CRACK!
It was as if each word William’s mother spoke was like a slap across his cheek. She said to him, “What-ever I was . . . that’s not who I am any more.”
“Darling, it’s who you’ll always be. A limp, sentimental fool.”
Each word, the harshest of blows.
CRACK!
Nikki’s boy kicked the creature in the face; it slammed back into the bookcases. Shelves broke; books tumbled like boulders. Robin loomed over him and rain blows all over its grotesque features, its distorted parody of a human face.
“Hurts, don’t it?” Robin cried. “This is what it felt like, when you beat the life out of her?” He hit it, over and over. “When you toyed with her? Before you snapped her neck?”
CRACK!
In the graveyard Buffy fought with the vampire, who had finally emerged from fresh grave, flipping him onto his back, straddling him, and whipped out her stake. Another night, another vampire.
She was about to finish him off when Giles said, “Don’t kill him yet.”
Both she and the vamp looked over at Giles. “Why not?” she asked.
“Because I’m asking you not to,” he informed her.
Buffy shrugged. No big. She elbowed the vampire and rolled away. The vamp got back up on its feet and they squared off again.
Giles said, “Would you let this vampire live if it meant saving the world?”
“Sure.”
She glanced at the vamp. “Seems like a nice enough guy.”
“Thanks,” the vampire said uncertainly.
“No problem,” she said pleasantly.
He added awkwardly, “My name’s Richard.”
“Hi, Rich.”
They fought a little to stay in the game, and then Buffy turned to her former Watcher and said, “Giles, we’ve had this conversation before. When I told you I wouldn’t sacrifice Dawn to stop Glory from destroying the world.”
“But things are different now, aren’t they? After what you’ve been through. Knowing what you’re up against. Faced with the same choice now . . . you’d let her die.”
She hesitated . . . and realized he was right.
“If I had to. To save the world, yes.”
The vampire spun-kicked her in the head; she scowled and said, “Ouch! Can I kill this guy yet?”
“No,” Giles ordered her.
Irritated, Buffy started wailing on Richard, giving him what for as Giles said, “So you really do understand the difficult decisions you’ll have to make. That any one of us expendable in this war . . .”
She couldn’t believe how he was droning on. “Have you heard my speeches?” she demanded.
“That we can’t allow any threat that may jeopardize our chances of winning,” he continued.
“Yes. I get it!”
She and the vampire fought, trading blows. She was getting very frustrated, wondering what the point was, and then Giles said, “And yet, there is Spike.”
What?
She paused to look at him.
The vampire tackled her.
CRACK!
The vampire was nearly comatose, its eyes glassy as if it was on drugs. Blood streamed down its face; its face was pulpy from the beating.
“Animal like you,” Robin flung at it, “never cared for anyone but yourself.”
He striped his mother’s coat off the monster’s body and laid it gently on the table.
It felt as if her ghost moved in the room . . . and he knew that soon, she would be at peace.
“No one else mattered,” Robin said to the creature. “Just all about the hunt.”
He pulled a small wooden cross off the wall with a bit of effort.
CRACK!
“You want to run, don’t you?” William’s mother asked him as she backed him against the fireplace. “Scamper off and cry to your new little trollop. Do you think you’ll be able to love her? Do you think you’ll be able to touch her without feeling me?”
She picked up her walked stick as she regarded him with utter contempt. “All you ever wanted was to be back inside. And you finally got your wish, didn’t you? Sank your teeth into me, an eternal kiss . . .”
“No,” he insisted. “I only wanted to make you well.”
She glided closer still. “You wanted your hands on me,” she said with contempt. “Perhaps you’d like to finish what you started, hmmm?”
“Please. I loved you. I did. Just . . . not like this.”
She watched him suffer, smiling cruelly, enjoying her power over him. Toying with him, and savoring its effect.
“Just like this,” she said. “This is what you wanted, all along.”
“Stop it!” he cried.
“Come on. Do it.” She mocked him. “Who’s my little dark prince?”
“No!” He shoved her away. She stumbled, and her smile vanished.
“Get out!” she shouted.
And then she grabbed her walking stick and swung at him. William blocked the block, catching the cane; she fought to get it back, snarling into vampface as she sneered at him, “There, there, precious. It will only hurt for a moment.”
Then his vampire’s heart broke. It was not true that the creatures of the night could not love or show mercy . . . “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“What?” Robin demanded, back in the garage.
And William plunged the shard of the walking stick into his mother’s chest.
For one last instant, she was his mother again, kind, gentle and loving. Her eyes, sick and tired, but filled with light . . . for him.
Then she dusted, and was gone.
Forever.
* * *
I’m free, Spike thought in wonder. He felt himself released from the trigger, felt the guilt and shame evaporate along with his memories. His face had changed to his man’s features.
He grabbed the principal’s arm and kicked him in the chest. The other man reeled backward.
“Sorry?” Wood demanded. “You think ‘sorry’ is going to make everything right?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Spike tossed off.
