Spike was barricaded in one of the cave’s many storage rooms, keeping company with Meret and an armless, headless corpse.

The door leading out was blocked with a dusty, upturned desk and an old fashioned chest freezer which seemed to be packed with some kind of gravel. Spike hadn’t bothered to wonder at the contents, he had simply been grateful that the room held something heavy enough to keep the moaning, decaying masses at bay while he thought through his situation.

The vampire was perched on the freezer, rolling the maroon crystal between his hands, trying to figure out his next move. The badly damaged zombie staggered towards him, and Spike casually kicked it back over with his booted heel. It crashed against the far wall and left another reeking smear of putrid blood on the stone. As a vampire, Spike understood that life and death weren’t absolutes, but existed on a gradient, like most other things in the world. And while this particular zombie wasn’t entirely dead, it was certainly dead enough, and it’s endless rising, ‘attacking,’ and subsequent falling gave the vampire something to do with his pent up energy. Meret didn’t seem to agree with his assessment and had taken refuge in a nook on the far wall. She was alternating baleful glares between the zombie and her slightly more lively undead companion. The little serpent had made one abortive attempt on the zombie’s unlife, but after her flight feathers had been fouled by reeking ooze, she had made it plain that the corpse was solely Spike’s problem.

If pressed, Spike would have guessed that they had been sitting in the room for a couple of hours, ever since he had fallen into the rotting throng at the base of the collapsing spire. He wasn’t sure how many rocks had hit him when the column came crashing down, one had struck him hard on the head, and the next few moments were a little fuzzy. By the time he reached the tiny cell that was currently serving as his haven, he had a dislocated jaw, a swollen right eye, a few cracked ribs, if the grinding sound was to be believed, and one of his legs was twisted to the side at an angle that nature never intended. In addition to his worse injuries, his body was covered with numerous bruises, bites, cuts, aches, and pains. In short, he had just been on the receiving end of a pretty comprehensive ass kicking.

Oh, he had given as good as he had got. The thrashing half-a-zombie on the floor was actually in a little better shape than many of its brethren on the other side of the barricade. Somehow that didn’t comfort the vampire much. He had managed to reset his jaw, and the swelling in his leg and eye was fading, but he still felt like unadulterated crap.

Spike held up the glowing crystal and glared at it. He had already tried hitting it against the wall, the solid metal desk, and the zombie, which, while even less effective than the other surfaces, at least made an amusing squishing sound. Hell, he’d even tried biting the stupid thing, which had resulted in a chipped fang and his current sullen mood. Nothing was working, as the struggling body on the floor and the army of moaning masses on the other side of the desk told him.

He had come up with the idea of trying to crush the rock in the hinge of the chest freezer when a tiny sound caught his attention. It sounded like… but it couldn’t be… but yes it was. Spike’s eyebrows rose in surprise as he recognized the muffled strains of “Come On You Reds.” After a moment of confusion, he located its source: his back pocket. Out came the cell phone, and the vampire snorted in disbelieving humor. The little screen on the front said “Dawn” in blocky letters.

Spike flipped open the phone and drawled into the receiver, “Is the world about to end?”

Dawn’s voice sounded tiny through the phone. “Um, hi, and no, but I really need to…”

“Because I only took this thing on an apocalypse-only calling plan and the demon bird has threatened me with overage charges. You ‘Bit-napped again?”

“No Spike, but listen…”

“Look, I’m in a bit of a situation, so unless you can send the cavalry, or this is an emergency…” His eyes trained back on the zombie again. It was flailing around in another attempt to rise.

“It IS an emergency you dork-wad!” she yelled across the digital miles. Spike held the phone away from his sensitive ears. He had to give it to the cell phone company, not only could he get service in the middle of the desert, at the bottom of a cave system no less, but Dawn’s voice was just as piercing through the phone as it was in person. “What were you thinking?!” she shrieked.

Okay, that was unexpected. “What?”

“You just left? Without talking to her?!”

She didn’t really need to explain who “her” was. Spike had the sinking feeling that he had broken some unknown rule held sacred in female circles.

