Chapter 4
I can wait….
Only I can’t. I can’t wait any longer. So that night I beg off patrolling, and wait till Giles is asleep, and I sneak out into the dark street. It’s kind of exhilarating, sneaking out. Like I’m a teenager again. Like I’m sneaking out to meet my boyfriend for some illicit sex.
I know Giles would disapprove– not so much the illicit sex part (though he wouldn’t be happy about that, if I was having any, not that I am) but because he’d think I’m crazy. I think it myself. There’s some rational part of my brain that keeps reminding me that Spike is dead, gone to dust, and I just heard it from an eyewitness. Giles would tut-tut and speak solemnly of the terrible lot of generals who must send others to die (that’s me, General Buffy), and he’d probably pat my hand and–
So I sneak out, just like when I was 16. And it feels just as wicked.
This time I skirt the garden and head for the adjacent cemetery. But I stick close to the brick wall, close enough to see the flicker of candlelight against the backdrop of darkness. My heartbeat flickers right along with it. He’s in there. I can’t hear him, but I can imagine him. Sense him. And maybe, maybe, I can get him.
I’m dressed just the right way– blood-bait, in a low-cut blouse that exposes my jugular vein. I mosey along, humming a Britney Spears song, bobbing my silly little head as I go. I’m no further than the third row of gravestones when the dark form of a vampire appears from behind a tomb. I could deal with him expeditiously, but I don’t, because it’s another vampire I’m after. So I play with him, calling out (loudly) my usual patter of puns, and he’s wondering what sort of dumb blonde he’s got here, anyway. I let him close in on me, his hands going for my throat, and I let out a great big howl, from way deep down inside me. “Spike!” I yell. “I need you!” (I still have my pride. I’m not going to yell help , even if I need it, and I don’t now.)
And there he is, standing on the brick wall, his bare biceps glinting in the moonlight. He leaps, his arms out to the side, one of those vampire moves I’ve never actually seen any vampire but Spike do. Pret-tay , Faith would say, but then, she’d say that about him if he were standing still, because she’s always had the hots for him.
The only thing is, that leap is usually accompanied by this sexy growl. No growl. The only sound is him landing lightly on the soggy ground, a few feet away.
He grabs the startled vampire, twists off his head– pret-tay for sure– and as the dust settles around us, he gives me that look, you know, the honestly puzzled but half-exasperated look that says you couldn’t handle the likes of him?
But I don’t care that he thinks I’ve suddenly become a total wimp. He’s here, and he’s real, and I reach out to touch him. And his face changes, shifts to vamp, and he backs away, and as I’m saying, “Wait! Spike!” he takes off.
Most vampires aren’t as fast as me (except for that first three or four yards– they move like blurs in that distance). But Spike is like the Michael Johnson of vampires. Over a couple hundred yards, I don’t think anyone can catch him. I’ve never managed. And I can’t manage it tonight. He’s sprinted along the wall and vaulted over it into the nearby park before I even get going.
I found him. And I’ve lost him again. I trudge to my garden and sit disconsolately on the rocky border of the pond, trailing my hand in the water and staring at the guttering flame of the candle. Around the pond he’s been putting in some more plants– lilies of the valley, I think, little white flowers with glossy green leaves.
Next to the little pots of flowers is a set of headphones. They’re connected to the boombox I gave him. I put them on and hear what he was hearing just a few minutes ago– the Ramones. I don’t wanna be buried … in a pet sematery….
I punch the stop button on the boombox. I don’t know if Spike will come back tonight, and I don’t want to run the batteries down.
All through lit class the next day, I’m thinking about Spike instead of Charles Dickens. The first question is, how is he back? Charles Gunn saw him dusted a year ago. And from what I can tell, Charles is a reliable witness– an attorney, a friend of Spike’s. If all I had to go on was Angel’s telling Giles that Spike was gone, I might have my doubts, because, well, Angel sometimes says things that aren’t true without realizing they’re not true. I’m not saying he’s a liar, just that he’s got his own particular view of reality that doesn’t always reflect real reality.
