from the lowest swamp and ordure. The rags with
which they wrap their loathsome bodies are soaked in the dregs of the
noisome mud in which they live," Andrew reads out loud. There's a
picture, and that looks almost right, but they didn't smell bad when he
and Dawn saw them in April Fool's. They smelled like dust and a little
perfume.
But they could wash, right? So maybe.
Malegg doesn't have Firack demons, so Andrew switches to Carysine. "The
Arcane World" by Stephan Carysine is one of those books Giles didn't
even keep in the library; Andrew swiped it from his bedroom bookshelf a
year or so ago. It's written on parchment that may or may not be human
skin and it's really a lot of work to read. He's read that humans have
to fight to keep their souls from being sucked out through their
eyeballs when they read it.
For Andrew, though, the biggest problem is that it's kind of boring.
Demons are in the middle, after the spells to raise and control the
dead and before the really long section on choosing psychic real
estate. He flips through the pages, watching the words skitter away
from his fingers on the corners.
Firack demons. The picture looks like the ones he saw. When Andrew
touches it, it turns its head, like a mug shot.
Then it tries to bite him, not like a mug shot. Andrew jerks his
fingers away and frowns at the page.
"Firack they fly from lands victorious / summoned here for purposes
inglorious / subject to no man or witch's spell / of spirit weak and
aspect fell," Andrew reads. It was actually written in 1952, but
Carysine was nothing if not pretentious.
And that's it, there's no more--until Andrew touches the page again and
the words swim into a new shape: "A nest for their God the Firack
create / She, hunter of holy men, Slayer's fate / in the year of three
blood moons She will rise / and all Man's dominion will be Her prize."
Oh.
That doesn't sound good.
The words swim away again. Andrew flips back to the beginning, the
opening preface on the sorcerer's almanac; "blood moons" refers to
Flower and Wood, which Andrew doesn't have downstairs.
Andrew ties the binding straps around Carysine and slips the padlock
through the rings on the cover, then runs upstairs.
Mr. Giles is in the living room. Andrew hugs the wall away from the
shafts of afternoon sun and pokes his head around the corner. "Mr.
Giles?"
Mr. Giles looks up. "Oh, good morning, Andrew."
"Do you have Flower and Wood's almanac thingy?"
Mr. Giles rubs his chin. "Somewhere, I'm sure. It might be at the
store. What do you need from it?"
"How to determine a blood moon for the purposes of a sorcerer's year."
"A blood moon is a full moon that coincides with Aethel's thaumic
swell. It's rather exciting, actually, we've had three this year, and
that hasn't happened for over two thousand years," Mr. Giles says with
a little smile and eyebrow quirk. "What are you working on?"
All Man's dominion will be her prize.
"I'm not sure yet," Andrew says.
He takes some blood from the fridge and goes back down to the basement
drinking it cold.
First he wants to know who the guy is who posted that. He could try
looking at the IP numbers... and then he could fail, and call Willow.
Alternately he could call Willow first.
Andrew picks up the phone and dials.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Buffy. It's Andrew? Is Willow there?"
"Hey! What's up? Is there something I can slay?"
"Uh--no?"
"Are you sure? Because I could totally slay stuff right about now."
"No Slaying yet. Computer stuff."
"Oh." She sounds disappointed. "Willow! Phone!"
There's some thumping, and then Willow says "Hello?"
"It's Andrew. Can you help me trace someone?"
"Sure! Who?"
"On Demons, Demons, Demons. The guy who posted about the Firack demons
in response to my question."
Andrew hears tapping. "Still working on the mystery of the demons and
the high heels? Maybe they just want to be pretty," Willow says.
"They're not really buying in their size."
"Well, maybe they're used to European sizes. Okay, he's using
EarthLink, that's easy..." More tapping.
"Willow! Warn me before you burn incense," Buffy says in the
background. "It makes me sneezy."
"Sorry! It's important. It is important, right?" Willow asks Andrew.
"I think so." Maybe--maybe the whole planet is at risk. Wow.
How cool would it be to save the world? Andrew spins back and forth in
his chair, biting on his finger.
"Okay! Ben White, 422 Main Street, Apartment B, right here in
Sunnydale. So--who is this guy?"
"He might know what the demons are and what they're doing."
"Ooh! Are you going to question him? Do you need backup? We could wear
sunglasses and be all menacing."
"Yeah!" Buffy says in the background. "Willow, give." There's another
thump and then Buffy says, "Andrew, I should totally go with you if
you're questioning some big shot wizard. It could be dangerous! He
might turn you into a toad."
"That's not funny!" Willow says in the background.
And--Buffy already saved the world once. This is Andrew's thing. "I
think I should do this alone. I mean--you're the Slayer, everyone knows
that. I'm a creature of the night so I'm incognito."
"Oh, come on! Save me from the French homework." Buffy sighs. "Okay.
Yeah, it's a good plan. Let me know how it goes."
"I will. Bye."
Andrew hangs up.
An hour after sunset he's dressed all in black, crouching on the roof
of the apartment building next to Ben White's, with binoculars and a
backpack full of magic gear.
He can see right into the apartment through the gauzy curtains. The
apartment is really nice--and really really girly--and there are
Firack demons all over.
Andrew sees Ben talk to a few. He doesn't look very happy. Then he
twitches, falls to one knee--and turns into a girl.
Whoa.
A tall, pretty blond girl in Ben's suddenly badly-fitting clothes. She
gets up and takes off Ben's clothes and walks naked into the bedroom
closet; she comes out in a little red dress and heels. She talks to the
Firack demons, then takes a scrying orb out of a box and looks into it.
Andrew really wishes he could see what she's seeing.
She bounces up and down with apparent glee and runs out of the
apartment. Andrew jumps down, ready to follow her.
But she's--she's right there, when she shouldn't have been able to see
him or to move that fast, and she's looking at him. "A vampire? Ick. I
hope you weren't thinking about biting me."
Andrew puts on his demon face and thinks fast. "Gimme your wallet!" he
says. "Grr!"
She backhands him across the street. He hits a brick wall head-first
and blacks out.
When he wakes up, she's gone and his head hurts like hell--but clearly
he's onto something, and he will not be deterred in his quest. He pulls
his grimoire from his backpack.
He flips through the pages--somewhere he wrote down the ritual for
summoning a tracking imp--and there it is. He's needs a circle of blood
and a rope to bind the imp, preferably made of his own hair though any
part of the body will do.
Andrew takes off his belt and slashes his left arm open. He traces a
circle with the bloodied knife, then soaks the raw leather of the belt
with his blood. He whispers the nonsense words of the incantation and
watches as the dirt in the small circle swirls in a magical whirlwind.
He so totally loves summoning demons. It's so easy.
The imp forms in the circle and Andrew drops the loop of his belt over
the two-foot creature's head. It glares up at him, irritated, and
Andrew says, "One service. I'll pay you fairly."
The imp scowls and nods.
"Find She whose home this is," Andrew says, pointing to the apartment
building. The imp looks at the building, sniffs the air, and nods. It
takes off. Andrew doesn't try to hold onto the belt--it's part of him,
he doesn't need to--but follows a few yards behind.
They don't go far--but then, Sunnydale isn't very big. Three blocks and
they're in the little industrial section of town. The imp leads Andrew
to a warehouse and points to the darkened door.
"Thank you, creature," Andrew says. The imp looks up at him expectantly
and Andrew takes out his wallet and gives it his plastic library card.
It chitters happily and takes a huge bite as Andrew pulls the belt from
its neck, releasing it.
Then Andrew goes inside. His nose tingles as he wanders the halls; it
smells like age and magic and power--and blood, fresh blood, stronger
as he works his way inside.
There's a shattered steel door and all the scents are strongest here.
Two men are inside, one wounded, one just scared. Andrew steps over the
threshold and sees Her--and She sees him.
She narrows her eyes. "You're amazing," Andrew says.
"I know," she answers, walking toward him casually.
"Be my master," Andrew says.
She stops; her mouth opens and after a second she laughs loud. "I?
Love this country! I'm here for a day and you roll out the
welcome mats!"
"You are glorious," Andrew says, creeping closer, "I've never seen
anyone like you."
"Oh no, baby, and you won't, either." She reaches out for him--then
frowns and stumbles and suddenly changes back into Ben White. Still in
the dress. It almost fits. "Oh shit," Ben says.
His smell changed utterly in the transition. There's no power here, no
age, just human scent and male skin. Ben looks confused; he looks
around and Andrew hears the sound of his heartbeat. "You--you have to
stop us," Ben says.
"All Man's dominion will be Her prize," Andrew mutters, and Ben looks
at him, eyes widening, and Andrew leaps upon him and tears out his
throat. Because maybe, just maybe, this is how to save the world.
Ben's blood gushes down his throat. It tastes so amazingly sweet.
Different from Joshua--Joshua was kind of spicy, kind of wild; Ben is
human, pure as water.
Human. He tastes so good because he's only human. Andrew pulls away,
suddenly sick to his stomach.
But he had to do it--didn't he?--yes, he had to, and enjoying it
wasn't the point. Wasn't why he did it. He's not evil.
Not evil.
Andrew drops Ben's body.
"Oh..." There's a man in a chair in a monk's robe and another man,
dressed as a security guard, tied to the wall. Andrew breaks the chains
on the man tied to the wall and then runs over to the other. A bleeding
man tied to a chair--Andrew remembers that first rush of life after
death.
"I can help you," Andrew says.
"Fox in the henhouse, chickens in the corn," giggles the first man. He
holds his head and wobbles out the door.
"You have helped... helped the world... you have saved us from the
Beast. She would rule us all... she would drag us into the depths of
hell. Creature, you are blessed," the monk whispers, and then he dies.
Andrew can see the life go out of him.
Andrew sits back on his heels.
He just saved the world.
Probably.
He feels fantastic, like he's strong like Buffy, like he could rule the
world. He wraps his arms around himself and feels his nerves crackle
under his skin. He's a blessed creature--a monk said so!
But there's blood all over--human blood--and if the Slayer finds
out--Andrew looks at the two bodies and realizes it just looks like an
ordinary vampire attack. One man with his throat torn out, another man
tortured to death. If Buffy sees him, sees this, if the cops find
this, if anyone does, he's sunk.
He knows in his own mind that he saved the world. That's enough.
