Purple shag carpet wasn’t really Spike’s thing, and he had carefully refrained from smelling the sheets, but even rent-by-the-hour shelter was better than no shelter at all now that the sun was up. Not that he was actually paying. The vampire had jimmied the locks with a stolen credit card, long since cancelled by its real owner, but saved for its other uses. It wasn’t the best set up, but it had a bed and heavy curtains, which was more than he could say for the occasional gas station and fast food joint he had passed after leaving Vegas in his wake.

The television was humming low in the background, but Spike’s attention was riveted on the stack of papers in his lap. The convoluted key that Dawn wrote on the inside cover of her folders had not shed any light on the nature of Vianne’s Mirror. Pink was marked “BBP,” whatever that meant.

The notes themselves contained an odd jumble of old newspaper clippings, photocopied maps scrawled with loopy script, and hand written snippets written on abortive school notes. In between quadratic equations, Spike was able to piece together enough information about the mirror to know that once he got past the zombies, there weren’t any wards, false doors, trip wires, or other assorted irritants to worry with. However, the rest of the story did little to set his mind at ease.

Vianne Deauprix had been a rising star in the silent film industry. She had cut a deal with a law firm in Los Angeles, maybe not as infamous as Wolfram and Hart, but still insidious in its own right. Morganston, Horton, and Yule had provided everything the young starlet had desired, be it occult or commonplace in origin, but when her nasal voice had failed to make the transition to movies with sound, the firm had seized her holdings and finally, when she missed one payment too many, her soul.

Morganston, Horton, and Yule had gone under in the late eighties. Most of their assets, especially in L.A., had been subsumed by larger firms, but the caves in Nevada where the lawyers had stored some of their more volatile unmentionables went untouched, at least officially. Looters, covert operatives, and enterprising magic users, anyone able to go toe to toe with the defunct firm’s small army of zombies, had picked away at the cave’s contents until only a few object remained.

Dawn seemed convinced that the actress’ mirror was among them. The entire story confused Spike. The younger Summers had implied that the mirror was a powerful artifact, but why then was it among the dregs of the old cache? It didn’t make sense, but what the Nibblet wanted, the Nibblet received.

Finally, when the vampire decided that he had gleaned every last detail he could from Dawn’s notes, he tossed them back in the hideous folder, a color only Harmony could love, and reached to rifle through his coat pockets. He lit the first of what was probably going to be a long chain of cigarettes. While replacing the pack and lighter, he came across the loose sheaf Dawn had given him. Spike’s eyebrows knitted in curiosity as he unfolded the paper.

It was a letter from Tara, forwarded through Willow and Dawn’s e-mail accounts. The vampire took a long drag off of his cigarette and started reading.

Dear Spike,

Sorry you missed our call earlier. Willow and I are both fine, if busy. Between classes at school and with the coven, we’ve hardly had time to check out the places you recommended. Don’t worry, we’ll get to them all, even if The Ninth Circle Pub sounds more to your tastes than ours.

If you need anything, Dawn says we can use her address. I know that you’re more of a writer than you let on, and Dawn promised to leave you in peace if you wanted to send me a letter. I miss our conversations.

I didn’t realize that I would still be able to hear Meret from here in Bath. Send her my love. She’s been sounding upset lately. Take care of yourself too. If you decide to try burning off stress by finding the biggest fight you can, at least take Buffy with you. You know that you always get into trouble when you fly off on your own.

Tara

A small smile curved the corner of Spike’s lips. It was hard to tell if Tara had spent hours composing the letter, deciding how hard to push and what to ask, or if she was instinctively that circumspect. The vampire suspected the latter. Tara was empathic enough that he sometimes wondered if she didn’t have a little demon in her, despite his little demonstration the previous year. It would certainly explain her preternatural ability to see straight through him.

He tossed the letter aside. Tara might be a true friend and trusted confidant, but she was wrong this time. The fewer people around to muck up Spike’s head, the better. He didn’t want any of the Scoobies with him on this, especially the slayer.

The thought drew the vampire’s attention to the coatl, asleep on the room’s ratty couch. He had tried talking to her during the ride, but she had refused to answer, even if muted waves of confusion, anger, and fear coursed through her tiny frame. After Spike had broken into the hotel room and fed both himself and the serpent, she had finally opened up a little, even if her response had left the vampire just as confused as before.

In his mind, Spike had seen Giles, except that the watcher had no mouth.