But Charles said he saw it with his own eyes. Spike. Dead. Dust.
I doodle in my notebook so the professor thinks I’m paying attention, and remind myself that Spike is really hard to kill. I know. I’ve tried. And only once– in the Hellmouth– I succeeded, not that I wanted to at that point. And he came back from that, didn’t he? Giles tried to tell me that it was some kind of Wolfram & Hart screw-up, that it was supposed to be Angel wearing the amulet and becoming the champion and saving the world, and Spike, as he usually does, made mincemeat out of their careful strategy. And there was some cosmic burp, and Spike got thrown back into the world.
But… but I have this alternate scenario that I’ve never tried out on anyone, because it sounds like the sort of wussy grief-and-guilt-inspired thinking Giles and Xander warn me against. But I’m going to say it anyway. I think maybe Spike’s special. Even more special than Angel.
I know. That’s like sacrilege or something. Angel’s spent decades as the fair-haired boy of the Powers That Be. (Even if he actually has dark hair, and hasn’t been a boy for centuries.) They have all these plans built around him, big plans that I don’t quite understand because I give wide berth to all those Powers. The only Powers I’m interested in are the ones given to me, and I gave to the other slayers.
But the PTBs love Angel. The souled vampire. The evil-turned-good. A prophecy come to life.
Only… I mean, think about it. Angel only has a soul because he’s cursed. And he turned good because he’s afraid he’ll be damned if he doesn’t expiate all his sins. And he goes along with the Powers because he’ll be rewarded if he does, plus I guess he’s respectful of all the prophecy stuff.
But Spike – no one forced him to get a soul. And he did good because he wanted to, not because it was worth his while. Okay, so both getting a soul and doing good were because of me, but come on. Love’s at least as worthy a motivation for doing good as avoiding damnation is. Hey, Dickens even wrote a whole book about it, didn’t he? I mean, that Sidney Carton guy only replaced the other guy, the drippy one, in the execution line to make the woman he loved happy, right? And, jeez, Sidney Carton is this major heroic figure in literature. So why not Spike? (He probably should have had a better closing line. Sidney Carton says this cool thing: “It’s a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done before. It’s a far, far better place I go, than I have ever been before.” That kind of resonates better than Spike’s exit line, where he like channeled Alice Cooper– “School’s out for the bloody summer!”)
So it’s possible that the Powers suddenly recognized that Spike was special. Or maybe there was one particular Power (female, I bet) who saw his potential. Maybe he got sent back because he could do something no one else could do. And maybe he wasn’t supposed to die again with Angel last year. (It is sort of annoying that he dodged the stake for more than a century, and then he dies twice in a year.) So… well, just consider this. Don’t dismiss it out of hand. Just consider that maybe they sent him back again for a reason. Or for a reward. Or as a rebuke to Angel.
Okay, so that answers the “how and why he’s back” issue. (I am not even going to worry about the “if”. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve proved that much.)
Next question. What’s with the garden?
I better not think about that. It twists my heart too much, and if the tears start up here in lit class, the professor’s going to worry I might be a bit too sensitive about poor Tiny Tim and Ebenezer Scrooge.
Next question. Question of the month, in fact. Why did he come to help me, and then run away when I started to touch him?
Well, okay, he came to help me because that’s what he does. If he’s alive (or at least undead) and around, and I need him, he shows up. No-brainer.
The other part of that question– that’s the hard part. I replay the moment in my mind. He’s there with me in the dark, like always, and I just stretch out my hand, meaning to touch his face, or maybe his shoulder. And something like panic shows in his eyes, and he’s gone.
He doesn’t want me to touch him.
I give that about two seconds before discarding it.
He doesn’t want me to hold him. Keep him. There’s some danger in that.
That makes a bit more sense. Danger for me? Or for him?
Probably for me.