“Um, why would I need to…”

“Look, you just do. It’s like bylaw four in appendix six of the dating code. ‘Thou shalt tell your girlfriend when you leave town unexpectedly.’”

“You know we’re not, I mean I don’t think she…” He was sputtering now, confusion making an even worse tangle of his ability to defend against an irritated Summers. And had Dawn just called Buffy his…

“But you want to be, right? So you should have checked in with her. God, you can be so dumb.” Dawn’s tone of voice made it plain that she thought he was roughly one step above club moss in terms of intelligence.

“Hey, I never had to check in with Dru!” Spike eyed the other undead occupant of the room, who had finally regained its feet and was staggering in his general direction again.

“One, never let Buffy hear you compare her to Vampirella. Two, Dru was psychic. Which leads me to three, Dru was psychotic! But I see your point.” Spike could hear the girl tapping her fingernail thoughtfully against the phone receiver. “You weren’t ever house trained.”

Spike’s eyes flared yellow and he slammed the glowing rock down on the freezer lid. “Oi! I am not some kind of mangy…”

“No problem!” Spike’s mouth was left hanging at the girl’s interruption. “I’ve got you covered. Just make sure you come to the house before you run into Buffy. Okay, gotta run!”

“Wait! What?!” Spike sputtered into the suddenly dead line. He wanted to throw it against the wall, but Anya’s half angry, half calculating eyes seemed to glare back at him from the device’s blank screen. He took solace in punting the almost-zombie back to the other side of the room again instead.

He shrieked an incoherent sound of disgust before letting his head sink into his hands. As usual, he had managed to bollocks everything up. Apparently Buffy was angry at him.

Again.

Not that it would matter in the long run if he couldn’t figure a way out of his current predicament. He glared at the rock that was the source of his more immediate concerns.

He knew that it was directing the zombie guards. He knew it controlled or held the spirits of the people who once inhabited those bodies. Or was it souls? And what the hell difference was there between a spirit and a soul anyway? Spike grabbed the offending crystal and brought it before his eyes. He snarled and wished he knew of some way that he could just pull out those souls, like lancing puss from a wound.

The tingling started in his fingertips.

Alarmed, he tried to cast the crystal away, but his hands wouldn’t seem to obey his commands. The strange, itching tickle swept up his arms, followed by a bright, white light. He threw his head back, maybe to cry out, maybe to curse, he didn’t know, but instead of sound, light erupted from his mouth. The last thing he saw before the blinding cascade took over his eyesight as well was Meret flying towards him, her thoughts tinged with surprise and fear. The muffled moaning of angry zombies followed him into the white.

*****

Spike didn’t know where he was, or really, if he was.

There was nothing around him: no cave, no Meret, no hint of the serpent’s mental touch, no floors or walls. He was simply a dark spot of dyed leather and cotton floating in an endless sea of white light. He looked around, curious at first, but then with a rising panic, at the painfully silent, white wasteland. If Spike could imagine a true hell for someone with his boundless energy and gregarious nature, it was something like this: the total lack of anything. Awareness without any stimuli. No one to talk to, no one to fight, and nothing to amuse him during the long years that made up an eternity.

Right before a panicked shout ripped its way from his throat; a light grey blur appeared in periphery of his vision. It grew, or maybe it drew closer, but within seconds the shapeless mass had coalesced into the pale grey form of a woman. She would have been beautiful once, but she looked worn, as if years of strain had leeched all the life from her features. She was dressed in an ill-fitting business suit and her blond hair was done up in an over-tall chignon that had been popular during World War II. Spike opened his mouth to ask her what was going on, but the woman reached up and touched his face. Her hand was ice cold, but her smile was warm right until the moment she disappeared.

Other forms appeared.

