chapter 20, bittersweet – part I

Tara flung the last of the herbs into the fire, covered her eyes and sank to the floor. The funnel, spinning in the center of Jacob’s living room, was bubbling and gurgling and vibrating so hard she thought the building was going to fall down on top of her.

She dropped her head between her knees and willed her body to stop shaking.

She prayed she'd see Willow standing in the middle of the room when she raised her head. She wanted to hear her voice telling her that everyone was safe and they could go back to Sunnydale. Willow then would explain how she’d stopped the portal jumper, saved Buffy and Dawn and had found more power. Tara would be thrilled, except she wouldn’t care about the power so much, but that was what Willow wanted. She had craved it since the thought spell, and since then, Tara had wanted whatever Willow wanted.

She lifted her chin and peered up at the ceiling and then at the circle. If Willow was going to come back, she’d come through that hole. Not from above, but from three feet in front of Tara.

The sound of her breathing filled the room as the portal stopped spinning and the air became deathlike in its stillness. Tara felt her arms and legs tingling. She wished she could run out of the house and yell at whomever she saw in the streets about the madness of vampires and portal jumpers and witches. What had she done since arriving in New York City but sit in a vampire’s living room burning photographs and roots? She closed her eyes, thinking. She was a witch, not a simple sorceress. She could do more than toss a few herbs in a fire. She could change things. She knew how to use magic.

The last of the photographs in the fire crackled as they burned to ash. She opened her eyes at the sound and then looked at the portal. It was glowing.

Tara heard a familiar voice shouting, and then Willow and Jacob were standing in the middle of the room dripping wet and covered with dirt and mud.

Tara unfolded her legs and rose from her crouched position, wobbling. She stumbled and leaned against a nearby wall.

Her eyes sought Willow's as she tried to find her balance. Then an overwhelming desire swept through her and she could think of nothing except holding Willow in her arms. Tara pushed away from the wall and started toward Willow and Jacob. But another shrill scream from a familiar voice fixed her to the floor.

"Nothing worked!" Willow screeched as she stomped one foot and then the other on the wooden planks. She then rushed toward the fireplace, gesturing frantically as she seemed to fly across the room yelling, nothing over and over again.

Tara swiveled toward Jacob. Maybe he could explain what had happened. What had made Willow so angry? Maybe he could tell Tara about the portal jumper. She glared at him, her eyes inquiring. But Jacob looked stunned and his lips were quivering. Was he afraid? Or was his living room the last place on Earth he’d expected Willow to bring him?

“Goddamned Shemhazi!” Willow cursed. “He was right in front of me. As close as I am to you and I couldn’t touch him.”

“Calm down, dear.” Tara moved slowly to Willow’s side and carefully placed her hand on her shoulder. “I chanted until the last of the herbs were in the fire.”

Tara was thinking that if she reminded Willow of what she’d done, Willow wouldn’t be so hard on herself. She’d remember that if Tara were a more powerful witch, Willow wouldn't need the vampire's help. If Tara could help her more, Willow could have stopped the portal jumper after one battle. Certainly, if Tara explained, Willow would remember it was Tara who had failed her.

This is my fault. It had to be, thought Tara.

“I seared the herbs in the flames, recited the verse and burned the photos, just as you asked.” She didn't bother trying to keep the whining sound out of her voice.

“I know you did as you were told.” Willow was pacing from one end of the fireplace to the other. “There were just too many of them. I couldn’t concentrate with all of them there.”

“Too many of whom?” Tara mumbled.

“Buffy, Dawn, Spike, some kid,” said Willow, “and Anya and the portal jumper.”

Willow faced Tara, her brow wrinkled and her mouth in full pout. “It was a damn Scooby convention!”

Wrapping her arms around her stomach, Willow dropped to the sofa with a thud.

“Buffy and Dawn were there?” Tara sat beside her on the sofa.

“Yeah…and Spike,” Willow stood and marched to the fireplace, picked up an iron poker and jabbed at the glowing embers.