That enraged Wood, who launched a full attack, but Spike defended himself skillfully, deflecting each blow. Then he executed a round kick to Wood’s head, dazing him.
“I don’t give a piss about your mum,” he informed Robin Wood. “She was a Slayer. I was a vampire.”
Wood attacked; Spike gave it right back.
“That’s the way the game is played.”
“Game?!” Wood shouted, astonished.
“She knew what she was signing up for,” Spike retorted, punishing Wood with a brace of hard blows.
“Well, I didn’t sign up for it,” Wood argued.
“Well, that’s the rub, in’it?” Spike said. “You didn’t sign up for it, and somehow that’s my fault.”
Wood threw punches; Spike dodged and deflected them.
“You took my childhood . . . when you took her away from me. She was all I had! She was my world!”
Spike stayed with the fight. “And you weren’t hers. Does it piss you off?”
Wood hesitated, then came at Spike again.
“Shut up!” he shouted. “You didn’t know her!”
His swing was awkward; Spike avoided it, then pummeled him, beating him to his knees.
“I know Slayers. No matter how many people they got around them, they fight alone,” he said coldly. Then he beat Wood to his knees. “Life of the Chosen One. The rest of us be damned. Your mum was no different.”
Bloody and beaten, Wood stared blearily up at him with desperate defiance. “She . . . she loved me.”
Spike delivered the final blow. “So she said, I expect. But not enough to quit though, was it? Not enough to walk away. For you.”
Wood did not respond. He could not. Broken on the floor, he was . . . shattered.
Spike gave each of them a few moments, and then he said. “I’ll tell you a story. ’Bout a mother and a son. See, like you, I loved my mother. So mu
ch so, I turned her into a vampire so we could be together forever.” He paused, then added. “She said some nasty bits to me after I did that. Been weighing on me for quite some time.”
He paced, running it through.
“But you helped me figure something out. You see, unlike you . . .” He didn’t mind saying that. “. . . I had a mother who loved me back. When I sired her, I set loose a demon that tore into me.”
“But that was the demon talking, not her. I realize that now.”
He finally understood, was finally free.
“My mother loved me with all her heart. I was her world.”
Confidently he crossed to the laptop and hit a key. The folksy rendition of “Early One Morning” began to play. He listened calmly.
“That’s a nice little song you got there,” he said to the ravaged man on the floor.
He listened a little longer, then stopped the music.
“Thanks, doctor. You cured me after all.”
Menacingly, he advanced on the defenseless man. “I’ve got my own free will now. I’m not under The First, or anyone’s influence now.”
He stared up at Spike looming over him.
“I just wanted you to know that . . . before I kill you.”
He morphed into vampface, yanked up his enemy, and bit him, hard . . .
CRACK!
Giles was still yammering on about Spike while Buffy kept socking the vampire, even though both she and ol’ Rich had grown tired of the game.
“Spike is a liability, Buffy. He refuses to see that. And so do you. Angel left here because he realized how harmful your relationship with him was. Spike, on the other hand, lacks such self-awareness.”
Buffy was pissed. “Spike’s here because I want him here. We need him. I’m in the fight of my life,” Buffy insisted.
“Really?” the vampire asked shyly.
“Not you, Richard.” She bashed him hard.
“You want Spike here even after what he’s done to you in the past?” Giles pressed.
“It’s different now. He has a soul.”
“Yes, and The First is exploiting it to his advantage.”
“Exactly,” Buffy insisted. “The First’s doing this. Spike’s innocent.”
Then she staked the vamp as she focused her attention on Giles.
And do I tell you now? Giles wondered. That I murdered Ben, the boy who had been forced to share his mortal form with Glory the Hellgod? That though he had not only been oblivious of her barbarism and her cruelties, and had tried to help us kill her . . . I put my hand over his mouth as he lay defenseless. I smothered him, and saved the world.
I did what you could not to.
Do I tell you this?
He did not, but she did read something else in his face . . .
She staked the vampire.
“Oh, god, you’ve been stalling me.” Her eyes widened. “Keeping me away!”
He made an attempt to connect and bring her to the place she needed to be in her mind.
“Buffy, it’s time to stop playing the role of general and start being one.”
She stared at him in shock, then turned and ran. “This is the way wars are won!” he shouted after her.
CRACK!
The side door of Robin’s garage opened and Spike stepped out. He was pulling on his coat, and he had been savagely beaten.
“Spike!” Buffy cried.
She came to him, full of fear for him, and for what he might have done.
Wordlessly he pushed the door open.
Robin Wood lay sprawled on the floor, barely recognizable through the blood and bruises.
“I gave him a pass,” Spike said. “I let him live. On account of the fact that I killed his mother.”
Buffy began to put the pieces together . . .
“. . . but that’s all he gets,” Spike told her. He began to walk away. “He even so much as looks at me funny again, I’ll kill him.”
Buffy watched him go . . . then turned toward the garage. She went inside, saw all the crosses.
Walked to Robin’s side and knelt beside him.
“I lost my mom a couple years ago,” she said. “I came home and found her dead on the couch.”
