Chapter 7 – Leave It To Me



Spike banged through the door of the Kwik LiQ All You Can Drink wearing his meanest vamp face and slammed his fist on counter.

The clerk shook with fear as Spike approached. “What can I get you, Sir?”

“Jack and a carton of Morleys.”

The clerk fetched a bottle of Jack Daniels and the carton of cigarettes and placed it in a paper bag. “Will that be all?”

“That will not be all, not by a bleeding long shot. If little Miss Tiny thinks she can give me the brush off, just because I got her preggers, she’s got another think.”

The clerk looked confused, but said nothing.

Spike stormed out of the store without paying, since the clerk had been too scared to ask for money. The late night butcher handed him a bag of blood without asking, too.

Getting his blood and booze and smokes without paying did not put Spike in a better mood.

He stalked home through the rain to his crypt taking the long way around the university campus, talking to himself, and yelling at an imaginary Buffy and drinking from his bottle of whiskey. He was too distracted and busy talking to himself to pay much attention to his surroundings.

As he walked past the burned-over field where the university’s computer department once stood, an Army truck’s engine turned over and followed him at a distance, with its lights out.

“So much for falling in love with the Slayer, you stupid blighter. She’s mad at you for putting a bun in her oven. She only wanted to have sex with you, not fall in love, you big poof. You were ready to throw your heart at her feet and instead, she gave you the mitten.”

Right after he’d climbed over the cemetery wall and jumped down, the soldier boys snuck up behind him. He’d been too busy arguing with himself and Buffy to hear them stomping around in the bushes.

A thick net billowed over him and thumped down on his head. He slipped on the wet grass, crashed to the ground and fought against the net while a big Army boot kicked him in the ribs. Four soldiers, headed up by Buffy’s favorite bleeder, stood around him. Escape was hopeless, but Spike kept thrashing around.

What he wouldn’t give to have his chip turned off for an hour or so while he ripped Finn’s head off his shoulders. Instead, he let himself get caught again by that pack of gits from the Initiative. If he hadn’t been brassed off at the Slayer, it would never have happened.

Finn leaned over Spike holding his stun gun.

“Got you again, Ass Face,” Finn said. He zapped Spike lightly with his stun gun, not full strength, but enough to hurt a great deal.

Spike moaned.

Finn planted his boot solidly on Spike’s chest and forced him to stop writhing and tearing at the net with his fangs.

“Bite me, Captain Cardboard,” Spike said, gripping Finn’s boot through the net so he could throw him off.

Finn lifted his boot and zapped Spike with a stronger bolt this time, enough to make him scream.

“Listen up Hostile 17,” he said when Spike stopped screaming, “I’m giving you a present. I’m deactivating your chip.”

A thrill of excitement leaped through Spike’s mind when he heard Finn’s words. A deactivated chip meant he could return to his old life. The life he’d enjoyed before the government put the chip in his head and Buffy grabbed his short hairs and yanked. Feeding and hunting and biting. Maybe he’d take a bite out of Buffy while he ravaged her. And, not a lovey dovey bite like the one he’d given her this morning when she was all soft and teary. No a real bite this time. A bite that would make her toes curl for a week. Yeah, that’s what he’d do.

What was he saying? Not Buffy. He’d bite some other delectable blonde college girl. That would show her.

The thrill turned to cold horror. If he lost the chip, Buffy would stake him as soon as she found out, and nothing as trivial as the fact he was the father of her unborn child would stop her. She’d sent her first lover, Angelus, sailing into a hell dimension without a blink of her eye.

“No!”

“Yeah. I know what you’re thinking Seventeen. You’re thinking the Slayer will dust you the minute she finds out. She will, too. This is the end of your sniffing around after Buffy and humping her like a dog every time Walsh gives you a hard on. Buffy’s going to find out what kind of psycho killer vampire scum you are, when there’s no chip controlling your every move. Then, she’s going to kill you.”

Not all the soldiers agreed with Finn’s plan. A black soldier grabbed Finn’s arm.

