Chosen

  . . . as his lifeblood streamed out of him.

  * * *

  I have to tell Buffy about seeing Cassie in the library, Willow thought anxiously, as she pushed opened the door to the Summers home. Or, not Cassie, just the thing that’s threatening to devour us, and it devoured itself!—It was so hideous . . .

  “Buffy?” she called.

  She had just started up the stairs when she heard Dawn say flatly, “She’s not here.”

  Silhouetted in darkness, Dawn was sitting on the floor hugging a cushion. The room looked exactly as if a bomb had gone off, everything shredded into hundreds and hundreds of tiny shards and pieces.

  “Dawn? Oh, my God,” Willow breathed. She ran to her side. “Dawn, what happened here? You’re cut.”

  Dawn turned her face for Willow to inspect. Her face was earnest, troubled . . . and tinged with a strange joy. “I saw Mom. She was here, Willow. I saw her. She was here and she spoke to me.”

  Willow’s narrowed with understanding. There had been more than one “visitation” tonight, then. She said sadly, “Oh, sweetie. It wasn’t her. At least, I don’t think. I—I saw something, too, and it looked like . . . someone else, but it wasn’t.”

  Dawn frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s the Big Bad, Dawn. The one we knew was coming.”

  “But that’s what she said. Mom said that things were on their way, and that she loves . . . us. So it had to be her, right? I mean, her warning was true.” Her eyes were luminous with tears, her voice breaking with emotion. She had been through hell, but she was convinced that she had seen an angel.

  And I thought I was communicating with Tara . . .

  Willow shook her head. “I don’t know. I just don’t think we can trust anything right now.”

  * * *

  Xander was making caffeine while Buffy paced. She was very wigged about the possibility that Spike had sired someone, and he was doing his best to be rational Xander.

  “Spike can’t be doing this, Xander. He couldn’t even if he wanted to,” Buffy protested.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Well, for one thing, pain chip, remember? He can’t hurt anyone.”

  “Didn’t stop him from hurting you,” Xander pointed out.

  Buffy looked away. She knew they were talking about many kinds of pain, and she just didn’t want to go into it with him.

  “It’s working,” Buffy asserted. “I’ve seen it.”

  “Is it? Or is that what Spike wants you to think?” Xander pressed.

  The were still discussing it when Spike came in through the front door, saw Buffy and Xander staring at him, and froze.

  “Well, this can’t be good. You here at this hour. Is there trouble?”

  They mooked around and he muttered, “Right, none of my business. No worries.”

  “How was your night?” she asked him.

  “S’alright,” he allowed, shrugging.

  There was a beat, and then he shyly attempted to enjoin her in conversation.

  “And . . . yours? Bag any baddies?”

  “One. Vampire. Uh, someone I used to know, actually, a little. Holden.” She waited for a reaction. “Holden Webster.”

  She tensed, waiting for him to betray a hint of name recognition.

  But Spike was only sympathetic. “You knew him, huh?” He walked closer to her. “That must have been a picnic.”

  “Yeah,” she said awkwardly.

  Then he went in his room and Buffy left for home. It was nearly sunrise. Spike would sleep now and nothing else, at least not in the daylight hours.

  If there’s even been an anything else . . .

  “We need to keep an eye on Spike,” she told Xander as she prepared to go.

  Xander help up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,. By ‘we,’ you mean ‘me’ and me’s gotta go to work. I got a big client meeting in a couple of hours.”

  “Xander, this is serious,” Buffy insisted. “We cannot let him leave this house until we know if he’s killing again. We need to find someone that can watch him.”

  * * *

  Anya got volunteered, and she was not loving what she was hearing.

  “Come on, Anya,” Xander said impatiently as he opened all the blinds in the living room. “You said you’d do it on the phone.”

  “Yes, but that was before you told me Spike’s killing again, and now you want me to be alone with him?”

  Xander muttered something she couldn’t quite catch. Then he told her that all she had to do is let Buffy know if Spike left the apartment. That was the complete mission, and thanks to all the sunshine pouring into the living room, she was going to be just fine.

