Blood Price, Chapter 4
Blood Price
by Nan Dibble
Chapter 4: Acala
When Dawn bounced down to stretch out full-length on the front room rug, Spike asked, “You ready?” regarding her narrowly.
“I’m fine,” she responded, fluffing her hair so she wouldn’t lie on it, have it pull--an habitual nighttime ritual, though it was only about nine o’ clock. “Don’t worry about me. You just go on and do what you do.”
“I don’t like it,” Buffy said, pacing by the couch. “This’ll be twice in one day, Spike. What if you can’t get back? What if something happens? What if Dawn can’t--”
Though it meant having to arrange her hair again, Dawn sprang up and hugged Buffy and somehow Spike got into it, encircling them both, all macho and protective, which was kind of cute, despite the fact that Dawn was going to protect him. To keep him focused, which she was very good at. Or even to need his protection (fat chance), which anyway would have the same effect.
And there was nothing either Buffy or Spike could say or do to prevent her, Dawn reflected smugly, rather happy to be the middle of a Spike-Buffy hug-a-thon. She felt cool and independent and determined--not afraid at all, though the astral plane was (cue creepy music) the unknown. For herself, she was afraid of things with too many legs, wasps, bees and hornets; unleashed small yappy dogs of uncertain temper; being helpless with the prospect of pain. Physical threats. By Willow’s explanation and Spike’s report, the astral plane contained none of these dangers. In her immaterial astral body, she should be as invulnerable as some kind of freakin’ superhero, and how cool was that?
Buffy would just have to deal. She hadn’t been able to contact Giles, who might already be on some trans-Atlantic flight, winging home, disappointed. Despite the fuss he’d made about going the first time, Spike took the necessity of doing what they could to recover Willow as a given, almost without comment. Dawn suspected any pretext would have done, any excuse to give in to his yearning to get back there, to have the real thing instead of just frustrating memories. Which meant she was going with, to keep him on track. It was all very simple.
Of course she hadn’t the least clue how to do it. But that was merely a minor detail. She was confident that when the time came, she’d know.
The hug broke up, and hair rearrangement was accomplished. Stretched out to her right, Spike extended his left hand (hers because of the tattoo), as if against his better judgment: he’d said he didn’t think she could follow him, and he didn’t want her there. So giving her a point of contact should be bad. Contrarily, if she could and did, he wanted to keep her close. Hence the hand.
Smiling, Dawn took it, wrapping her fingers tightly into his palm, feeling his thumb lock down. She’d expected both of them to have to meditate, prepare. Instead, she felt a pull and went with it, flinging herself in the direction of the pull almost the same as when she followed Spike through a rift, except they were still in Sunnydale.
But very high up. High enough to see the entire town cupped in its valley. But not distant, either. Anywhere she turned her attention was distinct and peculiarly itself: a house on the opposite side of Revello, decrepit and peeling paint, revealed a jolly, teasing personality, its loose shutters tipped at a jaunty angle, imbued with decades of happy, if raffish, habitation. The better-kept house beside it brooded in upright disapproval like a fixed glare.
Dawn tried to understand what she saw.
Neither house looked different, and yet it did. It was like comparing a routine photo, she thought, with a painting of the same subject. A photo showed the shell; in a painting, the subject was luminous with meaning. Or like the difference between meeting a stranger and meeting a friend….
The movie theater, downtown, gave off a strange mélange of eager, innocent dreams, lust, hunger, and dread--no wonder, since it was one of the prime vamp hunting sites. In fact, the first evening show was letting out and the hunt was in progress. It was odd to see the people moving like sleepwalkers, so little aware of who and where they were, a little like watching oblivious fish school and scatter; and the half dozen or so vamps, points of emphatic dark, the sharks of this water, choosing their targets and moving in.
One of the vamps was Mike. Not game-faced yet but intent, focusing on one man and then dismissing him because he had a pungent mark, a healed vamp bite, already on his throat. Someone else’s mark. Spike’s! Dawn conjectured--an astonished realization. Spike’s been playing catch and release!
That thought distracted her, made her wonder where Spike was. Following the pull of connection, she lifted and rose, searching, and rose higher, along the edge of a diffuse glittering fog…. It was Spike. Either he’d grown very large, or Dawn was exceedingly tiny. Maybe both.
His outline was like dust motes shifting in sunlight or like fog illuminated by a moving flashlight beam. Contours hazed into visibility--his legs, set into habitual prepared stance, lead foot and anchor foot, at rest but ready to move, a pose she’d seen him assume a thousand times, so she knew the rest of it, the set of his hips and the power waiting, balanced and coiled, low in the spine--and then faded as some new vista emerged. The spread of his shoulders. The column of neck. Finally his face, lifted and sublime: he was looking at the stars.
So Dawn had to be about the size of a gnat. That didn’t bother her. What bothered her was that he’d forgotten her: utterly caught up in the hyperreality. As she had been, she acknowledged guiltily, deciding not to get on his case about it. At least not right away.
Spike? Aren’t we supposed to be looking for Willow?
He blinked and leaned away, trying to focus, which was funny: apparently in his astral body, he was still farsighted. Or so accustomed to being farsighted that he imposed that on his form. Like having legs, hands, a body at all: his sense of himself, projected. Whereas she was--what?
She felt like herself but couldn’t see herself. She was only a moving perspective, nothing beyond her gaze except any outward form of herself. Like a floating eyeball.
She wasn’t sure if she’d said that or only thought it. She wasn’t sure she could tell the difference.
Bit. You’re green.
Never mind that--let’s do what we came for. Who knows how much time has passed? Buffy will be having kittens!
Buffy….
She’d only succeeded in distracting Spike’s attention in a different direction--back to the house on Revello, and down, and inside, to the front room where Buffy was frozen in mid-pace, one foot hanging suspended in the stopped time as Spike’s avatar swooped down and swarmed all over her, and there Dawn’s body was on the floor, and it was all just too weird. Some way, tiny as she was, she yanked Spike’s avatar out of there back to where he’d been, so power and size weren’t equivalent, and she was considerably ticked off.
Spike! For heaven’s sake, focus!
Yeah. Right. Look for Willow.
What do we look for?
Dunno, do I? I expect…something like us.
Something the size of a water tower or a pea? That’s helpful!
No: something…diffuse. The response was thoughtful, and Dawn quickly realized he was right. The panorama of streets, houses, stores, miscellaneous offices, a gridwork surrounding Sunnydale’s abundant cemeteries, was all solid and definite, almost too detailed to take in. They were of different stuff--more fluid, reconstituting themselves in ambient energy from second to second, like the id monster in Forbidden Planet.
Look for early CGI, Dawn thought, and adjusted to scan on a different frequency.
Although apt to be snagged by the minutiae of the familiar, yet unfamiliar, surround, Spike mostly stayed with her. Like a dog off the leash investigating smells, Dawn thought. Whereas she was pragmatic and purposeful. She was aware of the fairyland enchantment but it didn’t resonate for her as it clearly did for him. Because she wasn’t a poet, maybe; or because, inexperienced though she was, she felt this as a normal mode of being, maybe from the time the Lady had usurped Dawn’s body and Dawn had been left to rusticate in the Lady’s realm, bodiless, exploring the divisions and considerations into which the Lady organized her sphere of interest, the aspects of the multiverse under the Lady’s influence and rule.
It wasn’t nearly so demanding as steering Spike, drunk, but keeping track of his wanderings did take some of Dawn’s attention. So he was the first to spot something, focus, and move to it quick as a thought.
It wasn’t Willow because there were two of it: indistinct humanoid outlines, one shedding inchoate energy like a fountain, the other so dim it was barely a sketch of particles against the void.
Dawn knew the two were in conversation, communion of some sort but could feel only sadness, hopeless longing, desperate frustration.
Rupert, you seen the witch anywhere about? Spike asked.
As the solider phantom lifted its head and became recognizably Giles, the fainter phantom dissolved into the dark and was gone.
Bloody hell! Giles erupted.
So you can reach him, Spike observed. Which logically made the vanished wraith Rayne, Dawn deduced.
Barely, and only under optimal conditions, which you’ve just disrupted!
Dawn decided intervention was in order.
She told Giles, Willow’s spelled and tranced herself and is lying in her bedroom like Snow White, sans casket and dwarves. Buffy couldn’t reach you, so we came looking. Have you seen her?
Dawn? was Giles’ uncertain reaction.
