The Slayer’s little friends bored Spike rather quickly.

First, there was the brunette who had been almost hysterical ever since Spike had dusted the Master’s pets. Of all strange things, she knew Spike’s name, although he was quite sure he had never crossed path with her before. Annoying as she was, she wouldn’t have survived a previous encounter. Her ramblings about wishes coming true and a world that wasn’t quite what it was supposed to be were particularly irritating.

Then there were the kids who had stood guard outside. Spike had told Willow and Xander he’d deal with them, suspecting that the Slayer would consider their deaths a breach of their truce. They had returned a few minutes after Spike had made his grand entrance, all of them rubbing at the back of their heads where Spike had knocked them out, all glaring at him. Didn’t they see he had saved their sorry lives?

There was also the Watcher, who was trying to get information from everyone at once and had looked ready to have an apoplexy attack when the Slayer had reluctantly told him about her truce with Spike. He kept throwing looks at Spike up on the mezzanine, and if some of them spelled his uneasiness at being near a vamp, there was also the promise of violence hiding behind those too often polished glasses.

And there was the Slayer herself. Spike couldn’t understand what she was doing, delaying the attack like this. He could lead her to the Master’s lair, he had told her as much, and she still wasn’t moving, listening instead to the hysterical girl’s ramblings and answering the Watcher’s questions in as few words as possible, which meant he asked more questions.

Definitely the most mind-numbing ten minutes Spike had ever lived through. He had to repeat to himself that he wouldn’t need to play nice for long, and that soon enough he and the Slayer would be back to doing what they did best – fight. If he was lucky, the Master and that insane plan of his to harvest humans’ blood was the reason why she was in Sunnydale in the first place, and she’d have nothing left to distract her once the Master’s lair was cleared. It would be a challenge for her, he realized, but she was a good fighter, and he was determined to help her survive the battle. Her life was his to take, and he would see to it that she lost it when he decided the time was right. Nothing else would be sufficient to honor Drusilla.


“Again, it’s too risky, Miss Summers, and as your Watcher I cannot…”

“I thought,” Buffy interrupted Giles, her voice raised to overpower his, “that I had made it clear I don’t give a damn about that. You’re here to put your nose in your books, give me intel, weapons, and record in your diary how many vamps I dust. Anything else is out of your league.”

A snicker descended from the mezzanine; Buffy ignored it and pushed her way past Giles and into the book cage where the glint of metal had caught her eye. He tried to stop her with a hand on her arm, but quickly let go when she glared at him.

“You want intel?” he asked, clearly exasperated. “Here it is. You made a truce with a vampire whose claim to fame was to kill two Slayers…”

“One in China a hundred years ago or something,” she cut in again, “and one in New York three years before I was born. Tell me something I don’t know. Like why all Watchers seem to think the only appropriate weapons are those that belong in a museum.”

Shaking her head at his arsenal, she walked out of the book cage with only a couple more stakes tucked into her belt. She shifted her shoulder blades as she walked toward the staircase, feeling the familiar weight of the crossbow on her back, and eyed Spike warily. He was still leaning on the railing, but he had put away his stakes and lit a cigarette. He straightened up as she reached the upper level and gave her a bored look.

“Done talking, then?”

She stared at him blankly. He had been rather vocal in his demands that she accompany him to the lair he had discovered, and despite her own itch to fight she had taken her time to join him. If he thought he could give her orders, he was in for a surprise. She may pretend to accept his help in dusting a few vamps until he revealed this whole truce thing was a trap, but the cooperation on her part stopped right there.

Once he had started scowling, she gave a short nod. “Lead the way.”

For a brief instant, his eyes dropped to the stake tucked at the front of her belt and his lips pinched his cigarette more tightly. He didn’t say a word, nor did he look bothered when he presented her with his back. Buffy knew better than to think he trusted her any more than she trusted him, though.

“Miss Summers, please.”

Spike kept walking toward the back of the stacks as though certain she would follow. Buffy was about to do just that but a quick look down revealed something she hadn’t anticipated. She had thought Giles would be angry at her refusal to cooperate; instead he looked worried. She hadn’t seen such a look since she had lost her first Watcher.

“Are you sure it is wise to trust this demon?” he asked, clearly reining in his temper.

“I never said I trusted him,” Buffy replied with a tight smile. Her eyes fell on Cordelia and she indicated her with a tilt of her head. “Take her home.”

The poor girl had sat down and taken her head between her hands. She was muttering to herself and seemed ready to lose her mind, if it wasn’t already too late for that. What had she expected would happen, claiming that she had come from a world in which vampires did not rule Sunnydale, and where the two vamps Spike had dusted had been her friends?