He drops his bloodied belt to the floor. "Burn," he tells it, "consume
this building." The belt immediately bursts into a hot green flame.
He watches as the fire creeps along the blood trails, blackening and
cracking the concrete beneath. The blood burns long after it should
have been consumed. When the flames reach the bodies of Ben and the
monk, they flare up like bonfires and the ceiling catches fire. The
concrete dimples and bubbles; the building is going to go soon.
He could just--stay, and--
Andrew runs. Fast. All the way home.
He's clean and showered three times over. There wasn't much blood,
really; this time, it was clean.
Andrew turns on the news and watches the warehouse burn. Buffy wanders
around, making his hackles rise and his instincts sing.
"Ooh," Buffy says, looking over his shoulder. "Fire. Pretty. How did
things go with whatsisname?"
With Ben. Ben White.
"I couldn't find him," Andrew says. "His landlord said he disappeared."
"Oh. Well, that's good, right? This is Sunnydale. The evil usually
moves in to stay." Buffy goes back into the kitchen and peeks at the
cookies in the oven.
"Yeah," Andrew says.
"Why do you bake cookies when you don't actually eat?"
Andrew opens his mouth and closes it again. He does it because Willow
did, and they forgave her--it's stupid. "I guess because it makes you
happy," he says.
She grins.
He should just tell her what he did--but he already lied, so it's too
late. He can just--it's like a secret identity, right? Like Batman.
He's World-Saving Man on the sly.
He can handle more secrets. He rubs his nails furtively, checking and
re-checking for blood.
"Blood and rum," Andrew tells Willy. "Heavy on the rum." He just needs
to relax. He's wound way too tight.
Willy nods and glances behind Andrew nervously; yeah, someone is there.
"That's more like it, pup. Drinking like a man." Spike sits next to him
and blows smoke in his face.
Andrew looks at Spike. "If I buy you a drink, will you tell me horribly
violent stories from your blood-soaked past?"
Spike blinks.
"I'm in a bad mood," Andrew says, "and there's nothing on TV."
Spike shrugs and bangs his hand down on the bar. "Willy! Make that two."
Andrew stares at his messed-up hand as Willy draws off two tumblers of
oxblood from the tap. Things would be different if that hadn't
happened, if his brother hadn't been such a dick, if he hadn't been so
stupid. He'd be different--normal--and Xander would be dead.
Two fingers for a life. It's--it is a good trade.
"So what happened, then?"
Andrew looks at Spike and Spike gestures with his chin to Andrew's
hand.
"Oh," Andrew says. "Vampire."
"Held your neck?"
"Tried to hit."
"Mm. But it was Dru popped your cherry, right?"
Andrew stares at him as Willy sets their drinks down.
"Your neck cherry," Spike says.
Andrew imagines dusting him. He has a stake in his pocket.
"Never mind then," Spike says.
"Yes. Dru was the first. And the last."
"Nah, I had a nibble too."
Andrew slams his drink and does not dust Spike. "Give me the bottle,"
he tells Willy, and when Willy hands it over he goes to a booth.
Spike follows him. "Still want dirty stories?"
"Yeah."
"Could tell them about you. You were a sweet bite--what, fifteen years
old?"
"Shut up, Spike," Andrew says, barely above a whisper, "or I tell the
Slayer what you did to Giles."
Spike stops short; he looks to the right, obviously trying to remember.
"Haven't touched the bugger. Can't."
"So? I can still tell her stories." Andrew stares at him.
Spike raises an eyebrow and leans back, slowly smirking. "Well, pup,
that's a side of you I haven't seen."
"Shut up, Spike."
He was wrong. He doesn't want blood, he just wants quiet--but he
doesn't want to be alone. He wants Joshua, he wants Joshua, he knows
where Tuaro lives--
He pours both glasses full of rum. Spike shrugs and drinks.
And pretty quickly, they both get drunk.
Andrew pillows his cheek on his hand, feeling his aura float about his
body. He thinks that's what his aura should be like, anyway, something
shimmering and billowing over him.
But he's bad, he's bad, and that makes his aura smaller or something.
He read it in a book. Or maybe he doesn't have an aura at all, because
he's a vampire. No soul.
Weight settles next to him and he can see Spike through half-closed
eyes. Then he can feel Spike going through his pockets like the
scavenger he is. Andrew moves his arm slowly and elbows Spike in the
eye.
"Ow! Damn it, I was paying the man!" Spike shouts.
"Hmph," Andrew grunts.
"Got to pay Willy or he won't let us back, and then where will we be?
Out in the cold playing checkers on tombstones like some pretentious
Gothic wankers. Come on, you," Spike says, and he hauls Andrew's arm
over his shoulders.
"Mm," Andrew agrees.
Of course, Spike didn't put his wallet back.
Spike walks them down the street. They're weaving back and forth; Spike
must be very drunk if he can't walk in a straight line.
Spike is cold--and hot, ha ha!--but his leather coat feels pretty
good on Andrew's side and his arms are amazingly strong. I could sleep
with you, he decides.
"What was that, pup?"
"C'ld def'ni'ly slee' wi' you."
Spike walks faster. "Brilliant! I love shagging the Slayer's friends."
Andrew snorts.
"Never had the chance before. Course, Slayers before her, they never
had any friends. Dour lot." They turn and there's grass under their
feet: a cemetery. A few yards and Spike leans Andrew up against a tree.
"Look at you, floppy like Dru's dolls," Spike says. He fumbles with
Andrew's belt buckle. Andrew rolls his head against the bark.
"HEY! Hands up, buttercup!"
And that... is definitely... Buffy.
Andrew groans and slides down the tree.
"It's me, you madwoman!" Spike snaps. "And this is a vampire, so bugger
off."
"Spike? What are you up to?" Suspicious, of course. "Andrew?"
He feels her hand on his cheek. His eyelids are too heavy to open.
"What did you do to him?" Buffy demands of Spike.
"Nothing! He bought the bottle himself. And he's a vampire! He'll sleep
it off."
"Okay, so--Spike? Give back his wallet."
"What? What!"
"Wallet. Now."
"Had it for safekeeping," Spike mutters.
"Now run home. Scoot!" Buffy says.
Spike rustles off through the grass. "And now? You go back to Giles,"
Buffy says, "and maybe if you're lucky he'll be asleep or turned into a
demon again and he won't notice that you were drinking."
"Spike," Andrew mumbles, meaning let me have sex with Spike against a
tree because that really is what I feel like doing.
Buffy loops his arm around her shoulders and hauls him through the
grass. "Spike bad. Like cigarettes. Only you get cancer of the soul or
something, only you don't have a soul, so I guess it's brain cancer.
Spike makes you stupid. Bad Spike!"
Andrew groans.
Andrew wakes mid-afternoon with grass-stained clothing, a headache, and
a much lighter wallet.
After the sun goes down he walks to Spike's crypt. He sits on the stone
coffin in the middle of the room and looks at the downstairs level.
After a moment, Spike pokes his head up the ladder. "What? Oh, you."
"I'm not drunk, but the Slayer isn't around. Do you want to fuck?"
Andrew asks.
Spike cocks his head. "Yeah. Sure."
Andrew follows him down the ladder.
...and a half:
"Halloween," Giles sighs, "so traditionally restful, but in fact so..."
"Chock full of poseurs," Spike says. He hands Giles the broom.
"Thank you." He starts sweeping up the vampire dust and shattered
crystal balls--sixty dollars wholesale for that lot, bloody
hooligans--then snaps back and looks at Spike. "What on earth are you
doing here? Don't you spend Halloween watching television?"
"I suppose a little gratitude is right out of the question," Spike
says, jerking his head in a way that Giles recognizes all too well.
"You were looking for Buffy," Giles says.
"Was bloody not!"
Giles points the broom at him and Spike lifts his chin and sucks in his
cheeks defiantly. "Don't play innocent--you're terrible at it," Giles
says.
"Hey, I have my own life. I have a girl. Harmony. She's a hottie,
very into me." Spike crosses his arms. "What would I want with the
Slayer?"
Giles rolls his eyes and sweeps up the shards.
"Do those actually work? Those--balls? They tell you the future?"
"It depends on the person," Giles says.
Spike picks up a display model and looks into it. "Dru always said they
worked. But she saw the future in jam, too, and little girls' eyeballs."
"Time-honored tactic among the evil and insane."
"Really?" Spike turns the crystal one way and another. "I never did see
the future in anything, unless of course you're going to be upside down
and sort of... squiggly in your old age," he says, squinting at Giles
through the crystal.
"Possible, but unlikely."
Spike turns the crystal over in his hands. "So can you?"
"Can I what?" Giles brushes the glass into a dustpan.
"See the future with these things!"
"You want me to tell your fortune?" Giles pauses, dustpan in hand,
and then laughs.
Spike glares at him balefully. "It isn't funny. Dru would never tell
me. She'd look in her ball or--whatever she had--and she'd just hiss at
me and wouldn't cuddle. Sometimes for days." He looks at the crystal
and raises it as if he's going to smash it, but then puts it back on
its base.
"So terribly sorry to hear of your romantic woes," Giles says. "Bring
me the bin."
Spike hauls the trash to Giles and crosses his arms. "I helped you. On
Halloween. When it's against the, the traditions of my people, it
is, being out tonight. You owe me."
"As I recall, you owe me. Blood isn't cheap. Nor is Weetabix."
"That! That was a charitable donation to a soul in need."
"Soul?" Giles raises his eyebrow and dumps out broken glass.
"Person. Thing," Spike says. "Oh, come on!"
Giles sweeps up more glass. "Just a peek," Spike says, "just a little
hint of what's happening to me."
There's an urgency to his voice, a pain that gives Giles pause. This
isn't some flight of fancy, this was a plan. "And what is happening
to you, Spike?" Giles asks.
Spike gestures furtively to his heart, clutching with both hands, but
then looks at Giles and frowns. "Nothing," he says, "forget it, forget
all about it," and he stalks out, jingling the bell merrily behind him.
Well. That was worrisome.
Giles pulls into the driveway and Andrew pops up with a mixing bowl on
his lap. "You missed the children," he says as Giles comes up the walk,
"and they were children this year, I checked."
"There was a bit of a scuffle at the store," Giles says. "Some young
vampires decided smashing pumpkins was cliché."
"Are you okay?"