Yeah, Spike replied, gone all Tinkerbell, no notion why. So Quor’toth--if that’s where he is--isn’t so shut as the accounts claim. Traffic back and forth. On this level, anyways.
He’s been haunting me for weeks, Giles replied raggedly. He’s not certain where he is, but the very fact that he can’t create a portal suggests Quor’toth. Primarily, he’s manifested in singularly excruciating dreams. Alone, he hadn’t the energy to do more. I hoped, meeting on this plane, both of us trying, we might be able to establish a more stable connection. Then you lot had to blunder in and overwhelm the rapport!
Making a lot of progress, were you? Spike inquired skeptically. All set to drag his backside through and shove it out the other end?
No, Giles admitted. And he’s forbidden me to try. If a mage of his experience can’t escape, he’s convinced the most I’d achieve is to trap myself with him. Which might be an improvement over the present impasse. But Ethan says I only think that because I have no experience of such a place. He says it would send me barking mad, in point of fact. Spike? Giles’ tone was acerbic. Since you asked, you might at least do me the courtesy of attending.
Material or immaterial, Spike didn’t much do courtesy. He’d let his attention be drawn away, Dawn saw--gazing wide-eyed at the stars. But with purpose, this time. Focus. Because one was moving. Falling.
Dawn wondered if she should make a wish.
Come on, Spike directed curtly and took off, Dawn right with him, toward where the star’s trajectory meant it should impact.
Dawn didn’t think a star should approach screeching, but this one did. Stars didn’t have tails, only comets, but this one was trailed by an energy signature whose eldritch brilliance filled half the sky. Like Giles (arriving to join them) leaking incompletely used magic, only more spectacularly. Mostly, Dawn doubted stars were afraid.
Without impact, it was among them like a cloud. Then with a flick, a change of focus, it was Willow, grabbing at them with immaterial hands, wild-eyed and wailing, “Go! Now! It’s coming!”
Before her connection to Spike dragged her away to sudden breath and solidity, Dawn saw that above, a whole swatch of stars had been occluded by something vast and dark, pursuing.
**********
As the storm broke, it seemed as if the house was under occult attack. Buffy barely had time to wince at the flare and crack of lighting before the visceral boom of the thunder hit like a hard punch to the stomach. It was like being pinned down by an artillery barrage. The Weather Channel (just before the power went out) called it a freak winter storm; a few minutes later, in the dark, as Buffy scrambled for candles, hailstones began pattering, then banging, then roaring, almost drowning out the thunder. Small arms fire, Buffy thought, shakily lighting a third candle.
She’d thought she was being metaphorical until Dawn wrapped long arms around her and shrieked in her ear, “It can’t get in. It can’t get past the wards.”
Buffy felt a flood of relief: they were back, then. Much sooner than she’d hoped, even: only a few minutes had passed. Two or three specially loud bangs of thunder, nearly simultaneous, made them both jump. In the bright-black flicker of lightings, Spike was silhouetted against the front window--game-faced, roaring. Apparently he didn’t think it was a natural storm either. Before Buffy could reach him, he was off into the hall, headed cellarward, which maybe was a good idea if a tornado or two got thrown into the mix. Given the current level of bombardment, Buffy couldn’t rule it out although tornados were unheard-of in any season, west of the Rockies.
Huddled together, the sisters made a sort of sack-race progress along the hall to the basement door, where they found Willow hunched into the triangular niche under the stairs, eyes tight shut, chanting. All three accounted for. Reading her the riot act for taking off like that could wait: pushing candle-holding Dawn ahead, Buffy dragged Willow, still chanting, down the basement stairs.
The freshly soundproofed basement wasn’t quiet, but it cut the deafening bangs and booms by at least half. Able to think, and hear Willow chanting, Buffy ran back up the stairs to slam the door and shove the bolts home. She didn’t know if that was necessary or even useful, but it made her feel better.
Descending, she saw that the other basement door--the one that led into the new escape tunnel--was ajar. Spike. Racing down the black tunnel with arms stretched wide, she crashed into Spike and the door at the far end just as it was opening. For a second they were struggling--she to shut the door, he to pull it farther open. He let go, so she won.
Setting her back against the door, she demanded, “Are you crazy? Dawn says the wards are all that’s keeping it out, whatever it is. And you want to make a hole in the wards?”
She was blind as the proverbial bat, but she knew he was only about a foot away by the harsh pull of his furious breathing. All wound up and probably still in game-face, too. Teetering on the edge of another mindless explosion to vent the rage.
“For a second,” he said, more growl than words. “Just a second, to get out. Shut it behind.”
“So you can do what?” she challenged.
“Face the bloody wanker! ‘F it wants a fight--”
“Face what? Fight what? Rain? A deluge of hailstones that would mash you flat in a second? Oh! The SUV!” Buffy hated to think what the assault of hail was doing to it, parked in the open gravel stretch off the back yard. If its alarm was going off, she couldn’t hear it. Nothing she could do. She found Spike and wrapped arms about him. He was shuddering with the frustrated imperative to go out and challenge whatever was besieging them here. Totally insane. Totally Spike. “My house,” Buffy said. “My rules. We sit this one out until we know what it is we’re fighting. What works best against it. By the numbers: start with research. We’ve never faced a weather demon before, that I remember. Giles will--”
“He’s still here. Someplace. Had to get back to his body, I expect: some motel or another.” Spike’s arms closed about her and his cheek rested against her temple: tacit acceptance of her calling him off. “’F he lasts this out, we got a lot to talk about.”
Buffy filed that as a topic for another time. “You got Willow back. That’s enough accomplished for one day. Come on.”
They turned, her arm around his waist and his around her shoulders, to return to the upper door.
**********
As the house moaned and creaked, buffeted by gusts of wind, Spike found the custom bed’s disassembled frame in a back corner. With nothing better to do, he lifted out headboard, footboard, and side pieces, and began bolting them together. Bolts and locking nuts were all handy in a box on the floor: that Harris was a methodical worker, Spike had to give him that. No wrench, though.
He found if he could snug the wood up good and tight, mitered notches meeting true, he could push the bolt through, then tighten the nut with his fingers enough to hold until it could be done properly. When he moved to the far side of the footboard, Buffy was there, holding the side rail level and ready for connecting. Nodding appreciation, Spike crouched to insert and tighten the next bolt. It was much easier with the side piece held steady and horizontal, the footboard not trying to collapse onto it.
Given what the bed was gonna be used for when the basement was free of onlookers, Spike liked that they were assembling it together. Though the frame was solid oak and therefore weighed a few hundred pounds as a unit, between them, he and Buffy could lift and walk it into position against the wall smoothly, with no effort at all.
Willow, apparently done reinforcing the wards, and Dawn (giving hand signals and supervisory advice) helped with laying the oversized foundation in place, then the mattress on top.
As soon as the mattress was down, Buffy toppled gratefully onto it crosswise, arms flung high and eyes wearily shut. Wasn’t any point, then, to looking around for the bedding, so Spike launched himself and landed hard--by way of a test, like. All the joints held, and the bed barely shifted. Good enough. Buffy curled up against him, all soft in all the right places, warm all down his front, so eminently fuckable that it seemed a pity not to do her then and there, as he wanted to.
But there was Bit, clambering across the half acre of mattress to tuck in at his back; and there was the witch, slowly collapsing like a dying diva, on Buffy’s far side. And there was the storm, still raging full-blast, as best he could tell. Not gonna chase Bit and the witch back upstairs, to the dark and the scary noises, while that was going on. This was sanctuary; they shared it with equal entitlement. And Buffy, she’d be scandalized if he tried to start anything with so much company….
There were also all the as-yet unspoken things a storm like this portended, none of them likely to be a whole lot of fun. That gave an extra layer of comfort and satisfaction to being together, all of them, and entirely in the body. Just the simple pleasures of quiet, the warmth of contact, safety from the deluge and pyrotechnics outside that couldn’t touch them in this cozy refuge.
So on the whole, Spike was willing to be philosophical about not getting his end away, just now. This was good, too--gently holding, warmly held. Giving himself wholly over to the moment, he nuzzled into Buffy’s hair, the fine scent of her, and let himself drift.
**********
No question: the SUV was trashed. All the glass was broken, sagging in crazed, limp sheets where it hadn’t been blown out altogether; black streaks on the hood suggested the engine had taken a direct lightning hit; the air bag had done its thing and collapsed, entirely filling the front seat area; every part of the body was dimpled by hail. And as Buffy approached, walking carefully on the still-crunchy hailstones, she could smell leaking gasoline.
