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Chapter 34
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The courtyard was easily located through the French doors at the end of the lobby. The sight that met his eyes reminded Spike of the first time he had ever seen Buffy so many years ago. She was poetry in motion still. But she didn’t seem to be any more aware of him now than she had at the Bronze that first time.

Buffy was dancing like she made love, primal and wild. It was almost like watching sex to see her move. There were several panting boys dancing all around her that seemed to think so too. She shimmied up to one with a Marine build and dark features and began to writhe against him in rhythm with the beat of the music. The boy’s eyes shaded with lust.

Buffy was as unaware of her effect on her dance partners as she was of Spike’s presence. She moved as if there were nothing in the world but the music, the beat and her body. Her eyes were closed and her lips parted and moist.

Her body had filled out some finally. The thin-to-the-point-of-gaunt look she had sported the last time Spike had seen her was gone. She would never be fat or even overweight, but she had a woman’s curves again. Spike was struck dumb, feeling like his feet were nailed to the floor. He wanted to rip the heads off of the hormone-gushing pack of males. At the same time, he fought the desire to sweep Buffy into his arms and carry her off to the nearest room to make her his again. "Not that she ever really was mine," Spike reminded himself.

The sunlight shining on her filtered through a stained glass dome that covered the courtyard. It painted the scene in rich emerald, violet and red…the color of healthy, oxygenated blood. The whole scene was intoxicating on several levels.

The music changed in tune and tempo, creating an undulating rhythm that had Buffy rivaling Salome in her dance before Herod. Spike could easily see why that old king had gladly offered up the requested head of the Baptist as payment for such a dance. He would put his own head on a platter to have Buffy dancing for him just one time in that way, wanton and willing.

He was going to have to get her out of there quickly, before he embarrassed himself as he hadn’t since adolescence. Spike shook his head to clear it and called out to his love. "Buffy." No response, no indication that she had even heard him. He tried again. "Slayer!" Still Buffy danced on, unmindful of
anything but the music and movement.

"Christ, Buffy, need to stop dancin’ now and come with me. Your lil’ sis is worried sick. So’s your Watcher and friends. Had to be really worried or they wouldn’t have sent me in for ya, right?" Still there was no response from the Slayer.

"Come now, love, time to leave this charming hellhole." Spike was hoping not to have to pull her from the courtyard. He had seen people under a thrall when Dru would use it to control the mind of a victim. It could be dangerous to yank a slayer from such a thrall. She might dust him before it registered just who had grabbed her.

"Sweeting, don’t make Spike have to get physical. That never seems to help with us, yeah? I’m just gonna come out there and clear the dance floor of some of the clutterin’ chorus boys and we’ll get you set to rights." Spike started out towards Buffy only to encounter the first of the Senior Partners’ minions.

The demon in the red robe looked like a normal human except for the tattoos marking his face. He put a restraining hand on Spike and prevented him from continuing towards Buffy. "You may not pass. You have no business here, vampire. This part of the hotel is for invited guests and special clients only. You will have to leave now." The demon lifted Spike and began to move him back into the lobby area.

"Don’t think so, padre…or whatever you are. ‘Sides, you could say I’m here thanks to Mr. Hart," Spike said.

"I am unaware of any client of Mr. Hart that is due here today. The Senior Partners never lower themselves to handling mere vampires." The demon looked at Spike suspiciously.

"Never said I was a mere anything, you git. You could say I’m one of a kind…or one of a pair, I guess. Senior Partners pay lots of attention to this ‘mere vampire’. Get your hands off me and I may let you live," Spike said with bravado.

The robed demon laughed, making a deep and guttural sound. He lightly tossed Spike through the French doors, wiping his hands as he turned away from the nuisance.

Spike launched himself at the retreating back of the demon, landing on his shoulders and grabbing the cowled neck of the robe for purchase. The startled demon tried to throw Spike off of his back, but the vampire was hanging on for dear life.

They wrestled for control of the situation with Spike unleashing all his favorite unfair fighting techniques, including eye gouging.

The demon roared in pain as Spike managed to plunge his thumb into the false monk’s left eye, not hard enough to push through, but enough to finally get the upper hand with the demon. Before the screaming demon could recover, Spike grabbed his head and twisted quickly, breaking his neck and ending his caterwauling.