He wiped the blood from his mouth as he said, “I’m sorry.”
He said of his mother, “She got herself killed. Being murdered.”
“And none of it matters,” she told him. “We’re preparing to fight a war, and you’re looking for revenge on a man who doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Don’t delude yourself. That man still exists,” Robin said bitterly.
“Spike’s the strongest warrior I have, and we need him if we’re going to get through this alive,” she informed him. “If you try anything again, he will kill you. But more importantly, I’ll let him.”
He looked down, unable to meet her gaze.
“I have a mission: to win this war. To save the world. I don’t have time for vendettas.”
She turned her back on him and walked away.
“The mission is what matters.”
And she left him.
Alone.
* * *
Alone, Buffy came home. She checked on her sweet little sister, curled up with her stuffed animals. Her head was bandaged, but she looked good.
Then she walked toward her bedroom . . . alone.
“Buffy,” Giles called.
He was standing at the other end of the hallway. He came toward her and said, “I understand your anger.” He let that sink in, then added, “Please believe me when I tell you we did—”
“He’s alive, Giles,” she said flatly, not looking at him. “Spike’s alive. Wood failed.”
She couldn’t fathom the expression on his face, but she didn’t turn around to see it.
“That doesn’t change anything,” Giles insisted. “What I told you is still true. You need to learn.”
“No.”
Now she did turn, did face him, and she stared at him as if she had never seen him before.
“No,” she said again. “I think you’ve taught me everything I need to know.”
She turned, shut the door in his face.
And stood alone.
Part Three: Resurrection
Chapter Eighteen: “Dirty Girls”
The Potential was running for her life.
So close, she thought desperately, I’m so close!
On the outskirts of Sunnydale, the breath in her lungs pumping, she kept her mind focused on one simple thought: Buffy. Get to the Slayer. Safety.
She woved and dodged but the evil, eyeless men had caught up with her; they were surrounding her. She wove and dodged, but they kept lunging for her. She broke away and sprinted out into the middle of the road.
There was a pair of headlights coming; waving her arms, she planted her feet, screaming, “Help! Stop, please! Please!”
The vehicle swerved and screeched to a stop. It was a battered old truck, and a young man was driving it.
She raced over and yanked open the passenger’s side door. As she threw herself inside, he said, “What’s going on?”
“Please!” she begged. “Get me out of here!”
“Is someone hurt?” he asked anxiously.
The evil guys had reached the edge of the road and were heading toward them. Shannon yelled, “Drive!”
Which he did, flooring it even before she got the door shut, leaving the black-robed creatures behind.
She panted, catching her breath, as the truck roared down the road. The man—he was quite young and handsome, with dark eyes, dimples and reddish hair, and wearing a priest’s collar—studied her, then glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Well, that was . . . are you all right?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Thank you. Thank God you were there.”
“Well, let’s not give Him credit for everything. No, I’m funnin’ ya,” he said. “I don’t believe in coincidence.” He looked back again. “I also don’t believe young girls should
be out in the woods late at night.” He gave her a look. “Should be tucked in bed.”
“Wish I was,” Shannon murmured.
“I expect you do at that,” he said. I don’t mean to pry, but those boys looked kinda like, well . . .” He gave her another hard look. “You didn’t happen to fall in with devil worshippers, did you?”
She looked out the window, her hard history washing over her face.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “It looks like you’ve been traveling awhile.” He blinked. “And I didn’t think . . . is there somewhere you want me to drop you? Are you headed somewhere?”
“Sunnydale,” she told him.
He smiled a bit bemused. “Going there myself. Never been, but I expect we could find a police station . . .”
“I just need to get to Revello Drive,” she said firmly, staying on track. “But thanks, uh . . .” She glanced at his clerical collar. “Father?”
“Call me Caleb,” he said to her. “I never was nobody’s daddy.”
“I’m . . . Shannon.” She was reluctant to reveal even that—she had been warned by her Watcher to stay as incognito as possible—but after all, he was a religious person.
“Well, Shannon, you feel like telling me why those freaky joes were after you?” he asked.
“I—I’m not sure,” she lied.
“Did you ever give thought that maybe they were chasing you because you’re a whore?” he asked out of the blue.
She was shocked. “What?”
“I know what you’re thinking.” He smiled at her. “ ‘Crazy preacher man, spouting off about the Whore of Babylon’ or some such. That ain’t me. I’m not here to lecture you. What’s the point? My words just curdle in your ears. You don’t take in a thing. So much filth inside your head, ain’t no room for the words of truth. You know what you are, Shannon?”
When she didn’t answer, he said, “Dirty.”
Oh, my God, he’s crazy! Shannon murmured, “I’m not . . . I don’t want . . .”
“There’s no blame here,” Caleb said soothingly. “You were born dirty. Born without a soul, born with that gaping maw wants to open up and suck out a man’s marrow. Makes me puke to think too hard on it.”
Shannon tried to open the door on her side, realizing with a sickening rush of fear that there was no handle on the door. As she searched for another means of escape, Caleb pushed the car lighter in.