The Witch, The Warrior, and the Vampire

Chapter 8
Recovery

Spike was lying down in the backseat of the Jeep covered in his sun-blanket during the drive to the school. He’d tried to make small talk with Buffy but she’d ignored him. He coueel eel the anger, confusion, and despair she was projecting and it hurt him. He felt the car stop, and Buffy put the Jeep in park. Sitting up, Spike noticed they were pa rig right beside a covered entrance to the burned burned-down high school.

Buffy got out of the car and walked to the door. One good kick later it was ripped off its hinges. Spike quickly got out of the Jeep and followed her into the safety of the building. Not speaking they left two blankets by the door for their escape. Spike followed Buffy to the gymnasium and down into the locker room. In the shower she pulled aside a grate that covered a tunnel. According to Xander’s map it would lead directly to him.

“We should be able to follow this and go straight to him. Giles said there were seven vres res guarding him.” Buffy took a deep breath and started down the tunnel.

Spike stopped her with a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Slayer, we’ve got an advantage here. Traditional vampires sleep this time of day. If we can sneak up on them, we can stake all but the leader, and while I challenge him, you can carry Xander back up here.” He looked at her carefully, now beginning to see the nervousness shining through her determination.

“Wh-what happens if you lose this challenge?” Buffy bit her lip, almost certain she didn’t want to hear the answer to her question.

“Well luv, I’ll die.” A steely look of resolve crept across Buffy’s face. She squared her shoulders and her eyes took on a distant far away look. Watching her go into battle mode was always a revelation. Without any warning every emotion Buffy had been projecting was efficiently cut off. Her breathing became quieter, her heartbeat slowed down. He watched as she drew the mask of the Slayer over her entire being. Without any warning she jumped into the tunnel. Spike followed quickly behind.

The tunnel was lit every 50 feet or so with a single torch. One hundred feet and one right turn later they were standing in front of eight bodies. Seven of them were inhabited by demons, and one was the corpse of one of Buffy’s best friends. She withdrew her stake from the waistband of her pants. She looked to Spike, silently questioning which one was Xander’s sire. He pointed to the vampire in the brown bomber jacket. Immediately she staked the vampire closest to her. Within seconds only Xander and his sire rema. B. Buffy picked him up and carried him fireman’s style out of the tunnel.

Spike waited a long and painful ten minutes for Buffy to get to safety with Xander before he lit a cigarette. The vampire before him still didn’t stir. He decided to enjoy his smoke instead of using it for dramatic effect. When he had smoked it down to the filter he dropped it onto the forehead of the vampire, and ground it out with his heel. Immediately he the darker vampire woke and sprung to his feet ready to fight.

“Spike, the Slayer’s lapdog. Come to retrieve her little friend?” Maverick smirked condescendingly at Spike.

“Actually, I came to claim your childe as my own. What kind of vampire are you anyway? Your minions are dust and your childe kidnapped. If I were the Master I’d find myself a new Right Hand.” Maverick looked around, for the first time noticing the absence of the other demons and, most importantly, his newest childe.

“You’ll not take my childe.” Maverick’s true face emerged and a deep growl rumbled from his chest.

“Little late for that now innit?” Laughter shone from golden eyes as Spike growled and received the challenge. “What’s your name, in case my childe asks who turned him?”

“My name is Maverick, and you won’t get out of here. There’s over 200 vampires down here along with the Master. I think a long, unlife is in store for you, as the Master has enough minions to torture you round the clock 24/7/365 for eternity.” Maverick leapt at Spike with his last words.

Spike bent down, using his shoulder and the vampire’s own momentum to throw him into the wall. Staring down at his opponent disdain in his eyes, Spike started to laugh. “Ah I get it now, Maverick, bomber jacket, rather longish crew cut. You watch too many bloody eighties movies. What ya’ doin’, trying to be Tom Cruise?” The blonde vampire was able to hum a few bars of “Danger Zone” before Maverick charged at him again.

This time Maverick effectively shoulder shoulder-blocked Spike and smashed him into a wall. With a head butt Spike had advantage again. Fists flying, the two vampires tore into each other. Fists and fangs. Maverick knew he was outclassed. He was landing only one punch to Spike’s six, and he’d yet to effectively land a kick. He took a deep breath to roar for help when suddenly he was confused. Spike wasn’t in front of him anymore, and there was a pain in his neck. He managed to gasp out “what?” before Spike slammed the stake into his back, and dusted him.

He drew his hand across his mouth to wipe the fallen vampire’s blood from his mouth. Kicking at the ashes on the ground, he muttered, “He’s mine now.” Quietly he made his way back to where he and Buffy had entered the school. She was sitting, crying soundlessly beside Xander’s body, holding his cold hand tightly in hers. Spike took one of the blankets and covered Xander with it from head to toe. Bending he picked him up one arm under his legs, the other under his back. Buffy draped the second blanket over Spike and they headed back to the Jeep for the short drive to Xander and Anya’s apartment. Spike sat in the back with Xander in his arms. Suddenly the body seized up, one one of its legs kicked the window out of the passenger side door.