Some darker, some lighter, but every one distinct and whole. One man had been dressed in the ratty layers of the chronically homeless, while the next had a hand tailored suit set off with diamond cufflinks and a crisply starched white shirt. Another girl appeared in a flapper dress, followed by a woman in Navy dress whites. There were so many, dozens, maybe hundreds of people, and each one brushed a hand over his arm or his cheek before disappearing. Spike lost count of the endless parade, but he gave up jerking away from their cold touch after the first half dozen or so. He also seemed to have lost his voice as well, even as a portly man who looked disturbing like the zombie he had bitten shook his hand and faded into nothingness. No one in the crowd moved to attack him, or even speak. It felt like the volume had been turned down in his mind, every move and thought was made as if through molasses, so he found himself an almost passive observer of the strange drama.

After a while, the crowd dwindled. The last people to pass him seemed to be the darkest grey of the lot, but even the whip-thin man in a leisure suit who simply radiated darkness, smiled tremulously when he neared the unusually silent vampire and rested his hand on Spike’s shoulder. A tiny thread of emotion, maybe regret, followed each of the spirits. At last, they were gone and Spike was alone again, but not for long.

“You did good work here, son of mine.”

Spike turned his head and found the old man in green standing next to him. Somehow he wasn’t surprised. “Who were they?” he asked, finding his voice again. The dreamlike detachment started to fade.

“Souls who have waited a long time to cross over.” Mictlantechutli rested a gnarled hand on the vampire’s shoulder. “They have gone to their fates now, one way or the other.”

Spike looked back into the white nothingness. “What did I do?”

“You freed them,” the god said, as if that explained everything. “It’s what you were chosen to do.”

Spike eyed him cautiously. “Why me?”

The man in green smiled, a comforting expression even in his wizened features. “If you need to carry water, do you take a full jar to the well?” At Spike’s disconcerted expression, Mictlantechutli continued. “No. You use an empty vessel. I just happen to need a sentient and willing empty vessel.”

Spike scowled fiercely. He didn’t like the idea of being used by anyone. “What do you want of me?”

“Nothing you wouldn’t already do if left to your own devices.” Mictlantechutli looked every part the frail, old human on the outside, but Spike had to marshal every bit of his hard won control to keep from flinching back from the power in the god’s green, lidless eyes. “Every time you kill a vampire, and release the last shreds of its humanity into the ether, every time you kill a demon and prevent the premature death of a single human, you are doing my work. The ability to channel souls is just another weapon in your arsenal.” The god turned to the vampire with a serious expression on his face. “You aren’t my slave, William. You are my son.” The god rested a withered hand on Spike’s shoulder. “And right now, my brother’s child needs you. I believe you will find your next piece of business a little closer to home.”

*****

Spike’s eyes opened and found the worried gaze of a crimson serpent millimeters from his nose. The vampire smiled ruefully. “Not rid of me yet, little one,” he croaked.

Meret tilted her head this way and that before something in her mind seemed to appease her. She brushed her scaled jaw against his cheek and managed to coil herself around his neck as he struggled to sit back up from his sprawled position on the freezer. No sounds came from behind the overturned desk; the cavern was as silent as a tomb. The vampire’s eyes were immediately drawn to the remains of the zombie on the floor. It was still finally, truly dead.

When he looked closer, the zombie took on a slightly more familiar appearance: that of an older man dressed in slacks and a polo shirt, grey and tearful, if smiling, as he brushed age gnarled knuckles against the vampire’s elbow in that sea of white light.

Spike shivered. He didn’t know how to feel about the corpse at his feet. Regretful? Not really, except for in the most abstract, unexplainable way. Proud? In a way. He had never had so many people look on him with thanks. It was hard not to be affected. Uncomfortable? Certainly, but he couldn’t decide if it was because he thought he had seen the soul of the man whose body had been hijacked by a law firm in need of cannon fodder, or because he was empty again. He hadn’t been dreaming any more than Buffy’s visions were mere fancies. For a moment, he had held those people’s souls in himself, but now he was just Spike again. Just a vampire. He wasn’t sure what he thought about that.

Twitchy, maybe.

Spike slid off of the freezer, coatl wrapped tightly around his throat. He ran a finger down the delicate ridge of her spine feathers. She virtually hummed with love and support, reminding him that no matter what, he was not alone.

“What d’ya say, little one? Want to collect our prize and go home?”

Meret’s happy puffs brought a smile to the vampire’s face.

No, certainly not alone.