"Oh yes. No more than I could handle. Spike helped a little." Giles
plucks a Hershey's kiss from the bowl and goes inside.
Andrew follows. "Spike? Was out? On Halloween?"
"He had something to ask me."
"Oh! Still, he should stay home," Andrew says. "It's unseemly. I mean,
he made a big deal out of it." He puts the bowl of candy down on the
stairs.
"Spike's been giving you vampire lessons?" They fought like a cobra and
mongoose before--but they seemed quite chummy when they stopped Dracula
together.
Andrew shrugs and looks at the floor. "We talk sometimes."
"I'm glad to see you've reached some sort of détente," Giles
says, "since he refuses to leave town."
Andrew rubs the back of his neck. He's wearing a black turtleneck and
gray jeans, Giles notices. He wonders when exactly the boy started
dressing like a man.
Probably it was Joshua's influence. He's not quite sure what happened
with Joshua and Andrew; Andrew openly pines for him still. Willow
checked the records at Giles's request and found that Joshua dropped
out and left student housing. It's not unlike the breakup of Willow and
Oz in that regard--but their breakup was public, so very public, in
every particular.
He could, of course, simply ask what happened.
He's running lines through his head, trying to work out how to phrase
it--how exactly did your young man rip your heart out and stomp it
beneath his feet?--when Andrew says, "I"m going to go read."
Giles nods and Andrew retreats to the basement, looking morose.
He lets his breath out. There will be time.
The phone rings and he rushes to the kitchen and picks it up. "Yes?"
"Has the traditional Halloween terror started at your place? Everything
is quiet here," Buffy says.
"Well--some young vampires tried to smash up my store. Spike happened
by and staked them out of embarrassment for his kind."
"Oh, God," Buffy groans, "Spike."
"We must forbear. It's good for the soul."
"Sure! It builds character. I'm building so much character there's
going to be two Buffys soon. Okay, I'm going to call around, see if
everyone is all right. Halloween gives me the heebie-jeebies--I can't
believe I used to think it was fun."
"I never thought it was fun," Giles says, and she laughs and hangs up.
Perhaps he's wrong. Perhaps they shouldn't forbear.
Perhaps they should take a more aggressive stance--stake Spike, stake
Harmony, sweep Willy's clean of the scum that lurks there. They're evil
and plotting against Buffy, all of them--
He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
This is absurd. They take problems as they arise, because anything more
is not only unfeasible, but inhumane. The world of men and the world of
demons coexist, they always have, they always will. The Slayer polices
them--she doesn't deny them existence.
He's been tempted before. He considered turning Ethan over to the
Initiative in a similar bout of anger--and humiliation, quite honestly;
letting Ethan poison him was an amateur's mistake.
But he didn't call them. And when Ethan asked, arrogantly, What's a
Slayer going to do to me? it was Giles who answered him, who summoned
lightning into the palm of his hand and scorched the hair off his head.
A fitting response. Humiliation for humiliation, but more importantly,
it was between them.
There's no chain of reasoning that leads to imprisoning Ethan that
doesn't lead to staking Andrew as well, and he can't--he simply can't
do that.
The phone rings again and he snatches it up. "Yes?"
"Tara's dorm is having a party and most of the people attending are
ghosts."
"Oh. Oh, dear. I think I have the supplies for an exorcism at the
store," he says.
"No, it's cool. They're just hanging out. Willow says Tara is talking
to a 150-year-old witch about spell something or others. Still, I'm
heading over just in case. Do you have her number?"
"Yes--actually, would you mind if I joined you? That sounds
fascinating."
"Sure! The more the merrier." She hangs up.
Giles taps on Andrew's door, then opens it and calls down: "There's an
incidence of friendly ghosts at Tara's dormitory. I'm going over to
take a look, are you interested?"
Giles hears a sniff, then Andrew replies: "No. Thanks."
Giles pauses. Andrew doesn't sound quite... "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
If he doesn't want sympathy, Giles certainly isn't going to force it on
him. "I'll be back in a few hours."
"So--how long have you been dead?" Giles asks.
"Oh, about twenty years! It's been great. No harps, thank God," the
girl says. She scoops a few more crisps from the bowl. "Have you had
these things? They're fantastic! Spicy!"
"No formless anger, then? No unsolved crime that calls out for
justice?" Giles looks around the party. The ghosts stood out primarily
by their outdated clothes; they were laughing and chatting with the
live students and each other alike.
"Oh no! I tried to fish out toast from my toaster with a fork. Boy,
dumb, huh?" The ghost rolls her eyes. "But I met a guy up, you know,
beyond, who tried to feed goldfish crackers to an alligator. So I feel
better."
"Yes, I suppose you might."
Willow and Tara are sitting with an older woman in a plain, sober
Victorian dress, and Buffy appears to be flirting with a young man in
1920s clothing who doesn't know where to look. Riley pokes his head in
the door and Buffy holds out her hand to him instead.
"You want to dance?" the girl asks.
"Oh. Er. No, I couldn't possibly--"
"Oh, come on!" She takes his hand and pulls him up. Her skin is cold
and she makes his spine tingle, but he doesn't sense any lingering
evil. "You remind me of my Poli Sci professor," she says.
"Do I?" She's backing him onto the dance floor.
"I had a huge crush on my Poli Sci professor." She grins.
Well, only one dance--
He drops Buffy off at her house. "Goodnight, blue suede shoes!" she
giggles.
Giles groans and rests his head on the steering wheel. He'll never hear
the end.
Tuesday afternoons are supposed to be quiet.
"So, like, if I want to talk to a dead person? Can I do that?" the girl
asks.
Giles isn't quite sure what to tell her. Yes, she can, but the
price--every action has a reaction, and raising the dead is a very
great action. "There is a way," he says finally.
He takes down a blend of chamomile and witch's grass he makes at home
and marks up ten times. "Brew this as a tea," he says, "and drink one
cup every night before bed for a fortnight. At the end of that time
you'll dream of the person you desire to contact, and if you are a
sensitive person, it will be a waking dream."
It's nothing like a sure thing, but it's safe.
She sniffs the herbs and makes a face. "You can add honey. It won't
affect the magic," Giles says.
"But I can finally give that bastard a piece of my mind, huh?"
"I suppose so. Twenty-four ninety-five."
She pays and leaves a happy customer. Giles rubs his temples and goes
back to Bailey's Life Beyond Life.
Ghosts can be angry, sad, trapped, or on rare occasions, joyous.
The bell over the door rings again--he's starting to hate that
sound--and he looks up to see a half-dozen gray-skinned demons file
through the door.
They must be the demons Andrew has been researching. He hasn't actually
seen them before. Andrew still hasn't found a name for them; he
confirmed that they're neither Cratchler entities nor Firack demons,
and they have no other leads.
"Hail, sorcerer!" the lead demon says. "We have come to speak to you
about our god."
"Your--god?" Demonic Jehovah's Witnesses?
"We saw her only a week ago," another demon says. The lead demon
shushes her and turns back to Giles with an ingratiating smile.
"If you can assist us in locating our god, your rewards will be
plentiful and rich beyond measure!" the lead demon says.
"I sure I haven't the faintest idea who or what you're looking for,"
Giles replies.
The demons look at each other. "She is glorious," one says. "She is
creamy-skinned and delicious," says another. "We are unworthy of her,"
says a third.
"Well, if you're unworthy of her, perhaps that's why she left you,"
Giles says. "Did you think of that?"
Their faces fall. "Indeed we did not. Thank you, O sorcerer," the lead
demon says. They look at each other again, then file out, heads hung.
Giles sits for a moment before going back to his book. The bell rings
again almost immediately.
"Did you see those odd little men outside your shop?" Joyce Summers
asks.
"I--well, yes. Demons, I'm afraid," Giles says. "Quite unexpected in
broad daylight. They came in to chat about religion."
"How very odd." Joyce peers out the front window at the glum parade.
"It's delightful to see you. It's been some time."
"It's been quiet lately. Normally some crisis brings us all together,"
Joyce says, interlacing her fingers. She frowns suddenly. "It--has been
quiet, hasn't it? Or is Buffy just not telling me--?"
Giles thinks about Harmony's attack, Spike's continued presence,
Angel's visits and all the other incidents that they have failed to
mention to Buffy's mother. "Relatively quiet," he says, because after
all, this is Sunnydale.
"Well, good."
"Would you like some tea?" Giles walks around the counter and gestures
to the back room.
"No, actually." Joyce resettles her purse on her shoulder and sits at
the worktable. "I came to talk to you."
He joins her at the table. "Yes?"
"Andrew," she says, and Giles is instantly alarmed.
"Has he--done something?"
"No, not at all. He's a sweet boy, good company. Nice parents," she
says with carbon steel in her voice, "who have been looking for him for
the past two and a half years."
Giles closes his eyes. He knows this argument; he has been having it
with himself for a very long time.
"Buffy was gone for a summer and it nearly killed me. You've left
them in the dark for years?"
"Buffy was alive," Giles replies. He opens his eyes.
The anger on her face is crystalline and all too familiar. "If Buffy
was a vampire I would want to know! I would have to know! Poor Mary
doesn't know if Andrew is alive or dead! I didn't know what to say to
her! That I've had her boy sitting in my kitchen a dozen times and she
hasn't seen him even once?"
"And what is he?" Giles asks. "Alive or dead?"
She sets her purse heavily on the counter. "Alive," she says.
"You are naïve," Giles says, and he thinks for a moment that she's
going to throw a punch. "He's a demon animating the body that once
belonged to the boy named Andrew Wells. That demon has his form and his
memories, but the quart of gourmet pig's blood in my refrigerator is
not there to be drunk by any human child!"
Joyce meets his eyes. He can see her fire, but he knows he's right. "He
lives with you and you think that way?"
"All the more for living with him. If you saw his reaction to a cut
finger--"
"Then tell them that he's dead," Joyce says. "Let them mourn."
"Ms Summers, do you know how many of her classmates Buffy has had to
stake? How many piles of dust I've swept up from the school floor? I
cannot start--" He searches for the word.
"Caring?" Joyce asks.
He should never have met her. Not her, not Dawn, not any of Buffy's
friends, because if he'd been a proper Watcher, she wouldn't have any
friends. There would be no-one to care for her, no-one to aid her in
her fight--and she would be dead.
He's an improper Watcher. His reward is Buffy's life. His punishment
is--this.