He pondered the mystery. Had Giles refused to talk to Meret or had he somehow shut her out of his mind? Was he ignoring her? Was it a serpentine version of a nightmare after Dawn’s late night viewings of The Matrix?

Spike scowled and pointedly shoved that line of reasoning to the back of his head. No Scoobies. No thoughts about Scoobies. No plotting, pondering, or planning involving the Scoobies.

The vampire stood and grabbed his chair. After firmly wedging it under the door handle, he walked to the bed. He grabbed the trailing edge of the faux-satin comforter and ripped it from the bed. Two pillows followed and were soon arranged on the floor next to the bed on the far side from the door. An unfortunate incident in Morocco had impressed the unreliability of “Do Not Disturb” signs on hotels with external doors to the UV challenged. All it would take was a conscientious maid and a manager unwilling to let a few bucks slide, and Spike’s flimsy barricade would mean next to nothing.

However, he trusted that the sound of shattering glass or the chair catching in the shag carpet and breaking under the force of a determined landlord would wake him and his position behind the bed would afford him the time and shelter to avoid a serious burning. At least, that was the plan. In more cautious times, he would have placed his makeshift nest in the bathroom, but he had experienced enough days in a bathtub to last the rest of his unlife, and if he was going to be worth a damn, he needed a good day’s rest.

As the vampire drifted into an uneasy sleep, he felt the brush of feathers as Meret settled against the back of his neck, warming his dead flesh with her presence.

*****

“Stop clawin!’”

Spike’s axe bit deep into the shoulder of one zombie, temporarily incapacitating the shambling creature.

“On my bleedin!’”

The weapon came loose in his hands and the hilt led the way back into the face of another attacker.

“Coat!”

The irritating thing about zombies was that they were animated and controlled, to some extent, by a power source. This meant that as long as the talisman existed, so did its creations. Dawn’s notes had described the object, a chunk of rough hewn corundum, too ugly and dangerous to steal, because the zombies would follow the stone, too warded to be broken by magic, and too hard to be physically broken with ease. He only hoped that vampiric strength would be the tipping point.

Okay yeah, that was the weak point of his plan.

With a roar and a wild swing of his axe, Spike swept another rotting body out of his way and ran headlong down the corridor, severed head rolling behind him. Meret had flown ahead, skimming the ceiling in order to avoid the zombies’ grasping hands. In the coatl’s mind, Spike could see his path. While he had left more than a few zombies in his wake, the muffled sound of moaning ahead let the vampire know that following his serpentine companion would be no easy task.

But he hadn’t been looking for an easy task, had he?

A vivid image of a round chamber, filled to bursting with milling, rotting bodies blossomed in the vampire’s mind. Spike responded to Meret’s warning with a battle cry that was half growl, half wild laugh. Moments later he burst into the room, momentum broken as his twirling axe crashed head-long into the sea of zombies.

He spun, he parried, he lashed out with axe and feet, and dead flesh started to fall. Here an arm, there a chunk of scalp or shoulder, and everywhere the sickly green ichor that was all that remained of the animated bodies’ blood. Spike managed to carve out a corner of the room as his own, kept and held within the cutting diameter of his weapon’s reach.

Even though they were strong, impressively so if the vampire was honest with himself, the zombies were unarmed and deeply stupid. In between attacks and counter attacks, Spike managed to divide enough of his attention to look around the room. The ceiling rose far above him, barely visible even to his vampiric senses. A single walkway spiraled up the chamber’s walls, marked at regular intervals with rough hewn doorways and patches of glowing moss. In the center of the room rose a thin spire, too delicate and regular in form to be natural, and half way up: a pulsing chunk of maroon rock.

Aha!

Meret was wrapped around the glowing stone, trying to pull it free of its moorings, but her legless body and small size made finding a purchase nearly impossible. Spike pushed the closest zombies back with a wild arching swing and took off for the winding ramp. He took a few hits for his trouble, including a painful blow to the ribs, but he soon found himself sprinting up the narrow walkway. He was so intent on his goal that when the decomposing corpse of a middle aged man stepped out of one of the side rooms and into his path, the vampire plowed into the creature. They hit the floor and rolled a ways back down the walkway, effectively burying Spike in dead, clawing flesh. The distant clang of metal and wood announced his axe’s new location, namely two feet to the left and twenty feet down.

