CHAPTER SEVEN
 
As they walked toward the campus, Buffy unconsciously moved closer to Spike, expecting they would brush arms as they walked. To her surprise, he shifted slightly away from her and shook his head.
 
“What’s wrong?”
 
He shook his head again, clearly listening, his eyes flaring yellow as he sent his gaze around the area near the dorms. 
 
“Somebody’s watching,” he whispered to her. “Best keep our distance for a bit.”
 
“If somebody’s messing up my goodnight kiss…” she muttered, too low for any hearing but his.
 
He chuckled appreciatively, but remained a safe distance away, keeping his voice low. “Looks like, love. I think it’s the big lump and one friend. Sounds like they’ve got the night goggles but not the sound equipment. He probably just grabbed what was handy and ran here to see if you were really going back to the dorm.”
 
“I don’t think I’m going to like him as much this time around,” she grumbled as they reached the door.  “Maybe you should come in until they leave? What if they figure out what you are?”
 
“I’m not planning to do anything to give that away. Should have enough of a heat signature to show up on their goggles. Once I’m out of sight, I’ll be gone like the wind, so it’s not like they can follow me home.”
 
“You’re not going back to the crypt, are you?” As they tried to maintain the illusion of two friends chatting before saying goodnight, they smiled and nodded, laughing occasionally.
 
“Told the watcher I’d be back later, so that’s prob’ly what I should do. Unless I find a better place to stay the night….”
 
“If it involves Harmony Kendall, you’re toast — or dust. Just so you know.”
 
He threw his head back in a genuine laugh.
 
“No worries, luv. I’m just going back to Rupert’s through the sewers. No one will ever know I’m there.”
 
“All right, just be careful, okay? And remind me tomorrow to go to Mom’s and get that ring for you.”
 
“Don’t believe I’ll have any trouble remembering to do that,” he said. “You’d best get upstairs now. We’ve been chatting long enough to make him wonder what we had to talk about so long.” He growled under his breath. “Not that the bloody wanker has any right to—”
 
Buffy giggled. “For a minute there I was admiring how mature and sensible you were being about this. Nice to know the real Spike is still in there.”
 
“Really? Miss ‘you’re dust if you see Harmony’ pot? Calling this kettle black, are you?”
 
“Whatever.” Buffy waved her hand in dismissal. “Just go. Get out of here and don’t get captured.”
 
“Yes, ma’am, Slayer, ma’am.” He gave her a mock salute and turned away. “See you tomorrow, Buffy,” he said slightly louder than before.
 
“Night, Spike.” She also raised her voice enough for anyone within listening distance to hear.
 
xxxxxxx
 
She went inside and up to her room to find Willow, toothbrush in hand, just coming back from the bathrooms.
 
“Hey, thought you’d be asleep already.”
 
“I’m crashing. How did the evening go? Did you and Spike have smoochies? Is that why you’re so late?”
 
“I wish!” Buffy started undressing while she filled Willow in on almost being captured by commandos and then getting caught by Riley at the Bronze with Spike.”
 
“Wow. Do you think he bought it? That Spike’s just another Scooby?”
 
Buffy sighed. “I don’t know. It’s like guys have some kind of radar sometimes that tells them they’re meeting a rival. Must be a testosterone thing. I mean, of course, Spike already knows that I dated Riley for a long time and that we… you know. But Riley has no reason to think Spike is anything but what I told him he is.”
.
“Men are poopheads,” Willow said… “And boy am I glad we fixed the spell so that didn’t happen!  That would’ve been awful!”
 
“Could have been really messy,” Buffy agreed, then they both burst into giggles. 
 
Willow shook her head. “On that note, I’m going to get some sleep before I accidently create something else disgusting.”  She looked at Buffy for a second, then added, “I’m really glad you trusted me enough to tell me about where and you and Spike came from. And that you were here to stop me from hurting anyone I care about.”
 
“In your defense, when you broke the spell, you felt really, really bad about what you’d done and you baked us a lot of ‘I’m sorry’ cookies.  It was almost worth it.” Buffy grinned at her. “But it’s just as well. Making Adam explode is going to be so much more useful than making Xander any more attractive to demons than he already is.”
 
“Yeah. Definitely.” Willow yawned. “Okay, I’m off to dreamland. I want to wake up in time to hear the fire alarms.”
 