There was still no indication that Buffy had noticed the brawl in the least.

Spike ran the song lyrics through his mind in a desperate attempt to figure out how to safely get through to his lady love. "Tiffany twisted, yeah! What’d Lorne say? Oh, yeah, something about stained glass and that Tiffany bloke. Must be the dome that has Buffy in its spell," Spike muttered. He frantically looked around to find something he could use to break the glass and with it, the magic holding Buffy a dancing prisoner.

He saw a small concrete bench along the edge of the tiled courtyard. It was pretty, sitting there amidst the roses, but Spike had better plans for it. He wrenched the top from the bench and flung it at the glass dome hoping that the sunlight it would expose wouldn’t be flammable to vamps in this dimension.

Spike leaped to the protective cover of a convenient bower of foliage near the now bare legs of the bench. The sunlight flowed over him before he made it to safety. Fortunately, the sunlight here, as in the Aztec dimension, was vampire friendly. It seemed to be Spike’s lucky day.

Buffy danced until the dome was destroyed, whirling like a dervish as she had not since Sweet’s visit to Sunnydale. So far, no smoke was rising from her, but if she had been dancing as long as Spike suspected she had, she would be dead tired with massive leg pains. Indeed, Buffy fell to the courtyard soil, bellowing in agony and rubbing those legs, even as Spike had the thought.

Spike rushed to her side at once and attempted to help massage her left leg. Buffy kicked out in reflex, sending Spike sprawling on the concrete "dance floor".

"What the bloody hell, you silly bint?! Tryin’ to help out here," he protested. He was startled by Buffy’s reaction. It had been a while since the Slayer had played ‘kick the Spike’.

"You are dead. This place…and you…are not real. So just go back to whatever brain cell kicked you out and leave me to die from terminal leg cramps," Buffy spat at the prone Spike. "If Spike weren’t dead and were really here, he’d have the sense to give me an ice pack and not a massage anyway."

"Love, I really am here. Not the First or anythin’. Couldn’t have kicked me across the room if I were that bugger. ‘M here to get you out of this place and back home to all those nice Italian shoe stores you’ve been keepin’ in business." Spike could see that Buffy was still having some serious problems even though the spell appeared to be broken. "Been dancin’ long, pet?"

Buffy narrowed her eyes and glared at the Spike-like apparition in front of her with a hand extended to help her up. "This is so not funny and when I get my hands on Eddie, he’ll wish he’d never met me! Go away! You’re not suppose to show up until I’m nicely asleep and can moan all I want to."

Spike tilted his head and looked startled at her words. Could it be that the Slayer actually dreamed of him at times? Wet dreams? His lucky day just kept getting better and better.

"I don’t know who or what you are, but you’re not Spike. He’s at the bottom of the hole that once was Sunnydale. Just like everything else I loved…well, not Dawn…Okay, and not my friends…but everything else. I’m not entirely stupid. Just go and be somebody else and leave me alone." Buffy was surprised how much it hurt to see Spike in this cruel parody of the one lost to her.

"Got a lot of things to explain, love. Lotta time to make up for, too, I’m thinkin. Right now, we best get you out of here though. Plenty of time for playin’ catch up, and anything else you might want to play, later." Spike made another try at helping Buffy up from the ground.

Buffy sighed deeply and made a decision. "Right. I’m in a freakin’ oldies songland. Naturally that would attract Spike."

"Hey! My taste in music is classic, not oldies. Don’t see any demon dimensions built on any boy band shite, do you?" Spike was mildly offended at the insult to his taste. "Come on, up you go, love." He tried again to get Buffy to her feet.

"Hands! You keep yours there and I’ll keep mine here, okie dokie?" Buffy tried to stand but found that more than her leg muscles were a problem. Her joints were on fire and not only in the leg area; all of them ached. She was itching all over and a small rash was starting to develop on her right arm. The areas behind her ears and under her arms felt slightly swollen and tender. She was also slightly dizzy. "Whoa, Nellie! Hey, whoever you are, I might let you help me to that chair over there after all. Not feeling so good here."

Spike immediately rushed to her side and slipped an arm around her waist, drawing Buffy close to him so he could accept most of her weight and get her moving. "What’re you feeling, Slayer? Might help if I knew."

