Chapter Ten

The witch was still asleep when he woke up five hours later. She had pulled her pillow to one side, creating a small but effective barrier between them. She had rolled into the bulk of the pillow and stopped there, one hand balled up in a loose fist near her parted lips. She was breathing heavily through her mouth. What was it that Georgia had bought for her? Cough medicine. Cold and sinus remedies. Perhaps she had been right about that. The abandoned motel wasn’t his idea of the comfort, but it was isolated and there was electricity and running water. Humans required a bit more than that, didn’t they?

His eyes narrowed. It seemed improbable. When he had been human, he had lived in London. Filthy, stinking, disease ridden, London, where teenage prostitutes slept in alleys and unheated, crowded rooms within the reek of raw sewage, eating food prepared by street vendors with dubious notions of sanitation and no concept of cross contamination. Even with the comforts of an existence that had included having his fireplace stoked in the early morning hours and a cup of hot, bitter chocolate in bed, his had not been the easy, soft existence this girl was accustomed to with the modern conveniences of central air, cheap and plentiful food, and good climate.

Could he have faired so well? Minus a few pints, dragged around, sleep deprived, half starved, and bounced back with little more than a trifling cold? Probably not, he conceded. Red was a bit tougher than she looked.

Mankind had come a long way in a century. Sanitation, healthcare, good food easily gotten, at least in the West, travel, universal education. He knew he was supposed to deplore the educational standards of the day. Angelus liked to sneer over the fluffy curriculum and lack of culture, but what the fuck did he know? He was mostly self taught fueled by two centuries of boredom and eight decades of angst and guilt. Angel’s human self had been an Irish country farmer’s son, lay about, and drunk. The human Spike had once been had enjoyed what passed for a gentleman’s education and the eighteen year old girl sleeping beside him had an additional century of knowledge distilled into her education on topics that would have seemed fantastic when he was her age. Physics, chemistry, computer sciences, advanced mathematics, God knew what else.

She lay there with her soft, perfect skin, and strong, straight teeth smelling of bath gel and the lingering cinnamon of her mouthwash. He smiled at the thought. Wandering the aisles of the all night drug store last night he had been amused by the conveniences that everyone took for granted today. Take cigarettes, for example. Neat, uniform cylinders packed tightly together in paper and cellophane. They stayed fresh for months like that, and the taste—always the same. You learned to take it for granted, though he vaguely remembered the anxiety he had felt before lighting a hand rolled Turkish cigarette, never really knowing until the first draw if it would satisfy the taste as much as the craving for nicotine. Then there was the satisfying little miracle of the Zippo lighter. Wind resistant, reliable with the minor maintenance of changing the flint and refilling the tank. Solid in his hand, smooth, with the small sounds that attended its use. Marvelous.

He located his cigarettes on the bedside table, a sleek, modern looking blond oak veneer table with a cantilevered top that reflected the edgy innocence and optimism of America in the sixties when space travel had made everything seem possible. He could remember staying awake after dawn to watch the rocket launches, amazed to still be around to witness such marvels.

The motel was a faded time capsule of the sixties when Americans had started using their cars to take themselves from their ordinary lives to enjoy the fruits of their modernity. He rested a cheap black plastic ashtray on his abdomen, his hand brushing the slightly scratchy polyester bedspread. He grimaced. Polyester. Not a good moment in history, but you couldn’t bake a cake without breaking some eggs.

Sitting up a bit, he fingered a lock of her hair. So smooth and shiny. the product of good nutrition and cosmetics as much as genetics. She slept heavily, he had noticed. Perhaps still suffering the effects of being a snack food for that idiot Harmony. He had ground shipped Dalton’s notes to the Watcher on day three of their little jaunt through northern California, making sure that the origination point of the package would provide a cold trail. They would get the package sometime today. He wondered how long it would take them to find the Gem, and conversely, how long it would take them to get frustrated looking for the Gem and divide their efforts to look for him.

The longer he had the girl, the more desperate they would become. He made a note to himself to round up another cell phone and give them a call that night. He wasn’t sure how traceable the calls might be, so his strategy for now was to keep changing phones and avoid land lines that might reveal his location through the area codes and exchanges. They couldn’t stay in one place too long. The rising mystery murder rate and flurry of robberies would draw too much attention. His little tribe was becoming more efficient, and he had built up a nice nest egg of cash from their late night hunts.

