The fabulous banner is by the awesomely talented Ben Rostock.


Chapter 4

“Spike-aver! You are well!”

Even that small amount of Slayer blood had worked a miracle. Spike came striding into the living room the next day, fully recovered, with all his normal ebullient energy, duster flying. The staff converged upon him with little cries of delight. He grinned up at them as they clustered around him, all talking at once.

“Slayer solved the problem. She’ll solve yours too. Just wait.”

“We had no doubts,” said Emer steadfastly and every one of the staff nodded.

The youngest member of the staff had hurried off and now came back with a single blue flower like a daisy in her hand. She presented this to Spike, with a deep bow.

“We are very glad,” she said simply and everyone else bowed too, very deeply and seriously.

“Thank you,” mumbled Spike, looking utterly taken aback.

“Breakfast,” said Emer sternly and with little gasps the staff flurried off to fetch it.

“Nice people, aren’t they?” Spike muttered to Buffy.

She glanced at him sideways, smiling. “Would you eat them if you could?”

He got an arrested look on his face. “No. Besides, they’re ours.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, they’re...they’re sort of family, y’know. Our household. You don’t eat family. The ones in your care, I mean.”

Interesting. Giles would have been fascinated by this glimpse into vamp ethics.

Spike ate breakfast with relish, where previously he had only picked at it, even taking seconds of a concoction of curried rice, eggs and smoked fish that was too spicy-hot for Buffy’s palate.

“This is good,” he said to the staffer serving him, who beamed.

“The chef will be pleased, aver. He has been most distressed.”

“Kind of like the kedgeree of my day,” he said to Buffy.

“I thought Victorian cooking was bland,” she muttered, gulping at some tea to cool her mouth. “This is way hot!”

“British Raj cooking wasn’t. You must have bitten into one of these little peppercorn things,” he said, crunching them happily.

Buffy stared in horror. “Did you just crunch that? I just barely licked one and it nearly blew my head off!”

“I like strong tastes.”

“Yeegh!”

He grinned. “Wuss.”

Cadhi came quickly into the dining room. “There’s been an attack, nefa’in.”

“Where?” asked Buffy, throwing down her napkin and rising quickly.

“Faisi. Some forty ri from here.”

“Can we go there?”

“Dehren is making arrangements.”

Spike was fully dressed, but Buffy had to change her slippers for boots. On a sudden thought, she waved at Spike from the doorway of her bedroom. He came over, puzzled.

“Do you need more blood?” she asked and held out her wrist.

He took it and bent his bright head to it. But instead of biting her wrist, he just kissed it lightly. With astonishment, she felt his cool lips move against her skin.

“Not till tonight. It’s not a good idea for you to go into a possible fight weakened by blood loss. But thank you for thinking of it.” He looked down at her, his eyes wry and faintly smiling. “Did I say thank you last night? I meant to.”

She felt the color rise in her face.

“Hey, no big,” she muttered and ducked into her bedroom, She didn’t know what was going on with him. For that matter, she didn’t know what was going on with herself.

The palace tailors had copied Cadhi’s outfit faithfully and Cadhi had shown her where the Guild’s concealed weapons could be hidden in it. Buffy had never been this well equipped in her life. She might not have a stake, but she was carrying more weapons on her person than she had ever done in Sunnydale.

“Won’t need swords,” said Spike, who had been talking to Cadhi while Buffy was getting her boots on. “Thing’s gone. Came in the night and took off again.”

“The Guild is at Faisi now, guarding the search and rescue operation,” Cadhi said. “They have crossbows and will provide swords if necessary. It is best if you have no impedimenta. Unless you can ride very well, avera?”

Buffy turned in panic. “Ride?”

“The rail line does not pass near Faisi and we will have to ride some ten ri.”

“Thirty miles on a horse?” Buffy exclaimed in horror.

“On h’laren. That is your ‘horse’, yes? Four-legged mounts.”

“Guess so.” Sounded close enough.

Spike was looking amused. “Why do I get the feeling you’ve never ridden before, Slayer?”

“Not exactly never. I do vaguely remember riding a pony at my seventh birthday party.” She gave him a despairing look and he laughed.

“Don’t worry. You’re a Slayer. It’ll come to you. Just have to manage to stay in the saddle until then.”

‘I suppose you know how to ride,” she growled resentfully.