Buffy gave him a little rundown of the different symptoms and Spike frowned in concentration. "Wait a minute, something familiar here…." Suddenly he got a small grin on his face and his worry lines smoothed out. "Okay, you need to trust me on this, sweetheart. I think you’ve got a bit of altitude decompression happenin’. Ever hear of the bends? Usually get ‘em scuba diving, but altitude can do it, too. Don’t move around for a bit, only makes it worse. You need oxygen, pet. Too much nitrogen in the blood causin’ the pain and itch. Look, if that’s a side effect of this thrall, they probably have oxygen somewhere in case of an accident. You stay put and I’ll see what I can find, okay?"

Spike set off in hopes of finding an oxygen tank somewhere. "Maybe that talky git in the closet will know," he decided. "I always thought it was just bad spellin’, but it looks like the song’s a mite literal! 'Mercedes bends' is just what it meant."

Dilby, the little mousy clerk, was more than happy to point Spike to the first aid room and its sparse but adequate supply of oxygen. "Had a nasty accident a few years ago with a client in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr. Wolf insisted on keeping a tank or two around ever since. Guy was a druggie and kept laughing about getting the bends at a hotel in Mexico. Giggled a lot after the pain stopped."

"Thanks for the 4-1-1, Dilby. Gonna tape you back up again though. One chatty distraction at a time and Buffy’s prettier." Spike went to the room and grabbed a portable tank before heading back to his Slayer.

Buffy was skeptical about the "cure" but accepted the oxygen since there wasn’t any harm in it. "This is the latest thing anyway. Oxygen bars are even catching on in Europe, not just Japan and the U.S.. Might as well do the O2; can’t hurt me."

Buffy began to feel better with the combination of time and oxygen. Fortunately, her case was a mild one and the leg pain was more because of the long dancing session.

Spike had liberated some ice from a machine and made a pack for it using part of the robe from the dead minion. It was helping with the muscle cramps, but Buffy wanted nothing more than to go to her room and just lie there. Her body was still throbbing and not in a good way.

"Really don’t want to leave you anywhere, Slayer. Bloody slick Italian’ll snap you back up and then we’ll really be in the fire." Spike vetoed Buffy’s request to be helped to her room. "Got a nice little room on ourside of the janitor’s closet. You can sleep all you want once I get you there. I’ll even bring you
breakfast and dinner in bed."

"Talking crazy like that won’t make me believe you’re Spike, buster. Just ‘cause you don’t make any sense with half of what you’ve said won’t make me buy the act. I know my ‘crazy Spikespeak’ and you aren’t even close! You can keep your room in the closet, just get me somewhere to lie down and then get lost." Buffy was starting to feel better but wasn’t up to walking without help yet.

Spike needed to kill the last two Partners, get their blood for the ritual and get Buffy out before her disbelief buggered them both up.

"Buffy, I don’t know how to convince you I’m real, but I am and I need you to be a nice little Slayer and cooperate or we’re both going to be dead again." He wasn’t sure how many lives they had left between them and wasn’t wanting to find out any time soon. "Neither of us are cats, love, can’t be saying how many times we can come back."

"Cats and closets. I think you need this oxygen to revive some brain cells, mister. Look, I’m tired and cranky and seriously pissed. I’ve got a short list right now starting with Eduardo. I’d put you on it if I knew who you really were. Just get me somewhere to recuperate and I’ll not try too hard to figure out what to call you to put your name on that list. And for the last time, stop looking like him!" It was starting to cause her heart to constrict, seeing the much remembered face of her dead lover on this stranger. That bastard Eduardo was going to pay for this.

Spike scooped Buffy up and carried her into a lobby alcove with an overstuffed loveseat. He got her as comfortable as possible with as many pillows as he could find on the furniture in the room. "Just stay here and breathe. Keep that ice on your legs while I go kill a couple of demons."

Spike turned from Buffy only to see three more of the red-robed minions closing in quickly. Evidently Spike could forget about any secret attacks from here on out since the alert seemed to have gone up.

The first robed demon moved with unnatural speed, charging at Spike like a linebacker. He caught Spike with a body blow that would have knocked the breath out of Spike had he needed air. Spike flew into the wooden column that helped hold up the vega ceiling work. The column split and smaller wooden pieces were jarred loose, some falling.