Finishing the cigarette, he turned his attention back to his oblivious bed warmer. Her body threw off heat like a little furnace. There was a pretty flush to her cheeks. He had woken up more than once with her wound around him, all smooth skin and the softness of lingering baby fat, and humid breath on his skin. The first time it had happened he had just pushed her away, annoyed. He was getting accustomed to the warmth, though. It was nice. Reminded him of the warm flush of fresh blood filling his body after a kill, he reflected. He grinned wolfishly, imagining her horror if he shared that comparison with her.

He set aside the ashtray, moving down in the bed until they were more or less face to face, rolling on his side, folding the thin pillow he was using under his head. The arm beneath her body was curved over her head around the lengthwise pillow. He touched her hand, finding it cold. She would wake up to a dead arm and the agony of pins and needles as circulation was restored. Imaging her eyes cloudy with confusion and pain was appealing.

His attention turned to her mouth. Her sleep-slackened lips were pale pink, and at this distance, he could see a few freckles marring the dry surface of her lips. When she had been unconscious, he had seen her naked body—granted, he had not been looking at her as a naked woman. She had been too sick and weak to stimulate prurient interest. She was wearing a thin t-shirt and shorts to sleep in and he could fill in the blanks. Small, firm breasts with surprisingly large pale brownish pink nipples, a long, slim torso with a slight rise below her navel, slim hips, a tight, sweet little ass, and shapely legs that hinted at a less than sedentary lifestyle.

Trooping around in the Slayer’s wake meant physical hardship that would tax the endurance of ordinary mortals. She had been wearing a pair of pale pink panties with tiny white polka dots when Georgia had undressed her. He got a look at the tangle of cinnamon curls between her legs, a color less vibrant than her rich hair color, but still rather exotic. She had potential.

Possibly thinking of England and giving it up for the sake of hell and all-purpose evil would not enter into the equation. She was regrettably on the thin side, and a bit small and sweetly girlish enough to make him want to heave, but she was not, on the balance, repellent, or unappetizing. He slipped his hand in between her fist and her mouth, gently nudging her hand away from her mouth. Her heartbeat remained steady, a bit slow, but steady. He touched her lower lip with his thumb, feeling the slight roughness there from her irritating habit of chewing on her lower lip. She seemed unaware that she was doing it, and he half expected her to draw blood.

The mental image of a perfect drop of her blood hanging on her lip like a ruby made his morning hard on twitch. At almost the same moment, her tongue stole out to swipe her lower lip, slipping over his thumb. A nearly imperceptible frown pinched her eyebrows and her tongue came back to explore. He pushed his thumb over her lips, just inside her mouth to see what she would do. To his surprise, her fisted hand uncoiled and latched on to his wrist, her fingers stroking his skin as her lips closed around his thumb.

She made a contented sound, deep in her throat, sucking lightly on the tip of his thumb. It was probably the nicotine. She spent all of her time trapped in a room with a smoker. He had seen her small nose wrinkle in protest and disgust when he lit a cigarette in front of her. She probably didn’t understand that she was absorbing some of the nicotine from his cigarettes, stirring a mild craving for the stimulant. He started to move his hand away from her mouth, but her fingers tightened on his wrist and she bit his thumb, taking more of it into her mouth.

Well, well, well, isn’t this interesting, he thought with a leer. He feathered his fingers over her jaw, and she nestled into her pillow, eyes opening slowly, blinking away sleep.

The exact moment that she became aware of what she was doing her heartbeat changed, becoming erratic and her eyes widened in obvious panic and confusion. She spat his thumb out, jerking her head back with a startled gasp.

He chuckled. “It’s just me. Your favorite vampire chew toy, Red,” he said, enjoying her panic. He wiggled his wrist. “You want to let go or start working on another finger?”

She lifted his wrist, staring at it in blank surprise for a moment before she dropped it like it had suddenly become hot. The pale flush in her cheeks darkened, spreading splotchy color to her chest. “Oh, God,” she moaned, mortified. “I—you, uh—“ her eyes closed as she winced. “Just kill me now,” she muttered.

He laughed at her. “Really, pet,” he chided. “Not a smart thing to say to the undead,” he tsked. “Though, I’ve never been much for volunteers. Something about their eagerness to be dead just turns me off. Like that idiot that tried to trade the Slayer for a chance to become a vampire?”

Billy Fordham. Willow remembered him with a frown. He had had cancer and he was so afraid of dying that he had sought out Spike with an offer to walk Buffy into a trap if he would promise to vamp him. “I didn’t volunteer for this,” Spike spoke callously of his own death. “It seems unnatural to turn something that willing.”