“It’s history,” she called despondently to Spike, who was hovering just within the morning shadow the house cast on the grass--for moral support, maybe.
“Maybe it’s just sleeping,” he called back, and she wheeled and gave him a glare.
“It isn’t funny, Spike!”
“Sorry. So it’s an ex-parrot, you figure?”
Buffy gave a flat rear tire a rancorous kick. The axle collapsed. Throwing her hands in the air, she walked back to where Spike waited. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do. I guess insurance will cover some of it, but what am I gonna claim? Act of God? What--”
“Don’t fret, love. Not much, to get the DeSoto running again. Day or two.”
Spike started to hug her but she shrugged him off, stomping a couple of paces into the full light where he couldn’t follow. She didn’t want to be consoled or presented with reasonable alternatives. She wanted to be upset and miserable and worried about the logistics of transporting groceries. She wanted to contemplate patrolling on foot again, three-quarters of the time taken by just going and coming. She wanted to know who (or what) the hell was responsible for trashing what was, in her mind, at the moment, her sole and only means of getting anywhere. So she could cut it/him/her/them off at the knees.
“Or,” Spike ruminated, “I could sell the bike.” As Buffy swung around--astonished, touched, even--he went on, “No, scratch that. Sell the witch, maybe. She’d fetch a good price in some quarters.”
Buffy set her hands on her hips. “You really, really better be kidding, Spike.”
“Well, s’not like I suggested selling Bit,” Spike rejoined, mildly indignant. “Too skinny. White slavers, they like a little more meat on the bones.”
“Your bike is probably an ex-parrot, too,” Buffy pointed out with a certain satisfaction, refusing to even think about the bizarre suggestions he was coming up with.
Retreating a step as the shadow’s margin slid nearer, Spike turned his head, uncomfortably looking elsewhere.
Checking, Buffy found the motorcycle neither parked at the curb nor smashed to screaming red (with tasteful skull) flinders in the street under one of several downed trees. “What did you do?”
Hands stuffed in pockets, Spike retreated another step. “Got on the cellphone before the whatever, the tower, went down. Told Michael to come, wheel the bike up against the house there in back, by the porch. Seemed like the best place--inside the wards, an’ all.”
“You are the fricking limit! You brought somebody clear across town, in record incredible bad weather, baseball-sized hail, to move your frickin’ motorcycle?!” Buffy cared nothing about Mike--it was just the principle of the thing.
“Well, that’s what minions are for, innit? Do what you tell ‘em? He’s a vamp, Buffy: break all his bones and he’ll still heal. And wasn’t him that storm was after--it was us. Here. And he has an invite, all proper, so he could pass the wards. Who else was I gonna call to see to it? Who else is under my word in this piss-poor excuse for a town? So what if he’s the Master Vamp of Sunnydale in all but name? So long as he comes to my word, I still got something of my own here, some choices of my own left, not just--” Spike stopped himself for a second, but the explosion wouldn’t be held. “--not just trailing along behind--”
“Hi,” said the ten-foot blueblack creature that’d come up without either of them noticing.
It was more or less humanoid, with two visible teeth/tusks, one protruding from the lower jaw, one descending from the upper. Its eyes had epicanthic folds and wandered independently. Large, flattened nose with conspicuous hairy nostrils. Major ugly. Bright red hair--not auburn, not strawberry blond: red--in short flamelike whorls all over his head. Dressed casually in outsized jeans, a blue T-shirt, and a denim jacket.
Buffy thought dazedly, He wouldn’t fit into the bed.
The creature gestured apologetically with his right hand. “I can tell I’ve come at a bad time, you two are having a thing, so I’ll keep it brief. I don’t mean to be crude, but you and your little witch should mind your own business. Respect the Balance and nobody has to get hurt.”
It took the whole speech before Buffy realized the creature was talking past her…at Spike.
She also realized she and Spike were beyond the wards, in broad daylight, and unarmed. And this, apparently, was the opposition.
Sudden as a punch, she shot out her hand, smiling to show every well-aligned, symmetrical, and recently brushed-flossed tooth. “Hi! I’m Buffy Summers. And you are?”
Slightly surprised but deciding to be civil, the monster briefly enfolded her hand with the care of one picking up a pea. So it was tangible: it could be killed. “Make it ‘Cal.’ I have other names, but they’d sound strange to you.”
“Try me!” Buffy encouraged. Information was always of the good. She didn’t like Spike so silent behind her but it didn’t seem a good time to turn and check. “Is ‘Cal’ for ‘Calvin?’”
“No, for ‘Acala.’ It’s a kind of role, a title--like Slayer. So ‘Cal’ is better for conversation. Maybe you’re the sensible one here: you stay where you belong.”
So he not only knew who she was, he knew she hadn’t been part of last night’s expedition.
Buffy shot back, “I go where I’m needed.”
“Well, that’s good. Good. Because there’s no need for interference. Interference threatens to upset the Balance. Which, as a matter of fact, you’ve done on a number of occasions. Not criticizing, just observing. I usually don’t concern myself with internal matters, and you have an august patron.”
That would be Lady Gates. Hence the fence-mending heavy-handed goon visit in person today after trying to smash her house flat last night, Buffy figured.
“So my past misdeeds are not the reason you trashed my SUV?” she inquired pleasantly, still smiling and wide-eyed.
“Incidental damage. I was making a point.”
At the last second, Buffy decided it wouldn’t be a great idea to give her opinion of what he’d been making.
Acala went on, “I wasn’t, at first, aware that an avatar of the Slayer was involved. You didn’t ‘show up on my radar,’ as it were.” Having uttered this pleasantry, the monster showed a few more teeth--crooked, the size of tent pegs. “But rather than let that be an issue….” Acala gestured, and the SUV leaped to attention, tires swelling, pockmarks expanding with a barrage of popping noises. The steering wheel unkinked and slurped up the air bag in stealthy embarrassment. The greasy black flash-fire marks vanished from the hood. All the window glass sprang up and flowed into its accustomed GM-approved curvatures. As a coda, all the locks popped.
“A full tank of gas?” Buffy’s jaw had begun to ache, holding that smile.
“At these prices? Don’t push your luck.”
Buffy shrugged elaborately. “It was worth trying.” Since for the moment they were playing at being all good pals together, she risked a glance over her shoulder.
At the very edge of the shadow, beginning, faintly, to smoke, Spike was standing with two swords.
Assessing the balance, the implicit choreography, of the moment, Buffy mouthed silently, OK. The right-hand sword flew to her and she took it, already whirling. It clanged against Acala’s sword…that hadn’t been there a second ago. It was fully six feet long and shivered like living flame. She had no idea where he could have hidden it but it was there now and solid enough to make her arm tingle with the impact. She countered the block, disengaging, waiting to see what the next turn in the dance would be. And she felt Spike come to her back, at her left shoulder, so they could separate and take the monster between them…in the full sunlight.
There was no choice. Solemnly she raised the sword vertically before her, bowing slightly. Acala also bowed…and vanished.
Dropping the sword, Buffy gave Spike a hearty shove, pitching him all the way back to the front steps, crying, “You idiot!”
“What?” he protested, bouncing up. “I could’ve managed. I was just getting warmed up!”
“You were smoking, Spike!”
“That’s just to get me charged up proper. Then the wing thing kicks in and I channel it. But I have to be right at the point of burning, see, to get it started. I--”
She grabbed and held him hard, face buried against his shoulder, saying indistinctly, “I’ve seen you burn, Spike. And I never want to see it again. Let’s not push our luck.” That reminded her, and she turned to look at the restored SUV. “Cheapskate,” she spat. “The least he could have done was throw in a tank of gas.”
Letting go, turning away, she trudged back into the sunlight to retrieve her sword.
At least the hailstones were melting. So it wasn’t a total loss.
**********
“I’m staying,” Dawn declared, plunking herself down on the floor in easy grabbing distance of the TV's power cord--an implicit threat. The only way Buffy could get her out would be to drag her, and if Dawn went, she was taking the TV with her.
“She’s staying,” Spike agreed, dropping into his usual corner armchair, his eyes steadily on Buffy’s. For good measure, he barricaded Dawn between his outstretched legs and the TV stand. “Lady Gates comes into it, seems like. That’s her patch, Dawn’s. An’ she was with me, t’other side, which was what tripped that Acala’s alarm.”