  “Better be, because if I get vamped, I’m gonna bite your ass,” Anya threatened him.

  As Xander walked out the door he murmured something else that she didn’t catch.

  * * *

  Just as Willow quietly closed the door to Dawn’s room, Buffy raced up the stairs yelling, “Dawn? Dawn!”

  “Buffy, it’s okay,” Willow said softly. “She’s okay. Not hurt. She’s just exhausted. Finally fell off to sleep.”

  Buffy took that in. “What the hell happened? Downstairs looks like . . .”

  “. . . Hell happened?” Willow finished for her. “This big evil that’s been promising to devour us? Well, I think it’s started chomping.”

  “Oh my God.” Buff looked in the direction of her sister’s room. “And it started with Dawn.”

  “Both of us,” Willow told her. “Buffy, this thing knows us. It made us think that we were talking to people we knew. Mine said it came with a message from Tara. But Dawn actually saw . . . your mother.”

  Buffy reacted strongly, and Willow continued.

  “This thing . . . it had me for a while . . . I mean, before it started letting loose with the pulse-pounding terror. But before that, the lies were very convincing.”

  “Lies,” Buffy interjected. “Vampire I killed last night told me Spike sired him two nights ago.”

  “Well, that’s impossible right?” Willow asked. “So maybe it wasn’t a real one. A fake-out. You got one, too.”

  “It dusted real enough,” Buffy said, a bit mournfully.

  * * *

  I gotta know what’s going on with him, Anya thought anxiously as she glanced at the door to Spike’s room. It’s getting late and I’m running out of sunlight.

  She had been sitting in Xander’s living room all day, and she had run out of magazines long ago. Now she was repaging back through Wired and considering that pretty soon, she was going to have to turn on a light to read.

  Call Buffy? she wondered. But not for nothing had she chosen to become a vengeance demon twice. Anya, if nothing else, was a woman of action.

  So she crept into Spike’s room with a stake in her hand, searching for evidence of his killing spree—teeth, scalps, ears, matchbooks.

  Of course the door went creeeak . . .

  This was the final resting place of Xander’s junk—drafting table, old workout equipment . . . and the roommate Xander just could quite get rid of. He had an easier time getting rid—and staying rid—of me, she thought.

  But this wasn’t about Xander. This was about Spike. He lay asleep—I’m thinking naked!—under a thin sheet . . . or pretending to be asleep, before he pounced for the kill . . .

  She poked around in his dresser drawers, then decided to go for his real drawers. Anxious she slowly and carefully rooted around his pants, and then his shirt . . . and this his vampire-strong grip was around her wrist, and he was saying, “Anya, do be specific and tell a fellow just exactly what you’re doing here.”

  Oh God, he’s gonna kill me, she thought. Her mind raced into overdrive looking for a “Well . . . Spike, I . . . am here, obviously, for . . . um . . . sex.”

  He let go of her as he sat up. “Beg pardon?”

  She knelt beside the bed, a loaded with anxiety. “You and me. Here and now. Let’s go. Let’s . . . get it on, you big bad boy
.” She groped him urgently.

  He was flummoxed. “Wait, wait. Anya. Just a minute . . . is that a stake?”

  “Yes. Kinky.” She rambled on. “No questions. No talking. Why else would I be here? It’s not like I’m snooping around looking for proof that you’re some sort of whacked-out serial killer.”

  It sure didn’t go uphill after that . . . and Spike actually did not respond her advances. Not that she was disappointed, but she was awfully hurt.

  “It’s not that I’m not tempted,” he said kindly. “Obviously, if things were different, you’re a right catch.”

  “I got it. No problem. You think I’m fat. Or the haircut . . .”

  He couldn’t win. She wouldn’t let him and she went out and pouted in the living room, flipping back through Wired again—why the heck didn’t Xander subscribe to Vogue?—and then Spike came out fully dressed.

  He tried to apologize, Anya didn’t buy it, and he left.

  So, as instructed, she called the Slayer and so informed her.