Willow's posture changed as Tara watched her stirring the remnants of the fire. Tara could tell that Willow's thoughts had veered away from self-pity and embraced something new. The witch’s shoulders had straightened, her neck lengthened and her fingers gripped the poker so tightly her knuckles looked as if they might rip through the skin.

“Jacob.” Willow called to him without turning away from the ashes.

The vampire had backed out of the living room into the hallway, attempting to sneak away, Tara figured. But he froze as Willow’s voice cut through the room.

“What does it feel like?” Willow leaned against the mantle, staring at the fire. “Being able to walk in the sun? What’s it like to be almost a man?” She dropped the poker, turned and then slithered toward Jacob like a lioness, closing in on her prey.

Jacob stumbled into the wall behind him, cornered.

“It feels like I’ve been touched by God,” His nostrils flared as he blurted out the words. “You know how that feels. Don't you, witch?”

Damned defiant for what looked like a pinned animal, thought Tara.

“Yes, I do.” Willow examined her hands thoughtfully, as if she were waiting for her fingers to curve into claws.

She suddenly opened and closed her hands like flashing neon lights in front of Jacob’s face.

He licked his lips and lapped drops of blood into his mouth with his fat, wet tongue. He then grinned, mouth stretched wide, a soulless clown's distorted face. The slow in and out movement of his tongue over his cracked, swollen lips made Tara's skin crawl. She hadn’t noticed the blood before. She looked away, disgusted, but then the vilest thought she could imagine entered her head and nearly made her vomit.

What if Jacob had tasted Willow, pulled her essence into his mouth and swallowed her whole?

Tara heard Willow moan and feared she'd guessed right.

She glared at Jacob. The vision of Jacob's fangs sinking into Willow’s throat was all she could see. The blood on his lips belonged to Willow. Tara knew it.

But that couldn’t be right. She looked at the vampire again.

His courage had returned. He was glowering and on his upper lip, another lust-filled grin was forming as he dabbed at the last of the blood with a soiled handkerchief. Tara hadn't seen him pull the bloodied cloth from his pocket. She had no idea where it had come from. But as she stared at Jacob wiping his face, she saw something else wet on his upper lip. Drops of perspiration dotted his skin, replacing the blood that had been there seconds earlier.

Tara’s mouth opened soundlessly. What was going on she wanted to shout. Vampires didn't sweat. She knew this. Then again, maybe they did. She turned to Willow, wishing her lover would look at her. Straighten out the nonsense going through her head. But Willow wasn’t paying her any attention. Her eyes followed Jacob’s every movement. The slow blink of his eyelids, his tongue as it flicked over his dark, full lips and his hand, palm over heart, fingers splayed, massaging his breast.

Tara’s gaze traveled up his torso to his Adam’s apple and she was dazzled by the steady pulsation of the veins in his throat.

Was he alive? Oh, God! Was he breathing?

He wasn't pretending to breathe. No, he was actually pulling oxygen into his lungs and releasing it out. Was that what the vampire had meant when he’d said he’d been touched by God? Had he meant, he lived?

“You feel the power that Luke gave you, don’t you?” said Willow. “But you didn’t get as much as Spike, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Not the first born, so to speak. But I got enough, thanks to you,” said Jacob with an edge of sarcasm in his tone.

“Yes, thanks to me.”

Tara gasped. Was Willow a God now? Had she given the vampire life like she’d given Buffy life six months earlier? “Willow, what did you do?”

“Got in Luke’s way." She sat next to Tara on the sofa, settled her back against the cushions and closed her eyes. “But don't worry about Luke. Spike will deal with him.”

“What about Buffy and Dawn?” Tara asked.

“They’ll be alright.”

“Are you sure?”

“They will be all right!” Willow's voice rose, and then softened. “We’ve got to go back to the alley.”

Willow looked at Jacob, who was standing with his back pressed against the wall, next to the entrance of the hallway.

“Yes. You are right,” Jacob moved away from the wall and staggered toward Willow. He gripped the end table near the sofa with one long-fingered hand in an effort to steady himself. “We will make Shemhazi come to you.”

“We?”