"I do care, Ms Summers," he says. "I have not forgotten that children
have parents. But all that I can do is what I am doing now." He
gestures to the books, the store, his role in Buffy's small army.
Joyce's mouth is small and flat and angry. "I can't agree," she says.
It was always a fragile truce between them. "Last night Buffy dusted a
girl named Christine Oakland. She was reported missing September of
last year. If you're visiting Andrew's parents, you might visit hers as
well."
She stands and picks up her purse. He quite sure she'll never forgive
him.
"And Saturday, the boy's surname was Taylor... first name Justin, I
believe. Missing since 1984, but his family is in Reno, so that may be
out of your way."
She is a mother, and Giles is no kind of father. "If Andrew is nothing
more than a soulless demon," Joyce asks, "why do you let him live?"
Giles doesn't answer immediately. She waits.
"Because enough of the boy remains that I can't bear to see him die,"
Giles says. It's the simple truth. Saying it feels like ripping off his
skin.
Joyce meets his eyes. "I see." She turns and leaves.
He toys for a moment with the idea that things would have
gone--differently--after the dreadful incident of the band candy, if he
had been a better man.
But he is only who he is. Flawed, failed, and far too tainted by
darkness.
He sighs and adds a shot of scotch to his tea.
"It has been quiet, hasn't it?" Giles mentions to Buffy as he partners
her through a set of exercises for the stave.
She frowns, obviously thinking, and raises her eyebrows. "I guess. I
can't swing my purse without hitting a crusty little hobbit, but all
they do is run away from me. Have you figured out what they want?"
"Oh, yes, I believe so--some of them came into the shop earlier.
They're hunting for their god."
Buffy knocks him off his feet and he stays down, catching his breath.
Buffy leans on her stave. "Do you think they're trying to raise it
here? Some kind of demon god?" she asks.
"They implied, actually, that they mislaid her. They wanted my help in
locating her."
"They--what? They lost her? Like you lose an earring?"
"Well, yes." Giles has to smile.
She laughs, but sobers quickly. "This so can't last. Keep your eyes
open. There's always something--this is Sunnydale."
"I am watching. Can you give me a hand?" He reaches up to her and she
pulls him easily to his feet. "Lord," Giles says, stretching painfully,
"next time you're sparring with Andrew."
"If I break you, do I have to buy you?" Buffy smiles, then freezes,
obviously thinking. "Giles--remember that warehouse that burned down?"
"Yes, it was on the news."
"I rousted some vamps around there a while ago, and I remember those
buildings were concrete and steel from top to bottom."
"Which doesn't burn," Giles realizes. "Something else was there."
"What did the news say? Industrial accident?"
"I don't think they had any explanation at all."
"We should check it out."
Giles nods. "I'll look in the newspaper archives and see if anything
stands out."
They put up the staves and return to the front.
"I still don't see why you won't repeat the duplication spell," Anya is
saying to Xander, "it's actually quite easy."
"Because it was confusing enough the first time, okay? I have
memories from two lives that day. It makes me all dizzy." Xander
wiggles his fingers at his head.
"Well, that's very selfish of you."
"No, actually, it's not," Xander says, looking long-suffering. Giles
heads straight to the talisman section rather than being pulled into
that conversation yet again.
"It might be keen," Buffy says. "One of you could go to work and the
other could stay at home and watch TV."
"Yes!" Anya says. "One could come help in the store!"
Giles leans over the divider. "I'm not paying for another assistant."
"It's all right, I could pay him in sex! This is an excellent plan!"
Anya bounces on her heels.
The two girls browsing the candles are making a very good show of not
listening. Giles sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"It's a great plan until you get to the part where I'm not doing it,"
Xander agrees.
"Are they for real?" one girl whispers to the other. The other elbows
her.
"Can I help you ladies to find anything?" Giles asks.
They look at each other. "Are there candles to burn for good grades?"
the first one asks.
Candles. Rubbishy things, but they sell like a cold drink on a hot day.
"Not as such," although he stows the idea away for later, "but the pink
ones bring general good luck, and the green ones draw money, for which
good grades are a requisite."
"Cool," they say, and load up their hands with most of his stock.
"You're oppressing me and my desires! I know all about men," Anya is
saying, so Giles follows the girls to the cash register. "I could turn
your penis into a pickled leek!" she shouts as Giles rings up the
girls' candles.
The girls are staring openly by now. "Thank you, come again," Giles
says and hands them their bag.
Xander is a little pale. "Anya?" Giles says.
"What!"
"If you ever argue with your boyfriend in front of the customers again,
you're fired."
She stares at him, wide-eyed. "He started it!"
"That was your only warning." Giles retrieves the week's shipping order
from beneath the counter and looks it over.
"Men," Anya mutters to herself.
"And that is by no means the only offense for which I might fire
you," Giles says.
"Pickled leek?" Buffy says.
"They're much tastier than penises," Anya tells her. Xander whimpers.
"They found two bodies in the wreckage of the warehouse, neither of
them yet identified, and a spill pattern that suggests arson. The
current owner has a large insurance policy on the warehouses and no
tenants, so he is under investigation. The state of one of the bodies
indicated that he was indigent--he had never received care for his
teeth and several bones were broken and reset inexpertly." Giles holds
the phone between ear and shoulder as he stirs his pasta sauce.
"So nothing really screams magical attempt to suck the world into
hell," Buffy says.
"Well, it screams insurance fraud gone terribly wrong, but there's
always the chance that it's something else."
"Yeah..." Buffy sighs. "I just have this funny feeling, you know? An
instinct that this is something more. There has to be something else,
something we're missing..."
"Spike was acting very strangely on Halloween."
"And then the ghosts--which brought the wacky, not the evil, but
still--"
"Unusual paranormal activity can be a sign that mystical energy has
been released in an area."
"He's up to something. I knew this peace and quiet thing was too good
to be true."
"The question now is--what?"
"I'm thinking tag team. Bad cop, British cop. I can hit him and you can
turn him into a frog!" she says brightly. "Are you free tonight?"
"I--yes."
"So, come pick me up in an hour?"
"I'll be there." Giles hangs up the phone, then drains his pasta.
Andrew opens the basement door dressed extraordinarily: new
thigh-length black leather coat, ripped and excessively safety-pinned
black t-shirt, black jeans, and thick-soled amply-buckled boots. The
ring in his upper ear has been joined by two in his right nostril and
he's wearing rather a lot of eyeliner. He leans against the kitchen
table with his hands in his pockets.
"Going out?" Giles asks. Andrew nods.
"Is there any particular reason you're dressed like Spike?" Giles asks.
Andrew hunches his shoulders. "Joshua got me to throw out a lot of my
old clothes and get new ones. I'm tired of dressing the way he wanted
me to. This is my new look."
"Which happens to be Spike's look."
"Just tonight. Pretty much by accident."
Giles nods. "I wouldn't take Spike into my home--that is, I did, but
only as payment for his information. I wouldn't live with him
voluntarily." He glances at Andrew. "When I took you in, I expected to
have to stake you before the end of the summer. I thought surely by
then the demon would overwhelm the boy--but it did not and it has not.
You are who you are. You surpassed my greatest hopes," Giles says.
Andrew bites his lip.
"Do you remember that," Giles says, and sits down with his dinner.
"I will," Andrew says, and he's gone.
Buffy is waiting in front of her dorm. "Why is Mom pissed off at you?"
she asks as she gets in the car. "I talked to her earlier and when I
said your name she got growly."
"We had an argument," he says, putting the car in gear.
"About?"
"An issue upon which we disagree."
"Which is?" She pokes his arm with her forefinger.
"None of your business."
"Giles!"
"It's not Slayer business, it's between your mother and myself, and
that's the end of it."
Buffy gives him a hard look but settles into her seat without apparent
resentment. "Any guesses as to what Spike is doing?"
"I very much fear that it has to do with a certain missing god," Giles
says.
"Spike... killed God? Maybe I can write a philosophy paper on him."
Giles stops at a light. "A formless swell of mystical energy, resulting
in the temporary raising of several dozen ghosts in corporeal form. It
takes immense energy to raise even one happy spirit--normally there has
to be some hook, some strong emotion on their part to draw them back to
this plane. He may not have killed this god, but it would take an
enormous event to release that much energy, and who would go to all
that trouble without having some other purpose for it?" As he says it,
though, he thinks--Ethan. Ethan would perform a major ritual and then
set the energy free, just to see what happens.
"Sounds like our boy, all right."
"I could be wrong," Giles says.
He pulls into the cemetery, driving carefully along the hearse paths,
and parks near Spike's crypt. He hates to leave his car in the
cemetery, but--well, he's with the Slayer. This is as safe as it gets
in Sunnydale.
Buffy marches up to the crypt; Giles follows with a wary eye to the
ground around them. "Hey," Buffy whispers, raising a cautionary hand.
"Voices."
"Who?"
Buffy listens hard. "Spike and Andrew?" She steps into the crypt. "So.
What's up?"
Spike and Andrew are sitting on the sarcophagus with a bottle of vodka
between them. Andrew is shirtless, scratched, and bruised; as he turns
to look at Buffy, Giles sees that his left eye is swelling. Worrisome.
"Buffy and the Brain," Spike says, "this is a delight."
"Andrew, what happened to you?" Giles asks.
"I borrowed Spike's shirt without asking."
"Stole it! And got a proper beating for it," Spike says.
"Now we're bonding through alcohol." Andrew crosses his arms over his
chest and edges sideways. The marks on his chest are of varying age: he
didn't take them all tonight.
And he won't look Giles in the eye.
Very worrisome.
Andrew picks up his coat from the floor and slips it on over his bare
chest--an unsettling look on his teenaged frame, but it makes him
visibly more comfortable.
"How very vampiry," Buffy says. "Spike, we have some questions for you."
Spike shoots a look at Andrew and turns to the Slayer with a slow
smile. "Oh. Do tell."
"What have you been up to lately?"
Spike shrugs. "Smoking. Drinking. Thinking about the chip."
"No big magical stuff? No trying to end the world?"
"No. I've done with that." Spike takes a swig of vodka from the bottle.
There aren't any glasses.
"What did you want from Giles on Halloween?"
Spike's face twitches and he drinks from the bottle again. "Nothing."
"Sure. Nothing dragged your ass out of this crypt on the one day you
never stick your nose outside."
