“Okay.” Spike looked at their destination. “As the lone representative for evil, I would just like to point out that this is an insult to everything we stand for.”

“It’s a…” Buffy paused for a moment, blinking. She looked back at Spike, as if asking for some kind of explanation. An explanation he could not offer. “It’s a Build-A-Bear Store.”

The vampire just nodded, trying to keep his face in sober, sympathetic lines, and failing miserably. Meret’s thoughts were still impatient, but humor at the irony was slipping into her mind as well.

“But, but…” the slayer stuttered. “That’s just so… wrong,” she concluded lamely.

Spike just looked at the cutesy rows of smiling bear faces in the display window, decked out in banal stitched grins and nauseatingly adorable coordinated outfits. He couldn’t have agreed more. “What did Tara have to say?” he finally asked.

Buffy just rolled her eyes. “Something about convergence points, whatever that means.”

Spike ran a hand through his hair, fingers catching in the curls there. “Don’t see this goin’ down in front of the kiddies. Basement?”

The slayer nodded, adjusting her equipment bag on her shoulder. “Basement.”

A little broken glass, a little swearing when it shattered sharply across his bare elbow, and Spike had the store’s front door open. Buffy slipped past the vampire, who was busy pulling a sharp sliver of glass from his forearm. He whole heartedly wished that he hadn’t left his coat back in the crypt, ooze or no ooze.

He followed her in, stepping into a world of chintz so saccharine it made his teeth ache. Harmony would have loved it. Buffy poked around the stylized machines and walls of stuffed animal parts around the room. One door revealed a janitor’s closet. Spike slipped behind the counter and found the business office, which was painted in the same creepy pinks and smiling faces as the display room floor.

They picked their way to the back of the store, methodically checking each and every door, until they found Meret coiled around a door knob. She couldn’t seem to get a grasp on the handle, sleek scales slipping against the brushed silver. Buffy looked at the little serpent with some trepidation, met the vampire’s eyes, and nodded towards the door.

Spike tilted his head to the side and just listened. Sounds separated themselves from the underlying din that Spike, as a vampire, had to sort through every night of his unlife. Buffy’s heartbeat, steady and deep. Meret’s, rapid and fast. The low hum of the refrigerator’s compressor in the break room. Insects buzzing around the streetlight out front. The whispering brush of the wind and the random roar of a passing car.

Beyond the door he could hear more machinery, maybe a generator or four. The sporadic scratching sound he associated with rats, even the drip of water from a leaky faucet or damp basement wall.

If Giles was below, he wasn’t close.

Before he could tell Buffy that the coast was clear, Meret finally wrapped the end of her tail around the flat edge of the doorframe and wrenched the handle around. The Slayer gasped and reached for the doorknob, but it swung gently open, impatient coatl along for the ride.

They were met with stairs.

The crimson snake let herself uncoil from her perch, and with a powerful down stroke, sent herself sailing down the staircase. At the bottom, she banked sharply to the right and disappeared from sight. Spike cursed under his breath and took off after her, caution thrown to the wind in his wild chase. Her last solo jaunt still had him on edge.

Buffy followed him, muttering invectives into the darkness.

The bottom of the staircase opened up into a huge warehouse space, filled with all the stuffing and widgets for the store above. There was something indefinably obscene about the row after row of disembodied googly eyes and deflated stuffed animal limbs. Spike ignored them, plunging further into the darkness after the darting shadow that was Meret. When the gloom grew so thick that even Spike’s enhanced vision couldn’t keep up, he allowed his other face to come to the surface.

After two more turns down rows of shelves and overflowing boxes, he heard a dull thud and a startled cry behind him. Skidding to a halt, he turned just in time to see Buffy sit up from her position on the floor, sprawled next to her equipment bag. “What’re you playin’ at?” he hissed into the darkness. Meret, wait up! He only hoped that the coatl heeded his mental command.

The slayer looked up, wide eyes unfocused and searching. “Spike, where are you?”

“Right in front of…” he paused. “Oh.” He walked over and grasped the hand Buffy had thrust ahead of her, searchingly. “You can’t see, can you?”

Buffy allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, but she was scowling angrily, as if he was insulting her, before relenting and nodding.

“Think you can keep up if I keep a hold on to you?” he asked, voice low and urgent.

She seemed to think on it for a second before answering. “I’ll just slow you down. Haven’t you seen a light switch or something?” she asked irritably.

The vampire looked around, but they were surrounded on all sides by shelving. “Nope, and even if there was, the light might give us away.” Spike’s impish smirk was totally lost on the sightless slayer. “Do you trust me?” he asked as he stooped to pick up the bag for her.

Buffy pouted. “It depends,” she said, sulkily.

