Tara stood for a moment, still gaping at the scene before her.

“Glinda?”

“Oh, um, they’re feathered snakes,” she offered up a weak smile.

Spike blinked, expression stony.

“They, uh, were the favored familiars of ancient Mesoamerican warlocks,” she looked at Meret, who had chosen the top of the refrigerator as a good hiding spot, in awe. “They’re supposed to be extinct.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

“Anything else you’d like to share with the class?” Spike asked sarcastically.

“Yes. I mmmean, I think there’s a book upstairs. Give me a second,” Tara quickly ducked out of the kitchen. Spike could hear her rummaging around in the master bedroom upstairs moments later. The blond witch returned with a huge tome in her arms. She placed it on the counter before taking a seat next to Dawn. In gold leaf across the leather cover, Spike could make out the title: Hadrian’s Bestiary of the Exotic: Third Edition. Opening the book to the back, the witch started skimming through the index.

Tara apparently found what she was looking for and started flipping pages back towards the front cover. Spike watched in amusement as Dawn leaned over, surreptitiously trying to read some of the pages as they turned. She glanced up and realized that Spike had caught her, a wicked twinkle in his eyes. In response to her arched eyebrow, Spike gave the smallest of smiles. The two were far from strangers to conspiracy.

Scoobs are gonna have to let the Bit do some research soon, or else she’ll start lookin’ on her own.

Spike affected a bored expression and Dawn went back to her discreet spying.

After a few moments, Tara reached the page she sought. “Here! Willow mentioned it when we were researching that snake demon over the summer.” She started skimming the yellowed page. “Want to see the entry?” She shoved the book towards Spike.

Tara returned to staring at Meret until Dawn tugged on her sleeve and asked what had brought her home so early. The witch blushed and said she had been nominated for homework duty, to which the teenager winced and made a sour face. The two retrieved Dawn’s backpack from the dining room and settled down to work. Both of them pretended to concentrate on the math problems, but Spike caught their glances towards the fridge.

Spike turned the book around and quickly found the relevant section. He skimmed the first part, which covered the discovery and naming of the species, before finding the good stuff.

…Coatls display some telepathic and empathic talents which, while resembling similar magical spells, are actually an inherent trait of the species. A hatchling will imprint upon the first adult coatl it sees. A mental bond forms between the newborn and the adult, a link through which the hatchling will learn everything it needs to know to survive in the coatl covey. In time, the mental link will spread from the young coatl to other members of the covey through the connection with its chosen parent.

If an adult coatl is not present at a hatching, baby coatls have been known to form similar links with humans. The bond lets the human host and the coatl communicate with thoughts and strong emotions. These bonded coatls learn the habits of their human partners, such as diet and general disposition, much like they would have in the wild. Similarly, the human host will quickly develop a strong mental and emotional connection to a coatl hatchling. Once this bond is firmly established, the mental link has been known to extend to the person’s family and close friends, the bonded coatl’s approximation of an adopted covey. This connection only seems to function in one direction because the linked humans can sense the coatl, but not one another through the other bonds. However, since the coatl tends to echo the emotions of its original bond mate, the feelings it projects to other linked humans often, but not always, represent those of its host...

Sensing his interest, Meret flew down to land on Spike’s shoulder. She wrapped her tail tightly around the vampire’s throat and peered at Tara and Dawn with trepidation. All work on the equations stopped as the girls watched the tiny creature, but Spike paid them no heed and continued with his reading.

…A bonded coatl’s lifespan seems to be connected to the life energy of its human host. While a coatl can be killed, it will not die of disease or old age until its human companion does...

Spike skipped some of the more technical theories attempting to explain the mental and physical link. The esoteric “whys” were not as important to him in that moment as the “whats.” He soon found another interesting section.

…When it was discovered that coatl feathers vastly strengthened mind reading spells in the early eighteen hundreds, the creatures were hunted to extinction by black market bounty hunters. The last sighting of a wild coatl occurred in 1862 and the last known bonded coatl died with its partner, a Mr. Charles Hurst, in 1897...

From that point on, Spike only picked out interesting snippets from amongst a sea of technical jargon and admitted speculation.

…highly intelligent, more so than dogs or even chimpanzees...

…able to fly and carry proportionately heavy loads from birth...

…subsists on insects and small mammals in the wild...

…will fight bitterly to defend its covey or human partners...

…hermaphroditic, starts laying eggs upon reaching maturity...

The following page held a drawing of an adult coatl and its nest.

Well, I’ll be damned.

“Glinda, I’ll be borrowin’ this book.” Spike’s tone of voice was pitched to dissuade argument.