“Or you were just being perverse.”

She was almost grateful for the conversational detour. It was giving her something else to think about other than waking up with—she ran her tongue over her lower lip, tasting Spike. Oh God. What had she been thinking about to get herself in such a weirdly intimate place? Had she been dreaming? She didn’t remember dreaming about anything. Please let me have been dreaming, she prayed. About Oz, about cinnamon candies, about anything, other than Spike.

She had to hold her end of the conversation up. Stick to dissecting Billy Fordham, and avoid topics that had to do with anything remotely personal, she directed herself.

“Buffy staked him,” she said, picking up the thread of the conversation. Whew!

“What a surprise,” Spike retorted. Perverse? “I think you meant contrary.” That sounded about right to him. “Probably waited by his grave to do him,” he returned from his vocabulary sidebar.

She pursed her lips. “That doesn’t bother you?” she asked. “Didn’t you, uh, vamp him?”

“Uh,” Spike mimicked her verbal pause, “no. Had a minion do it. A deal is a deal. He asked to be turned. He was turned. What? Did you think I’d take the annoying git under my wing?”

“I’m sticking with perverse,” she mumbled, and then to answer his question, “I don’t know,” Willow said. “Do vampires care about the people they turn into vampires after they,” she winced as she moved her left arm. It felt like something dead. She poked it experimentally. Oh great. When the blood started flowing again, this was going to hurt, “uh, turn them,” she finished, gingerly lifting her arm and cradling it against her chest as she rolled on her back.

“Care?” Spike repeated. “Depends. Minions?” he shrugged. “I can’t say I’m too attached to them right off. They are useless at first. Once you teach them to hunt, you weed out the ones who aren’t useful.”

“Weed out?”

“Stake ‘em,” he was blunt. “Not wasting time on minions who don’t work out,” he explained.

“Oh,” she looked surprised. Giles had said something once about vampires not getting along with other demons, and not really getting along with other vampires either. Guess that was what he meant. Spike didn’t sound broken up over the idea of destroying his . . . creations.

“Childe-sire bonds are something different, though,” he added. “Take Georgia. Colin sired her. They’ve been together going on twenty years. That’s pretty much the norm.”

She knew a little more about that from the Watcher’s Diaries and Angel talking about Drusilla in a very stilted kind of way that hinted at some kind of deep and mysterious attachment.

“How do you know a minion isn’t working out?” She had met a few of Spike’s minions, not that they were friends or anything like that, but if they weren’t working out maybe someone should point it out. Give them a little push in the right direction. It might keep him from creating more minions to replace the duds.

The topic and her interest in it struck him as odd. “They aren’t efficient hunters. I won’t keep a minion that can’t feed itself,” he explained. “Or they won’t follow instructions. Can’t have that,” he said decisively.

She could help with the following instructions thing, but she had no tips to share for being an efficient killer. Another plan foiled. Unbeknownst to her, Willow’s eyes reflected disappointment. She rubbed her arm to get the circulation going again. Her gaze focused on the water stain in the ceiling. She stifled a yawn, which only made it grow bigger until she had to stop rubbing her arm to cover her mouth.

Spike left the bed. He was naked. He always slept naked. He didn’t even seem to notice he was naked, and Willow would have gladly followed suit, but she couldn’t quite convince herself that she was blasé about being in the same room with a naked vampire. A full body impression of him, pale, sinewy, and graceful, seared her retina before she squeezed her eyes shut. Fortunately, the renewed circulation in her arm was becoming painful.

Think about anything else, she told herself sternly.

She felt his weight shift the mattress when he returned to the bed. Something lumpy with hard edges landed on her tummy and her eyes flew open to find him regarding her in a smugly amused way. He had pulled on a pair of jeans. Whew. “Thanks,” she said, and then wished that she hadn’t.

He raised an eyebrow, took in her blush, and looked down at his half clothed body, and gave a spare shake of his head. “Georgia got a few things for you,” he told her.

She investigated the contents of a plastic bag with a familiar chain drug store logo. Nail polish in sheer pink and pearl white. Georgia’s only comment after Spike had hit her had been to tell her that she would give her a French manicure, like beating people with a belt simply wasn’t comment worthy. Probably wasn’t to a vampire.

There was a box of chocolates—nutty, crunchy, and chewy. Her favorite food groups. Vanilla bath gel. “Oooo,” she crooned. A notebook. College ruled. Yea. And a package of ballpoint pens with the cushy grip. Double Yea.