"Balls! Nothing like providin’ stakes to the bastards," Spike thought as he gingerly got to his feet and sidestepped another of the demon monks. The third had already seen the same advantage that Spike had and was picking up some of the fallen decorative vegas. Each glorified stick was about the circumference of Spike’s thumb. They might not be pointy, but they’d still do a dandy job of staking an unfortunate vamp.

Spike was trading body blows with the minion he had sidestepped earlier, trying to keep his eyes on the now standing minion and his wood-wielding friend. The one pummeling Spike outweighed the vampire by at least as much as Angel did. Spike idly wished he had thought to have a bit of that bagged slayer blood before he had to take on this trio.


The one who had performed the tackle at the onset of the attack was coming up on Spike from the rear. He didn’t seem to be armed with anything other than his fists, but the fists, like the demons, were large. They looked like smoked hams on the end of long arms. Spike ducked in time to let the demon in front swing and miss, hitting the other demon’s face. A wonderful side effect, having the minion clock his buddy!

With the demons distracted, Spike was able to move away from the tag team boxers and dart around the one facing him. He drew up short when confronted with the wood bearing minion. A quick sidestep kept the makeshift stake from finding its mark.

Spike wasn’t sure if his magic suit was a sure thing or not but was grateful that it seemed to hold for now. The stake glanced off the material as Spike did a swing kick, knocking the demon off his feet. The demon, tangled in his red robes, fumbled to get up from where he’d landed next to the sofa containing the confused Slayer.

Buffy was completely unclear about what was going on and who these characters were, but she did know that the one that looked like Spike had helped her earlier. Besides, she didn’t think she wanted to see a Spike look-alike dusted in front of her. Seeing the real Spike begin to dust in the Hellmouth had been one time too many for her. Buffy took the oxygen cylinder she had been using and brought it down hard on the skull of the robed demon.

Spike was distracted by Buffy’s unexpected help and tossed a genuine grin her way before returning to battle the remaining two minions. "Thanks, love," he tossed over his shoulder to Buffy.

The demon wearing the black eye that had been intended for Spike came at him with a roar. This vampire was proving to be slippery and the Partners hated a disruptive element in their home. His large fist connected with Spike’s jaw, throwing the vampire’s head back in a violent jerk.

Spike returned the blow, catching the demon in the throat and cutting off his ability to breathe for a moment. This allowed Spike to turn his attention to the other minion, who picked up a wrought iron sconce and began to bring it down repeatedly on Spike’s back.

"I really don’t like my spine fucked with, you reject from a monastery! Buffy’s the only one gets to mess me up like that." Spike grabbed the approaching end of the candleholder and wrenched it from the demon’s hands, disarming him.

The other minion had regained his breath and was charging at Spike again, this time relying on a dagger instead of the fists he had been using before. He was evidently smart enough to notice that the material of Spike’s clothes seemed to repel stakes and was giving metal a go. When the demon saw the blade was having no more effect than the wood before it, he slashed at Spike’s unprotected face, catching him on the cheek.

Spike drew back but not before feeling the blade go deep, opening his left cheek from just below the eye to his jawline. With no time to move out of the other demon’s line of attack, Spike was kicked behind the knees, dropping him to the floor.

Spike dropped all the way to roll away from the two attackers and move closer to Buffy. Spike didn’t want the bloody git she’d walloped to come to and use Buffy as a hostage. Spike stopped rolling as he got to her position on the couch and kicked the still unconscious demon across the room and away from his girl.

Spike grabbed one of Buffy’s pillows and used it as a makeshift shield to help deflect the other demon’s blade as he came at him again, having followed Spike’s rolling move. The blade was used with enough force to rend the pillow. Stuffing flew around Spike, still crouched by the sofa.

Before Spike could get to his feet, he was crushed under the weight of both demons still in the fight. His last sight was the repeated connection of that ham-sized fist with his rapidly swelling face.

Buffy, still not fully functional, was torn between helping the Spike clone and indecision about if, or whom, she should help in this contest. Just as she decided to continue to back the one who looked like her dusted vampire, the minion she had hit with the oxygen recovered enough to take the decision out of Buffy’s hands and give her that rest she’d been begging for earlier. Soon Buffy joined Spike in the artificially induced blackness of unconsciousness.