“It is the reason you came to me in the first place.” He glared at Willow. “For my help. You knew we’d get Luke’s gifts, and you couldn’t ask Spike to help you. His only concern is the Slayer. So you came to me because you know I want this…and not just temporarily. I want to keep Luke’s gifts forever. Whatever the consequence.”

Jacob pried his fingers off the table and shoved his hands into the pockets of his muddied leather pants. He reminded Tara of Spike for the briefest instant as he walked toward Willow, his body teamed with energy and confidence.

Jacob knelt in front of Willow and took her small white hands into his large black ones.

“We will need more power for you to defeat Shemhazi and for me to become eternal.”

“This could work,” exclaimed Willow, an unexpected giggle rushed from her as she pulled her hands out of Jacob's hands and looked at Tara. “This is a very good thing. Don’t you think?” She nodded at Jacob and then took Tara's hand between her hands and pulled it into her lap.

“Now, you were saying we should go back to the alley?”

Willow's words were directed to Jacob, but she looked at her as she spoke.

Jacob had pushed himself firmly onto his feet and his thumb and forefinger were hooked through his belt loops. “The Shemhazi wants to get to you as much as you want to get to him, right?”

Willow squeezed Tara’s hand. “Right,” she answered, turning her head toward Jacob.

“All we have to do is pick the place and wait.”

Willow pursed her lips thoughtfully and then smiled. “When did you get so smart, Jacob?”

“Just one of my gifts.”


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Anya lay sprawled on one of the piles of filth that littered the ground in the alley. She could feel the grit and the mud and a balmy liquid soaking the bare skin of her calves and forearms. Its warmth surprised her. Then she remembered the rain the night before and the sun in the sky early that morning. It had shined bright and hot when she'd watched the vampires in the daylight.

She cringed as she recalled being mesmerized by Spike and Jacob as she watched them bite into the flesh of Dawn and a kid she didn't know. Amazing. They had not turned to dust in the sunshine. Anya shook her head, loosening the cobwebs in her brain. Maybe she’d imagined it. But no, they were human. Spike was human, but he was also still a vampire, and so was Jacob.

She turned her eyes away from the sun and looked at Luke. Earlier, he'd been in a corner, cowering like a rat. Now he loomed above her, no longer infatuated by the Shemhazi or the witch. They had gone anyway. Jacob and Spike had gone, too.

Luke had returned to his old self. He had taken back his memories and Anya hadn’t been able to keep them from him.

But she'd been pretty busy herself since Shemhazi and the rest had vanished. Her demon had come back unexplainably. She'd felt her soul drift away from her as the sun rose and spilled into the alley. At least that's when she'd figured it out—knew that she was a vengeance demon again.

Anya opened her eyes, sat up and reached her hand out to Luke.

“Help me up,” she ordered and then allowed him to lift her from the ground. She didn’t even bother to straighten her short skirt. It fell easily over her thin hips as she stood.

“Well, dear muse, we seem to be back where we started our journey." His teeth flashed brightly as his eyes shined with soft tears. “I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah, me too.” Anya pushed her blouse into the waistband of her skirt. She wasn’t in his thrall any more. That part of their journey was over. Seeing Shemhazi had released her from that curse.

Luke took her hands in his and held them together between his palms. He lifted them to his lips and placed a gentle kiss on her fingertips.

“We must go after them?”

“Shemhazi and Willow?”

“No. Spike and the Key.”

“What?” Anya kept her voice steady. She’d thought Luke would go after Shemhazi and Willow. She'd been ready for that. But Spike and Dawn? Well, okay.

“I must return to what I was,” he said. “I was a man before I became what I am now. Just like you were a woman, once upon a time. I want to be that man again, and the Key is the one who can help me.”

“Oh.” Anya muttered.

“Dawn disappeared through a portal and she took Buffy, Spike, Dawn and that kid with her. How will you find her?”

“No problem. All I have to do is follow Spike. He will lead me to her.” Luke squeezed her hand tight and smiled at the swirling funnel that had appeared next to him.

“Let’s go," he said, as the portal swallowed them up.