“Books,” she sat up. They were both mysteries. John Grisham’s The Street Lawyer and Patricia Cornwell’s Point of Origin in paperback. Willow preferred Anne Perry and Laurie King, but Georgia’s choices beat reading the New Testament, so she was not complaining. She scanned the back of the Cornwell novel, rocking back and forth in a small burst of delight. Books!

“There’s some cough medicine, cold remedy crap, too,” Spike pointed out since she seemed to have forgotten everything else.

She made herself look. “That was thoughtful,” she said automatically. Then she cocked her head to one side. “Vampires? Snot? Not a problem?” she hazarded a guess.

A small laugh escaped him. “Not a problem.”

She made a face. “Geez, doesn’t that figure,” she sighed. Tired of waiting for her arm to wake up the slow way she started rubbing it more vigorously, her lips thinning as the sensations sped up.

“Hurts?” he sounded hopeful.

She looked at him skeptically. “Is this like, entertaining for you?”

“Moderately. Throw in a few tears and a quivering chin, and I’d call it a show.”

“Sadistic, much?” she shot back, and then shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know,” she said hastily.

He shrugged, “You’re safe enough if you don’t annoy me too much.”

“Am I going to know if I’m annoying you too much before you . . . hit me again?” she asked, and there was a definite edge in her voice.

“Nothing in it for me if you do. I’d beat your ass for the pleasure of licking the tears off your face, pet,” he practically purred. That sounded nicely evil and dastardly. Half the fun of being bad was having someone to bounce the badness off of, he decided.

Her lip curled. “Eeew. I do have snot issues, especially when I cry, so bon appetite, mister,” she muttered, unnerved.




Buffy picked at a stack of pancakes that Xander had made in Giles' tiny kitchen. They had slept over, camping out in Giles' living room. Angel had arrived a little before midnight and he had gone on patrol with her. Her Watcher was on the phone with a colleague on the East Coast, asking to borrow several apparently rare and expensive books that he thought would be useful. They were in a holding pattern, waiting for the package Spike claimed he would send to arrive. Angel was lying on the couch, sleeping.

Buffy stabbed the pancake stack with her fork in a random pattern, watching the butter and syrup soak in the perforated stack. Willow liked chocolate chip pancakes with butter and strawberry jam. Or banana nut pancakes with peanut butter. Buffy considered herself a pancake traditionalist. Buttermilk pancakes, maple syrup, and real butter.

She was intensely grateful to Giles for calling Angel. He had taken the choice away from her. When Angel walked into Giles' apartment Buffy had launched herself into the safe haven of his arms. It had to be wrong to be so glad to see him when what brought him back was the danger Willow was in. She wasn’t sure she could get through this without him—and even as she thought it, there was a small, but more astringent voice in her head that mocked her. She was the Slayer. When did she ever stop doing things that she didn’t think she could do?

She felt jumpy. The adrenaline had been flowing since Giles had laid it out for them. Since the seriousness of the situation had turned Xander grim faced, he was as edgy as she was, aching for something to do, anything except wait. Once the package arrived, the research would begin. Buffy knew the value of research. It had saved her butt a couple of times, provided her tools to fight with, made her more effective as a Slayer. She did not have Willow’s patience and intuition, or her friend’s stream of consciousness that could pick out patterns and put together creative, innovative conclusions.

When Giles explained the magnitude of the project that they were forced to engage in, Xander had given a short bark of laughter. “Spike so kidnapped the wrong Scooby,” he snorted.

It was true. Willow would have been infinitely more help with the research than she or Xander would be.

She nodded to herself. They would work harder. There was no other option. She caught Xander watching her pick at the pancakes and made herself take a bite. Chew. Swallow. The sugary sweetness of the syrup made her feel a little queasy. She tried to smile, and Xander tried to smile back. They failed miserably.

“Have we heard anything more from Oz? Do we know how to get in touch with Oz?” Xander asked.

“I don’t know where he is right now,” Buffy admitted. “San Jose. Maybe at Willow’s place there? Giles talked to him last.”

A little before noon the doorbell rang. Xander managed to get there first, over Giles' protests. It was a UPS delivery guy in a familiar brown uniform saying, “Package for—“ quick consultation with the packing slip, and a small smile, “Rupert Giles.”

“That would be me,” Giles came forward, gently brushing Xander out of his way. He signed for the package, taking it from the deliveryman.

