chapter 9: mary magdalene – part I

Dawn nearly fell off the sofa bed when her cell phone rang. Rolling over awkwardly and in somewhat of a daze, she snatched the phone from the end table before it could ring a second time. She didn't want to risk waking up Buffy in case her big sister had returned from patrol.

“Hello,” she whispered. It was Carlo, but she'd known that before she'd flipped open the phone. He was the only person who called her at 4 a.m. except for Buffy. But Buffy never called her at 4 a.m. on her cell phone because she was supposed to be at home in the bed at 4 a.m. sound asleep.

“Need to see you, Dawn.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. That okay?”

“Yeah, it's okay.”

She listened as he explained how he'd get into the building, the apartment and past Buffy. They said goodbye and Dawn snapped the phone shut, rolled out of bed and tiptoed to Buffy's closed bedroom door. Opening it slowly, she peered in. Good, she sighed. Buffy was still out and hopefully she'd stay out a while longer. Carlo had sounded bad. His voice even broke once. When he'd said he had to see her, he meant he really had to see her. Something was wrong, terribly wrong, and he'd said—actually said—he needed her. Wow! She inhaled deeply and tried to steady her heartbeat. Carlo was her first boyfriend. The first boy she wanted to kiss, like all the time, and hold so close neither one of them could breathe. She loved staring at him and talking to him until her eyes tired out and her voice was raw. It was the strangest, most wonderful, most frightening feeling she'd ever had, ever. And she knew she'd do anything to keep it.

Dawn hopped onto her sofa bed, bouncing on the tight cushion springs. Here she was not quite 17 years old and this guy, this beautiful, strong, great guy really, really liked her. He liked her enough to call her when he felt bad. He'd sounded all vulnerable, like he might cry even. She'd never seen a man cry except for Spike the night Buffy jumped off the tower. She'd been scared silly by that sight—Spike crying, head in hands, body quaking with tears. If she hadn't been, well, so busy staring at Buffy's body lying on top of a pile of rocks, all quiet and not moving, she'd have freaked out. On second thought, she was lucky she hadn't lost her freaking mind; it had been such a crazy year. Mom dead, Buffy dead, Mom still dead, and then surprise! Buffy is back from the dead and very much alive. But before Dawn can adjust to that little change, a monster gives her headaches, visions and more pain and agony than she could ever imagine.

And don't forget that you are a mystical, glowy green thing, all powerful and ancient, existing an eternity before being given a face, a voice or a reason to breathe.

Dawn pulled her fingers through her hair, attempting to quiet the memories raging in her head.

She suddenly felt hot and sticky, which didn't make sense. It was mid-December and she was in New York City in a small apartment in the Bronx that had heat, but it hadn't been turned on yet. And it was cold outside or maybe not. The weather had been odd. Never what you expected. Never what you thought it was going to be. She jumped from the sofa and headed to the weapons chest, which also served as her dresser. She grabbed a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and underwear. She needed to slip into some clothes, no matter what the temperature was, before Carlo got there. She had to have on more than the flimsy nightshirt she was wearing. Being covered from head to toe was for the best when she was around Carlo. Her body always felt like it wanted to be touched when she was with him, but that wasn't going to happen, not tonight. Dawn changed her clothes quickly, and stuffed the nightshirt in the chest, closed the lid and glanced nervously around the room. She didn't like waiting.

The walls creaked as she listened to the tiny feet of the hopefully tiny beasts inside the walls scampering along the pipes. A pebble struck the window pane and she jumped. That was a signal. Carlo was downstairs. Another rock skittered over the ledge. She rushed to the door and pressed the buzzer once. That would let Carlo into the building. She then unlocked the apartment door and walked quickly to the open sofa bed and sat down. This was the first time she'd be alone with Carlo at night, in the dark, in her bedroom. Okay, it was actually the living room, but right now it was her bedroom. She started popping the knuckles of her left hand absently with her right thumb and forefinger.

She heard three soft raps at the door and then Carlo was pushing it open and walking into the apartment. He stopped in the middle of the small hallway.

“Come on in. But be quiet...and sit in the corner. Never know when Buffy's gonna show up.” Dawn pointed to the end of the sofa bed.

“She's not home?” Carlo shuffled his feet without taking a step as he stared at a spot on the wall behind her. “Tommy's dead. Serial killer got him.”

Dawn gasped and began shaking her head slowly. She didn't doubt Carlo. She knew she'd heard him correctly by the anguished look in his eyes. “God. Tommy dead?” Dawn's thoughts headed uncontrollably to the portal jumper. "You sure it was a serial killer?”

“What do you mean?” Carlo walked toward her and when he reached the sofa bed, pushed the covers on the bed aside before sitting down next to her. "Darnell said it was this guy the cops had been chasing for the past few weeks, a serial killer that cuts off the heads and leaves the bodies behind." Carlo was shaking as he spoke. Dawn placed a hand on his shoulder and scooted closer to him as she looked into his wet eyes. He then dropped his head to her chest and started to cry, softly, almost in silence. Dawn wrapped her arms around him and pulled him to her breast as close as she could manage.

