chapter 30 – make me wanna holler - part II

Luke’s fingers felt cold and clammy on her skin. He was holding her wrist, and pulling her at his side as he strutted around in a large circle ranting.

“Where the hell is she? She’s got to be here. Do you understand me? She’s got to be here!”

He was like a child having a temper tantrum, screaming and stomping, which struck Dawn as practically strange considering they were standing in the middle of sky. At least that's where she was—balancing between portals in a dimensionless void. All blue and formless, it made her stomach queasy with its emptiness and lack of touch or smell.

This portal jumping business was getting curiouser and curiouser, she thought.

Wasn’t that always the case? As soon as you think it—it gets worse.

Now, she was teetering on top of a thin pale cloud after stepping out of an airplane at 30,000 feet. A cool, moist breeze snaked beneath her feet and between her toes, making her shiver with fear. Dawn wished she could wrap the nothingness around her like a magician’s cloak and disappear. This in between dimension thing was more disorientating than any portal ride she'd ever taken.

She looked down at the shoes on her feet surprised. She hadn't felt them there a moment before. She'd slipped them on when she and Carlo had jumped out of bed and made their hasty exit from New York. But with the clouds and the sky and all, she’d forgotten about footwear—and Carlo. It hurt her chest too much to think about him, she decided. Maybe that was why she'd put him out of her mind. Better to trust that Giles had found him than worry, right? Besides, she couldn’t protect everybody. Her priority had to be Buffy. She didn’t want her sister to get dead again.

“I said where the hell is my muse?” Luke roughly pulled her to him. They were standing nose to nose. “You know where she is, don’t you?”

He was searching her face, looking for the truth she imagined, but his eyes and his voice were pleading with her. “Please tell me what you’ve done with Anya.”

“I haven’t done a thing." Her voice sounded frightened, but she couldn’t help that. He was weirding her out. One minute he was intimidation, torture guy, and then a scared and angry two year-old child.

“This is what you wanted, me here with you. I didn’t take anything from you. I just want you to leave me and my sister alone.” Dawn jerked her arm free of his grasp.

“Mmmm. That’s right. Your sister.” He lifted a finger to his lips. “You will tell me where I can find my muse.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and grinned. “The Slayer will die if you don’t.”

He let her go and started pacing in a small circle. Then he stopped. “There’s someone else who can help me, isn’t there?” He clapped his hands together and laughed, a short loud burst. "I'm right, aren't I?"

“I won’t let you hurt any one else.” Dawn spoke slow and deliberate, the fear gone from her voice.

“What are you talking about?” He tilted his head, a bewildered expression on his face. “I’ve collected my gifts every day for the last 1,000 years and you dare to—threaten me?”

He whirled like a spinning top, and then floated to a standstill in the middle of nothing.

Dawn squeezed her eyes shut and opened them slowly. She was trying to focus on his face and not on the stars circling around inside her head. Her stomach wasn’t going to last if the freaking spinning didn’t stop.

“You and this damn vampire slayer are comical.” Luke leaned against an invisible post, and eyed her from head to toe.

“Do you have some kind of power beyond that of a Key? Power I don’t know about?” His humorless chuckle made her belly feel even worse. “Please tell me if you do so that I can remember to be afraid—so I can remember not to kill you and your sister when I’m done with this dimension.”

“Spike can stop you,” she blurted. It came to her just like that. Spike had opened portals and could stand in the sunshine. He’d made Buffy run away from him in the Night World. He had super strength and the chip wasn’t bothering him. Humans weren’t a problem. He could kill anything. Dawn would bet her stash of Keifer Sutherland photos hidden beneath her bed—because Keifer, way too old for her—that Spike could kick Luke’s scrawny pale ass. No problem.

“Thanks for the warning.” He said casually, but Dawn hadn’t missed the anxious frown on his face. The idea of Spike getting in his way bothered him. That had to be good.

If she could only just reach Spike, like through telepathy or something. Then she could tell him where she was and he’d come and get her out of this mess. The Key had to be able to do more than whip up a few portals.

Dawn had never tried talking without using her mouth. Maybe she could do that thing Willow had done in the summer. Tara had told her about Willow’s then new power. Could be it wasn’t so much of a witch thing as a power thing, and if Dawn had real power, then it made sense that mind talking was automatically on her can-do list.

—Spike, if you can hear me, I’m with Luke, and he’s afraid.

Dawn turned her head away from Luke and hoped he hadn’t noticed her face was all scrunched up. She could feel her eyes squinting and her lips stretching thin as she struggled to make the words inside her head reach Spike.

—We can hurt him. I can hurt him. I feel it, but I need your help. Now.

Suddenly wind, lots of wind, hit her in the face and ripped at her skin and her clothing. She held her t-shirt down and prayed that the wind wasn’t pulling her hair out by the roots.