"Fine. I wanted to see if I ever get the chip out."
"You know I don't believe you. Why do you bother to lie to me?" Buffy
asks.
"Why do you bother to ask me?"
"Andrew!" Buffy says. Andrew startles and sits up straight.
"Yes, Slayer?" His eyes are like dinner plates.
"What's Spike been up to lately?"
"Um. Smoking, drinking, and complaining about the chip, pretty much.
The last time I know he was involved with anything magical was when he
helped me trap Dracula," Andrew says.
"Oi! You helped me. It was my plan!"
"It was my blood," Andrew says.
"But has he killed any demon gods lately is my real question," Buffy
says.
Andrew jerks upright. "Demon? Gods?"
"Gods? Show me a god and I'll spit in its sodding eye."
"Been involved in any warehouse fires? Raised any ghosts?" Buffy looks
from Andrew to Spike.
"You're off your rocker," Spike says.
"Killed anybody?"
"No!"
"Is this true?" Buffy asks Andrew.
Andrew looks petrified. "I don't know--I don't think he's--I really
don't know anything, Slayer!"
Buffy glares at both of them. Andrew draws his knees up, shrinking
himself under her eye as much as possible; Spike stretches his legs out
and props the bottle on his groin.
"I'll just take a look around," Buffy says, and Spike looks alarmed at
that.
"Those are my private things! Dirty, manly things that are not for
female eyes," Spike says.
"What are you talking about?" Andrew whispers to Spike. Spike slaps him
on the back of the head.
"Mm hm." Buffy climbs down the ladder; Spike jumps to his feet and
starts to follow, but Giles grabs his shirt.
"I don't believe you either," Giles says softly. "Would you like to see
my interrogation techniques?"
"Fine! Fine. I've been robbing old ladies, right?"
"Robbing old ladies."
"Fags cost! Booze costs! And they lock up the stores so much it's
work to break into them. So I jump out, gives the biddies a bit of a
scare, and swipe their wallets. No harm done! Tell the Slayer to back
off," Spike says, wrenching out of Giles's grasp.
"Robbing old ladies?"
"Oh. My. GOD!" Buffy screams. "SPIKE!"
She barrels up the ladder. Spike's eyes widen and he starts to bolt,
but Andrew tackles him to the floor. They roll across the stone,
snarling at each other, as Buffy leaps up from the basement with a
sweater in her hand. "SPIKE! You are the grossest thing I have ever
met!"
The two vampires pause in their scuffle, Spike's arms locked around
Andrew's waist. "I can explain!" Spike says.
"Oh. No explaining. Just setting on fire," Buffy says. "This? Is my
sweater. And also? My bra!"
"It's! I can--" Spike shoves Andrew away from him and circles away from
Buffy. Giles gives Andrew a hand up. "It's like a predator--it's that
I'm in love with you," Spike says, and he falls to his knees.
Buffy is dumbfounded. Andrew lets his breath out and doesn't draw in
again.
"Like a witching knight for his lady fair," Spike says, inching closer
to Buffy on his knees, "or the poison for the unicorn's horn--"
"Oh, do stop," Giles says.
Spike embraces Buffy's thighs. She kicks him in the stomach. "We're
leaving," she says to Giles.
"Fine," Spike gasps out, "you run, but you'll never outrun my heart!"
"I'm going to burn these," Buffy says as she stalks out of the crypt.
Giles follows her; Andrew lags behind, but Spike spits a curse and
Andrew catches up to them.
"Harmony is going to be super-pissed when she finds out," Andrew says.
"Watch me shed a tiny perfect tear." She climbs into the passenger seat
of Giles's car, looking over her sweater. "Ew! I think he got blood on
it."
Andrew hops over the side of the car into the back seat.
"I think I should kick Spike's ass some more."
"I doubt he had anything to do with this," Giles says, and starts the
car.
"Oh, I know he doesn't have anything to do with this. But in between
figuring out who does, I'm thinking some face-punching is in order,"
Buffy says.
Giles glances over his shoulder. Andrew's eye is swollen nearly
shut. "What do you think, Andrew?"
"Hitting Spike is good."
"We think there's a connection between a recent fire in a warehouse,
the strange demons and their missing god, and the Halloween incident of
the ghosts," Giles says, glancing back at Andrew periodically.
"If it's not Spike, there's some new evil in town," Buffy says.
Andrew is pale as milk in his new jacket. "I guess so," he says.
...and three quarters:
"And you'll be careful," Xander says.
"Yeah." Andrew pockets the keys.
"Do you--wait, do you actually have a license?" Xander takes his
shoulder urgently.
"I have a fake license that looks real. And Mr. Giles taught me to
drive on his car."
Xander still has his shoulder. "So why aren't you driving the
Gilesmobile?"
"The trunk isn't big enough for me to get into if I have sun problems."
"Maybe I should drive!" Xander says. "See Cordelia! Make my ex-demon
girlfriend painfully jealous," he says, face falling.
"I promise I won't let Angel touch it," Andrew says.
Xander makes a face, but sighs. "So long. Have fun."
"Thank you, Xander." Andrew leaves quickly before Xander changes his
mind again.
Lending Andrew his car is a touching gesture of faith and friendship.
Andrew only hopes that he can live up to Xander's example.
The route out of town takes him past the Summers house, and Andrew
stops for a minute to ask Dawn if she wants anything from L.A.
He smells the cigarette smoke as soon as he gets out of the car.
"Spike, what are you doing?" he asks.
"Lurking. Spying on my mortal enemy." A shadow shifts behind a tree and
smoke drifts through the lower branches.
"Who is also your best beloved," Andrew says.
"Shut your mouth," Spike says. His voice is low and full of threat.
Andrew hasn't seen him since that night. Since Mr. Giles saw him there.
He didn't say anything, but he saw, and Andrew just couldn't go back.
Plus--he's pretty sure Spike wasn't thinking of Harmony while doing
Andrew, but he's not sure at all that he wouldn't think--wasn't
thinking--of Buffy. And that's disturbing and wrong.
The front door flies open. "Andrew! Are you talking to Spike?" Buffy
shouts.
"Yes, Slayer!"
"That's it." Buffy storms out of the house cocking a crossbow. "Andrew,
clear the target."
Spike jumps out from behind the tree and pulls Andrew in front of him.
"Now, Buffy, don't be hasty--"
"I've had enough. More than enough. I should have killed you years ago.
Now you're doing some sick stalker routine and you think I'm being
hasty? Stand up, Spike," Buffy says, pointing the crossbow at Spike
and Andrew, "take it like a man for once."
"My love is pure and beautiful and eternal!" Spike shouts in Andrew's
ear. He's edging them back against the car; he's so going to make a
break for it.
"It's Xander's car, Slayer," Andrew says. "Please don't scratch the
paint!"
Spike flings open the door; another car drives by and blares its horn,
distracting the Slayer. Spike pulls Andrew into the car sideways and
fishes the keys out of his pockets despite Andrew's struggles.
"Hey!" Buffy says. She grabs Andrew's ankle but Spike already has the
car started and roaring down the street.
"Stop! Stop the car, it's Xander's! If you crash it he'll rip out your
eyes and set you on fire!" Andrew struggles to pull himself entirely in
the car and shut the door.
"Oh, save me from the mighty carpenter," Spike sneers. He slows down
some as they tear down Revello, though, and he stops at the light at
the end. "What are you doing with Xander's car?"
"I have business in L.A."
"I'm coming with." The light turns green and Spike hangs a left toward
his crypt.
"No!"
"Fine, then I'm tying you to a headstone and going alone."
"You cur!" Andrew tries punching him but Spike grabs his hand in
mid-air and twists his wrist painfully. "Ow. Ow. Ow!"
"You either get the car back or you don't, pup," Spike says, steering
the car into the cemetery one-handed.
Andrew tries to squirm out of Spike's grip, but Spike is using his
joints against him. "I hate you so much."
"Feeling's mutual." Spike stops the car by his crypt and looks at
Andrew. "So?"
"Fine! Come with. But don't come back!"
"Not planning to. Had enough of this one-horse town." Spike turns off
the car and stalks into the crypt, taking the keys with him.
Andrew tucks the keys into an inside pocket and looks over Xander's car
carefully for scratches. It seems fine, thank goodness.
He tosses Spike's duffel bag out into the sidewalk. Spike is staring up
at Angel's hotel.
"Been a while since I saw the old man," Spike says, shifting from foot
to foot.
"Do you get along?" Andrew asks, looking up at the hotel facade.
"I hired a guy to torture him."
"Maybe this isn't a great idea. Maybe you should leave now!" Andrew
says brightly.
Neither of them move.
"Well, I have to go in," Andrew says, "I have to see Mr. Wyndam-Pryce."
"And I can't stay in town without seeing Angel; he'll think I have
something to hide," Spike says.
"Okay." Andrew takes a deep breath and puts one foot in front of the
other.
Cordelia is sitting at the huge front desk reading a magazine and doing
her nails. She looks up as the door swings shut and grins. "Andrew! Hi!"
"Hi, Cordelia," Andrew says. He likes her much better now that neither
of them is in high school.
"And Spike." Her smile drops. "Can you hand me that axe so I can cut
off his arms and legs?"
"Hey, I am the helpless victim of government science here! Harmless as
a kitten! Don't be hacking off limbs!" Spike says, gesturing to his
head.
"Oh, I heard about that!" Cordelia says. Mr. Wyndam-Pryce emerges from
the doorway behind her. "So that means it'll be easy, right?"
Spike suddenly whirls. Andrew jerks and looks at him and sees that
Spike is holding a crossbow bolt in his hand.
Angel and a Black man Andrew doesn't recognize are standing in the
doorway; Angel has the crossbow in his hand. Spike backs up as Angel
advances but Andrew stays put.
Angel picks up Andrew by the front of his shirt as he walks. "Andrew.
You know, I'm sorry you got made. I'm sorry your life sucks. I'm sorry
you ever met me. But there's absolutely nothing I can do about it and
I'm now officially tired of apologizing. So unless you want me to end
your misery with a table leg, leave me the hell alone." He tosses
Andrew onto a padded couch in the middle of the room and backs Spike up
against the front desk.
"Andrew is here to see me, actually," Mr. Wyndam-Pryce says. Andrew
sits up and pulls his shirt straight.