She knew there was something he wasn't telling her, and she didn't want to tell him about the portal jumper. Not yet. It wasn't the right time and she could wait. As long as Buffy didn't come home any time soon, she'd sit on the sofa bed and hold Carlo for as long as he needed her to hold him.


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Buffy pushed open the apartment door and paused, her hand fisting the knob as she mulled over her next words carefully.

“Come in, Spike,” she said quickly. “Follow me and be quiet. Dawn's asleep.”

She grabbed his hand and led him through the living room toward her bedroom. She then stopped outside the door and gestured to him to go into the room without her. “I'll get some bandages and things. Be right back, okay?” She had offered to take care of his cuts and bruises, the jagged slash across his cheek, the torn skin around his throat and the (at least) three broken ribs under his bloodied shirt. Sure, if left alone, he'd heal in a day or two. He didn't really need first aid. He was a vampire after all. Nevertheless, she couldn't just let him go off alone, so badly injured, into the night. Not after he'd come all the way to New York City to see about her and Dawn. Besides, in between a few moans and groans, he'd explained why he hadn't mentioned Jacob or what he knew about the portal jumper. He really hadn't had enough time to say much of anything before Jacob and his gang had attacked them in the alley.

She’d had no choice but to invite him back to her apartment Buffy reasoned as she rummaged through the bathroom cabinet. She was searching for the gauze and antiseptics she'd sworn she'd left there. But there was nothing in the cabinet but three rolls of toilet paper and five plastic bottles of shampoo. She tiptoed out of the bathroom into the kitchenette empty-handed and looked around the room. The breakfast dishes, crusted with dried egg and half-eaten pancakes, were stacked in the sink and an empty wine bottle rested on the countertop. She glanced at Dawn. Her arms and legs were sprawled across the sofa bed, a mass of long brown curls cascading over the sheets, her face smashed into the pillow. She appeared very much the ‘dead to the world' teenager. Buffy didn't buy it though. But she wasn't going to start a mini-war with her sister at nearly 6 a.m. Not with Spike in the other room of their two-room apartment.

Buffy stood in front of the counter and massaged her temples as a dull pain began to throb behind her eyes. She'd deal with Dawn—and the dishes—in the morning.

She continued to open and close cabinet doors, hunting for medical supplies and thinking about the vampire in her bedroom. Spike showing up, well, actually, dropping down from the sky, had completely surprised her. Spike and New York's version of a 'big bad' being all friendly to each other and then almost killing each other had given her quite the jolt, too.

Buffy chewed her lower lip. She'd been, well; honestly, glad to see Spike when he’d shown up in the alley. Or had she been glad to get word from Giles for which Spike had simply been the messenger.

“Maybe that’s it. I'm just homesick,” she mumbled, still rifling through kitchen drawers and cupboards.

She pulled open the door to the cabinet under the sink and pushed aside a large box of extra-strength powdered detergent and a pile of garbage bags. The first aid kit she hadn't thought about since arriving in New York City sat in the corner. She grabbed the kit and a two-gallon pot and hurried back to the bathroom, filled the pot with hot water, and dropped in a bar of soap and a wash cloth. With her arms full of the supplies needed to clean and mend Spike's wounds, she walked into the bedroom.

Spike was lying on the bed on his back, his arms crossed behind his head. He'd taken off his duster and shirt; from across the room, she could see the black bruises circling his ribcage and the blood still seeping from the largest cut in his side. His face was swollen and his left eye puffy, the lid closing shut. For an instant, all Buffy could think was at least Spike had left Jacob in pretty much the same condition. She'd make certain to tell him that later.

“This is not the way we used to be together, is it?”

“No, pet, it's not,” he said. “Not complaining, mind you. But you never treated me—“

“Like a person?” She finished the sentence for him, emptied her arms onto the nightstand and taking the wet cloth out of the basin of warm water, began carefully wiping the dried blood from his throat and chest. He was looking into her eyes, staring, studying every move she made as if she was some kind of ghost.

Spike grimaced slightly as she dug the cloth deeper into the cut, cleaning out the blood from the wound on his side. “Sorry,” she said and smiled at him.

“Said that twice in one day, love,” he winced as Buffy poured mercurochrome over his ribcage.

“What's that?”

“You saying sorry—to me.”

As he looked into her face, his eyes seemed to shine from the intensity of his gaze. It made her slightly nervous, but not in a bad way. She smiled at him again and leaning forward, touched her lips to his mouth.

“Yep—sure is different,” he whispered.