“No,” said Willow dispiritedly, puddling on the floor past the end of the couch and wilting against it. “That would be me.”
Munching popcorn, seated on the couch with her legs curled under, Anya opined tartly, “As it should be. You were the only one prepared and qualified. The astral plane is noplace for amateurs.”
“I concur: Dawn should remain,” said Giles, opening his briefcase on the coffee table.
Standing alone in the middle of the front room, Buffy twisted her hands anxiously. “I don’t want her to be a part of this.”
Dawn commented quietly, “I’m already a part of this. I’m seventeen now, Buffy. By the time you were seventeen, you’d already died once. Let’s be a teeny bit realistic here.”
Though nobody had yet said the “G” word, Dawn was certain they all had Glory on their minds: ordinary demons could make things happen but they couldn’t make them unhappen with a twitch of a finger--Buffy had already described the untrashing of the SUV. So what, if they did? Dawn wasn’t a helpless, whining child anymore: she could do things. At least, in collaboration with Spike, she could. And anyway, so far there’d been no specific threat to her in particular. She wasn’t the target.
“Could we get started?” Anya put in. “I’m losing valuable retail time and I had to call Wilbur in early. He’ll try to charge me extra for that.” Wilbur Banks, that Dawn mentally tagged “The Chinless Wonder,” was the part-time clerk Anya had recently taken on, now that the Magic Box was open evenings. Mike had told her Anya had courted him for that position but he’d declined, having larger fish to fry than an exciting new career in retail.
A few vamps held steady jobs. Not many, though. They hated routine and conforming to abstract rules like punctuality and not eating the customers. Also, night jobs weren’t plentiful and cut into their fighting, feeding, and fucking time--the traditional three F’s of vampire existence.
Buffy checked her watch, then glanced out the front window at the early winter twilight darkened by the absence of functional street lights. “Xander should be just getting off. He said he’d come straight from the site. So he should be here in a few more minutes….” Taking a step toward the hall, she asked, “Anybody besides me want a soda?”
“Beer,” said Spike, crossing his ankles.
“Beer?” Buffy’s tone was between uncertain and disapproving.
“Beer,” Spike responded firmly. “Sun’s long past the yardarm an’ if I have to sit and listen to you lot yammer on, here in the Summers No Smoking Zone, has to be compensation. Beer. Several. Watcher?”
“I’ll stay with tea, thanks,” said Giles without looking up, inspecting papers from a folder. “Somehow sleep eluded me last night; I’m sure I needn’t explain why.”
Raising a hand, Willow requested, “Citrus Jolt: I’m undercaffeinated.”
“I’m good,” Dawn said, doing a small happy bounce as Spike’s palm settled reassuringly on her head and began stroking her hair.
It was to be a fullscale Scooby meeting, research cum war council, in full session by candlelight, the power not yet having come back on; and she was being allowed to stay, an equal partner. A first, a milestone.
Before Spike had popped the tab on his second beer, Xander arrived, sporting more layers than Finnegan’s Wake from working all day in the cold. Shedding garishly checked and colored flannel shirts and several ragged sweaters, he explained that part of the mall roof had collapsed--a combination of the weight of water and a tree disobligingly toppling onto it--and his construction crew had been detailed to repair it on a rush basis, since their power tools could be run off a generator. Several of the interior shops had already suffered damage to their fixtures and merchandise; their proprietors had banded together to offer triple-time for a super-fast repair job.
Rubbing his hands wearily up and down his dark-stubbled face, Xander also requested beer since “the platinum menace” was being indulged. More from habit than actual annoyance, Dawn thought, Spike showed him two fingers backhanded and stretched out deeper in the chair, cradling the beer can on his chest. Fairly amicably, as Xander reversed the straight-back wooden chair and straddled it, arms folded across the top, they started discussing installing a downstairs bath, complete with humungous tub, until Buffy returned from the kitchen and handed Xander his beer, implicitly calling the meeting to order.
As usual, these days, Buffy presided.
The first thing was to bring Anya and Xander up to speed on the out-of-body experimentation on the astral plane. Willow did that. Then Giles took the floor, explaining with tight control why he had reason to suspect Ethan Rayne had been consigned to Quor’toth, briefly interrupted by Willow’s dashing out to get the laptop, to take notes. Clicking the necessary keys, she reported sadly that the local connection to the Internet was still down, but the battery life was fine and should get them through. But she was really, really wanting to Google the name Acala.
Apparently glad of the change of topic, Giles leaped ahead past the storm to this morning, eliciting from Buffy a description of the critter, with occasional comments by Spike, who seemed otherwise content to let Buffy make the running on that subject. He was working on his third beer and frowning, sometimes muttering a rude word under his breath. Dawn surmised that Buffy’s preventing him from immolating himself still rankled.
When Buffy had got through the magically-appearing sword and the suddenly vanishing ogre, Giles tipped his head back, murmuring, “Acala. Indigo blue: that suggests Hindu iconography. Attributes including a sword, whorled hair. Associated with fire, lighting bolts and their attendant storms, like the Norse Thor. But Oriental eyes.”
“Ring a bell, Watcher?” Spike asked alertly, despite his indolent pose of disengagement. He compensated by sipping more beer.
“A faint one. Perhaps. I wish I had access to my resource materials! The local library…. Even the university library….” A sigh indicated Giles considered them hopelessly inadequate. “My recollection can be amended later, when I can inspect the relevant texts online. But Acala isn’t the name I associate with that image, that set of attributes: it’s Fudo.”
Making screwed-up Incredulous Face, Buffy blurted, “Fido?!”
“Fudo,” Giles repeated with patient over-distinctness. “Or more properly, Fudo Myo-o. A staple of one of the offshoots of Buddhism, chiefly in Japan and principally a discipline and practice of the priestly class rather than the general public. Fudo is the principal member of the Godai Myo-o, the so-called ‘Five Great Kings,’ all fierce and warlike in aspect, who struggle to conquer Illusion and wrong thinking and lead the soul to choose self-abegnation as the path to true enlightment. If memory serves, Fudo is known as ‘The Immovable’--that doesn’t bode well--and is associated with the sun and fire: not that promising a connection for you, Spike. Typically, Fudo is depicted as holding a flaming sword in his right hand and a noose in his left. The noose is for binding demons,” Giles concluded with a Significant Look.
“Not a demon, then,” Spike drawled.
“If anything, a demigod. In some urban syncretic sects, in fact, he’s been identified with Michael, Archangel, and with the Cherubim--apparently a lesser order of angels--set to guard the closed gates of Eden with a flaming sword. Tradition conflates him with Azrael--the Angel of Death.”
“Nasty packet. Well traveled, though.”
“Only suggestions, not firm identities. Iconic images and deities are transmogrified in their passage through various cultures. The divinities of one are often the arch-demons of another if the first is conquered or falls into disfavor and persecution. Moloch, in particular, never traveled well. Infanticide, baby-killing, however tempting on prolonged overseas flights, never endears itself in the long run. Pride of progeny, however annoying, seems a human constant.”
“Dunno about that,” Spike responded, pretending to pick a piece of fluff off his knee. Dawn knew that not being able to get Buffy pregnant (though Buffy swore up and down that children just weren’t in the Slayer’s job description and that vampires therefore made ideal mates, no ucky precautions needed, and Watchers should therefore be all YAY about such pairings, not all Get thee behind me! and Perish the thought! and Fate--literally--worse than death, the way they actually were), was one of the things, like lacking bodily warmth, he was uneasy about.
Dawn knew this, of course, from Buffy, not Spike, who didn’t tell her the really personal stuff anymore.
The doorbell rang, simultaneous with a few measured light knocks. Not urgent, just insistent. Maybe Buffy had ordered pizza delivery. Dawn didn’t stop to think that the power and the phones were out. Calling, “I’ll get it!” Dawn hopped up, grabbed a candle, and sprinted to the door. She wasn’t stupid: before throwing the bolts and pulling the door open, she checked the side window panel. No need for precautions.
“Hi, Oz.”
Standing rumpled and diffident on the dark porch, Oz replied quietly, “Hi, Dawn.”
But not so quietly that vampire hearing didn’t pick it up: from Spike, loudly, “Oh bloody hell!”