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“Let’s go, babe,” Carlo pulled Dawn's hand as he dragged her back toward Buffy and Spike. They were at least five New York City blocks away, thought Dawn. She could barely make out their bodies standing in the middle of the sun-drenched road. Hadn't they been sitting down a few minutes before, she wondered?

Dawn snatched her hand out of Carlo’s grip. She wasn’t ready to go back. They had barely found enough for the four of them to eat, let alone drink. The makeshift containers they’d carved from the larger pieces of black fruit were only half-filled with seeds and edible leaves, if Dawn had remembered her biology properly, if biology even existed wherever they were now.

They’d discovered a small hole bubbling with fresh water under the twisted vines of one of the fruit bushes. They were able to fill at least one container with the warm clear liquid. She'd return to Buffy with a feast in hand.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered anxiously. “What’s Spike going to eat?”

“Don’t you think he’s had enough?” Carlo headed down the road toward Buffy and Spike.

He turned. “Jeez, Dawn, what is it with you and your sister and this fucking guy? I mean he’s not even human. Shit, if he is, he’s still got a thing for blood. I mean girl, look at your neck!” He threw his hand out and pointed, but still managed to hang on to the fruit bowls cradled in his other arm.

“Hey, Carlo. This is not Spike’s fault. Something happened to him in that alley and for a few moments he lost control. You met him before this all went down. He’s a good vampire and he wouldn’t hurt me or you or Buffy, ever!”

“What about the other bastard? He bit me, you know.”

“Yeah, true.” She couldn’t argue that point. “But he didn’t finish the job. Maybe he’s a little like Spike and has some good in him.” Dawn had left the sunlit road and wandered into the Night World. She pushed aside a patch of thick branches and rotten fruit, keeping up her search for anything she could add to the containers.

As Dawn looked for food, she knew she was stalling. She wanted Buffy to have time to talk to Spike. Make certain that he was okay and not one bloody hell away from turning into the Big Bad he’d been in Sunnydale before the chip.

Dawn had been a little girl when Spike had been running amuck with Angelus as Giles had called the two vampires time together. She didn’t remember meeting Spike then, but she’d heard about him. He’d frightened the pee out of his share of Scoobies as Anya had said often, and he’d given Buffy a good fight several times, too. Even her big sister admitted that.

Still, her memories of Spike were more recent and that wasn’t because she’d been dropped in Sunnydale the year before by the monks. She and Spike were friends. He’d helped her bunches of times. He’d helped her find out the truth about her past. He’d stayed with her that horrible summer before Willow brought Buffy back to life. Buffy had even trusted him with her life and with their Mom’s, lots of times. Sure, he had scared the heebie jeebies out of her with that biting thing in the alley, but she wasn’t going to admit it. Not right off anyway, because she trusted him. She had to, he was her friend.

“Dawn, come on. Let’s get back, okay?” Carlo sounded less angry, she was thinking as she crawled out from under a heavy patch of vines with a handful of seeds.

“Okay. I’m ready.” She dumped her armload into one of the fruit bowls and picked up the handmade bottle now filled with water and fell in step next to Carlo.

“You did this, didn’t you?” Carlo asked.

“Oh, you mean like teleported us to this dimension,” she said. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You know not every girl in the Bronx can teleport, babe. At least not without some serious drugs in ‘em. So you’re like Spike, not human?”

“I’m human. Just got special powers because of my being the Key and all. It’s why we came to New York City in the first place. Something was trying to hurt me and my sister and all of our friends in Sunnydale because they wanted to get to me. Or at least that’s what we thought.”

“Okay, hold on a minute. You got me confused, girl. You’re a key?” Carlo had nearly tripped over his own feet, he’d stopped so quickly.

“Hey, don’t go there. It would take hours for me to explain the Key business. So just trust me. I can do things but I’m still human.” She was concerned about how Carlo might react to her being the Key. In less than a day, he’d met his first vampire, found the body of his murdered mother and been teleported to a three-dimensional black and white world. Carlo wigging out would have been perfectly understandable.

“Look, Carlo. For some reason I didn’t even know about until recently, I can travel through dimensions. Get from one universe to another and obviously,” she waved her free hand in the air. “Pull my friends and family with me when I do it.”