  * * *

  Buffy kept far enough from Spike to stay off his radar, but close enough to keep up with him. He went to the Sunnydale Promenade, which reminded her a lot of the Santa Monica Promenade back in Los Angeles. People were bustling down the streets; it was noisy and busy. A street musician played the blues.

  And Spike wandered over to a young woman waiting in line to get into a club. He smiled, whispered in her ear, and she walked off with him, hand in hand.

  And then, shortly after that, Buffy lost track of him.

  * * *

  The busker with the mouth organ was playing Spike’s song.

  “Early one morning . . .”

  “So what kind of name is Spike?” the girl asked silkily, as Spike led her into an alley. She went, willingly, murmuring, “What, are you going to make me guess?” She giggled. “I’ll guess you’re a little bit bad, huh?” She kissed him. “Am I right? Are you a bad boy?”

  And she let him know she didn’t mind bad; bad was good.

  There was her neck, ah, and there the vein . . .

  And there was Buffy, walking right up to him.

  His eyes widened. Buffy’s smile was eager, her eyes bright.

  “You know you want it,” she told him. Then her expression grew more lusty. “You know I want it.”

  Yeah, I do.

  He vamped; the girl screamed; he bit her.

  Human blood, oh, God, so much of it, so warm . . .

  Buffy’s smile grew. “There’s my guy,” she said lustily. “Now, doesn’t that feel better?”

  What have I done? What . . . who . . . ?

  Spike dropped the corpse, shuddering, and raced off in a panic.

  Then Buffy smiled . . . and morphed into a perfect likeness of Spike.

  “ ‘How could you use a poor maiden so?’ ” he drawled.

  * * *

  Buffy lost track of Spike at the Promenade; thwarted, furious, she stomped back to Xander’s apartment, found him in bed, and yanked him onto the floor.

  “Did you kill her?” she demanded.

  Spike was slowly rousing. “What?”

  “The girl. Last night,” Buffy flung at him. “I caught The First act. I missed the curtain call. Did you kill her? Did you turn her? Is she one of your kind now?”

  “Are you following me?” he asked, taken aback.

  “Answer the question. Where is she?”

  He stood. “Who knows? I certainly didn’t off her. Where are you getting this? You know I can’t.”

  “Right. The chip,” she replied.

  “No, not the chip!” he said, frustrated. He lowered his voice. “Not the chip, damn it. Do you honestly think I’d go to the end of the underworld to get my soul back and then . . .” He sighed, shaking his head. “Buffy, I can barely live with what I did. It haunts me. All of it. If you think that I would add to the body count now, you’re crazy.”

  She would not be mollified. “So, what, you just troll the Promenade looking for drunk co-eds because you’re hungry for conversation?”

  Spike laughed. “You’re jealous!” As he began to put on his shirt he added, “Yeah, you saw me chatting up another bird, giving the eye to somebody else. Touched a nerve, didn’t it?”

  Buffy huffed. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “As daft a notion as ‘Soulful Spike the Killer’ is, it is nothing compared to the idea that another girl could mean anything to me. The chip, they gave to me. But the soul, I got on my own . . . for you.”

  “I know,” she replied, soberly reminded. She took a beat. “Spike, this vampire told me you sired him.”

  “And you believe him?” Spike queried.

  “I did follow you last night,” she said, “and you know, you didn’t look lonely or casual to me. You looked like you were on the prowl.”

  “We talked,” he insisted, then added, “That’s all I remember.”

  Buffy looked at him sharply. “All you remember?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, sounding less emphatic. “I go out. I talk to people. Or I don’t. It’s boring. It all bleeds together.”

  Buffy said leadingly, “Well, if you seem to forget so much . . .”

  “Not that,” Spike insisted. “The taste of human blood? That I’d remember.”

  Buffy jumped back in. “You were camped on the Hellmouth talking to invisible people. Recently. How can you be so sure what you’ve been—”

  He cut off her. “No. You are wrong. You’ve got an accusation from a pile of dust . . . and not a shred of proof.”

  “So I’ll get some,” Buffy told him.

  Then she left the room.