“I’ve ridden, yeah. Plenty of places in the last century where horseback was the only way to get around.”

“Wonderful. I’ll be the only rookie in the group.”

It was a group. A Search and Rescue team came with them, comprised of both Guild and military personnel, plus earth-moving and other similar heavy equipment. A special train was taking the place of the luxury coach they had had the last time.

It took two hours to reach the point where they would have to change from riding a train to riding horses. The station looked like a doll’s house, all fretted wood and curlicues, charming. Buffy looked around as they stepped down onto the platform. Carts with teams of what looked like oxen stood on the right side of the platform and the heavy equipment from the train was being unloaded, then reloaded onto them. That would take its own time getting to Faisi, along with the operators. A few Guild members and military personnel headed that way, but all the others had gone to the left side of the platform and were heading down the steps to wait for their mounts in a clearing that had been made there. Buffy and Spike headed left as well.

Halfway down the steps, Spike stopped short.

“Uh, you’d better stay on the platform, Slayer,” he said with a laugh in his voice.

“Oh, my God,” said Buffy faintly.

A seething mass of mountainous, black forms was coming around the corner, snorting, squalling and slashing at each other. Their heads were massive, longer than her arm from shoulder to extended fingertip, and the lower jaw had tusks the length of her hand, blunt-capped with metal, otherwise they would be ripping each other’s shoulders to shreds as they bumped and jockeyed for position. They had claws instead of hooves, and they were gigantic, they loomed.

“Horses!” said Buffy bitterly.

The only thing those behemoths had in common with horses was that they had four legs, a mane and a tail.

“Horse equivalent,” said Spike, trying not to laugh.

Dehren and another two riders herded them closer, thwacking at them with riding crops while they squealed and kicked and tried to bite.

“They’re carnivores!” exclaimed Buffy, seeing one on the far side of the clearing stomp what looked like a rabbit under its claws, then gulp the crushed and bleeding corpse down with relish.

“Omnivores,” corrected Spike, watching another snatch at a bush, its flexible upper lip stripping all the leaves from a branch.

“Kill me now,” muttered Buffy.

“Not until we get back to Sunnydale,” grinned Spike. “I need your blood till then.”

“You truly are evil.”

Riders were snatching at reins and mounting. Spike was watching their technique intently. One thwacked a mount on the shoulder until it bent a knee, then grabbed a rein as fast as possible, got hold of the saddle, and then was flung upwards when the monster heaved itself upright again. Hopefully, one ended up in the saddle instead of being pitched clear over onto the ground on the other side.

“We have two quiet ones for you, nefa’in,” Cadhi called, already mounted and driving two h’laren towards them. “The stirrups have been shortened.”

Black and wicked eyes each the size of Buffy’s fist rolled towards them, and red nostrils flared and blew fiercely.

Buffy groaned. “Quiet!”

“Comparatively,” laughed Spike.

He caught the riding crop Cadhi threw him and whacked a huge shoulder solidly. The knee bent, Spike grabbed the reins and saddle, then was tossed upward as the creature straightened with a powerful snap. He landed neatly in the saddle and grinned triumphantly.

“Well done, aver!” called Cadhi.

“I am not doing that!” said Buffy flatly.

“No, no,” said Cadhi soothingly. “You told us you don’t ride, avera.”

She struck Buffy’s mount lightly on the crop and it knelt down.

“Just climb on, pet,” Spike called.

The thing was so big that, even though it was kneeling down, Buffy still had to jump to get her leg over its back. To her relief, they had given her a saddle with a pommel and the reins were wound around that.

“Do not touch the reins, avera,” Cadhi instructed. “Just hold onto the pommel.”

“No fear,” muttered Buffy. She already had a deathgrip on it.

The h’laren rose. Its forequarters came up first. Buffy found herself lying horizontally in midair, staring up at the sky. Her stomach lurched. After a horrible moment, the hindquarters rose. She was pitched forward sharply and bruised her stomach on the pommel. She keeled over to one side, losing the stirrup, and was pushed upright again by Spike’s straight arm. He was laughing and she could have killed him.

“Just hang onto the pommel and keep your feet in the stirrups, Slayer. With that saddle, you’re safer than in a rocking chair.”

“Says you!”