“Okay, okay. It’s way too much for me to take in right now, babe. I’ll just go with it, okay?” Carlo looked exhausted. Dawn planted a quick kiss on his cheek as she walked past him.

“Is this bad guy still after you?” Carlo asked as he walked next to her. “I mean outside of the vampires, I saw some really weird shit in that alley.”

“Yeah, it was weird.” Dawn said as she thought about seeing Willow inside a spinning jar of wind and a giant angel flying around her. She wasn’t going to mention the angel, though. It had wigged her out big time. She couldn’t even imagine what Carlo might…

“What made you think of it? I mean damn, bringing us here to this place. It’s odd, you know. Just three long strips of world. Two dark and one, well, nothing but sunshine.”

“Don’t know why, really.” She said honestly. “I wanted to get out of that alley as fast as possible. Too much bad for us to handle.”

She turned to face Carlo and felt a tickle in her spine. Then a twisting pain in her head made her sink to her knees. Carlo!” she screamed. “Get me to Buffy. Get me to Buffy now!”

“Oh, shit.” Carlo dropped the containers he was carrying, scooped her up in his arms, and ran as fast as he could toward the figures of Spike and Buffy standing in the middle of the road. Good thing he was a runner, he thought as he double-timed his pace. He felt like he was flying over the dirt path.

“God. Oh God. It’s coming. God, we’ve got to hurry,” she cried. “Run faster, Carlo. Faster.”


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Buffy couldn’t hold Spike’s body close enough.

The kiss had started slowly, tongues tasting and entwining as they caressed each other tenderly. Then the kiss was a starved animal and his arms engulfed her and she was hanging on for her life.

Spike's bare chest pressed against her swollen breasts roughly, brushing the fabric of her t-shirt over her nipples, making them ache. Her hands moved from his back to his naked stomach as he pushed her shirt over her breasts and his fingers found her nipples. She moaned into his mouth as he tugged and pulled them and then rolled them gently with his thumb and finger. Her breathing hitched as she felt the hardness of his body pulse against her stomach. She wanted to feel his body naked against her body, and she began to struggle with the button at the top of his jeans.

Then she heard Carlo screaming her name and pulled away from Spike.

Twenty yards down the road, Buffy could see Carlo running toward her with Dawn cradled in his arms.

Buffy spun and ran from Spike and sprinted toward the boy running to meet her with her sister in his arms.

“What happened?” she yelled as she reached Carlo and pulled Dawn out of his arms.

“She…wanted me to…Buffy, damn.” His words were falling out of his mouth in fragments as he dropped to his knees in front of her and Spike.

“Buffy, my head. God, it hurts,” Dawn cried. “It’s coming after us. I feel it, Buffy, and I can’t…” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she screamed clutching Buffy around the neck as the pain seemed to shoot through her.

“Oh, Dawnie. Please hang in there, baby. Please.” Buffy rocked Dawn in her arms and looked up at Spike, her eyes pleading. She didn’t know how to help her sister in this dimension where only trees, a dirt road and sunshine existed.

“Buffy!” Dawn scrambled free of her sister’s embrace and collapsed into a ball. “It’s here!” She screamed as she pointed a finger toward the direction where she and Carlo had run from.

“Spike?” Buffy was reaching for Dawn when she saw Spike begin to morph into his demon visage. She couldn’t even touch her flailing sister. She couldn't take her eyes off of Spike's face. He looked different than she’d ever seen. The bumpies were there but his eyes were blood red.

“Buffy, hold on to her,” he ordered, his voice deep and stern. Carlo was kneeling next to Dawn and slowly inched closer as Buffy pulled her sister’s body to her chest.

Buffy didn't hear anything except the swishing sound of the portal as it whirled around them. Then she felt her body being pulled through dimensions, before suddenly landing in a heap in the small living room of her apartment in the Bronx.

“Spike?” He was standing next to her, his face covered with sweat, holding his duster in his arms. “What did you do?”

“I’m a portal jumper, Buffy,” he said calmly. “I jumped.”

To be continued…