  * * *

  At Buffy’s house the group debriefed as Buffy set Willow and Dawn into research mode. Dawn stood near her sister, looking on.

  Dawn said, “You only think Spike is turning people ’cause that vampire told you so, right? But that night we were all told things that weren’t true . . .” She trailed off and glanced down. At least, I hope they weren’t true . . . because Mom . . . or whoever that was . . . told me that Buffy was going to let me down . . .

  Willow looked up from the laptop with a strange look on her face. “Well, just because those weren’t the spirits of, you know, our people, just because it was some evil thing, it doesn’t mean what they said can’t be true.”

  Dawn looked anxiously at Buffy as Anya nodded in agreement. “I used to tell the truth all the time when I was evil.”

  “We can’t assume anything. We need hard facts,” Buffy piped up.

  “Missing people,” Willow announced, gesturing with her head toward the computer screen. “Maybe eight. Oh, ten of ’em. No bodies. They’re just . . . missing. Mostly young, lots of girls.”

  Dawn’s heart skipped a beat.

  So the ghosts are telling us the truth.

  “It still doesn’t prove it’s Spike,” Buffy insisted.

  * * *

  Right bitch, Spike railed, as he put on his coat. Comes in here, accuses me of bitin’ girls . . .

  He stuffed his hand into his duster as he walked toward the door. There was something in his pocket, pack of cigs . . .

  Cigs, sumpin’ about cigs . . .

  Early one morning . . .

  Flash. Bird with the fur collar, placing the cigs in front of him.

  Flash. Chatting her up, leaning in close.

  Flash. Her limp, on the ground . . .

  Shaken, he put the cigs back in his pocket and hurried out of his room.

  Xander was eating a frozen dinner in front of the TV. Spike headed for the door.

  “No, no,” Xander admonished him. “You’re not going out.”

  Spike was irritated. “I know what the Slayer told you,” Spike said, as Xander blocked his way. “It’s not true. Let me go and I’ll find a way to prove it.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna list the reasons that won’t happen,” Xander said. “One . . .”

  Spike punched Xander and the chip gave him what-for. As Xander w
ent down the count, Spike grabbed his coat and walked out the door.

  Then he headed to the Bronze, looking for something that would prove his innocence.

  Strange word, applied to me, he thought.

  Aimee Mann was singing, which was a bit of an all right. “Pavlov’s Bells,” one of his favorites. Her dusky voice provided a nice counterpoint as he wove among the patrons and waitresses, asking about the blonde. No luck on the ground floor, so he hit the balcony.

  He was up there on the catwalk, drinking from his flask, when a fetching young woman sauntered up to him, scanning along with him, and finally saying, “One of them take your wallet?”

  “What’s that?” he asked, distracted.

  “The way you’re scanning that crowd. You look like you’re out for blood.”

  He winced inwardly at her choice of words and muttered, “I’m just looking for a certain bird I met here the other night.”

  “Hmmm.” She smiled languidly and touched his shoulders. “Was it me?”

  “Sorry, love. Don’t think so.”

  She kept smiling. “Not even if I ask nice? Or are you the type that has to be convinced?” She took the liberty of sitting next to him, even though he hadn’t invited her.

  “Friendly warning, pet. I’m the type best left alone.”

  “Huh, I get it. You’d rather I slip into something . . . more comfortable.”

  She vamped.

  Spike went on alert.

  “Should we pick the crowd off one-by-one, or block the exits and ravish the place?” she asked, her voice eager and evil as she curled around him.

  “Get away from me!” he spat at her.

  “What’s with the wallflower act?” she demanded. “You didn’t seem so shy when you were biting me.” At his look of horror, she added, “I’m not asking if ya wanna be soul mates, just figured you’d wanna have some fun.” She looked down at the crowd. “I take him, you take her. Or the other way around. Whatever.”

  Spike grabbed her. “No, you’re lying!” he shouted. She punched him and he threw her to the ground.

  “Is that all I was to you, a one-bite stand?” she asked, living.

  They went at it, fighting on the catwalk. She grabbed a vase and tried to stake him with it, but he wrestled it away from her and staked her with it instead.