He closed his mouth, deliberately. Buffy had a feeling he wasn't going to say another word. She decided she'd let their last words hover in the room. In silence, she finished scrubbing away at the blood covering his body, sewed his torn flesh, doused his wounds with antiseptic and covered Spike's deeper cuts with bandages and gauze. Then she stood up, placed the unused bandages, gauze and scissors into the kit and picked up the pot of blood-stained water.

“Stay here today and get some sleep. Tonight we'll figure out how to kill the portal jumper.”

She walked out of the bedroom and closed the door softly behind her without giving Spike a chance to protest, just in case that thought had crossed his mind.


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Jacob knocked the candelabra he'd placed on the dining room table as a lark onto the floor. Then he stalked around the basement, alternating between shouting curses and mumbling recitations of bible verse. He hadn't liked what he'd witnessed that night. How was it that one of the most natural killers he'd ever seen, and had proudly once claimed as his best mate and blood kin, was defending a Slayer? Damn it all to bloody hell. Was there an Aurelian curse or something? First, there were the stories about the vampire Angel, the bloodsucker with a soul, and now this! Jacob raised an angry fist to the ceiling.

For fifty years, he had dismissed the rumors that Angel was Angelus until he saw the sorry bastard with his own eyes one night in an alley in Chinatown chasing rats. Jacob had to turn his back on the sight and literally run away. A cowardly act for sure, but he couldn't help himself. He'd worshipped Angelus. He'd served him for nearly twenty years on his knees, stomach or ass at the whim of the vampire. Whatever the fiend had desired, it had been his duty to fulfill. So seeing Angelus chase rats in Chinatown was truly more than a demon of Jacob's lineage could bear.

And now, there was Spike. Again, he'd ignored the tales of the blond Brit in southern California who was fighting along side the Slayer. He'd refused to believe any of that treason. He and William had been blood brothers. Both fledglings in the house of Angelus and Darla. They'd formed a bond. Even though Jacob was the lowest order of fledgling—a ship's slave turned by Darla as a cruel joke to get back at Angelus, he imagined. She never even acknowledged that she'd turned him, just kept the dark-skinned animal around to “clean up” after their feasts and fuck on occasion. But William treated him like a comrade. Whenever they could sneak away from the insane trio, they'd scamper off and create their own havoc. Feeding with glee and speed, feast and run, teeth glistening and tongues dripping thick red drops from the joy of killing—that was their way. Jacob missed that. The 20th century was far too civilized for vampires like Jacob the Preacher's Son and William the Bloody—oh, excuse me, he thought sarcastically—he wants to be called "Spike". He spat the name out aloud.

Grabbing his throat, he felt the dried blood and recalled being beaten nearly to dust by his so-called comrade less than two hours before. Suddenly exhausted, he collapsed in the over-stuffed chair he kept in the corner near his bookshelf.

Raising his legs, he dropped them onto the dark-chocolate leather ottoman and slid his body down into the cushions. His arms drooped over the sides of the armrests and his head lopped forward, bopping on his chest. He glanced up at the small holes that served as windows to his basement abode and smelled the advancing daylight. He hoped he had at least a few hours to rest, and maybe heal. He had to prepare for the arrival of the Portal Jumper. Then he could convince Spike to change his evil ways and return to appreciating the nature of things.

Jacob sniggered as he fell into a dreamless sleep.


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Willow was marching ahead of Tara on the crowded sidewalk, her dark red high-heeled boots clicking rhythmically on the pavement as her short tweed skirt swirled around her hips. Tara glared at the passersby as they stared at Willow's naked thighs, partially exposed above her wool-covered thighs. Seemingly unaware of the glances she was attracting, the redhead pulled the blue fur collar of her waist-length jacket snugly around her throat. She then shook her short-bobbed hair flirtatiously from side to side. Tara increased her pace to keep Willow within arms reach.

A gust of cold, crisp wind blew over them and Tara hugged her own full-length cloth coat around her body. Willow wiggled slightly, suppressing a shiver Tara presumed, as she continued to dance through the crowd, looking very much like a born and bred New Yorker. To think they'd only been in the city a few hours thought Tara as she strained to keep up with the darting Willow.

Out of the corner of her eye, Tara caught sight of a street sign. Eighth Avenue and 14th Street to be exact. The building they were looking for was on 13th Street. “Willow!” she called. Tara skipped through the throng of rushing bodies to catch up with her. “We passed it. The address we're looking for—it's back there.”

They turned and walked quickly down the avenue toward the block where Willow had said they'd find a red-brick building.

“Willow, don't' you think we should tell someone where we're at in case something goes wrong?” said Tara. “We could call Giles, you know.”

“No,” said Willow, her voice hard. “We don't need him. Not now. We're good here.”

She led Tara up the steps of the red brick building and pushed open the door. Willow didn't seem surprised to find that it wasn't chained shut. She grabbed Tara 's hand and pulled her through the doorway.

“You ready for this, my darling?” Willow looked excited, anxious for whatever was about to happen, thought Tara.

“Yes,” she answered. “Always.”

to be continued…