Angel had gotten up, but stayed well clear of the sunlight streaming in from the open door. The other windows had been vamp proofed with curtains and shutters. Giles told Xander to shut the door and carried the package over to his desk while Angel, instantly awake at the sound of the doorbell ringing, moved closer to study it.

“Uh, guys? Maybe we should open it?” Buffy prompted.

Giles fished a penknife out of his pocket and started to methodically slit the brown packaging paper the package had been wrapped in. The box beneath it was a cardboard stationery box. He lifted the lid while Angel studied the shipping label. The vampire wandered over to a book shelf to get a California road atlas to locate the point of origin. He found the town, about a hundred miles north of San Jose.

“He sent this three days ago, Giles,” Angel observed. “From Redding.”

Giles tore his gaze away from the cache he was uncovering. There was a leather bound diary with meticulous notes in a clear hand, a few very, very old documents neatly stored in clear melinex envelopes and sleeves, and a very old manuscript wrapped in paper, bound in tooled leather with a rather ornate gold cross on the front cover. He had to geographically re-orient himself to what Angel was saying. “Moving north?” he concluded.

“Or he wants us to think he is,” Angel thought that was even more likely. “I’ll call Oz and let him know that we will need him to go to Redding after he’s done in San Jose.”

Giles nodded. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to familiarize myself with the material. Buffy? Why don’t you and Xander get out for a while. Fresh air. Take a nap?” he waved at the door. “I’d like to read through this and get organized. Meet back at five?” he suggested. “We’ll need everyone fresh tonight,” he added bracingly. “We have a lot of work to do.”

After Buffy and Xander were persuaded to leave and while Giles read, Angel called Oz.

Angel asked him to visit the offices of the San Jose Mercury News to check crime reports, looking for anything that smacked of a vampire attack, missing persons, or particularly violent or mysterious robberies. Spike and Dru had had money, but between fleeing Prague in a hurry and his own incapacitating injuries, Spike would be low on cash. Impressed by this reasoning, Oz agreed to make that his first stop and to call him with his findings. They could decide if he needed to go to Redding after that.

Angel hung up, ready to pick up anything Giles had finished reading, but he found the former librarian watching him thoughtfully. “You think you can find him?”

Angel rubbed his jaw. “Honestly? I think we have to find him,” he said. “The Gem of Amara?” he shook his head. “It’s a legend, and it is the most highly sought artifact in the vampire world. But, what is it? How will we know if we find it?”

“Actually, that is partly why I asked you to come here. Anything we find, we will have to field test,” Giles said pointedly.

Angel’s eyebrows lifted and a grudging smile appeared. “Good thinking.”

“I can’t just find any vampire to test it on. If it works, they will become impervious to holy water, crosses, stakes, and sunlight. Literally impossible to kill. It might be difficult to persuade them to return it under the circumstances,” he commented dryly.

Angel looked down, frowning, “You trust me?” he asked, keeping his tone studiously neutral.

Never forgetting that this was the same vampire who had murdered Jenny Calendar, tortured him, and terrorized his Slayer, her mother, and her friends, or that this was the man who had saved them countless times and shown what he was by leaving Buffy so she could have a normal life, Giles nodded. “I suppose I do.”

Angel looked at Giles, nodding gravely. “Thank you,” he said softly. He didn’t deserve the chances these people kept giving him, but he was determined to be worthy of them. He shook his head, clearing his throat. “Still, it’s a long shot,” he told Giles. “Finding the Gem of Amara,” he clarified. “Finding Spike can’t be as hard, and he may have learned some new tricks, but I think I may be able to figure them out.”

Giles nodded. “Perhaps you should look at this,” he gestured to the materials he was studying. “I think . . . ah, Dalton,” he retrieved the name from memory, “was on to something. He found some notes in a text by du Lac that started his research,” Giles explained. “He got no further on the issue of what the Gem of Amara is, though conclusions may be drawn from its use.”

Angel pulled a chair over to the desk and sat. “I was thinking about that. It’s probably not a weapon. A contact item, though? Armor, jewelry, something that could be worn.”

“My thought as well,” Giles agreed, “Not that I am ruling anything out at this point. We know from Rafael’s Compendium that according to the legends, the Gem of Amara was hidden in the valley of the Sun.”

Angel winced. “Almost too easy,” he groaned. “Generic enough to be a puzzle. Obvious sounding if you’ve been to Sunnydale.”