"Ducky," Angel says, standing four inches from Spike and resting his
hands on the counter on either side of his body. "So how about you,
William?"
"Here for a job."
"A job," Angel says. "Here for a job."
"I'm making a fresh start of it," Spike says, sounding amazingly pissy
for someone bent backwards over a desk.
"Get out of here before I rip off your skin and make Cordelia a purse."
Angel steps sideways and lets Spike out of his personal space.
"Wait. Who are these clowns?" says the strange guy.
"Family," Andrew says.
"Charles Gunn," Mr. Wyndam-Pryce says, "meet Spike, also known as
William the Bloody, bane of two Slayers, now running away."
The side door is swinging closed. Mr. Gunn moves to chase him, but
Angel says, "Let him go."
"And this is Andrew. Perhaps we should go now," Mr. Wyndam-Pryce says
to Andrew.
"Go where?" Angel asks.
"Anyplace fun?" Cordelia asks.
The Host is a bright green demon with bright red horns and a bright
blue suit. Andrew prefers Joshua's style of demoning.
Sometimes he really misses Joshua. He pinches himself to make it stop.
"Shiny white teeth and big blue eyes. You bring me the best presents,"
the Host says, talking to Mr. Wyndam-Pryce but smiling at Andrew.
Andrew can't quite decide whether to flirt back or not. "What do you
want from me, babydoll?"
"I want to know what my destiny is," Andrew says.
"Well, that's vague."
"I feel like--I think maybe I've lost my way." Andrew looks down at his
hands. "Also I kind of want to know if there's any chance of getting my
boyfriend back."
"Mm-hm. Well, pick a song from the big black book and I'll have a
listen. We can slot you in after Daegana there." The Host indicates a
girl vampire sitting at the bar.
Cordelia is paging through the book. "This is my mom's entire CD
collection," she says.
"Well tell her to drop by, I'll buy her a Sea Breeze. Can I get you a
drink, babydoll?"
"Blood and rum, please." He looks at the stage and panic creeps into
his stomach. Cordelia hands him the book of songs.
A cute waiter comes by with his drink and a smile. Andrew downs half
the glass in one go and points to one of the two Bowie songs in the
book, a song he recognizes from Mr. Giles's vinyl: "Heroes."
The other one is "Let's Dance." Andrew isn't much of a dancer.
"Sure thing," The Host says.
"I should sing sometime," Cordelia says, "except I know what my future
is going to be. Fabulous." She grins at Mr. Wyndam-Pryce.
The Host raises his glass. "That's the spirit--take no prisoners!"
Andrew finishes his drink and looks to the cute waiter for another.
He's kind of drunk when he gets up on stage. It makes things easier.
"I, I will be king," he sings, "and you, you will be queen. For nothing
will drive them away... we can beat them, just for one day."
He watches the Host as he sings, but the demon doesn't change
expression.
When he's done, a few people applaud, including the cute waiter. The
Host meets him at the side of the stage. "You're going to die in three
days," he says.
Andrew's knees give out. He sits heavily on the side of the stage. The
Host sits beside him, saying, "If, baby, if you don't go back home to
the Slayer and tell her everything that's been going on these past few
months. Every detail. All of it."
Andrew shakes his head as Cordelia and Mr. Wyndam-Pryce come up to him.
"Are you all right?" Mr. Wyndam-Pryce asks.
"And you're going to get your guy back, all right, just not in the way
you want."
Andrew shakes his head and he sobs, once; he sticks his wrist in his
mouth to stifle it. "Oh, honey!" Cordelia says, and she hugs his
shoulders.
Die?
"Is there anything--?" Mr. Wyndam-Pryce asks the Host.
"Anything you need to know? No. The problem is all his and so is the
solution. Don't go looking to anyone else to make this better, you got
that, babydoll?" the Host says to Andrew. "And try to make a little
peace with yourself. There are worse things than being a vampire."
Andrew leans on Cordelia as they walk out of the club. His legs won't
quite hold him up and he can't stop crying, silently.
Home. He has to go home.
And die.
Unless he tells the Slayer everything, so that she can fight whatever
evil he's raised.
He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. Tell her--that he killed
a man and bit Joshua. He can't--she'll kill him!
Mr. Wyndam-Pryce is driving Xander's car, because Andrew can't. Because
he's going to die.
"Are you okay? What did he tell you?" Cordelia asks Andrew. She's in
the back seat with him, her hand on his shoulder.
Andrew can't answer--he can't breathe to speak without freaking out. He
must have--the great evil that the Slayer spoke of must be coming to
bear on him. The power raised by the death of the god must be
recoiling. He has to--
Andrew takes a deep breath. "He said I'm going to die."
"Oh, God! Did he say how? We can fight it!"
"The solution is up to me. I have to figure out a way to fight it. I
think--" He can't tell Buffy without some kind of proof that it was a
god he killed, and not just a guy. Or maybe he can fight the power
himself--he's very powerful. Way more powerful than anyone thinks.
He can do this. "I think I need to see your library, please, Mr.
Wyndam-Pryce."
"Of course." Mr. Wyndam-Pryce takes a hard right turn and accelerates.
Back at the hotel, Angel and Mr. Gunn have Spike tied to a chair. "He
came back and tried to steal blood from the fridge," Angel tells Mr.
Wyndam-Pryce.
"I'm hungry!" Spike complains.
"This guy really survived over a century? Don't see how," Mr. Gunn
says, kicking the leg of Spike's chair.
Spike shifts to his vampire face and snaps at Mr. Gunn. "If I had my
sodding teeth back, I'd show you, now wouldn't I?" he snarls.
"Don't underestimate him--he's stupid but tenacious, like a Yorkshire
terrier. What's wrong with what's-his-name?"
"Bad reading," Mr. Wyndam-Pryce says, and he shows Andrew into the
office behind the desk. Andrew looks at the shelves--ooh, the Annals of
Grigor--and pulls an armload.
Andrew's skin prickles; he looks up and sees Angel, who turns away.
Mr. Wyndam-Pryce takes a pillow and sheets from the bedroom closet and
makes up the couch. "I'm sorry, I don't have any blood, and I suppose
food does you no good at all. We should have taken some of Angel's. I
wasn't thinking."
"I think Angel would have objected." Mr. Wyndam-Pryce's apartment
smells like Mr. Giles's house--magical herbs and old books. Andrew sits
at his desk and looks at the books on his shelves.
"No--not at all. His problem with Spike is with the man himself. He
tried to kill Angel more than once."
"So did I." Andrew glances at Mr. Wyndam-Pryce and then back at the
books. "Only seriously the once."
"Oh. I don't think he carries a grudge, though."
"It would have worked if the Slayer hadn't been there," Andrew says.
"I hope you won't take it the wrong way when I say that I'm glad it
didn't."
Mr. Wyndam-Pryce never saw Angel when he was evil.
"Would you like something to drink? I have--" He opens the fridge.
"Water. And nothing else. I'm sorry, it's been rather hectic."
"Did you find the thing the lawyers raised?" Andrew asks, remembering
the research session at the beginning of the summer.
"Oh, yes!" Mr. Wyndam-Pryce takes a bottle of water from the fridge and
pulls an armchair over to the desk. "It was--well. Your
great-grandmother, in a sense. Darla. Wolfram and Hart brought her back
to life as a mortal. The whole situation has put Angel in a bit of a
mood."
Andrew looks up from the books. "Darla gets a second chance?"
Mr. Wyndam-Pryce leans back in his chair. "Well, it's more complicated
than that..."
He remembers Darla--he saw her, once, leaping over a gravestone,
telling her minions to chase Xander and Willow and Jesse-who-died. She
was an ancient monster and she was finally killed by Angel and she gets
a second chance at being alive. "I wish I could be human again."
"It is hard, I know, but you're doing good works and you have your
soul."
Andrew jerks his head.
"No?" His eyebrows knot together. "You don't have a soul? But I thought
certainly--"
"No." Mr. Giles never said why. Andrew didn't ask.
"Oh," Mr. Wyndam-Pryce says, "well, congratulations on your
self-control."
Around two in the morning there's a knock on the door. Andrew is
studying Mr. Wyndam-Pryce's books; Mr. Wyndam-Pryce is sleeping with
his clothes and half the lights on. He just sat down and keeled over
about an hour ago.
Andrew looks through the peephole and sees Mr. Gunn. He works with Mr.
Wyndam-Pryce and everyone, so--he'd better let him in. He unlatches the
three locks on the door. "Hi. Mr. Wyndam-Pryce is asleep," Andrew says.
"Yeah, I just came by to see if you ripped his throat out." Mr. Gunn
shoulders past him and heads straight for the bedroom.
"I don't eat people," Andrew says, but Mr. Gunn isn't listening.
"Ah! Who's--" Mr. Wyndam-Pryce falls out of bed. "Charles?"
"How's the neck?" Mr. Gunn asks.
"Fine, until I fell on it. Don't sneak up on a man!" Mr. Wyndam-Pryce
shuffles out of the bedroom rubbing his neck.
"I'm sorry. I thought I should let him in," Andrew says.
"Of course you should let him in, Andrew." Mr. Wyndam-Pryce smiles.
"Charles is simply a little overprotective."
"Yeah, well, I got a long look at that other guy and I don't feel so
good about letting you go home with this one." Mr. Gunn eyes Andrew
like a Slayer.
"The only thing Spike and I have in common is blood," Andrew says.
"Blood and no soul."
"Regardless--Andrew didn't rip my throat out while I slept. He lives
with Rupert Giles, Charles, he helps the Slayer. I told you about her."
"Yeah." Mr. Gunn looks at Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. "How come she never comes
north and cleans up our streets, anyway?"
Andrew clears his throat. "No offense intended, Mr. Gunn, but Sunnydale
is a Hellmouth. I've helped to avert an apocalypse three times." Four
if he counts Ben White.
Mr. Wyndam-Pryce salutes Mr. Gunn with his water bottle. "After
Sunnydale, Los Angeles was restful."
"Maybe for you," Mr. Gunn retorts.
Living in Sunnydale is messed up. It messes you up, it makes you crazy.
If he could have stayed away from the vampires, if he could have been a
normal boy, then he wouldn't have a demon now telling him he has three
days to live.
This is crazy. This world makes no sense. "Twenty-three people in my
class were killed or disappeared before graduation," Andrew says,
"including me. It was only twenty in the Slayer's class, the lowest
ever. They gave her an award."