“What was that, is he waking up?” Buffy tried to see what was going on in their rearview mirror, almost driving off the road. “Shit!”

“Check the time, we’ll have to ask, but I think he just got his soul back.” Buffy’s eyes flew to the clock on the dashboard. 10:30.

Twenty-five minutes later they opened the door to the apartment. Anya quickly invited them in. Spike carried Xander to the bedroom and gently laid him on the bed.

“He started jerking around at 10:30, but he didn’t wake up.” Spike tried to arrange Xander as comfortably as possible, and Anya crawled up on the bed to be near her husband.

“Excellent.” Morgaine said as she studied the body. “We finished the spell just about then. Now we know it worked.”

Willow was sitting beside Xander holding his hand. Anya placed his head in her lap and stroked his hair. Everyone else was standing around the bed, staring, not knowing what to do next. Finally Dawn broke the silence and looked at Spike. “What do we do now?”

“Now you all leave. Except for Anya. And I don’t mean the bedroom; I mean leave. There’s some stuff I’ve got to do, then there’s a bunch of waiting, and then there’s more stuff when he wakes up. It’ll go better for him if none of you all are here.” Spike was deliberately vague in his explanations; there were some aspects of a new childe rising that he knew the group was not ready to deal with yet.

“Why?” Willow quietly asked. She was completely resigned to what had befallen Xander after a long conversation with Morgaine, but she wasn’t ready to leave. She and everyone else wanted to be there when he woke up. To show they still loved him.

“When he wakes he’ll be confused. His senses will be overwhelming to him. The sounds of your heartbeats will draw him. He’ll want to feed. I don’t know how long it’ll take for his soul to take over, but when I first woke, it was about half a day before I gained any control at all.” Spike was not-so-subtly trying to motion them out the door, not sure how long he had before Xander started to fully wake.

“But we gave him his soul back. It worked; you saw it,” Dawn interrupted.

“It’ll still take a while for ‘Xander’ to wake up ‘bit. Demon has total control for the first few hours. I doubt Xander would want any of you to see that.” Spike explained patiently, appealing to what he knew about the boy, and what the others knew about how he was going to handle the new situation; after all, vampires were probably the least favorite thing of his existence, second only to Harrisily gathgatherings.

Everyone appeared to be crushed. Giles especially had wanted to stay for the entire process. No one had ever studied the first few hours of vampiric life, and academically he was intrigued, to say the least. On a personal level, he wanted to show Xander his support. “Well, is there anything we can do?”

“Blood, lots of it, bags and bags. All human.”

Giles nodded, “All right everyone, I believe Spike is correct and its best if we leave him and Anya to what they have to do.”

“I’ll be back with the blood, before sunset.” Buffy said, then she hugged Spike to her tightly before shooing the others out of the apartment.

When they heard the door shut Anya turned to Spike, “Now what?”

“Now you get to leave for a few minutes while I do what I need to.” Spike turned away to give Anya a moment’s privacy with her fallen husband.

Anya leaned down and kissed Xander on the lips. Slowly she slid away from him, and placed a pillow under his head, to replace her lap. “Come get me when you’re done, and we’ll wait together.” She left the room and softly closed the bedroom door behind her.

Spike turned and studied Xander. He’d yet to take on the translucent sheen of vampires. “I hope that bollicksing up as a sire doesn’t run in the blood line. I’ll do my best by you. But if you fuck with me, as your sire, I have full rights and privileges for torturing yoou bou bloody whelp.” Not wanting to act anymore like a poofter than he already was, Spike unceremoniously grabbed the body and pulled it into sitting position. With one arm wrapped around it, he used his other hand to turn the head from side to side. He immediately saw the bite marks on the left side of Xander’s neck. Spike vamped out and plunged his fangs on top the existing marks, obliterating them.

He sucked hard, relishing the taste of what was to become his flesh and blood. The taste of the blood was not demonic. Xander would truly be his. Maverick’s demon hadn’t started the transformation; some inner hope in Spike grew with that knowledge. When the blood stopped flowing easily, he withdrew his fangs and rasped his tongue over the wound, in a definite pattern. He traced a circle to represent the sun, three dots to represent stars. Order of Aurelius. He sank his fangs into Xander again, drew two more swallows of blood, and licking the wound, he traced a line down the center of the sun. Childe of. He bit Xander for the third time, sinking his fangs into him as far as they would go, and tugged backwards on them, stretching the holes. Spike. “Mine,” he whispered.

Quickly he slashed his wrist with own fangs and held it to Xander’s mouth lips. He dribbled the blood into his mouth. “Drink,” Spike growled. Xander drank. And drank. And drank. Spike patiently let him drink until his boouldouldn’t withstand anymore. His head was spinning and he didn’t have the strength to stand up. “Kitten,” he croaked out, “bring me some blood, will yah?”

Anya had been waiting outside the door with the blood. When she entered the bedroom, she found Spike passed out on top of Xander. She put the bag of blood on the nightstand and lay down beside them. She played with Xander’s hair and snuggled into him. Not long after, she was asleep too.