Re Part a: Everybody, is this too weird? Can you make sense of it? Can you visualize/imagine it? Please advise.
by Nan Dibble
Chapter 4: Acala
When Dawn bounced down to stretch out full-length on the front room rug, Spike asked, “You ready?” regarding her narrowly.
“I’m fine,” she responded, fluffing her hair so she wouldn’t lie on it, have it pull--an habitual nighttime ritual, though it was only about nine o’ clock. “Don’t worry about me. You just go on and do what you do.”
“I don’t like it,” Buffy said, pacing by the couch. “This’ll be twice in one day, Spike. What if you can’t get back? What if something happens? What if Dawn can’t--”
Though it meant having to arrange her hair again, Dawn sprang up and hugged Buffy and somehow Spike got into it, encircling them both, all macho and protective, which was kind of cute, despite the fact that Dawn was going to protect him. To keep him focused, which she was very good at. Or even to need his protection (fat chance), which anyway would have the same effect.
And there was nothing either Buffy or Spike could say or do to prevent her, Dawn reflected smugly, rather happy to be the middle of a Spike-Buffy hug-a-thon. She felt cool and independent and determined--not afraid at all, though the astral plane was (cue creepy music) the unknown. For herself, she was afraid of things with too many legs, wasps, bees and hornets; unleashed small yappy dogs of uncertain temper; being helpless with the prospect of pain. Physical threats. By Willow’s explanation and Spike’s report, the astral plane contained none of these dangers. In her immaterial astral body, she should be as invulnerable as some kind of freakin’ superhero, and how cool was that?
Buffy would just have to deal. She hadn’t been able to contact Giles, who might already be on some trans-Atlantic flight, winging home, disappointed. Despite the fuss he’d made about going the first time, Spike took the necessity of doing what they could to recover Willow as a given, almost without comment. Dawn suspected any pretext would have done, any excuse to give in to his yearning to get back there, to have the real thing instead of just frustrating memories. Which meant she was going with, to keep him on track. It was all very simple.
Of course she hadn’t the least clue how to do it. But that was merely a minor detail. She was confident that when the time came, she’d know.
The hug broke up, and hair rearrangement was accomplished. Stretched out to her right, Spike extended his left hand (hers because of the tattoo), as if against his better judgment: he’d said he didn’t think she could follow him, and he didn’t want her there. So giving her a point of contact should be bad. Contrarily, if she could and did, he wanted to keep her close. Hence the hand.
Smiling, Dawn took it, wrapping her fingers tightly into his palm, feeling his thumb lock down. She’d expected both of them to have to meditate, prepare. Instead, she felt a pull and went with it, flinging herself in the direction of the pull almost the same as when she followed Spike through a rift, except they were still in Sunnydale.
But very high up. High enough to see the entire town cupped in its valley. But not distant, either. Anywhere she turned her attention was distinct and peculiarly itself: a house on the opposite side of Revello, decrepit and peeling paint, revealed a jolly, teasing personality, its loose shutters tipped at a jaunty angle, imbued with decades of happy, if raffish, habitation. The better-kept house beside it brooded in upright disapproval like a fixed glare.
Dawn tried to understand what she saw.
Neither house looked different, and yet it did. It was like comparing a routine photo, she thought, with a painting of the same subject. A photo showed the shell; in a painting, the subject was luminous with meaning. Or like the difference between meeting a stranger and meeting a friend….
The movie theater, downtown, gave off a strange mélange of eager, innocent dreams, lust, hunger, and dread--no wonder, since it was one of the prime vamp hunting sites. In fact, the first evening show was letting out and the hunt was in progress. It was odd to see the people moving like sleepwalkers, so little aware of who and where they were, a little like watching oblivious fish school and scatter; and the half dozen or so vamps, points of emphatic dark, the sharks of this water, choosing their targets and moving in.
One of the vamps was Mike. Not game-faced yet but intent, focusing on one man and then dismissing him because he had a pungent mark, a healed vamp bite, already on his throat. Someone else’s mark. Spike’s! Dawn conjectured--an astonished realization. Spike’s been playing catch and release!
That thought distracted her, made her wonder where Spike was. Following the pull of connection, she lifted and rose, searching, and rose higher, along the edge of a diffuse glittering fog…. It was Spike. Either he’d grown very large, or Dawn was exceedingly tiny. Maybe both.
His outline was like dust motes shifting in sunlight or like fog illuminated by a moving flashlight beam. Contours hazed into visibility--his legs, set into habitual prepared stance, lead foot and anchor foot, at rest but ready to move, a pose she’d seen him assume a thousand times, so she knew the rest of it, the set of his hips and the power waiting, balanced and coiled, low in the spine--and then faded as some new vista emerged. The spread of his shoulders. The column of neck. Finally his face, lifted and sublime: he was looking at the stars.
So Dawn had to be about the size of a gnat. That didn’t bother her. What bothered her was that he’d forgotten her: utterly caught up in the hyperreality. As she had been, she acknowledged guiltily, deciding not to get on his case about it. At least not right away.
Spike? Aren’t we supposed to be looking for Willow?
He blinked and leaned away, trying to focus, which was funny: apparently in his astral body, he was still farsighted. Or so accustomed to being farsighted that he imposed that on his form. Like having legs, hands, a body at all: his sense of himself, projected. Whereas she was--what?
She felt like herself but couldn’t see herself. She was only a moving perspective, nothing beyond her gaze except any outward form of herself. Like a floating eyeball.
She wasn’t sure if she’d said that or only thought it. She wasn’t sure she could tell the difference.
Bit. You’re green.
Never mind that--let’s do what we came for. Who knows how much time has passed? Buffy will be having kittens!
Buffy….
She’d only succeeded in distracting Spike’s attention in a different direction--back to the house on Revello, and down, and inside, to the front room where Buffy was frozen in mid-pace, one foot hanging suspended in the stopped time as Spike’s avatar swooped down and swarmed all over her, and there Dawn’s body was on the floor, and it was all just too weird. Some way, tiny as she was, she yanked Spike’s avatar out of there back to where he’d been, so power and size weren’t equivalent, and she was considerably ticked off.
Spike! For heaven’s sake, focus!
Yeah. Right. Look for Willow.
What do we look for?
Dunno, do I? I expect…something like us.
Something the size of a water tower or a pea? That’s helpful!
No: something…diffuse. The response was thoughtful, and Dawn quickly realized he was right. The panorama of streets, houses, stores, miscellaneous offices, a gridwork surrounding Sunnydale’s abundant cemeteries, was all solid and definite, almost too detailed to take in. They were of different stuff--more fluid, reconstituting themselves in ambient energy from second to second, like the id monster in Forbidden Planet.
Look for early CGI, Dawn thought, and adjusted to scan on a different frequency.
Although apt to be snagged by the minutiae of the familiar, yet unfamiliar, surround, Spike mostly stayed with her. Like a dog off the leash investigating smells, Dawn thought. Whereas she was pragmatic and purposeful. She was aware of the fairyland enchantment but it didn’t resonate for her as it clearly did for him. Because she wasn’t a poet, maybe; or because, inexperienced though she was, she felt this as a normal mode of being, maybe from the time the Lady had usurped Dawn’s body and Dawn had been left to rusticate in the Lady’s realm, bodiless, exploring the divisions and considerations into which the Lady organized her sphere of interest, the aspects of the multiverse under the Lady’s influence and rule.
It wasn’t nearly so demanding as steering Spike, drunk, but keeping track of his wanderings did take some of Dawn’s attention. So he was the first to spot something, focus, and move to it quick as a thought.
It wasn’t Willow because there were two of it: indistinct humanoid outlines, one shedding inchoate energy like a fountain, the other so dim it was barely a sketch of particles against the void.
Dawn knew the two were in conversation, communion of some sort but could feel only sadness, hopeless longing, desperate frustration.
Rupert, you seen the witch anywhere about? Spike asked.
As the solider phantom lifted its head and became recognizably Giles, the fainter phantom dissolved into the dark and was gone.
Bloody hell! Giles erupted.
So you can reach him, Spike observed. Which logically made the vanished wraith Rayne, Dawn deduced.
Barely, and only under optimal conditions, which you’ve just disrupted!
Dawn decided intervention was in order.
She told Giles, Willow’s spelled and tranced herself and is lying in her bedroom like Snow White, sans casket and dwarves. Buffy couldn’t reach you, so we came looking. Have you seen her?
Dawn? was Giles’ uncertain reaction.