Mr. Gunn makes a noise in his throat and looks at Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. "A
sparkly umbrella," Mr. Wyndam-Pryce says.
"Well now it all makes sense. Can't compete with an umbrella."
"How is Sunnydale?" Mr. Wyndam-Pryce asks Andrew. "Did you find out
what those gray demons were?"
Andrew looks down, breathes in and out a few times. "Firack demons. I
found them in Carysine."
"Carysine! My word. I can't even read that one without tinted glasses.
It pulls your soul out," Mr. Wyndam-Pryce says to Mr. Gunn, gesturing
to his head. "Very distressing."
"Bad poetry," Andrew says.
"Perhaps you could transcribe it for those of us with souls."
Andrew nods. "Maybe."
If he survives.
Mr. Gunn is sleeping with his head on the kitchen table. Mr.
Wyndam-Pryce made it back to the bed. Andrew turns out the lights and
reads via moonlight. He has good eyes--vampire eyes.
He starts looking for the name of the god. Then, maybe, he can avert
his doom.
He leaves as soon as the sun dips behind the horizon, with a stack of
notes and the ingredients for a protective spell.
No more crying. No more hiding. Time to show how powerful he really is.
"I'm going to kill him," Xander says.
"Angel kept him?" Buffy asks Andrew.
"Tied to a chair," Andrew says.
"There's a certain symmetry to that," Mr. Giles says.
"He stole my car! I'm going to drive up and kill him. Did he scratch
the paint?" Xander asks.
"He didn't scratch the paint. I checked," Andrew says.
"Blech! Spike. Good riddance," Dawn says, and hugs Andrew.
Andrew hugs her back. "I have a ton of work to do, so I have to go hit
the library."
"Yes? What is the problem?" Mr. Giles asks.
"The singing demon told me I had to do this myself, so thank you, Mr.
Giles, but I have to work alone." Andrew picks up his notes and heads
straight for the library.
Saturday was one day. Sunday was one day. Now the sun is going down on
Monday and he doesn't have the name, so he can't use the spell.
Only the Slayer can protect him now. Time to go and tell her everything.
Andrew puts on a clean white shirt and good pants. He only has combat
boots and bright red sneakers, so he goes with the boots. He hesitates
over the coat--but it is kind of Spike-like and Buffy is still pissed
at Spike, so he doesn't wear it.
He takes off the necklace Dawn gave him and sets it on his desk, just
in case his death catches up with him on the way to the Magic Box.
Then he checks the sun carefully and steps outside.
It's just dusk. The sky is a brilliant blue in the west, outlining the
trees black against the sky. Lights flick on one by one in the houses
with their backs to the sun.
Andrew shoves his hands in his pockets and stares at the ground.
Shops are still open. It's early. There aren't many people around,
though, on a Monday night, and most of the monsters haven't left the
house yet. Most of them like to wait for the stars.
Andrew looks up. No moon, no stars. It's blank, like daylight. It
doesn't feel like he's going to die tonight.
The lights are on in the Magic Box. Buffy and Mr. Giles will be there.
Andrew takes a deep breath and walks in.
The little bell jingles and everyone turns. Buffy. Mr. Giles. Anya.
Willow. Tara.
Joshua. Uncle Tuaro.
Joshua looks terrible, pale and drawn. He's standing by Buffy, pulling
his collar back and showing the long, purplish scars Andrew left on his
throat.
"Oh," Andrew says, barely loud enough to hear himself.
You're going to get your guy back--just not in the way you want. It
wasn't the god, it was the man seeking his revenge.
"Andrew," Buffy says, "we can talk about this."
"I mean, I didn't consider this possibility, though maybe I should
have," Andrew says, feeling his hands start to shake. He takes a step
backwards and Buffy starts toward him; he bolts for the door, bites his
hand and slaps it on the door frame, shouting "Hold!" before he can
really stop to think.
His blood shimmers and spreads in a halo around the building. The door
rattles and shakes with Slayer strength, but it holds. Blood is
powerful.
"What's going on?"
Andrew yelps and slams back against the door. "Dawn! Don't sneak up on
evil creatures of the night!"
"Well, if I see one, I won't," Dawn grins. "What's up? Anya is pounding
on the window."
"The. The door is sealed." Blood is powerful... he's done a lot of
stuff with blood. "Dawn."
He healed Dawn's mother once. He did that. It's hard to think
about--hard to hold it in his mind--but he knows, that was him... and
it was Dawn's blood. He tasted it.
"You can help me," Andrew says, "if you want to, there's a way."
Dawn's blood is powerful. She is powerful in some hidden way. He
changed reality once with her blood.
Maybe he can do it again.
"I get to help? Of course I want to help!" Dawn says. She beams and
gives Andrew her hand.
He can fix things. He thinks--he's pretty sure.
There has to be a way.
He pulls Dawn around to the back of the Magic Box, into the back room
through the back door. He darts up to the door that leads to the front
room and dabs blood on that as well. "So what's going on? Someone's
attacking the Magic Box?" Dawn asks.
"We need to fix things," Andrew says, "we need to set things back the
way they should be." He takes a knife from the wall.
"Okay. Is this going to hurt?" Dawn makes a face at the knife.
"A little bit? We need to mix blood." Andrew picks up a bowl as well.
"Just your arm, and my arm, and then magic."
Dawn groans. "Okay. But I don't have to look, do I?"
Andrew shakes his head. He sits on an exercise mat and Dawn sits across
from him. Andrew goes first, cutting into his arm and letting the blood
flow down his wrist, then holds his hand out to Dawn.
She squeaks as the knife bites into her skin. "I'm sorry," Andrew says.
"It's okay, it's okay!" she says, shaking her other hand. "Now what?"
"Now we change the universe so it's better."
"What?" Dawn gives him a funny look.
"I did it once! I can do it again. With you. We'll save everyone,"
Andrew says, laughing a little bit, "but they won't even know."
"Giles said changing reality is a big, big no-no. Like, you can cause
more problems than you create, with the butterfly effect and stuff?
Maybe we should check with him first," Dawn says, pulling at his hand.
Andrew holds on. "No. We can't. He's not available."
"Why do we have to change reality just to unlock the Magic Box?" Dawn
asks.
"The Magic Box isn't the problem," Andrew says. He can feel the power
growing, but there just isn't enough, not yet. "I put up the barrier.
The problem is everything!"
An axe slams through the door and bounces off Andrew's barrier. "Wait.
Wait a minute," Dawn says. Andrew tightens his grip on her arm.
"Andrew, you're freaking me out!"
The axe breaks through the door again and someone pulls out a long
shard of wood. "Dawn!" Buffy screams.
"Buffy?" Dawn tries to get up but Andrew yanks her closer. "Andrew,
it's Buffy!"
"DAWN! Don't trust him! DAWN!"
There's not enough power, not yet, and his barrier is going to come
down if Buffy destroys that spot of blood. He needs--he needs to fix
this fast so none of this ever happened, so none of it will--he
needs to go back to the beginning and make it so he never met Buffy, so
he was never part of this, because it's been nothing but wrong.
Dawn freaks out and struggles with all her strength. She kicks the bowl
and spills their blood across the floor, spilling the magic along with
it.
"I'm sorry, Dawn," Andrew says, shifting from human to demon face, "but
this is how it has to go."
And he bites her; he taps into the power directly, and it works, it
works, it works! He can see all kinds of futures, and all kinds of
pasts, too, just--there, like snowflakes in the sky. He can reach
out--
There's one where Andrew is Dawn and Buffy's brother--but he and Dawn
both die in that one, killed by Angel.
There's one where Andrew is a powerful he-witch and Buffy is dating
Charles Gunn and Mrs. Summers has a surgery that removes her cancer. He
looks at that one for a long, long time before he realizes that Giles
is dead, killed by Angel, and--he can't.
There's one where Spike and Drusilla rule Sunnydale and Andrew is
Drusilla's puppy and his name is Sunshine.
There's one where the Mayor rules Sunnydale and everyone else is dead.
There's one where Buffy lives in Cleveland and the Master has risen in
Sunnydale. Willow and Xander are wrong somehow and Andrew works with
Ethan Rayne and it's very confusing.
And then he finds it--
He was never in the cemetery. He was never attacked by vampires at all.
His retard brother still attacked the Prom with hell-hounds, but Buffy
stopped him. He's a normal boy, and he's friends with Jonathan from
Buffy's class and another boy named Warren who didn't go to Sunnydale
High and he's--
He can see how the future goes and it's bad. He's in love with Warren
but Warren treats him just like Tucker did and he--they attack Buffy?
And something with jet packs and ghosts and then he stabs Jonathan and
he can't--
It's all wrong. He can't be that person. If he was nice and normal and
never died then he--then that's the person he really is.
The killer.
He stares at himself. There he is. There he is. And he's gotten so
many things so wrong...
He comes back to himself: his body, the floor of the shop, Dawn's body
in his lap, Dawn's blood in his mouth.
Shouts. Screams. He looks up and sees Willow standing in the doorway,
blocked by his blood-barrier, and Buffy red-faced and screaming behind
her. He looks down at Dawn, pale and unconscious in his arms.
He hurt Dawn. For nothing.
There are worse things than being a vampire, said the Host.
The evil in him is his own evil. There's no miracle cure. There's no
escaping himself, and what he is is bad.
A strange, thin man--Ethan Rayne?--shoulders in front of them and
presses his hands to the barrier. His mouth moves and Andrew can feel
the magic draining away; it becomes visible as it swirls away from
Andrew and into the palms of Rayne's hands. Andrew doesn't get it,
someone else shouldn't be able to break his barriers without burning
the blood away, but they're falling.
Buffy jumps over the threshold. She raises her stake. Andrew raises his
right hand and looks at her over those two missing fingers--
It's because of her that he hasn't been in the ground for the past four
years. It's because of her that they're not all in hell, or slaves to
the Master, or demon food. Buffy always wins. Buffy is the chosen
Champion of good.
He's on the wrong side. He's evil. He can't win, he can't make it
better, he can't fix it--this is his destiny.
Dawn is limp and pale in his arms and the taste of her blood is in his
mouth. Buffy circles around him, her eyes darting from Andrew's eyes to
Dawn's face and back.
"I'm sorry," Andrew says, staring up into Buffy's eyes as she charges
him.