“And then if you want to help…”

She eyed Giles and the students around him critically. The Watcher was probably more suited to research than combat, and Spike had taken down all three of his little helpers with probably no effort at all; what help could they be in a fight? Yet they seemed to stand straighter under her gaze, waiting for instructions. She wasn’t used to working with anyone, even having a Watcher around was often more trouble than it was worth. But these four seemed like they wanted to help, and after all, they had looked over the town longer than she had. She supposed they had a right to be there.

“Come to the club after you drop her off,” she sighed, rolling her eyes both at herself and at them. “Stay outside, catch any vamp that might escape.”

There were a couple of nods. Giles’ eyes remained straight on her, heavy and demanding. She could feel them still as she walked away, his parting, “Be careful, Buffy”, remaining unanswered.

She followed the cigarette smoke outside through a window and found Spike waiting for her, looking even more annoyed than before. Any second now he would start pouting like a child. She almost smiled at the image but made sure to keep her features smooth. Spike had proved particularly good at finding and exploiting weaknesses.

“If you’re that much in a hurry,” she said before he could complain, “you could have gone and cleaned that nest by yourself.”

He snorted, giving her a disbelieving look. “I said I’d help, not that I’d do all your dirty work. What’s next? Washing your knickers?”

She didn’t reply to that. The best thing to do with Spike, she had quickly discovered, was often to ignore him.

They walked fast, side by side but with enough room between them to prevent any accidental contact. Buffy kept glancing at him from the corner of her eye, almost expecting him to attack. He had finished his cigarette and lit another one. She couldn’t help wondering if it was a sign that he was nervous, just like her reaching back to touch her crossbow was. She tried to force herself to stop; she couldn’t afford to give any hint that she was nervous. And it wasn’t like she had a reason to be anyway. She had taken many nests in the past year, this was just one more to add to the list.

“We’re close,” were the first words Spike said, and they startled Buffy out of her thoughts.

She chided herself for letting him surprise her, if only with words. He didn’t seem to notice though.

“Last night there were about thirty vamps in there, maybe forty,” he said offhandedly. “It’s early still, so a lot of them will be out and hunting. They’re fledglings, most of them, and they shouldn’t give you much trouble. The two I dusted earlier were the Master’s favorites, probably some of the most dangerous.”

“What about this Master?” she asked, easing a stake out of her belt.

“Pretty strong. Old. You’ll recognize him when you see him.”

Something in Spike’s voice made that statement almost mocking – for the Master, Buffy realized, not for her. The memory of the dreams that had led her to Sunnydale resurfaced. In her mind, the vampire stood in front of a crowd, raising a glass filled with blood and gesturing toward caged humans. Could it be the same vamp?

“Pointy teeth and ears, really ugly, wrinkly vamp face, nails three inches long?”

Spike turned his face to look at her, an eyebrow raised high. “You know old batty, then?”

She shrugged, unwilling to share too much about her dreams. The less her enemies knew about her, the better, and Spike knew too much already. “I know I’ve got to get rid of him. Is that it?”

She indicated with a nod what could have been a warehouse if not for the blasting music and neon lights. Spike stopped walking and nodded.

“That’s it. You want to slide in through the back and do it the stealthy way or…”

She kept walking, which she supposed he took as his answer. When he caught up with her, he had gotten rid of his cigarette and instead had a stake in each hand.

For the last couple of hundred yards as they approached the entrance, and the unsuspecting vampires beyond, Buffy had time to wonder if she was walking straight into a trap. From the start, she had told herself that Spike’s offer for a truce was nothing more than a trick. And yet she was striding into battle next to him, blindly believing, or at least appearing to blindly believe, what he had told her was waiting past the club’s entrance.

A cold bead of sweat ran between her shoulder blades at the realization. What had Spike done to deserve her trust, even in as limited an amount as she was granting him? He had killed those two vampires in the library, certainly, but that hardly proved anything. He wanted her dead, she knew that, he had said it and proved it often enough. She couldn’t afford to forget it. She couldn’t afford to forget the look on his face when she had killed Drusilla in front of him. She had known, at that instant, that he wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead. Even this truce of his wasn’t a stop to his vengeance, it was merely a detour according to the reasons he had given.

If she had been cruel, she would have told him he was the reason why Drusilla was dead. The vampire had been rambling when she had come to fight Buffy, her words all but incomprehensible except for a single idea she had reiterated ad nauseam. She had come to fight Buffy to keep Spike safe, repeating that he was hers and she wouldn’t let Buffy touch him. It sounded a far cry from what Spike often said, that his girl had predicted he would kill Buffy. Why he believed it, Buffy couldn’t fathom. Just like she couldn’t understand why she believed him now .