Spike tried to curse, but it seemed that the best, if not only, way to effectively silence the vampire was to bury his head under a few hundred pounds of putrid middle aged flesh. He kicked blindly, but his body was twisted into an awkward pretzel that made physically ridding himself of the hefty zombie nearly impossible. Taking the first course of action that popped into his head, the vampire sank his rapidly emerging fangs into the expanse of dead flesh.

The zombie’s groaning voice took on a vaguely bleating edge as it rolled away, but Spike could have cared less. His stomach was doing its level best to invert in response to the taste of zombie flesh on his tongue. It was worse than cold, coagulated pig blood. It was worse than the horse piss that passed for beer in the States. It was even worse than Buffy’s last attempt at Chicken Parmesan, which was really saying something. The vampire staggered to his feet and started spitting desperately, trying to get the horrific flavor out of his mouth.

The fat zombie chose that moment to charge, but Spike was in no mood to play. He captured the corpse’s flailing punch in his left hand and jammed his right, fingers splayed wide to grab, into the folds of chins. He added his own strength to the zombie’s momentum and pivoted abruptly, sending the putrid monster spinning down the pathway, toppling the group of advancing zombies that were shambling after the vampire.

Spike stumbled into a jog again, fumbling for his hip flask as he ran. A quick swig and another gagging spit later, and the vampire decided that he might not dust from sheer disgust after all. His skin was crawling and there was a lingering sour flavor under the taste of jack, but it was nothing a celebratory bottle couldn’t fix once his night’s work was done.

Check. Never but never bite a zombie.

Spike hazarded a glance over his shoulder, and saw that the pile of zombies had regained their feet, but the bottleneck of the narrow walkway was slowing their pursuit. Not that they had ever been known as great sprinters. The vampire shot them a smirk and an offensive gesture he knew they had no way of understanding.

When he thought he was high enough up the winding ramp, Spike poked his head into the nearest side room. There were a few battered boxes, upturned and empty, and a chair, barely standing on awkwardly bent legs. He kicked the listing piece of furniture aside and backed himself against the far wall. He looked back outside; the glowing rock was slightly below eye level.

Here goes nothing.

The fastest of his pursuers stumbled back and fell from the ledge when the vampire reemerged at a dead run. At the last second, he kicked away from the walkway and launched himself into the air, arms spread and coat flaring like leathery wings. Meret hissed in alarm and dove away from the rock, seconds before the vampire crashed into the spire. He slithered badly, but his flailing boots finally found purchase on the slick column. With a mad grin plastered on his face, the vampire started to climb.

When he reached the piece of corundum, he scowled at what he saw. The stone wasn’t really set into the spire as he had originally thought. It was more like the surrounding rock had grown around the talisman, sealing it into place. Spike eyed the glowing crystal with irritation. There wasn’t an obvious way to remove it that would leave a gaping hole in the spire, and thus a gaping hole in his perch’s structural stability.

Not that that really mattered three seconds later when one of the more enterprising zombies took a swing at the base of the spire. With a strangled “Fuck!” Spike clung to the narrow column of stone. When a few more blows didn’t manage to shake him loose, the vampire breathed a sigh of relief. The fall wouldn’t kill him, but the idea of bouncing off of the stone below, which suddenly seemed a lot farther away, just didn’t appeal.

Content that he wasn’t going to splatter all over the cavern’s floor any time soon, Spike looked back up at the stone and came eye to eye with Meret, who was wrapped around the narrow spire again. She tilted her head and Spike could suddenly see the fractures forming at the top of the carved stalactite. The message was clear. He would remove the stone and himself from the spire, or be removed.

“Right.”

A strong, cold hand wrapped around the red stone, which pulsated with heat, and tore it loose from its moorings. It flared brighter, a call that was answered with louder moans from the zombies that now lined the walls of the room, but Spike was more concerned with the gaping hole left in the column and the loud crack he could hear far above him. He shoved the fist sized lump of rough crystal into his coat pocket and looked back up at his serpentine shadow.

“Time to go!”

Meret hissed in agreement. She took off with a flourish of red feathers and spiraled wide around the vampire as he half climbed, half slid down the unstable spire, keeping an eye out for the both of them.

He was within kicking distance of the reaching zombies when pieces of stone the size of his head started falling like rain. He never saw the one that sent him spinning into the waiting arms of the corpses below.

A/N I'm still in the field doing my thesis research, but I'm almost done and I think I can get back to my regular posting schedule now. Also, for whoever's going to WriterCon, see you guys in a few days!