...and the end.
Joshua is pale and stricken. "Did I do the right thing?" he asks.
"Probably not," Giles says.
Joshua swallows. "I really loved him."
"We always do worst by the ones we love." Giles removes his glasses and
drops them on the table. He has no wish to see--anything.
"Dawn needs the hospital. Xander, drive us!" Buffy says. She and Riley
and Xander rush out, Dawn lolling in Buffy's arms. Joshua looks at the
sad pile of dust on the floor and his uncle ushers him out.
Willow cradles Tara on the floor. "Is she all right?" Giles asks.
"I think she is--the barrier just sucked all her juice out. Blood magic
and earth magic don't really mix. Giles, isn't that--"
"Ethan Rayne. Yes. I summoned him."
"Claps of thunder in the middle of dinner--I didn't know that was your
style these days, Ripper," Ethan says. He peers into the room where
Andrew's ashes lay.
"Touch him and you'll regret it," Giles says.
Ethan smiles at him. He sashays toward Giles, twinkle in his eye
becoming clear as he backs Giles into the table. "He's past caring--but
you aren't, are you?" Ethan purrs. He clasps his hands behind his back
and rests his cheek on Giles's chest. "Ah, Ripper."
Anya picks up the shop broom and dustpan and cleans up Andrew's ashes.
Giles closes his eyes.
"He's touching you. That's disturbing," Anya says.
Giles knocks Ethan to the floor. Ethan chuckles up at him. "Angharok,"
Ethan says. "You knew."
"Yes," Giles says. Blood magic--black magic--stems from chaos. Andrew's
affinity for it came from his Claw of Angharok.
"You could have stopped him," Ethan says.
Giles scowls at him. "If I had seen what he was doing, if I had paid
more attention, if I had known, yes, I could have. Are there any other
wounds you would like to salt before we go?"
"Not what I meant, Ripper." Ethan stands slowly, painfully. "You're as
open to Chaos as I am, you always were. You could have absorbed that
child's charms. You didn't. You called me. And now there's a price to
pay."
"I was never a servant of Chaos."
Ethan smiles. His black eyes twinkle merrily.
"Price? What price? Can you get a discount?" Anya asks. "You should
never pay full price for anything."
Giles turns away from Ethan pointedly. "Anya, put Andrew in an urn for
burial. Willow, are you quite sure that Tara will be all right?"
Anya looks at the dustpan. "But it's just--"
"Don't argue with me."
For once in her talkative life, she doesn't. "Price?" Willow asks
softly.
"Will Tara be all right?"
Willow nods and strokes Tara's cheek. Tara tosses her head and makes a
small sound. "She's waking up."
"I'll be at home," Giles says. He picks up his glasses and looks at
Ethan.
Ethan smiles, showing teeth. "Give me your glasses, Ripper."
"This can wait," Giles says.
"But I don't want to wait." Ethan holds out his hand.
He has no choice; he gives Ethan the glasses and Ethan shatters them
between his palms. He takes Giles by the collar and presses his other
hand, with the broken glasses, into Giles's throat.
"No!" Willow shouts. Her power swirls around them, but she can't touch
them; this is a sacred moment.
The metal and glass melt under his skin--agonizing, but mercifully
quick; he bites his tongue and doesn't cry out. When it cools, he bears
Ethan's mark in the hollow of his throat and his body is a vessel of
Chaos.
"Hands. Off." Willow crackles with power; it pours from her eyes to her
hands in palpable waves.
"Willow! This is the price," Giles says, and coughs.
"What?"
"He didn't hurt me," he says, and he shows her the mark.
She settles back onto her feet, shock naked on her face. "What?"
"Ohhh. You sold him your body in return for his help," Anya says. "I
suppose that's a fair deal for Dawn's life. I approve."
She sets an urn on the counter and funnels Andrew's dust into it.
Ethan watches Giles knowingly.
At home he touches his throat and thinks things over. Ethan wanders
through the house, looking and touching as he pleases.
"Lovely house," Ethan says, "and I assume that charming basement was
the boy's?"
"Yes," Giles says.
"Will his parents mourn him?"
"They already have." Clothes--the utilitarian ones. He has no affection
for the tweed. He can ask Joyce to give the rest to charity. Books--the
most powerful, and the one he lent to Jenny and she returned unmarked.
The rest can go into storage and he can give the key to Buffy.
Talismans and objects of power likewise.
The furniture can go to charity. The store to Anya and Xander. The
house is rented, he can break the lease.
"Two days," Giles says. He needs to draw up papers for the shop, speak
to his landlord, pack.
"Three is traditional," Ethan says.
"Two."
"I'm staying three. You can do as you please, of course."
"Can I?" He is Ethan's creature now.
Ethan smiles. "I have what I want--you and I, bound together. Forever."
He sighs theatrically. "How lovely. Shall we have matching rings made?"
"Your mark will suffice." Giles turns away and hunts for his suitcase.
Midnight. He's sorting books; Ethan is asleep in his bed.
They were lovers once. He doesn't suppose they will be again. Ethan
can't force him--there's no compulsion attached to this mark, which
surprises him until he realizes that Ethan has never sought to control
him, only to seduce him.
It won't work, not this time.
He hears a knock at the door and immediately a key in the lock. Buffy,
then, come to see what he's done.
Giles meets her on the stair landing. Riley is with her, and Xander and
Anya. "What happened?" Buffy asks.
"I sold my soul to Chaos in return for Dawn's life," Giles says. "You
would have done the same."
"But that's crazy," Riley says, but Buffy understands; Giles can see it
in her face.
"It's a perfectly straightforward transaction," Anya says. "A good in
return for a service. It's no big deal, I've known lots of nice Chaos
mages."
Xander watches him, somber as the grave. "But you're leaving."
"Yes."
"No!" Buffy cries out. "You can't leave, we still need you!"
"If I stay, Ethan will stay as well. The Hellmouth is bad enough
without adding him to the mix--the man can't get dressed in the morning
without setting loose rogue spells."
"So you get dressed, you have breakfast, you thwart Ethan Rayne--what's
the problem?"
He descends the last few stairs and hugs her. After a moment, Xander
hugs them both as well.
"Where are you going?" Anya asks. "I'll need a forwarding address and a
phone number for store business--unless you're moving the store's
location as well," she says with a frown.
"The store is yours," Giles says over Buffy's head. Anya shrieks in joy
and runs up to hug him from behind.
Xander releases him and pries Anya away. Buffy presses her face to his
chest and doesn't let go.
"I'm guessing there's an important reason that we're not just taking
out Ethan Rayne," Riley says.
"You couldn't do it without killing me," Giles says.
Buffy hugs him tighter--he'll bruise, but this is the last time. "I
take it this is a mystical brain-link thing, and not an 'over my dead
body' thing?" Xander says.
"Quite right. Buffy--" His ribs are squeaking.
Buffy lets go and Riley rests his hand on her shoulder. "Where are you
going to go?" she asks.
"I don't know yet."
"And you won't call when you get there," she says, mouth trembling.
Giles shakes his head. "I'm sorry."
She flinches; of course, it was the last thing Andrew said. "It's
late," Riley says, softly. "We should go."
They file out two by two. Xander's keys fall from his hand; Giles picks
them up and waits for him to return.
In the darkened foyer Xander looks older than his years. Giles holds up
the key ring. "The key," he says. "The reason Andrew chose Dawn--it
wasn't opportunity, it was her nature. She's a key that opens doors
between worlds."
Xander takes the key ring from Giles. "I don't get it," he says.
"Neither do I. But the forces Andrew was controlling were unmistakable."
"What was he trying to do? Send us into hell?"
Giles shakes his head. "I don't know. If I weren't so--sentimental--so
weak--I would have watched him more carefully, and I would have stopped
him."
"You trusted him. It's not weakness, it's humanity." Xander's face is
long and drawn and--once Giles really looks at him--fully adult. The
children are no longer children.
"Keep them safe," Giles says.
"I'll try."
Xander pulls the door shut after him. Giles stands in the foyer, closes
his eyes, and takes the surgical route.
He knows this house, every inch, everything in it. He thinks on the
closet and the clothes fly from their hangers into his bag; he snaps
his fingers and the bookshelf trades places with Buffy's old bicycle in
her mother's basement. He gestures and his papers fly into order: the
store, his will, his lease. Curios and talismans pack themselves into
boxes and take wing to Willow's dormitory, where she will find a
claiming slip in her mailbox.
Elsewhere, in response to this, a fault line will shudder, a tree will
die--there is always a price for power.
He opens his eyes and takes a last pass through the house. The
attic--the practice dummy, patched a dozen times. His library, his
bedroom, Ethan with his hand trailing loosely on the floor. The living
room, stripped of everything truly his; the kitchen, with a pint of
blood still tucked into the coldest part of the refrigerator.
Andrew's room, untouched. He runs his fingers over the books filed
neatly on the shelves--so that's where his Carysine went--and
straightens the leather jacket, tossed carelessly on the rumpled bed.
The leather smells like old incense and Spike's cigarettes--there's no
trace of a boy at all.
Andrew's necklace sits on the desk. Giles brings it to his cheek and
closes his eyes again as the room packs itself into a box that is his
will taken shape. He opens his eyes and looks at it: tall, square,
inlaid with black and red triangles of burnished wood.
He holds out his hand and picks it up: now it fits into the palm of his
hand.
Giles climbs the stairs again and shakes Ethan roughly. "We're
leaving," he says.
Ethan squints at him. "Now?"
"Now." The box of books and suitcases of clothing walk themselves down
the stairs and hop into the trunk of his car.
"But Ripper--"
"Now." He drags Ethan out of bed.
They leave that moment. "Goodbye, Hellmouth, goodbye, crooks, goodbye
Slayer's dirty looks," Ethan sings cheerily.
Giles does not look back.
One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
He said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Beside the crystal fountain
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Oh the buzzin' of the bees
In the cigarette trees
Near the soda water fountain
At the lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
On the big rock candy mountain.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain,
It's a land that's fair and bright,
The handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
The boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the sleet don't fall
And the winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
You never change your socks
And little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
And you can paddle
All around it in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain,
The jails are made of tin.
You can walk right out again,
As soon as they put you in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the turk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
Oh, I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
THE END.
All comments are welcome.
bas@yosa.com
www.ravenswing.com/~bas/slash
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