Yeah, Spike replied, gone all Tinkerbell, no notion why. So Quor’toth--if that’s where he is--isn’t so shut as the accounts claim. Traffic back and forth. On this level, anyways.
He’s been haunting me for weeks, Giles replied raggedly. He’s not certain where he is, but the very fact that he can’t create a portal suggests Quor’toth. Primarily, he’s manifested in singularly excruciating dreams. Alone, he hadn’t the energy to do more. I hoped, meeting on this plane, both of us trying, we might be able to establish a more stable connection. Then you lot had to blunder in and overwhelm the rapport!
Making a lot of progress, were you? Spike inquired skeptically. All set to drag his backside through and shove it out the other end?
No, Giles admitted. And he’s forbidden me to try. If a mage of his experience can’t escape, he’s convinced the most I’d achieve is to trap myself with him. Which might be an improvement over the present impasse. But Ethan says I only think that because I have no experience of such a place. He says it would send me barking mad, in point of fact. Spike? Giles’ tone was acerbic. Since you asked, you might at least do me the courtesy of attending.
Material or immaterial, Spike didn’t much do courtesy. He’d let his attention be drawn away, Dawn saw--gazing wide-eyed at the stars. But with purpose, this time. Focus. Because one was moving. Falling.
Dawn wondered if she should make a wish.
Come on, Spike directed curtly and took off, Dawn right with him, toward where the star’s trajectory meant it should impact.
Dawn didn’t think a star should approach screeching, but this one did. Stars didn’t have tails, only comets, but this one was trailed by an energy signature whose eldritch brilliance filled half the sky. Like Giles (arriving to join them) leaking incompletely used magic, only more spectacularly. Mostly, Dawn doubted stars were afraid.
Without impact, it was among them like a cloud. Then with a flick, a change of focus, it was Willow, grabbing at them with immaterial hands, wild-eyed and wailing, “Go! Now! It’s coming!”
Before her connection to Spike dragged her away to sudden breath and solidity, Dawn saw that above, a whole swatch of stars had been occluded by something vast and dark, pursuing.
**********
As the storm broke, it seemed as if the house was under occult attack. Buffy barely had time to wince at the flare and crack of lighting before the visceral boom of the thunder hit like a hard punch to the stomach. It was like being pinned down by an artillery barrage. The Weather Channel (just before the power went out) called it a freak winter storm; a few minutes later, in the dark, as Buffy scrambled for candles, hailstones began pattering, then banging, then roaring, almost drowning out the thunder. Small arms fire, Buffy thought, shakily lighting a third candle.
She’d thought she was being metaphorical until Dawn wrapped long arms around her and shrieked in her ear, “It can’t get in. It can’t get past the wards.”
Buffy felt a flood of relief: they were back, then. Much sooner than she’d hoped, even: only a few minutes had passed. Two or three specially loud bangs of thunder, nearly simultaneous, made them both jump. In the bright-black flicker of lightings, Spike was silhouetted against the front window--game-faced, roaring. Apparently he didn’t think it was a natural storm either. Before Buffy could reach him, he was off into the hall, headed cellarward, which maybe was a good idea if a tornado or two got thrown into the mix. Given the current level of bombardment, Buffy couldn’t rule it out although tornados were unheard-of in any season, west of the Rockies.
Huddled together, the sisters made a sort of sack-race progress along the hall to the basement door, where they found Willow hunched into the triangular niche under the stairs, eyes tight shut, chanting. All three accounted for. Reading her the riot act for taking off like that could wait: pushing candle-holding Dawn ahead, Buffy dragged Willow, still chanting, down the basement stairs.
The freshly soundproofed basement wasn’t quiet, but it cut the deafening bangs and booms by at least half. Able to think, and hear Willow chanting, Buffy ran back up the stairs to slam the door and shove the bolts home. She didn’t know if that was necessary or even useful, but it made her feel better.
Descending, she saw that the other basement door--the one that led into the new escape tunnel--was ajar. Spike. Racing down the black tunnel with arms stretched wide, she crashed into Spike and the door at the far end just as it was opening. For a second they were struggling--she to shut the door, he to pull it farther open. He let go, so she won.
Setting her back against the door, she demanded, “Are you crazy? Dawn says the wards are all that’s keeping it out, whatever it is. And you want to make a hole in the wards?”
She was blind as the proverbial bat, but she knew he was only about a foot away by the harsh pull of his furious breathing. All wound up and probably still in game-face, too. Teetering on the edge of another mindless explosion to vent the rage.
“For a second,” he said, more growl than words. “Just a second, to get out. Shut it behind.”
“So you can do what?” she challenged.
“Face the bloody wanker! ‘F it wants a fight--”
“Face what? Fight what? Rain? A deluge of hailstones that would mash you flat in a second? Oh! The SUV!” Buffy hated to think what the assault of hail was doing to it, parked in the open gravel stretch off the back yard. If its alarm was going off, she couldn’t hear it. Nothing she could do. She found Spike and wrapped arms about him. He was shuddering with the frustrated imperative to go out and challenge whatever was besieging them here. Totally insane. Totally Spike. “My house,” Buffy said. “My rules. We sit this one out until we know what it is we’re fighting. What works best against it. By the numbers: start with research. We’ve never faced a weather demon before, that I remember. Giles will--”
“He’s still here. Someplace. Had to get back to his body, I expect: some motel or another.” Spike’s arms closed about her and his cheek rested against her temple: tacit acceptance of her calling him off. “’F he lasts this out, we got a lot to talk about.”
Buffy filed that as a topic for another time. “You got Willow back. That’s enough accomplished for one day. Come on.”
They turned, her arm around his waist and his around her shoulders, to return to the upper door.
**********
As the house moaned and creaked, buffeted by gusts of wind, Spike found the custom bed’s disassembled frame in a back corner. With nothing better to do, he lifted out headboard, footboard, and side pieces, and began bolting them together. Bolts and locking nuts were all handy in a box on the floor: that Harris was a methodical worker, Spike had to give him that. No wrench, though.
He found if he could snug the wood up good and tight, mitered notches meeting true, he could push the bolt through, then tighten the nut with his fingers enough to hold until it could be done properly. When he moved to the far side of the footboard, Buffy was there, holding the side rail level and ready for connecting. Nodding appreciation, Spike crouched to insert and tighten the next bolt. It was much easier with the side piece held steady and horizontal, the footboard not trying to collapse onto it.
Given what the bed was gonna be used for when the basement was free of onlookers, Spike liked that they were assembling it together. Though the frame was solid oak and therefore weighed a few hundred pounds as a unit, between them, he and Buffy could lift and walk it into position against the wall smoothly, with no effort at all.
Willow, apparently done reinforcing the wards, and Dawn (giving hand signals and supervisory advice) helped with laying the oversized foundation in place, then the mattress on top.
As soon as the mattress was down, Buffy toppled gratefully onto it crosswise, arms flung high and eyes wearily shut. Wasn’t any point, then, to looking around for the bedding, so Spike launched himself and landed hard--by way of a test, like. All the joints held, and the bed barely shifted. Good enough. Buffy curled up against him, all soft in all the right places, warm all down his front, so eminently fuckable that it seemed a pity not to do her then and there, as he wanted to.
But there was Bit, clambering across the half acre of mattress to tuck in at his back; and there was the witch, slowly collapsing like a dying diva, on Buffy’s far side. And there was the storm, still raging full-blast, as best he could tell. Not gonna chase Bit and the witch back upstairs, to the dark and the scary noises, while that was going on. This was sanctuary; they shared it with equal entitlement. And Buffy, she’d be scandalized if he tried to start anything with so much company….
There were also all the as-yet unspoken things a storm like this portended, none of them likely to be a whole lot of fun. That gave an extra layer of comfort and satisfaction to being together, all of them, and entirely in the body. Just the simple pleasures of quiet, the warmth of contact, safety from the deluge and pyrotechnics outside that couldn’t touch them in this cozy refuge.
So on the whole, Spike was willing to be philosophical about not getting his end away, just now. This was good, too--gently holding, warmly held. Giving himself wholly over to the moment, he nuzzled into Buffy’s hair, the fine scent of her, and let himself drift.
**********
No question: the SUV was trashed. All the glass was broken, sagging in crazed, limp sheets where it hadn’t been blown out altogether; black streaks on the hood suggested the engine had taken a direct lightning hit; the air bag had done its thing and collapsed, entirely filling the front seat area; every part of the body was dimpled by hail. And as Buffy approached, walking carefully on the still-crunchy hailstones, she could smell leaking gasoline.