“No, he is right, avera,” said Cadhi. “You are quite safe. Do not touch the reins. You will not need them. h’laren are herd animals. This one will follow the rest. You will not have to tell it where to go and we will be beside you always. If we have to run...”

“No running!”

“If, avera. We stay on by balance. But don’t worry about that. What you should do is just hunch down low, center your weight and hold on to the saddle. You are so light, you are nothing to her. But they turn fast and if you do not keep low, you will fall. Stay low, join her center of mass and cling to the pommel. Understand?”

“The clinging part, yes. Oh, yeah, I’ll be clinging.”

“She’ll be all right,” said Spike nonchalantly and Buffy glared at him. He grinned.

“Unfeeling pig! I wish I were dead,” she muttered.

“How do you guide them?” Spike asked, ignoring that. “What are the signals?” And got a fast lesson. “Not that different. Except for the way you use the riding crop. Whack them to distract them from mischief, right? And they’re always up to mischief, by the looks of it.”

“You can say that again,” muttered Buffy, having to stifle a yelp as her mount swung its huge head to thump the shoulder of Spike’s mount. There was an audible thud. Apparently, the damn things’ sense of personal space was as well-developed as their build. Spike shifted his mount sideways until an acceptable distance between the two was reached.

“They will be better once we are moving, avera,” Cadhi promised.

Riders were already heading out, the whole mass of h’laren shifting and swinging northward, bawling and jostling for position as they strung out into a ragged line. Her mount moved forward also.

“Too high up,” moaned Buffy. The ground looked miles away and was now not only rushing by dizzyingly, but was also moving up and down with the h’laren’s gait. She had a sickening urge to lean towards it and found herself empathizing with the people who refused to go up tall buildings for fear they’d throw themselves over. She fixed her gaze rigidly between the h’laren’s ears and refused to look lower.

After a while though, she got used to the movement and was able to look around. As long as she didn’t look down, she was all right.

Spike grinned at her. “Better?”

“Some.”

They had to shout because of the distance they had to keep from each other. The size of these creatures and their tendency to chop at each other or at a rider’s foot if that came within reach made it imperative to stay well away.

“This is fun!” he said and laughed when she gave him a dirty look. “C’mon, Slayer! You’re already balancing better. By the time we get to Faisi, you’ll have it down pat.”

She really was getting the hang of it, her innate Slayer sense of balance and movement already responding and adjusting to the new situation. She scowled at him, unwilling to admit that he was right.

“Do you always have to be so damn sure of things?”

“You may not believe in yourself, Slayer, but I do.”

It was strange, but his careless confidence in her ability to do this gave her more assurance than all the Scoobies’ concern would have. The Scoobies’ and Giles’ concern would actually have meant that they were worrying about whether she could really do it. And Angel would have insisted on putting her on a leading rein, attesting that he really didn’t believe she could. Spike, her enemy, simply took it for granted that of course she could—she was the Slayer, wasn’t she? Maybe it was because he was her enemy. It was only sensible to overestimate rather than underestimate an enemy’s capabilities.

The awful thing was that she was really getting to like Spike. That was one for the books, wasn’t it? There he was—an evil, soulless, unregenerate monster—and she liked him! Someone should drum her out of the Slayer’s corps. The Council of Watchers probably would.

And, of course, he was right. By the time, they got to Faisi, she had gotten used to this strange beast she was riding.

Faisi was—no, had been—a town built of stone. Even though they had seen that other village, the devastation here still came as a shock: the ruins of shattered buildings, blackened and reeking of fire; ash blowing through empty streets choked with rubble; no sign of life except for the Search and Rescue teams moving through the town, looking for survivors, of which so far there were none.

“Where are the bodies?” Spike asked beneath his breath. “There’s a few lying around, charred to a crisp. But not enough for a town this size.”

He was right. There were hardly any bodies at all. Maybe they were under the rubble. The Guild were using h’laren the way Sunnydale’s rescue teams would have used search dogs. The h’laren seemed to have the same ability to sniff things out, but had found nothing so far.

“Be careful where you step, nefa’in,” Cadhi said. “The town is...was...an ancient holy place. It was built over several layers of catacombs and passageways. The ground is honeycombed with them. There has already been a subsidence at the center of the town and word is that the rest of the structure is now very unstable.”

