Spike regained consciousness in pretty much the same condition he had left it: pinned in place with the rampaging troll of all headaches and something pointy pressed against his chest.

"Now just a minute," he mumbled without opening his eyes. "I'll have you know that coat and I have history. Won it fair 'n square, I did. Best sodding night of my life. Takes the swagger to a whole new level, mate. 'Sides, what would our Dark Princess think of you if you offed me over a fashion choice? Not a great turn-on, even if you do go for the horned, strong-scented, hairy type. Get what I'm sayin'?"

"Sounds to me," drawled a poisonously sweet voice--a painfully familiar voice, "like you've got trouble in paradise, Spike."

Spike's eyes popped open, and he bolted upright--or would have done, if the tiny hand gripping his throat with the strength of a steel trap had let him move at all. The pointed object pressed a little harder against his chest.

"Slayer," he growled, glaring venomously at her to cover his confusion. His sensory perception was finally starting to filter through to a brain that felt like it was still rattling around in his head: a cool night wind in place of warm tropical breezes, the disturbingly familiar scent of wet earth, grass, trees, and vast open spaces instead of the cloying overripe smell of death, the clinging, clammy feel of chilled bovine blood against his skin, and of course--her. The sodding Slayer. Buffy Head-Up-Her-Oh-So-Righteous-Arse Summers. "Finally decided you couldn't take on the Big Bad in a fair fight, eh? Asked your little friend the witch to even the odds a bit?"

"What are you talking about?" she demanded, pink-glossed lips curled in disgust. "You're the one who brought us here so you could kill me. Too bad this plan went the way of all your plans--what, did you forget to pay your shaman or something?"

He stared at her for a moment. The Slayer couldn't lie worth a slagged farthing. Which meant she didn't know where they were any more than he did. Nor was it likely she had answers to any of the other questions his brain had finally stopped clattering about enough to pose. He slowly, deliberately stretched before crossing his arms behind his head and giving her an indolent smile. "Fine, Slayer, you've got me. 'Course, that means I'm the only one who knows where we are and how to get back. Kill me, and you might be stuck in another dimension forever. One where Slayers wear the black hats and vampires are the knights in shining armor. Where the little vampire-loving villagers are going to be coming after you with sticks and stones to rescue me."

She snorted indelicately. "Oh please, like I'm gonna fall for another one of your stupid bluffs?" The point of her stake dug a little harder against his chest. It was actually blunter than he would have guessed, but that only meant that it would hurt a hell of a lot more in the milliseconds before he dusted. "And come on! You couldn't have come up with something more original than 'we've been dropped into an alternate dimension?'"

"Right, look there!" he tilted his chin at the dark giant growing a few feet from his head. Its leaves rustled slightly in the mild night air, and a few tiny white flowers drifted down. "That is an English whitebeam--sorbus anglica. It's a tree native to Ireland and Great Britain. In fact, it doesn't grow anywhere else. And--and that thing coming down the road! Does that look like a car to you?"

Buffy stared at Spike as if he'd sprouted another head. "What kind of a tree is a white-beamed soar bus? Have you been feeding on druggies again?" Spike blinked. He rather wanted to ask himself the same question. Sorbus anglica? Where the hell had that come from? He opened his mouth to make a sharp obfuscating retort of some kind, but Buffy rode right over him. "Actually, you know what? I don't even care. I'm gonna call Giles, and in a few hours I'll be home while you and your feeble stoned brain will be tiny--oh my God, is that a horse?"

It was. The gentle hill which the unknown witch or shaman had beamed them down on offered them a clear view of a winding country road, pale ash gray under the light of a high full moon, upon which an elegant-looking black carriage was approaching. It was drawn by a quick-trotting chestnut horse and driven by a pepper-haired man smartly dressed in formal livery. The sight of it sent another tiny chill through Spike, though for the unlife of him he couldn't have said why. They both stared at it in bemusement as it passed below them. As it did so, Buffy saw a woman look out at them from the side window, her expression, even from that distance, obviously startled.

Spike murmured something that immediately shifted Buffy's attention back to him. "Did you just say, 'Mum?!'" she snickered. "Okay, now I'm starting to believe we have landed in some bizarro--oof!"

In the second she'd been distracted, Spike had somehow managed to catch both her wrists, twist like an alley cat beneath her, and toss her over his head. She landed hard, cursing herself as she gritted her teeth against the jarring impact. She was up almost immediately, but Spike, to her surprise, had not pressed his advantage. Instead, he was staring at the carriage as it disappeared into the night. No, not merely staring. His entire body was straining toward it, focused so intently that she could have dusted him in that moment as easily as if she had asked Willow to perform some kind of paralyzing spell on him--well if Willow managed to get it out any better than Spike's hypothetical shaman. So why was she still standing there thinking about spells when she finally had the chance to rid the world of a vicious killer--the vampire she loathed more than the Mayor, Faith, Angelus, and fifty smelly spiny demons combined--especially when he'd managed, despite all her care, to ruin one of her favorite tops with two huge swathes of rust-red leftovers from whatever his latest revolting meal had been?

She raised her stake...and hesitated. For the same reason she'd waited for him to come around instead of planting wood through his chest the moment she'd found him looking like he'd been pickled in his dinner and out cold on the ground next to her after waking up from her own lightning and thunder show. The truth was, she had not the faintest idea where she was, how she'd gotten here, or how to get back to Sunnydale. And if a phone call to Giles--assuming she could find a phone--fell through, then she'd be well and truly stranded. If Spike knew anything at all about what had happened to them, could she really afford to kill him now? He could be her one remaining link to--

"Hey!" she yelled as she suddenly realized that he'd somehow teleported himself halfway down the slope in the time she'd been debating with herself over the precise timing of his imminent demise. He was now sprinting madly down the rest of it after the carriage.

"He's going after a midnight snack now? Seriously?" she grumbled in disbelief as she set off after him in the wake of his bloody boot prints.

Buffy had to truly stretch herself to keep up with him, and although she never lost sight of him as they both dashed headlong down the road, she couldn't quite gain on him either. In the end, she didn't catch him so much as crash into him as she rounded a corner, sending the both of them sprawling. There goes my jeans, she thought. And my shoes. Unless dried blood is the new black in this vampire-loving corner of the multi-dimensions. You never know. She heard a startled whinny above her and rolled frantically to avoid the hooves that came down inches from her head. She hastily scrambled backward in a undignified shuffle on her hands and heels, her stake forgotten.

Buffy finally regained her feet a good three yards away. Then she looked up, and her jaws hit the dirt again. "Oh. My. God." She stared unabashedly. For there, sitting on a tall gray horse staring back at her, with Spike (now sporting a coating of road dust along with a coating of dinner) still frozen on the ground between the wicked restless hooves, was another Spike. But Spike as she could never have imagined him. "I've been sent to a dimension where Spike is Giles," she breathed, awed.