“It’s history,” she called despondently to Spike, who was hovering just within the morning shadow the house cast on the grass--for moral support, maybe.
“Maybe it’s just sleeping,” he called back, and she wheeled and gave him a glare.
“It isn’t funny, Spike!”
“Sorry. So it’s an ex-parrot, you figure?”
Buffy gave a flat rear tire a rancorous kick. The axle collapsed. Throwing her hands in the air, she walked back to where Spike waited. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do. I guess insurance will cover some of it, but what am I gonna claim? Act of God? What--”
“Don’t fret, love. Not much, to get the DeSoto running again. Day or two.”
Spike started to hug her but she shrugged him off, stomping a couple of paces into the full light where he couldn’t follow. She didn’t want to be consoled or presented with reasonable alternatives. She wanted to be upset and miserable and worried about the logistics of transporting groceries. She wanted to contemplate patrolling on foot again, three-quarters of the time taken by just going and coming. She wanted to know who (or what) the hell was responsible for trashing what was, in her mind, at the moment, her sole and only means of getting anywhere. So she could cut it/him/her/them off at the knees.
“Or,” Spike ruminated, “I could sell the bike.” As Buffy swung around--astonished, touched, even--he went on, “No, scratch that. Sell the witch, maybe. She’d fetch a good price in some quarters.”
Buffy set her hands on her hips. “You really, really better be kidding, Spike.”
“Well, s’not like I suggested selling Bit,” Spike rejoined, mildly indignant. “Too skinny. White slavers, they like a little more meat on the bones.”
“Your bike is probably an ex-parrot, too,” Buffy pointed out with a certain satisfaction, refusing to even think about the bizarre suggestions he was coming up with.
Retreating a step as the shadow’s margin slid nearer, Spike turned his head, uncomfortably looking elsewhere.
Checking, Buffy found the motorcycle neither parked at the curb nor smashed to screaming red (with tasteful skull) flinders in the street under one of several downed trees. “What did you do?”
Hands stuffed in pockets, Spike retreated another step. “Got on the cellphone before the whatever, the tower, went down. Told Michael to come, wheel the bike up against the house there in back, by the porch. Seemed like the best place--inside the wards, an’ all.”
“You are the fricking limit! You brought somebody clear across town, in record incredible bad weather, baseball-sized hail, to move your frickin’ motorcycle?!” Buffy cared nothing about Mike--it was just the principle of the thing.
“Well, that’s what minions are for, innit? Do what you tell ‘em? He’s a vamp, Buffy: break all his bones and he’ll still heal. And wasn’t him that storm was after--it was us. Here. And he has an invite, all proper, so he could pass the wards. Who else was I gonna call to see to it? Who else is under my word in this piss-poor excuse for a town? So what if he’s the Master Vamp of Sunnydale in all but name? So long as he comes to my word, I still got something of my own here, some choices of my own left, not just--” Spike stopped himself for a second, but the explosion wouldn’t be held. “--not just trailing along behind--”
“Hi,” said the ten-foot blueblack creature that’d come up without either of them noticing.
It was more or less humanoid, with two visible teeth/tusks, one protruding from the lower jaw, one descending from the upper. Its eyes had epicanthic folds and wandered independently. Large, flattened nose with conspicuous hairy nostrils. Major ugly. Bright red hair--not auburn, not strawberry blond: red--in short flamelike whorls all over his head. Dressed casually in outsized jeans, a blue T-shirt, and a denim jacket.
Buffy thought dazedly, He wouldn’t fit into the bed.
The creature gestured apologetically with his right hand. “I can tell I’ve come at a bad time, you two are having a thing, so I’ll keep it brief. I don’t mean to be crude, but you and your little witch should mind your own business. Respect the Balance and nobody has to get hurt.”
It took the whole speech before Buffy realized the creature was talking past her…at Spike.
She also realized she and Spike were beyond the wards, in broad daylight, and unarmed. And this, apparently, was the opposition.
Sudden as a punch, she shot out her hand, smiling to show every well-aligned, symmetrical, and recently brushed-flossed tooth. “Hi! I’m Buffy Summers. And you are?”
Slightly surprised but deciding to be civil, the monster briefly enfolded her hand with the care of one picking up a pea. So it was tangible: it could be killed. “Make it ‘Cal.’ I have other names, but they’d sound strange to you.”
“Try me!” Buffy encouraged. Information was always of the good. She didn’t like Spike so silent behind her but it didn’t seem a good time to turn and check. “Is ‘Cal’ for ‘Calvin?’”
“No, for ‘Acala.’ It’s a kind of role, a title--like Slayer. So ‘Cal’ is better for conversation. Maybe you’re the sensible one here: you stay where you belong.”
So he not only knew who she was, he knew she hadn’t been part of last night’s expedition.
Buffy shot back, “I go where I’m needed.”
“Well, that’s good. Good. Because there’s no need for interference. Interference threatens to upset the Balance. Which, as a matter of fact, you’ve done on a number of occasions. Not criticizing, just observing. I usually don’t concern myself with internal matters, and you have an august patron.”
That would be Lady Gates. Hence the fence-mending heavy-handed goon visit in person today after trying to smash her house flat last night, Buffy figured.
“So my past misdeeds are not the reason you trashed my SUV?” she inquired pleasantly, still smiling and wide-eyed.
“Incidental damage. I was making a point.”
At the last second, Buffy decided it wouldn’t be a great idea to give her opinion of what he’d been making.
Acala went on, “I wasn’t, at first, aware that an avatar of the Slayer was involved. You didn’t ‘show up on my radar,’ as it were.” Having uttered this pleasantry, the monster showed a few more teeth--crooked, the size of tent pegs. “But rather than let that be an issue….” Acala gestured, and the SUV leaped to attention, tires swelling, pockmarks expanding with a barrage of popping noises. The steering wheel unkinked and slurped up the air bag in stealthy embarrassment. The greasy black flash-fire marks vanished from the hood. All the window glass sprang up and flowed into its accustomed GM-approved curvatures. As a coda, all the locks popped.
“A full tank of gas?” Buffy’s jaw had begun to ache, holding that smile.
“At these prices? Don’t push your luck.”
Buffy shrugged elaborately. “It was worth trying.” Since for the moment they were playing at being all good pals together, she risked a glance over her shoulder.
At the very edge of the shadow, beginning, faintly, to smoke, Spike was standing with two swords.
Assessing the balance, the implicit choreography, of the moment, Buffy mouthed silently, OK. The right-hand sword flew to her and she took it, already whirling. It clanged against Acala’s sword…that hadn’t been there a second ago. It was fully six feet long and shivered like living flame. She had no idea where he could have hidden it but it was there now and solid enough to make her arm tingle with the impact. She countered the block, disengaging, waiting to see what the next turn in the dance would be. And she felt Spike come to her back, at her left shoulder, so they could separate and take the monster between them…in the full sunlight.
There was no choice. Solemnly she raised the sword vertically before her, bowing slightly. Acala also bowed…and vanished.
Dropping the sword, Buffy gave Spike a hearty shove, pitching him all the way back to the front steps, crying, “You idiot!”
“What?” he protested, bouncing up. “I could’ve managed. I was just getting warmed up!”
“You were smoking, Spike!”
“That’s just to get me charged up proper. Then the wing thing kicks in and I channel it. But I have to be right at the point of burning, see, to get it started. I--”
She grabbed and held him hard, face buried against his shoulder, saying indistinctly, “I’ve seen you burn, Spike. And I never want to see it again. Let’s not push our luck.” That reminded her, and she turned to look at the restored SUV. “Cheapskate,” she spat. “The least he could have done was throw in a tank of gas.”
Letting go, turning away, she trudged back into the sunlight to retrieve her sword.
At least the hailstones were melting. So it wasn’t a total loss.
**********
“I’m staying,” Dawn declared, plunking herself down on the floor in easy grabbing distance of the TV's power cord--an implicit threat. The only way Buffy could get her out would be to drag her, and if Dawn went, she was taking the TV with her.
“She’s staying,” Spike agreed, dropping into his usual corner armchair, his eyes steadily on Buffy’s. For good measure, he barricaded Dawn between his outstretched legs and the TV stand. “Lady Gates comes into it, seems like. That’s her patch, Dawn’s. An’ she was with me, t’other side, which was what tripped that Acala’s alarm.”