The town had been centered around a huge, open square that had been paved over. Some of the paving on the edges remained, jutting out like teeth over the great pit that now lay where the square had been. The whole square had collapsed into the catacombs below.

“Fire wouldn’t have done this,” Buffy said, looking at that huge hole in the ground. “Something heavy. Something really heavy did this. It’s as if a meteor fell or something.”

“But then where did it go?” Spike peered over the edge at the crumbled stone and broken beams that were all that were lying below. “There’s nothing down there but rubble.”

Buffy looked at Cadhi. “Did no one hear or see anything?”

“So far we have found no survivors. We only heard about this when the next closest town sent word. They are about three ri away. They saw flames in this direction, but don’t know how long Faisi was burning before they noticed. Faisi has...had a very good fire prevention squad, so no one thought to come and check before morning. But of course that was too late.”

“No one ever sees anything,” muttered Spike. “This thing is either really smart or really lucky.”

“Or really thorough,” said Buffy.

“Mm. Maybe it was a good thing that other town didn’t send anyone sooner. They might not have come back.” He was sniffing the air, frowning a little. “Something smells funny.”

There was a pungent, acrid smell in the air, the stench of burning.

“The fire,” Buffy shrugged.

“More than that. Like the smell you get before a storm. Ozone.”

“Really? What would cause that?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know.”

Dehren came towards them, leading his h’laren. “Nefa’in, the team chief wishes to speak to you at the river. He has found a curious thing.”

“That’s more than we have,” muttered Buffy. “Lead the way, Dehren.”

The river ran along the west side of the town, close to where the h’laren had been picketed. Buffy could see a small group of Guild moving around beside the water’s edge. Cadhi took the reins of Dehren’s mount and took it off to the picket lines, while Dehren led the way to where the team chief was standing. He was a stocky, middle-aged man with a hard, competent face, stern now with the burden of what had happened in Faisi.

“Look,” he said as Buffy and Spike reached him.

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Spike.

The river bank was gashed and torn, as if by gigantic claws. At one point, there was a huge depression, as if something had fallen onto its belly and then wallowed down into the river. Or had struggled up from it. The depression was over a hundred feet wide.

“God, it’s big!” Buffy swung around to stare in all directions. Plains on this side of the river, forest on the other, the sharp, gray-black ramparts of the mountains beyond... “Where could something that size hide?”

“Might travel fast.” Spike jerked his chin at the rocky walls so close on the other side of the river. “Could be in the cliffs over there. Maybe it crossed. Any tracks on the other side?” he asked the team chief.

“We are searching.”

Spike held his hand up against the sun. Sure enough, there were black uniforms moving through the trees on the west side of the river.

“It passed through the city,” Buffy muttered. “Wasn’t that what you said, Spike? Several times. How could something that big do that without being noticed?”

“Don’ know. Doesn’t make s...”

Something shrieked. The sound was so loud that it hurt the eardrums, filling the air, reverberating off the cliffs, seeming to come from all sides at once. Everybody clapped their hands to their ears. It was a fell, deadly sound, full of hate and fury, freezing the blood.

The silence after that screech was deafening. Nobody could move.

Then squalls ripped the air as the h’laren panicked, breaking away from their picket lines, kicking and struggling in terror. With the inevitability of an avalanche, they tore loose from their halters and poured away, jostling each other in their stampede, like boulders crashing.

“Cadhi!” Buffy gasped.

She could see Cadhi struggling in the middle of those tons of heaving, black muscle and slashing tusks, her face white and desperate.

“Slayer!”

She was running and then dodging kicking, clawed hooves and thudding, massive bodies. A huge, sweating, black shoulder slammed into her, knocking her off her feet. She somersaulted under the bellies of clashing behemoths, came up beside Cadhi, grabbed her arm and flung her with all her strength towards the trees.

Then the earth gave way beneath her and she was falling.

‘The ground is honeycombed,’ Cadhi had said. All those pockets and passages beneath and the weight of those monsters thrashing and fighting on top of them. The barrier between had not been able to take the strain.

Most of the clearing had given way. Earth, rocks, rubble and a couple of h’laren were cascading with her. A couple of beams of sunlight showed the bottom. God! A hundred feet below her, stone-paved. She was going to smash herself on that stone. No way to avoid it.