Well, he should know I can take care of myself. Or at least that there aren’t too many dangers he and I can’t overcome together.
Final question. Why am I going after him, if he is trying to get away?
I can’t really come at that question straight. First I remind myself that he might try to get away, but he can’t really want to succeed. I don’t know how he came back here, but he came here, to Cleveland, to me. And he made me a garden. I don’t know where he got that crazy idea, but when I think of him, a vampire, trying to bring a little life into the world… planting flowers he’ll never see in the sun, digging in the dirt by flickering candlelight, carefully building those boxes when being careful has never been something he’s been good at– and all for me… it’s just a gift of love. That’s all it can be. So no, I don’t think he really wants to get away from me. I think… I think he’s been away from me long enough. I think the garden is his way of being with me.
But me… I’m such a mess. Such a mess. I don’t have any plan. I don’t know what I want. And is it fair to go after him now? Chase him down? Capture him? When I haven’t ever been able to commit to him?
What do I plan to do with him when I catch him?
I find myself making a list in my lit notebook.
To do:
1) Yell at him for not ever calling me that whole year to say he was alive.
2) Apologize for not calling him from Rome. Explain about the Immor– no. Maybe not. Just explain about wanting to call him but running out of time.
3) Yell at him some more for not calling me this time to tell me he’s alive.
4) Thank him for the garden.
5) Take him to bed.
I stare at that last one for a while. The wanting grows. It feels like a need now. But I remember what that means– me taking advantage of his love. I’m done with that. Moved beyond that. Grown up. Changed. Learned to value what’s really valuable.
So I scratch that last one out and replace it with:
5) Tell him I love him only this time sound more believable. Then I add, 6) Take him to bed.
But not tonight. Here I am, all tense for Spike, and we have to go pick up the slayerette at the airport. Oh. I’m not supposed to call her “the slayerette”. That’s what Spike used to call them, all those girls who hung around the house on Revello and looked at him like he might bite them. (Well, that I get.) But Giles calls them slayer trainees. And that’s what I’m supposed to call them, since I’m the Senior Executive Slayer and should set a good example.
So we go to pick up the slayer trainee at the airport that evening, and the whole time we’re waiting by the baggage claim, I’m worrying if he’s mad at me or sad or missing me. I’m worried that some demon might see the candlelight flickering in the garden while Spike works and decide it’s a great lair to be had. And then he goes after Spike when I’m not there to help. Well, Spike can handle most demons, even without my help. But what if he’s upset and sad and not paying attention and the demon takes him by surprise? That could happen. What if seeing me hurt him so much he’s drunk a whole lot of whisky and he’s passed out there in the dirt, one hand around the neck of the bottle, the other around some begonia he was transplanting? And that damned Wehoe that runs this town has sent a whole contingent to get him? Or what if he is still passed out there when the sun rises over the brick wall?
His voice comes to me, inside my head, as I wait with Giles next to the revolving baggage carousel. Slayer, can take care of myself. Been doing it for a lot of years. (I never thought I’d miss being called Slayer that way.) And I think back, Well, you’ve done a lousy job of it lately! Dusted twice in a year!
I glance over at Giles, hoping he doesn’t notice me talking in my head to a supposedly dead vampire. But he’s busy looking at a photo in his hand and comparing it to the passengers streaming off the escalator. “There she is,” Giles says, indicating some tall skinny girl in cowboy boots and an Armani jacket. Her hair is auburn and perfect, all tousled and Jennifer-Anistonish. I can’t believe she’s just 18. “Taylor Watson.”
You know how sometimes you just don’t like someone? Well, I just don’t like Taylor Watson. That name, right off. Just like Kennedy– using a last name as a first name. Sure, that’s her parents’ doing, and maybe someone named Buffy shouldn’t talk, but – it’s just instantaneous. She looks at me in this cool, dismissive way, and turns to Giles with a smile. One of those women who thinks only men are worth attention.