“Yep. Big day tomorrow.” Buffy debated about talking to Willow about giving up the spell completely, but decided bedtime wasn’t the best choice for a serious conversation. Maybe she’ll think of it herself when she thinks about what a mess she could have made just now.
 
xxxxx
 
Buffy and Willow strolled around campus, trying not to look as if they were expecting anything.
 
“Do you think it looks weird? Just hanging out here when there aren’t any classes today?”
 
“I dunno. But if we don’t…. oh, crap! I forgot I’m supposed to meet Riley for lunch at the cafeteria.  Want to come with?”
 
‘Uh, okay? Do you think he’ll be there? If the lab goes ‘boom’ at noon?”
 
Buffy shrugged. “He’s supposed to meet me at noon, so he shouldn’t be in the lab then. At worst, he’ll be on his way to the cafeteria.  We know he probably won’t stay long when the alarms to go off, so he won’t have time to wonder why you’re with me.”
 
“You’re using me to keep this from being too much like a date, aren’t you?”
 
“Maybe? It’s a good thing you didn’t say that fishy word before you said that,” Buffy said with a smile.  “Because if I wasn’t already thinking it, I would be now.”
 
Willow sighed and bit her lip.  “As tempting as it is to be able to just get whatever I want by saying I have it, I’m really glad you talked me into altering that spell. Got to admit, I don’t miss feeling miserable, so that was a good result. But I can’t even imagine how many things I could screw up just by opening my mouth without thinking. Tell me again what happened before?”
 
“Well, Giles came looking for you to see why you didn’t come to him to do the truth spell on Spike, and you just wanted to stay in the room and cry, so when he got testy with you and said he could see you were upset, you told him he couldn’t see anything. And by the time he got back to his apartment, he couldn’t. He was blind.  And then you got annoyed when he called to tell me Spike had escaped, and you said I didn’t need to leave right then because it would only take a couple of seconds to find him, and poof! All of a sudden I was standing right beside him. And then Xander—”
 
Willow interrupted Buffy’s recital to say, “Oh, look, there’s Riley. He’s been waiting for us – you. He doesn’t look thrilled to see me here.”
 
“He’ll get over it,” Buffy said, breaking into an insincere smile. “Right about now!” she added as suddenly fire alarms were going off everywhere and people began running to the outside doors and leaving the building. 
 
Riley rushed up to them. “Let’s get out of here. There must be a kitchen fire or something—” A completely different sort of alarm began screaming, and Riley’s face paled. “Oh my God. I’ve got to go. Stay away from the buildings… all of them…”
 
Without another word, he ran off toward the direction of Lowell House, leaving Buffy and Willow staring after him.
 
“Well, looks like something’s gone wrong down there. I don’t suppose there’s anyway we can find out exactly what it was….”
 
Buffy shrugged. “I’ll give Riley a call later just to tell him we’re fine and ask if he knows what happened.  He’s obviously not going to tell me a secret underground lab blew up, but maybe he’ll slip up and say something about Professor Walsh.”
 
“Oh.” Willow looked disappointed. “What are we doing to do for the rest of the weekend?  What did we do in your time?”
 
“Well, after you broke the spell… we mainly ate cookies you baked. Lots of cookies.” Buffy gave her a hopeful smile, but Willow just shook her head.
 
“I don’t owe anybody ‘I’m sorry’ cookies this time.”
 
“True,” Buffy said with a sigh. “It was worth a try, though.  I guess we should just go back and tell Giles it looks like it worked.”
 
xxxxxx
 
To Buffy’s surprise, when she used Giles’s phone to call Riley that evening, he was too busy to talk to her.
 
“I’m sorry, Buffy. I’ve got to… we’ve got a… situation… here and I have to— there goes one, men!  Gotta go. Stay indoors tonight!”
 
Buffy hung up.  “Something’s up. There’s lots of yelling, and he told me to stay indoors tonight.”
 
“I’d guess the captive demons and whatever’s left of their science projects have somehow got loose,” Spike said. “They’re probably escaping.”
 
“Crap! I’ll bet you’re right. I didn’t even think about that possibility.” Buffy went to the weapon chest and picked out a sword and grabbed some more stakes. She tossed another sword to Spike, saying, “Let’s go. Maybe we can head them off before they get too far from campus.”
 