Then it stopped and the sun was shining on her face and she could breathe. There was also grass beneath her feet.

“What happened?” asked Luke. His voice was much calmer than Dawn had expected.

But, she ignored him and looked around.

A large well-tended green lawn stretched out before her and a familiar row of low bushes dotted with pink and red roses shimmered in the sunlight. She glanced at the horizon. A tall fern, branches weighted down and full of wide stiff leaves, shadowed the park bench where she and Luke had sat an hour earlier. Or had it been days before? Who knew the deal with time and portals? But from the sun’s position in the sky, Dawn guessed it was early evening on hopefully the same day she and Luke had left.

Luke wasn’t going to like it. But they were back in Sunnydale.

“Damn it!” Luke screeched. “How the hell did we get here?”

Dawn smiled. Spike must have heard her.

“Dawn!”

She fell to her knees. Willow's voice was vibrating through the air with such power and intensity, it had knocked Dawn down on the ground. Then Willow's tone registered in her mind, it was all shrill and angry and scared her. Dawn could feel the truth in it as soon as she'd heard her.

Willow hadn't come to her rescue.

“Witch!” Luke had fallen to the ground next to Dawn. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, clawing at the dirt, trying to get back on his feet. His blue eyes had turned red and his pale skin scarlet.

Damn, damn, damn.

Spike wasn't coming. He hadn't heard her shouting inside his head, Willow had though. Dawn tucked her knees beneath her and pulled her body into a crouched position.

She'd just have to stop Luke and deal with Willow all by herself.



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Buffy had run out of Giles’ apartment as soon as he’d finished his mumbo jumbo spell. The first twinge of pain in the back of her head had started as soon as the last word had come out of his mouth. She didn’t want to writhe in agony in front of everybody, so she’d marched out saying something about needing to change clothes and grab weapons from Revello Drive before the pain got too bad.

There was some truth in her words. She needed a clean shirt and a pair of jeans, and she had the time. When Dawn first got the headaches, it had taken hours before the scratching and clawing and screaming and flailing began. Even then, she'd stay lucid long enough to point at a pile of clothes on the floor near the closet in their mom’s bedroom. "There"! Dawn would scream. The monster was buried beneath the dirty cloths, shrouded in a black cloud, and it was coming from there!

Buffy wasn’t seeing any clouds yet, so she was good for a while.

“This isn’t your bloody best plan ever, Pet.”

That was the only downfall of her escape. Spike had followed her from Giles’ apartment, giving her an ear full every step of the way to Revello Drive. He hadn’t even taken a breath, and since he had to breathe, that struck Buffy as just plain ridiculous. How could anyone talk that much without the least bit of encouragement? She hadn’t even looked at him. Her eyes were pinned on the sidewalk in front of her. Jaw set like concrete. She hadn’t even craned her neck in annoyance, just stomped in a straight line right to her front door.

Only once had she seriously considered telling him to bugger off. Use his own words to get him out of her hair. It had been his comment about the next time he needed her blood and what he’d do—well, she wasn’t certain what he’d said he'd do because she’d stopped listening to him after the ‘her blood’ line. But she didn't turn around and punch him in the noise, she kept her eyes on the pavement and kept walking.

But down deep and okay, maybe not that far down deep, she needed Spike especially now.

Buffy wasn’t looking forward to suffering through the headaches alone, and being with Anya and Xander or even Giles simply wasn't what she wanted to do. The plan was about saving Dawn. She didn’t need to have half of the Scoobies fretting over her while she waited for the excruciating pain that would make it possible for her to help her sister.

But she certainly hadn’t counted on Caring Spike.

She glanced over her shoulder as she stepped up onto the porch of her house. He was trailing behind her a few feet. She opened the front door and stepped through the archway quickly and then tried to slam the door in his face.

Spike was at the door in a flash, stopping it from closing with a swiftly raised hand. Damn it, she cursed. There was no chance of the door making that decisive sound she was hoping for. The thud against his palm didn’t register the same degree of frustration as the exclamation mark of a door slamming shut.

“This is a mistake, Buffy.”

He’d said that at least six times during the last block alone.

“Spike, you’ve made your point." She glared at him over her shoulder, and then headed up the stairs to her room. “But it’s not going to change a thing. I’m doing this and you’ve got to deal with it.”

“Always with the short cuts, Love.” He was following her up the stairs. “Not a good strategy at all.”

“Oh, and this coming from Mr. Always with a Plan?” She turned to face him as she stepped up onto the second floor landing. Being above him on the stairs put her at his eye level. “Excuse me, did I say man or man slash vampire, or does that make you a man-pyre?”

She didn’t wait for him to reply as she spun and stomped down the hallway to the bathroom.

This time she did slam the door.