The words stung, wiping the grin off of his face. “On what?”

Had there been any light whatsoever to reflect in her wide, dilated eyes, they would have twinkled mischievously. “On the situation. With my back in a fight? Um, duh. But with my wardrobe? Pfft,” she made a dismissive gesture.

The vampire blinked. The slayer was teasing him. And had admitted in a roundabout way that she did trust him. Spike cleared his throat shakily and settled the bag with fidgeting fingers over his left shoulder. “Right then.” Without waiting for a response, he slid an arm around her shoulders and stooped low to hook her knees with his other arm. Buffy squealed in surprise, an amusingly girlish sound to come out of one of the greatest warriors he had ever known. “Stop squirmin’,” he grumbled, and she instantly froze.

The slayer wasn’t heavy, just a wisp of weight to his demonically enhanced strength, and Spike was soon jogging down the hallway again. He almost veered into a wall himself when the girl in his arms curled tightly against him, pressing her face against the bend of his neck. Her breathing was deep and even, her heartbeat only slightly elevated. If he was reading her correctly, he would have said that she seemed wholly unconcerned with her current vulnerability. The vampire’s hands tightened unconsciously, pulling her even closer against his chest.

It didn’t take long to catch up with the steaming serpent, whose imperious thoughts and darting motions lead them further into the darkness. They passed rows of old, clanking generators that lined the far side of the underground warehouse. Spike finally gave up on trying to hear anything other than the whoosh-bang of archaic machinery. He placed his faith in his feathered companion and just ran.

They soon came to a side room that housed a few battered lockers and a big grate in the floor. Meret hissed and puffed, diving wildly at the grate before pulling up at the last possible minute to circle and dive again. Spike gently dropped the slayer back on her own feet and went to take a closer look.

“What is it?” Buffy whispered.

“Grate or something.” He ran his hands along the shiny scratches around the hinge. “Looks like it’s been forced.” He leaned forward and inhaled deeply through his nose. A myriad of scents registered, but the two foremost were stagnant water and mildew. Damn. Sewers again. “Looks like we’re goin’ underground again, Slayer.”

Buffy only nodded.

Spike pulled the grate open, wincing as the rusty metal screamed in complaint. Buffy jumped a little at the noise, but soon relaxed again. She seemed to be looking at him, even if her eyes were unfocused when he neared. The vampire wondered if it had something to do with her slayer’s intuition, or ‘spidey sense’ as he had once heard Harris call it. He wondered what he felt like to her. Was he just another vampire, or could she pick him out, even without sight or sound? It was a question for another night.

Meret dove into the Stygian blackness and flashed a mental image of solid concrete, maybe ten feet below. Spike scooped up the slayer, and walked to the edge of the hole. “Ready love?”

She tightened her grip a little, and nodded silently against his neck. He jumped into the inky blackness below, a slight gasp from the girl in his arms following him down.

He landed, cushioning Buffy against his chest, and tried to get his bearings. These weren’t Sunnydale’s usual sewers, which had service lights and grates to the world above so as to let at least a little light into the world below. These were old, and blacker than a Vrexi’s heart. They stank of old magic and ancient, primordial earth. It set the vampire on edge.

Even his heightened eyesight couldn’t pierce very far into the darkness, so he started picking his way cautiously down the tunnel. Meret far outstripped him, her night vision apparently better than his own, but the flashes and snippets of thought kept him on the right path, twisting and turning after his winged guide.

The tunnels were damp and lined with plain, unchanging rows of grey, stone blocks. The scent was unrelieved mildew and soil. Even the clanking of the few weapons they had brought seemed to drone into the background, continuous and predictable. Nothing changed, except the direction of his turns as the coatl lead them further into the labyrinth. Spike knew that without Meret, there was a good chance that they would have wandered, hopelessly lost, for hours.

The tingling started a couple of minutes later. Spike didn’t really notice it at first, what with his senses already humming from the slayer in his arms, but it soon expanded until he was certain his fangs were going to be shaken loose. When Meret projected an image of a closed door around the next bend, Spike slowed to a stop.

“Think we’re here,” he whispered.

Buffy nodded against him, and he dropped her lightly on the concrete floor. Her hands ghosted against the bend of his neck for a moment, leaving behind a trace of heat in their wake. The vampire clenched his hands into fists to keep from returning the gesture.

Spike peered around the corner and was relieved to see a little light leaking out around the doorframe. It was enough for the slayer, who had unconsciously mimicked his own actions, to make it safely, and silently, to the door. She pressed a bare hand against the barrier; it was made of old wood, standing out in sharp contrast to the almost industrial blocks that had paved the way to it.