Later that afternoon Buffy returned to the apartment with a cooler full of blood. She didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t what she found. “Anya, Spike?” she called out as she put the cooler in the kitchen. Receiving no answer, she headed into the bedroom. She drew up short at the sight in front of her. Spike was wrapped around one side of Xander, Anya the other. If they hadn’t have all had their clothes on, it would’ve looked the three of them had engaged in a ménage a trois.

Worriedly, she began to wonder if that wouldn’t be what happened when Xander rose.

“Hello, cutie.” Buffy had been so deep in thought that she hadn’t seen Spike’s blue eyes flutter open, as if he seemingly sensed her presence even in his sleep.

“I brought a cooler full of blood. It’s in the kitchen.” Buffy didn’t quite now how to ask questions about what had transpired, or even what questions to ask.

Spike spied the blood on the nightstand and quickly drank it downGoodGood, bring it in here. I’m going to fill the tub with hot water.”

“Why?” Buffy asked, confused.

“Need it to be as close to body temperature as possible.” Spike waited for Buffy to return with the cooler, and then helped her bring it into the bathroom.

“Did everything…” Buffy trailed off as she watched Spike run water into the tub, testing it by holding his wrist under the st.
.

“Everything went fine, Slayer.” He seemed to have found the satisfactory temperature and plugged the tub, letting it fill up.

“Uh, how, how long?” Buffy desperately wished Spike would look at her; she couldn’t gauge his emotions when his eyes were trained on the tub.

“Don’t know. Could be sundown, could be sundown tomorrow, and could be sundown day after that. If it hasn’t happened by then…it didn’t work.” His voice got noticeably softer with his last words. Didn’t want to think what would happen then. Couldn’t.

“Oh.” There was a long silence before Buffy spoke again. “Are you two gonna wait it out?”

“Yeah, we’ll give you guys a call when he’s Xander again.” Spike shut the tub off and began tossing the bagged blood packets into it, still not looking at Buffy.

“What happens next?” There was a world more of questions encompassed in that single one that Buffy didn’t even begin to know how to ask.

“Depends on a lot hinghings. Why?” He stopped in his task and turned questioning azure eyes on her, trying to suss out what she was fishing for. The slayer didn’t like to admit it, but often he could read her better than she knew, and he could tell when she was dancing around something.

“Uh, I’m um, uh, just wanted to know what, uh, else you need to do.” Now it was Buffy who wouldn’t meet Spike’s eyes.

“Like I said, depends on a lot of things. Why don’t you go look it up? It may make you all feel better about not being here, or it may make you want to stake us both. Either way, you’ll know at least some of what’s going on.” If Buffy wasn’t going to ask what she wanted, then Spike was going to let it lie.

“Why’s Anya here?” Buffy blurted out, blushing at how bitchy the words sounded out loud.

“ ‘Cause she’s ‘is wife. Why wouldn’t she be here?” Spike cocked his head as he stared at her, genuinely puzzled.

“Can’t he um, hurt her if he uh, feeds from her and you don’t stop him?” Again with the skirting the issue.

“Not really, she’s demon again.” Buffy started to chew on her thumbnail nervously, a trait he had never seen her exhibit before.

“Oh, I guess, she uh, already knows what to expect huh? Being a demon and knowing so much about demons and uh, vampires and stuff already.”

“Yeah, she does. What’s this all about Slayer?” She was sending out signals he’d never felt from her before and was genuinely confused.

“You uh, aren’t uh, er, and her uh, ummm, ah, gonna?” Buffy couldn’t bring herself to say it. Didn’t even want to think about it actually, much less wantfigufigure out why the idea of Spike and Anya bothered her so terribly much.

“Slayer! Are you jealous? Think I’m gonna shag the demon girl?” Jealousy! That’s what it was, the Slayer was jealous? Now this was gonna give him something to think about until Xander rose.

“Well, I know enough to know that what comes next is a lot of blood and sex, and why, is she here?” Buffy demanded and pointed to Anya, stamping her foot.

He had to bite back a smile at her petulant pout. “ ‘Cause I figure when Xander’s back in his body and the demon doesn’t have complete control, he’ll be happy to know he shagged his wife, and not me.”

“You told me the demon doesn’t care about that.” Buffy’s voice was starting to sound suspiciously wavery, as if she thought Spike was choosing Anya over her.

Spike sighed and reached out for a strand of Buffy’s hair to play with. “Demon doesn’t care. But I’m pretty whe when Xander gets back in control again, he will. I don’t want him to hate me Buffy. If I treat him the way 99.99% of fledglings are treated, I guarantee you he’ll kill himself. It can take weeks or months, for a fledging to retain a significant part of his human personality. Since his soul has been magickly reinforced, I suspect his human personality will emerge much sooner. This is going to be hard enough on him as it is. I’m not going to force sexual relations on him, the way they always ar
“
“So, Anya’s going to take care of all the sex parts?” She met his eyes again, something (hope?) gleaming from her hazel ones.

“It’s the way we’ve got it planned.” Buffy quickly hugged him, silently thanking him for understanding, before she left the apartment. She added another silent thank you for Spike’s consideration of Xander. She headed to the Magick Box where everyons was waiting for news, determined to research vampire traditions. She figured Willow was working on it at that very second.