When he welcomes her, she’s like a queen accepting tribute. She probably thinks being a slayer isn’t a duty or a burden, but a recognition for being perfect.
Oh, great. I probably ought to assert my authority, be the alpha female. But I’m just too preoccupied with the whole Spike thing. So when she says, “Buffy, is it?” in a sardonic Texas drawl, Giles glances over with a “be-nice” expression on his face. I don’t pay any attention. I just say, “Yeah. How ya doing?” and then to Giles, “I’ll go get the car.”
I can tell Giles is surprised I didn’t get all bitchy. And Taylor looks like she’s been denied a fight. But I just want to get them home and asleep so I can sneak out and go to the garden and find him.
Taylor keeps Giles up past midnight, demanding answers about disability insurance and tuition-reimbursement. Across the dining room table, I regard her with grudging respect. She can’t be more than 18, and she’s more savvy already than I am now. I mean, I never thought to ask for disability insurance. And I’ve been paying my own tuition. But she’s already got a 401K plan set up. Turns out her father is an investment banker.
After awhile, I tune out, mentally adding items to my to-do list.
7) Tell Spike he has beautiful eyes.
8) Find out where he lives and whether it has bathroom facilities, otherwise bring him here to my own bed and who cares what Giles and Taylor think.
9) Better tell Dawn as soon as it’s confirmed or she’ll hold a grudge against me for life, like four life-long grudges against me aren’t enough.
10) Persuade Xander that he and Spike are really old friends and old friends don’t stake each other.
11) Ditto Giles.
12) Don’t get mad at him no matter what. When I finally get over there, the garden is dark. Empty. The boombox is gone. The lilies of the valleys are all planted. I consider leaving a note, but maybe that’ll spook him. He’s so stubborn.
(When he’s being stubborn, he gets this cute expression. Like a bulldog, only a lot cuter than a bulldog. He looks all determined and mad. I want to see him again.)
Two nights later, I stand in the empty garden and curse. I pull out my little penlight and my little pen and a receipt from the grocery store and I write: Now stop being stubborn and be here when I come, because I’ve come every night and you’re not here, and I can’t sleep, and I have to go to school, and I have to patrol still, and I have to train this new trainee, and I need my sleep. I think for a minute, remember what works with him, and add, It’s not safe for me to patrol if I’m not getting enough sleep. Love, Buffy.
The next night, he’s there. He’s not in the garden, but I sense him somewhere around. I walk around the brick wall into the cemetery, breathing in, because I feel him there in the air around me. My heart just aches. I want him to be here. All of him. Right here with me.
Is this love? It’s got to be love. He can’t say it’s not love.
I wander around till I sight the perfect situation. There are two vamps, a male and a female, waiting at a gravesite for a fledgling to erupt. (And they say this current generation of vamp lacks family values!) I stay far enough back that they can’t sense me, and I wait right along with them. I’m glad Giles left for London yesterday, because he would get so mad at me. I trained you better than that,he’d declare. Stake the two first, and get the third when he comes out!
But dumb Giles. He’d think I’m coming here to kill vampires. Really I’m trying to entice Spike out of hiding. And that’s going to take more than one or even two vamps.
So I lean against a tomb and watch as a hand emerges from the dirt. The female reaches down and yanks, and a new vampire, still clad in his funeral suit but pretty dirty, slides out. I kind of get a shiver, remembering my own climb out of the grave. Then I stride forward to meet them.
The fledge stands around looking bewildered while I engage the other two. Their eyes are gleaming gold in the darkness, and they make a fight of it, but I have to work at keeping them on their feet. Finally it gets intense enough– they’re on either side of me, snarling– that I feel justified in yelling, “Spike, I need you! Really! This time I really need you!” And then, cringing in humiliation, I add, “Help!”