“Buffy…” Giles looked at Spike. “Aren’t you taking a chance risking Spike out there where there are soldiers looking for escaped demons and, one must assume, vampires?”
 
“Not lettin’ her go out there alone,” Spike growled. “We’ll be okay as long as I don’t let my fangs show and use the sword on the demons. Doubt they will be looking for many vamps. Most of the ones that were in there with me either died during that sadistic cow’s ‘tests’, or got dusted when they were done. All she cared about for parts were demons. And a vamp strong enough to put the chip in,” he added.
 
 
xxxxxx
 
“Here we go, love. Incoming.”  Spike moved far enough away from Buffy to give them both room to work.  The oncoming demons hesitated for a second when they saw her, but sounds of gunfire from behind them gave them courage and they continued running at Buffy and Spike.
 
With a whoop, Spike leapt to meet them, using the sword to remove heads and limbs rather than fighting them as he normally would. Buffy worked more methodically, but soon had a pile of bodies in front of her to rival the one in front of Spike.  Neither of them noticed Riley putting out an arm to halt his small squad of commandos as he saw what was happening in front of them.
 
Recognizing one of the escaping demons, Spike said, “Get out of here, Clem.” The wrinkled demon gave Buffy a quick glance, but she just waved with the hand that wasn’t holding the sword and said, “Do what he says.”
 
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Clem said as he went around them. “Thanks.”
 
Buffy had turned to watch Clem leave, giving a short, but powerful-looking demon a chance to knock her down. Before it could do any damage, Buffy had kicked it away so hard it ended up at Riley’s feet. Without taking his eyes off Buffy, now back on her feet and fighting again, Riley shoved the demon toward one of his men, who promptly shot it.
 
He watched as Buffy and Spike slowed down, the escaped demons now either dead, or running in other directions.  Riley pointed toward the fleeing creatures and sent his men after them, while he remained staring at Buffy and Spike who had finally noticed him.
 
“Reckon that little secret’s out, pet,” he said, acknowledging Riley with a nod. “For both of you.”
 
“Yeah. This isn’t exactly when or where it happened, but it is what it is.”  She let her sword dangle from her hand as Riley picked his way around the dead demons to approach them.
 
“Uh. Hi,” she said. “Gee, I wonder where all these demons came from?”
 
“It’s classified,” Riley said, staring at Spike, then back at Buffy. “How do you know about these sub-terrestrials? And why did you call them demons?”
 
“Because that’s what they are. Demons. They love it here in Sunnydale because of the hellmouth.” She peered at him. “You know about the hellmouth, right?”
 
“If you mean the power center under the ruins of the high school....”
 
“Power center – hellmouth. You say tomato, I say tomahto.”  She looked up at his frowning face. “Is that all of them? Or are there some still left down there?”
 
Before he could stop himself, Riley said, “No, everything else is—” He looked horrified. “How did you know—?”
 
Buffy just shrugged. “That’s classified too,” she said. “If that’s it then, we’ll just head—”
 
“You’re not heading anywhere,” Riley said, pulling out his handgun. “You must be what my men almost captured the other night. They tried to say it looked like a small woman, but I didn’t believe them.” He glared at Spike. “They also said something took them down from behind and knocked them all unconscious.”
 
Spike stared back blandly. “Did they? Well, you know how it is in graveyards at night. Dangerous places to be.” Moving slowly so as not to alarm Riley, Spike worked his way in front of Buffy, blocking her from any possible shots. Buffy touched his back briefly to express her gratitude, but peered around him at Riley.
 
“We’re on the same side, Riley… well, maybe not the same side. But we slay demons and vampires too.  I’m the Slayer.  Look it up.”
 
Riley was still holding his gun, but allowed the muzzle to drop a little. “I don’t understand….”
 
“I know,” she said sympathetically. “Look it up and we’ll talk… later.”
 
“You can’t leave yet.” Riley started to bring the gun back to bear on Spike, blinking when instead of flinching Spike moved quickly and batted it away.
 
“I think we can,” Spike said, as Buffy scooped up the pistol and kicked Riley’s bigger weapon out of reach.
 
Before anyone could make another move, a dazed Fyral demon came stumbling up to them, roaring as he focused on Buffy. Spike grabbed him as he went past and picked him up, tossing him at Riley with a “here, catch”. Without waiting to see the outcome, he and Buffy took off running, not stopping until they were well away from campus and any chance of running into more commandos.