She snapped her attention away from the tiny creature coiled around his neck. “I dddon’t think Mr. Giles would… I mean, I’d have to make sure that Willow is…”

“Look ducks, I’ve got a beastie who shouldn’t even exist knockin’ around inside my head, thinkin’ I’m her mum. I’ll return the book safe and sound to Red and Rupes as soon as I get a handle on the situation. I think I need it a little more right now, yeah?” Spike’s posture dared the witch to disagree. “Also, I’d appreciate it if you kept this little secret among the three of us.” He held up a hand when Tara and Dawn both opened their mouths to protest. “Don’t you have more important things to worry the others with, like recently dead slayers? Meret here would just be a distraction.” For someone with a decidedly warped conscience, Spike knew the mechanics of a good guilt trip by heart. The two girls shut their mouths with audible snaps and twin guilty expressions. “They’ll all find out in time, not to worry.”

But not for a very long time if I can help it.

“Right, be seein’ you Bit, Glinda,” and with that, he turned to go.

“Bye Spike! Thanks for the dagger!” called Dawn.

“The what?” blurted Tara. Spike beat a hasty retreat, tome in hand, making good his escape through the back door and into the yard beyond.

Time to test a theory.

*****

Spike sat on the floor of his crypt, a pile of ashes and cigarette butts piled in front of him. He pulled out the shards of the broken pendant and lined them up neatly next to him before shoveling the remains of the cigarettes back into their urn. He dusted off the fragments as best he could and carried them over to where the huge book waited, open on the stone sarcophagus.

Sure enough, the shards shared the same green swirls described in the entry and sticky bits of membrane still clung to the inside of some of the pieces. If the scale in the drawing was to be believed, the size was about right as well. It wasn’t a charmed pendant he had won off that drunken warlock.

It was an egg.

He deposited the eggshell in a little broken dish from his cupboard, unsure as to what to do with it. Then he vaulted on top of the sarcophagus and crossed his legs, head bent to read.

Starting from the very beginning of the entry, Spike read the entry with careful detail. The only section he skipped over described the various magical spells that used coatl feathers and scales as components. He’d get to that with the ex-demon bird once Meret started shedding.

I bet two of Meret’s feathers would keep me in smokes for years.

He felt a questioning tendril of thought from Meret. He glanced up to find her wrapped around Dave’s chest, nose a hair’s breadth from the statue’s mouth as if wondering why the stone figure did not speak to her.

“Sorry little one. Dave’s conversations tend to be a little one-sided.”

Meret glanced at him before turning her attention back to the marble saint. Spike snorted with amusement. If the little serpent was supposed to learn proper behavior from him, she was doomed to failure from square one. So far he had managed to start her off eating an all-blood diet and trying to communicate with a stone monument.

William the Bloody Role Model, that’s rich.

He finished the section on coatls before reading it through a second time. He had learned little more for his efforts except that Meret was in fact from a Central American subspecies. South American coatls were green and the African ones had more leathery skin to better handle the dry desert air. He even attempted to cross reference related species, but to no avail.

Spike found it disturbing which details he had not found in the entry. There was no mention of coatls bonding with vampires or other demons, no hints as to what changes that might create in the link. And the bonding with friends, did the emotions have to be returned or did his feelings alone mark those that Meret would contact? Things could get really awkward with the Scoobies if that was the case. Too many questions would arise that Spike had little interest in answering.

The only plus side was that the detailed descriptions of coatl behavior gave him a good idea of what he needed to do to care for the little creature. In a small side cavern, hidden from direct view from the main sleeping chamber, Spike found an ornate bronze brazier among his loot from past battles and discreet thefts. Using the head of a battered axe as a hammer, Spike pounded the anchoring chains into the bare rock of the main chamber’s ceiling. When he was satisfied that the shallow dish was secure, he tossed the remains a red silk shirt, torn in one of his recent fights, into it for bedding. He promised himself that he would steal Meret a birdbath at the first opportunity. Not one of the cheap, concrete ones either, one of the fancy metal ones he had seen in the yards of some of Sunnydale’s wealthiest citizens.

“Meret, got somethin’ to show you!” he called from the lower cavern. In a moment, the little serpent fluttered through the hole in the ceiling and sailed to his side. “Like it?” he queried.

The coatl’s mouth dropped open with a happy puff before she darted to her new bed. Spike smiled and wondered where she had been sleeping before she had awakened him from his drunken stupor. Meret landed in the dish and nosed around in the shirt. Spike chuckled when she poked one of the chains with her snout and hissed with surprise when the motion sent the brazier swinging.

“All yours little one.” Meret fluffed up her crest feathers in happiness before flying to Spike’s shoulder and rubbing her jaw along his cheek in appreciation. “Oi, none of that!” he complained, but the smile never left his face.

It went completely against his tough guy façade, but on a very basic level, Spike craved feeling needed. As a human, he had found his place tending his ailing mother. As a vampire, he had waited on Drusilla hand and foot, catering to her every whim. If the slayer had let him, he would have spoiled both her and Dawn rotten. After months of solitude, Spike had found a new focus for his care. He fully intended to lavish as much attention on Meret as he had any of the other women in his unlife.

“Now, how about findin’ you a bath?”