The vampires are laughing at me. (Spike owes me for this.) I fend them off with my feet and fists instead of the stake, waiting. Waiting. I have to dust the female– just can’t hold her off anymore– and I yell, “Need you, Spike!” as I turn to the male. He’s really mad at me for killing his woman, and that’s good, because he comes at me like he means it, and I sense Spike nearby– and then, with a whoomph, someone shoves me to the ground. I roll over quick and hear the clang of metal on bone, and I see it– the fledge picked up a gravedigger’s shovel and swung it at me, and hit… well, Spike. Who is now laid out on the ground, quite unconscious.
The vamps are growling, but I don’t have time for them. I stake the male, and then, really mad now, I grab the shovel from the fledge, break it over my knee, and shove the jagged end of the wooden handle into his chest. “Don’t you hurt my man,” I say, and fling the broken shovel into the settling dust.
Then I drop down beside Spike. “You dummy,” I say, my hands on his shoulders, searching for damage. “All you had to say was duck. And I would have ducked. You didn’t have to get between me and the shovel–”
But of course he doesn’t hear me. His eyes are closed, and he’s lying as limp as I’ve ever seen him. I touch the broken place on his temple with my fingers, as delicately as I can. Oh. I got him hurt. Again.
On the bright side, he’s out for the count and can’t get away.
Sitting down in the dirt beside him, I find my cell phone and call home. Taylor is supposed to be asleep, but she must be up late surfing pornsites (okay, maybe she’s checking her investment portfolio) because she answers pretty quick. I tell her to get the car and come to the cemetery, and make it quick.
She growses about having to get dressed, but I hang up on her, and in about the time it takes me to drag Spike to the curb, she’s right there in my Taurus. She climbs out and comes around to help me, and says, “Whoa,” as she catches sight of Spike in the light of the streetlamp.
It’s not politically correct to say this. But the truth is, no one looks as good beaten up as Spike does. I think it’s the contrast between his ivory skin and the purple bruises. And he really looks beat up tonight. The spade got the whole left side of his face. Already he has a nice black eye, and the skin is broken over that sharp cheekbone of his, and his mouth is getting swollen.
“Whoa,” Taylor says again, her gaze roaming from his two-toned hair (only the tips are still bleached) down that sweet hurt face of his, over his black-t-shirted chest–
“He’s mine,” I say. “Hands off.”
Well, I let her use her hands to help me get him into the back seat, but that’s all. I climb in after him, and take his slender, solid body in my arms, and hold his head steady against my chest as she drives the few blocks back to my house. She’s silent even when we carry him up the porch steps.
One arm under his shoulders, I fumble to get the key in the lock, and push the door open with my hip. “Almost there, Sp–” I start to say, backing in, but then his poor head bangs against the invisible barrier and I almost drop him. I have to fumble to keep his head from hitting the ground, and his mouth opens in a moan, only he’s too deeply unconscious for it to sound. I hurt him. Again. I mutter some curse, and then say loudly, “Come in, Spike,” and pull him through, with Taylor almost losing his legs, I’m so fast.
I shove on the light switch with my shoulder and point with my head to the spare room beyond the kitchen, recently vacated by Giles. And together we get Spike onto the bed. She lingers in the doorway as I pull off his boots. His old boots. I kind of hug the left one to my chest, getting a bit of mud onto my blouse. Then I set them both gently on the floor, side by side.
I forget about the slayerette, because I’m watching his face– his eyelids flickering just a bit, his teeth biting his torn lip. His beautiful face. I never told him that. I never complimented him at all. He probably thinks I think he’s as ugly as a toad.
His hair is dark against the pillow, and that’s a change. But he’s still wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt, and he’s still slender and – and he’s still mine. Whether he knows it or not.
“He’s a vampire, isn’t he?” Taylor says in a hushed tone.
I realize the only vampires she’s ever seen are the ones we staked the other night on her first training patrol. “Yeah. But he’s a good one. And he saved the world.” I add, threateningly, “The Powers brought him back from death twice now. So he’s favored. And he get a buy, okay? You stake him, I stake you. Got it?”