“No,” said Willow dispiritedly, puddling on the floor past the end of the couch and wilting against it. “That would be me.”
Munching popcorn, seated on the couch with her legs curled under, Anya opined tartly, “As it should be. You were the only one prepared and qualified. The astral plane is noplace for amateurs.”
“I concur: Dawn should remain,” said Giles, opening his briefcase on the coffee table.
Standing alone in the middle of the front room, Buffy twisted her hands anxiously. “I don’t want her to be a part of this.”
Dawn commented quietly, “I’m already a part of this. I’m seventeen now, Buffy. By the time you were seventeen, you’d already died once. Let’s be a teeny bit realistic here.”
Though nobody had yet said the “G” word, Dawn was certain they all had Glory on their minds: ordinary demons could make things happen but they couldn’t make them unhappen with a twitch of a finger--Buffy had already described the untrashing of the SUV. So what, if they did? Dawn wasn’t a helpless, whining child anymore: she could do things. At least, in collaboration with Spike, she could. And anyway, so far there’d been no specific threat to her in particular. She wasn’t the target.
“Could we get started?” Anya put in. “I’m losing valuable retail time and I had to call Wilbur in early. He’ll try to charge me extra for that.” Wilbur Banks, that Dawn mentally tagged “The Chinless Wonder,” was the part-time clerk Anya had recently taken on, now that the Magic Box was open evenings. Mike had told her Anya had courted him for that position but he’d declined, having larger fish to fry than an exciting new career in retail.
A few vamps held steady jobs. Not many, though. They hated routine and conforming to abstract rules like punctuality and not eating the customers. Also, night jobs weren’t plentiful and cut into their fighting, feeding, and fucking time--the traditional three F’s of vampire existence.
Buffy checked her watch, then glanced out the front window at the early winter twilight darkened by the absence of functional street lights. “Xander should be just getting off. He said he’d come straight from the site. So he should be here in a few more minutes….” Taking a step toward the hall, she asked, “Anybody besides me want a soda?”
“Beer,” said Spike, crossing his ankles.
“Beer?” Buffy’s tone was between uncertain and disapproving.
“Beer,” Spike responded firmly. “Sun’s long past the yardarm an’ if I have to sit and listen to you lot yammer on, here in the Summers No Smoking Zone, has to be compensation. Beer. Several. Watcher?”
“I’ll stay with tea, thanks,” said Giles without looking up, inspecting papers from a folder. “Somehow sleep eluded me last night; I’m sure I needn’t explain why.”
Raising a hand, Willow requested, “Citrus Jolt: I’m undercaffeinated.”
“I’m good,” Dawn said, doing a small happy bounce as Spike’s palm settled reassuringly on her head and began stroking her hair.
It was to be a fullscale Scooby meeting, research cum war council, in full session by candlelight, the power not yet having come back on; and she was being allowed to stay, an equal partner. A first, a milestone.
Before Spike had popped the tab on his second beer, Xander arrived, sporting more layers than Finnegan’s Wake from working all day in the cold. Shedding garishly checked and colored flannel shirts and several ragged sweaters, he explained that part of the mall roof had collapsed--a combination of the weight of water and a tree disobligingly toppling onto it--and his construction crew had been detailed to repair it on a rush basis, since their power tools could be run off a generator. Several of the interior shops had already suffered damage to their fixtures and merchandise; their proprietors had banded together to offer triple-time for a super-fast repair job.
Rubbing his hands wearily up and down his dark-stubbled face, Xander also requested beer since “the platinum menace” was being indulged. More from habit than actual annoyance, Dawn thought, Spike showed him two fingers backhanded and stretched out deeper in the chair, cradling the beer can on his chest. Fairly amicably, as Xander reversed the straight-back wooden chair and straddled it, arms folded across the top, they started discussing installing a downstairs bath, complete with humungous tub, until Buffy returned from the kitchen and handed Xander his beer, implicitly calling the meeting to order.
As usual, these days, Buffy presided.
The first thing was to bring Anya and Xander up to speed on the out-of-body experimentation on the astral plane. Willow did that. Then Giles took the floor, explaining with tight control why he had reason to suspect Ethan Rayne had been consigned to Quor’toth, briefly interrupted by Willow’s dashing out to get the laptop, to take notes. Clicking the necessary keys, she reported sadly that the local connection to the Internet was still down, but the battery life was fine and should get them through. But she was really, really wanting to Google the name Acala.
Apparently glad of the change of topic, Giles leaped ahead past the storm to this morning, eliciting from Buffy a description of the critter, with occasional comments by Spike, who seemed otherwise content to let Buffy make the running on that subject. He was working on his third beer and frowning, sometimes muttering a rude word under his breath. Dawn surmised that Buffy’s preventing him from immolating himself still rankled.
When Buffy had got through the magically-appearing sword and the suddenly vanishing ogre, Giles tipped his head back, murmuring, “Acala. Indigo blue: that suggests Hindu iconography. Attributes including a sword, whorled hair. Associated with fire, lighting bolts and their attendant storms, like the Norse Thor. But Oriental eyes.”
“Ring a bell, Watcher?” Spike asked alertly, despite his indolent pose of disengagement. He compensated by sipping more beer.
“A faint one. Perhaps. I wish I had access to my resource materials! The local library…. Even the university library….” A sigh indicated Giles considered them hopelessly inadequate. “My recollection can be amended later, when I can inspect the relevant texts online. But Acala isn’t the name I associate with that image, that set of attributes: it’s Fudo.”
Making screwed-up Incredulous Face, Buffy blurted, “Fido?!”
“Fudo,” Giles repeated with patient over-distinctness. “Or more properly, Fudo Myo-o. A staple of one of the offshoots of Buddhism, chiefly in Japan and principally a discipline and practice of the priestly class rather than the general public. Fudo is the principal member of the Godai Myo-o, the so-called ‘Five Great Kings,’ all fierce and warlike in aspect, who struggle to conquer Illusion and wrong thinking and lead the soul to choose self-abegnation as the path to true enlightment. If memory serves, Fudo is known as ‘The Immovable’--that doesn’t bode well--and is associated with the sun and fire: not that promising a connection for you, Spike. Typically, Fudo is depicted as holding a flaming sword in his right hand and a noose in his left. The noose is for binding demons,” Giles concluded with a Significant Look.
“Not a demon, then,” Spike drawled.
“If anything, a demigod. In some urban syncretic sects, in fact, he’s been identified with Michael, Archangel, and with the Cherubim--apparently a lesser order of angels--set to guard the closed gates of Eden with a flaming sword. Tradition conflates him with Azrael--the Angel of Death.”
“Nasty packet. Well traveled, though.”
“Only suggestions, not firm identities. Iconic images and deities are transmogrified in their passage through various cultures. The divinities of one are often the arch-demons of another if the first is conquered or falls into disfavor and persecution. Moloch, in particular, never traveled well. Infanticide, baby-killing, however tempting on prolonged overseas flights, never endears itself in the long run. Pride of progeny, however annoying, seems a human constant.”
“Dunno about that,” Spike responded, pretending to pick a piece of fluff off his knee. Dawn knew that not being able to get Buffy pregnant (though Buffy swore up and down that children just weren’t in the Slayer’s job description and that vampires therefore made ideal mates, no ucky precautions needed, and Watchers should therefore be all YAY about such pairings, not all Get thee behind me! and Perish the thought! and Fate--literally--worse than death, the way they actually were), was one of the things, like lacking bodily warmth, he was uneasy about.
Dawn knew this, of course, from Buffy, not Spike, who didn’t tell her the really personal stuff anymore.
The doorbell rang, simultaneous with a few measured light knocks. Not urgent, just insistent. Maybe Buffy had ordered pizza delivery. Dawn didn’t stop to think that the power and the phones were out. Calling, “I’ll get it!” Dawn hopped up, grabbed a candle, and sprinted to the door. She wasn’t stupid: before throwing the bolts and pulling the door open, she checked the side window panel. No need for precautions.
“Hi, Oz.”
Standing rumpled and diffident on the dark porch, Oz replied quietly, “Hi, Dawn.”
But not so quietly that vampire hearing didn’t pick it up: from Spike, loudly, “Oh bloody hell!”
Re Part a: Everybody, is this too weird? Can you make sense of it? Can you visualize/imagine it? Please advise.