Something caught her wrist and jerked her to a stop. She heard rubble fall past her to clatter on the ground beneath and the sickening meaty thud of the h’laren thumping onto the stone flags. But she was swinging ten feet above that stone and unharmed.

She looked up. Spike had a painful grip on her wrist with one hand and a deathgrip on a protruding beam with another.

“Sodding Slayer instincts,” he was muttering. “Can’t stay out of trouble, oh, no. Had to save the bloody human.”

“Our household,” she flung at him and he gave her a furious glare. “Is Cadhi all right?”

“How the hell should I know? I just went after you. Gonna drop you, Slayer, okay? This beam is none too stable.”

“Okay.” The ground was only ten feet below her; she would be able to make it unhurt.

He let her wrist go. She fell, landed on her feet, but went down onto her hands and knees from the momentum. She staggered upright just as Spike landed in front of her. He caught her and threw her back against the wall of the pit, flung himself after her, covering her with his body as the beam, plus a heavy fall of rocks and earth, cascaded down upon them.

There was a slight overhang above them. That made the beam miss him. But she felt him jerk as rocks hit his back, grabbed at him and pulled him tighter under the overhang.

The crashing noises changed to a pattering, then finally stopped. Enough sunlight was filtering through the haze of dust for her to see him as he turned his head to look over his shoulder. His lips were skinned back in a snarl from clenched teeth, and the cut-glass cheekbone and strong jaw were standing out in strain.

Then he blew out his breath in relief. “Looks like we made it.”

“What do we do now?”

“Oh, they’ll get a rope down to us in a few.” He leaned limply against her, resting his forehead against the wall beside her head, breathing hard. “Just give me a minute here, Slayer. If my heart could beat, you woulda stopped it.”

“You’re breathing,” she noted with interest.

He laughed a little. “Reflex. Stress does that to me. Emotion.”

“Scared?” she mocked.

“Terrified.”

Her brows rose. “About the Slayer?”

Something moved behind his eyes. He said nothing for a moment. “About my food supply.”

She laughed. “That makes sense. But you haven’t thought it out. You said that if we succeed, we might go back to our dimension, bam, just like that, right? But you haven’t thought about what might happen if we fail. If I die for instance. You wouldn’t be needed anymore. You might get sent back, bam! It’s a possibility. Haven’t you thought of that?”

He stared at her.

“Should have thought of that,” she teased. “What kind of vamp are you anyway, saving the Slayer? You should have let me die.”

“God, you can be such a bloody fool!” he said violently and kissed her bruisingly hard.

Holy...!

Oh, my God, whoever thought the man could kiss like that! Her knees turned to water, her whole body went liquid, and she almost went straight down to the ground amidst all the rocks and rubble. Her arms clenched across his back and her mouth answered his involuntarily. They kissed and kissed again, mouths twisting together, passion flaring, urgent and imperative.

No one had ever kissed her like that, with that much heat, that much intensity. Parker? Parker hadn’t had a clue about passion, was a wimp, just like Spike had said. And Angel? Angel had always backed away from passion, had been oddly afraid of it somehow, never seeming to trust it or himself, maybe because of Angelus and the way Angelus twisted passion to his own use. Angel kept his emotions in a cage, never really letting them go.

Spike never could keep things to himself. He was all out there. Everything he was, right out there. What he wanted, he wanted intensely, openly, passionately.

And he wanted her.

And she wanted him. God, the way he felt! Couldn’t get enough of the taste of his mouth as it ate her alive, devoured her. Or his tongue sliding along and around hers, searching out every corner of her mouth. Or his hands, at once delicate and hungry, moving and gripping across her face, her hair, her shoulders. Or his body, heavy and urgent, pressing her back against the wall, vibrating with intensity. She was drunk on him, drunk on sensation, unable to keep her body from moving and rubbing and straining against his.

They couldn’t stop kissing, mouths tearing apart to catch at breath, then coming back again and again, unable to keep apart.

God, she thought, drowning in him. What is this? What’s happening? This is wrong!

Someone called insistently above them, asking if they were there, if they were all right. It brought her back to her senses, incredulous and appalled.

Buffy tore herself away, gasping and breathless. He was gasping too, struggling for air as desperately as she was; and he didn’t need to breathe. They stared at each other, still caught in that net of dark fire and exigent desire and urgent need.

Oh, God, what had she just done? she thought in panic. What had she just let loose in both of them?


TBC