She kind of coughs. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Go get a wet cloth. And then–” I stocked up, see, yesterday, when I was making my plans. “Go down into the basement. There’s a freezer there. Get a couple bags of blood out of there, and warm them up in the microwave. Seven minutes on 40% power.” I don’t know how I remember that, but I do.
She brings me the cloth and heads downstairs, and carefully I wash away the blood and mud on his face. I think of all the times he’s been hurt like this for me– sometimes by me– and I’m extra gentle, and I talk to him. No mad, I remind myself. Just nice. “I’m glad you’re back.” That’s nice. “I missed you. I missed you a lot.” That was good. “Thanks for the garden. It’s lovely. I love it.” I love you, I think. But I want him to be awake when I say it. “Why didn’t you–” Oops. Sounds mad. I clamp my mouth shut.
Taylor returns holding a big china bowl with the ziploc bags of blood. She sets it down on the nighttable and retreats back to the doorway. I look over my shoulder. “What?”
“I– I was just wondering where his other face is.”
I dab at his poor mouth with the wet corner of the cloth. “He puts it on when he wants to. But he usually looks like this. Without the damage, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Taylor says. She sounds sort of reverent. “Umm, what else can I do?”
She’s actually trying to be helpful. I give it some thought. It’s been awhile since I had to deal with a battered vampire. Spike heals so quickly, it is just symbolic, me nursing him like this. But I want to do it. “How about a bag of ice? That’ll help with the swelling.”
She vanishes and comes back a minute later with an ice-bag. When I apply it to his mouth, he stirs. I catch my breath, and close my eyes, and I wait for him to see me and say my name. I want to hear it in that low voice of his. Buffy. Hey, I’ll settle for Slayer .
But I don’t hear anything except Taylor’s gasp. I open my eyes, and he’s looking up at me, and he’s scared.
Scared. Of me. “Hey, Spike–” Now I wish I used to call him by some endearment. He always called me pet or love, but I never called him anything but Spike. Well, I called him bad things. But it would really help now if I’d ever called him honey or sweetheart, because I could call him that and he’d know I’m not going to, well, hurt him, I guess. Whatever he thinks I’m going to do that makes him look at me like that.
I gentle my voice. “Hey. Honey.” Better late than never, right? “I brought you home with me. I’m going to take care of you.”
Now there is full-blown panic in his eyes. But he doesn’t say anything. I pick up one of the blood bags– it’s nice and warm, just like he likes it– and start to hold it out to him. But he’s moving fast, like only he can, springing out of the bed and across the room before I can grab him.
Stupid Taylor just moves out of the way, letting him past her into the kitchen. “Stop him!” I yell, and she goes to comply, and we collide there in the doorway, and I have to shove her aside and take off after him.
Spike is just turning the corner to the front hall, and I know if he gets out the door into the night I’ve lost him. He’s too good at this escape business. But as he rounds the corner, he skids on the hardwood floor, and his stockinged feet slip out from under him, and in the clumsiest move I’ve ever seen him make, he sprawls on his back in the little hallway.
I’m on him in an instant, knees straddling his chest, face only a few inches from his. I want to pound on him, but I remember I don’t do that anymore, and I settle for yelling at him. I’m not supposed to do that anymore either. But it’s better than pounding. “What is wrong with you? Why are you trying to get away?”
He looks up at me, and his blue eyes– well, one blue eye, the other is swollen shut– is full of misery. But he still doesn’t answer me, and in exasperation I pull him up against me, his head against my breasts, and I say, “Just tell me.”
And he struggles to get free, and I’m afraid of hurting him, so I let him go, or at least his head, and he sinks back to the floor and turns his face away. And he’s got that stubborn look I love/hate, only there are tears in his eye, and he works his hand free of my grasp. He rubs hard at his eye with a chipped and dirty thumbnail, shoving the tears away, and I say, helplessly, “Spike, sweetie, just talk to me.”
He turns back and looks up at me, and then I realize. “You can’t,” I whisper. “You can’t.”