Meret, who had been fluttering above the doorway, glided to a landing across the vampire’s shoulders. He ghosted an unsteady hand down her back, but the rest of his attention was squared firmly on the slayer and the door she was inspecting.

The force of the magicks being marshaled in the room beyond the ancient wood, were more than a little jarring. Spike ground his teeth and had to concentrate to keep from going cross-eyed or worse. At Buffy’s silent, questioning look, he only nodded. If this wasn’t the right place, then he was Bob Marley.

He bent low and settled their bag as quietly as he could. Buffy joined him, kneeling next to the bag and pulling her escrima sticks out with only a few wince-worthy clanks of shifting metal and wood. Spike dipped into his own pocket and retrieved the set of brass knuckles he had pilfered from the slayer’s home. She quirked an eyebrow at that, but he grinned irrepressibly in return, momentarily breaking the tense situation with a little flash of good-humored fang. Buffy just grinned back and shook her head.

They rose as one, and Buffy took a couple of steps forward. She bounced for a moment on the balls of her feet, hands flexing instinctively over the polished rods in her hands.

The vampire tensed in anticipation, trying to steel himself against whatever they were about to find.

Right, direct approach it is.

He guessed right. In a flash, the slayer’s right foot lashed out and struck the door next to the handle and rusting locking mechanism. The old wood gave way, cracking planks and splinters flying inward.

Buffy threw herself through the open portal, Spike following only a hair’s breadth behind her. Spike’s eyes swept the room, instinctively taking stock of the battlefield, small though it was. The walls of the room were rough and earthen, protruding roots giving the area the impression of having been torn from the living earth. Tables ringed the room, covered in bundle after bundle of white silk. There were fetid liquids staining the cloth, and Spike didn’t have much problem guessing what the folds of fabric concealed. Between Willow’s description and the smell, these could only be the long rotten bodies of thirteen dead necromancers.

The limp bodies of little black birds, stitched and obscene, lay atop each wrapped body.

Bunches of juniper surrounding the bundles, dingy candles stuck in every available nook, dirty shovel propped against the back wall. Buffy had positioned herself slightly in front and to the left of the vampire. The ceiling was low, and the tables looked flimsy. All of these details were noted and passed in a flash, weighed on a subconscious level for potential danger or gain.

Even as the vampire’s mind registered the lay of the land, he was more actively concerned with the figure in the center of the circle of tables. Buffy too had skidded to a halt, balking under the weight of uncertainty and indecision. It was one thing to know who they were coming to fight. Actually being faced with the situation was another thing altogether.

Giles stood behind a cauldron, its reeking contents heavily tainting the air with the scent of decay. Tendrils of steam floated up and around the watcher, catching the light from the many candles lining the room. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes sunken, adding to his already unsettling appearance.

Buffy’s weapons dipped low, mute testimony to her conflicting emotions. As for Spike himself, the situation was a little more cut and dry. Everything about the watcher simply screamed ‘wrong’ to his senses. The way Giles stood, weight shifted slightly to the side, arms crossed lightly across his chest, was just off. So was his scent: a blend of Giles, more cologne than the watcher had ever worn before, and a cloying odor that was reminiscent of decay and open graves. The cant of his head, the rumpled appearance of his clothes, the way his face seemed to flush with fever: nothing seemed to fit. The vampire could look at the figure in front of him and immediately tell that while the lights were on, Rupert simply wasn’t home.

Elaine, in the watcher’s body, stepped to the side of the cauldron, revealing a clay chalice in his right hand. “You’re too late,” she said in a voice pitched too high, delivered in too clipped a tone to ever be mistaken for Rupert Giles. Elaine dropped the cup, the crude pottery shattering at her feet, clay damp but otherwise empty. A sinking feeling settled in the vampire’s stomach. The necromancer must have already drunk from her unholy concoction. With an oddly graceful twist that lacked all of the watcher’s usual efficiency of movement, Elaine stretched her hands to her sides and tilted her head back, face slack in an obscene parody of rapture.

Meret hissed against Spike’s neck. Words filtered through their bond and enraged emotions clogging the vampire’s own thoughts. Mine. The feathers along the serpent’s spine stood up in quivering rows, puffing up as if to make the little serpent seem larger in her rage. My family. Mine! She reared back, wings flexed and poised for flight. Defiler!

Spike couldn’t have agreed more. He stepped forward, slipping easily into a fighting stance. “Slayer,” he said, his voice a tight rumble of barely controlled anger, a seething echo of his scaled companion’s emotions. “Pull it together. That is not your watcher!”

“No,” responded Elaine with Giles’ mouth, looking at the two fighters again. “I’m really not.”

On the tables, the first of the birds began to stir.