“It’s insane for you to be the one to get these blasted headaches,” shouted Spike. “I can do this, Buffy. I can stop Luke and Willow.”

Buffy turned on the facet and threw a handful of cold water on her face. She could hear Spike pacing back and forth on the other side of the door muttering to himself.

“Would you stop it?” She flung the door open. “You have no idea what you might do.”

She shoved Spike out of her way and marched past him into her bedroom without a second glance. Her brain was stuck, repeating over and over in her head Spike can't go after Dawn. The memory of his face as he stood on that window ledge in her New York apartment hadn't left her. He’d been frightened, horribly so, and that had scared Buffy more than she could understand. Even now, she couldn't look at him without remembering his eyes and how his hand had trembled as it rested on the glass.

Then she'd run after him and into that alley and nearly died, because she'd had no choice. No other thought but to save him.

Damn, that had to be it. The thought spell.

She hadn't wanted to believe it. But that had to be the reason Spike mattered so much to her, that he mattered to her almost as much as Dawn. It was the spell. That explained why she had let him bite her. Why she had wanted him to.

She was in her bedroom now. Pulling armloads of clothes out of her dresser drawer, flinging them over her shoulder as she tried to ignore the tears running down her face.

Spike might want to be the one to face Luke and deal with Willow, but she knew he couldn’t handle it. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the risk was too great. Whether a spell made her care for him or not, she wasn't going to let Spike go. He might turn evil or die—really die because he was alive. He breathed. And Buffy wasn’t ready for him to die. She wasn’t ready for anyone to die.

Not Spike, not Dawn, not any of them. Not if she could stop it.

Buffy leaned forward on her dresser and took a deep breath. She looked up at the cross hanging on the side of the mirror and moved her fingers over the silver chain, slowly and carefully.

What had happened to her?

That young girl who would always cherish that necklace with its simple cross. A gift given to her by a dark-haired vampire she’d loved more than life itself once upon a time.

Buffy could taste the salt on her lips. Her face was hot as she shifted her gaze to a curvy-shaped bottle filled with her mother’s favorite perfume. It was hidden behind the jewelry box crammed full of gold and silver hoop earrings and oversized rhinestone brooches. In the corner, next to a can of hair spray was a photo in a black frame. Willow and Xander’s smiling faces, eyes only slightly sad, beamed up at her. It had to have been taken junior year—just before Spike and Drusilla showed up in Sunnydale.

She shivered as she felt Spike move behind her. He was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her neck. She sank against his body and hugged his arms over her chest as he reached around her.

“It hurts,” she whispered. The pain in her head had been building, vibrating like gunshots in a glass jar, cracking and shattering her skull.

“Tried to keep your mind off of it, Love.” He’d turned her to face him and before she could say a word had lifted her into his arms and was carrying her toward the bed.

Holding her easily with one arm draped around her, he pulled the sheet down and laid her across the mattress, talking to her the entire time. Soft words—loving words, hopeful. If her head hadn’t been hurting so badly, she’d have smiled at him. He never knew when to shut up. Thank God.

“Oh, Spike, I’m sorry.” She held on to his hand. “But these feelings we have are because of the thought spell. I didn’t think that way before, but they have to be. We never...”

“Shush.” He placed a finger on her lips. “Doesn’t matter, Love.”

His eyes were so blue, staring at her with such tenderness. It made her feel warm and loved to look at him, to feel his arms around her body, to feel his lips on her forehead, kissing her gently.

She could get used to Caring Spike. He wasn't bad, wasn't that bad at all.


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Buffy felt his weight leave the bed and opened her eyes. She hadn’t remembered dozing off. She didn’t think she could with her head hurting so much.

“Spike?” she whispered.

He was kneeling next to the bed, watching her. She started to smile at him, but Spike didn’t look well. Not well at all. There was sweat on his forehead and throat, and his jaw was clenched tight, but it trembled when she touched his hand, which was resting on her stomach.

“What did you do?” She asked, her voice shaking.

The strain was evident on his face and his breathing was shallow.

"What did you do?" She asked him again, pushing herself up onto her elbows.

"I jumped.”

“What?" She could hear the panic in her voice, but couldn't stop it because there was a black cloud surrounding him and she couldn't see through it.

"No! Damn it, Spike. No!"

Then the cloud disappeared, and Buffy swung her legs onto the floor and rushed to the he door and pulled it open.

Oh God! She couldn't see him. He wasn't in the hallway. She staggered toward the staircase, and grabbing hold of the banister, steadied her legs as best she could as she wobbled down the stairs. Before she even reached the bottom step, she saw that the front door was closed. He hadn't come this way.

Damn. She had to find him. Make certain he hadn't done something stupid. She had to find him, and Dawn and Willow, and bring them home. Safe and alive.

“Spike!” she screamed in frustration.

But he was gone, just like her headache.

To be continued…