“What are you doing, Finn? You can’t take his chip out. He’s a killer. You said we were taking him back to base.”

“Shut up, Gates,” Finn answered.

Finn reached into his combat vest and pulled out a black control box. He played with the digital display for a minute, tuning the box to the frequency of the chip inside Spike’s brain. Once satisfied, he tested for contact by firing the chip.

Spike bellowed and grabbed his head, further tangling himself in the net.

“Good. Got you on the screen. This is the fun part. Don’t forget to wake up before sunrise. I wouldn’t want you to torch before Buffy finds out you’re no longer defanged.”

Finn set the controls to send a deactivation wave to Spike’s chip and mashed the button.

Spike shrieked from intense pain as the chip fired, then passed out as the arcs of electricity scorched his brain.

Rays of sun were striking the headstones when Spike drifted back to consciousness. The soldiers had dragged him under the dappled shade of a tree before they left to keep him from being fried by the first rays of the sun. The net was gone and so were the soldier boys. Had he dreamed what happened? No, his head ached too much for this to be a dream. The bloody bastard deactivated his chip, or, he said he did.

Spike got to his feet and collected his crushed carton of cigarettes from the ground where he dropped them when he was attacked. His bag of pig’s blood had been stomped open and had gushed onto the ground. The soldiers nicked his bottle of whiskey, too. Pricks. He needed a drink.

Spike stumbled home to his crypt, dodging under the shadows of the trees, his brain on fire.

***

Buffy ditched class that morning to avoid sitting under Professor Walsh’s evil eye. She was sure Walsh knew Buffy was expecting a Spike baby and would find some way to gloat over her success. Walsh Gloating seemed infinitely worse than Giles Nagging.

She picked up a box of Crispy Creamy jelly donuts and reported to the Magic Box for research duty about ryzark demons and Slayer pregnancies.

Her heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t want to spend hours digging through musty old books and listening to Giles gassing on and on and berating her for getting involved with Spike.

She missed Spike. She missed him and she didn’t want to hear a bunch of stuff from Giles about how wicked Spike had been in the past and would be still if he had half the chance, and how she should have known better after Angel and blah blah blah. She was upset about her fight with Spike, but it was pointless to patch things up now that she planned to find a normal guy to marry.

Giles was buried in a pile of books and papers. Willow was sitting next to him, flipping pages furiously and avoiding looking at Buffy. Tara was helping, too. Tara blushed as she leafed through the pages of a thick book on demon-human mating. Buffy had scoped out that book herself once, when she was a teenager and Giles hid the book from her. She learned a lot of things from the demon-human mating book that were not covered in Health Class.

“Find anything?” Buffy asked. She dropped the donuts on the research table. She didn’t even want to eat a jelly donut. She was too upset.

“Nothing,” Giles said. “I’m afraid our work here is useless. The Initiative is not playing by the old books as far as I can tell. I haven’t found any prophecies or predictions about your, er, predicament. We need more information about the program they’re running. I may need to fly to Washington to check the resources at the Library of Congress.”

“It’s not a predicament. It’s a baby. Does Congress have a library?”

Everyone, except Tara, looked at her like she was a nitwit. She hated when they did that.

“Joking,” she said.

Buffy picked up the loose papers Willow printed out when she hacked into the government computer a few months earlier. “Did you read through the stuff Willow got before?”

“Yes,” Giles said, “but there are a number of other referenced documents Willow didn’t obtain. Willow, we need you to break into the government’s computer again and get more information.”

Willow’s face blanched at his words and she exchanged nervous glances with Tara.

“I can’t. It’s too dangerous,” Willow said.

Tara pressed Willow’s hand and nodded to her. “Go ahead.”

“Buffy, I … I want to tell you something,” Willow said. “I did a bad thing.”

“What, Will? You helped before with the computers and stuff. That wasn’t bad.”

“Did you use the condoms, the Vampires Always Get Invited In condoms?”

Buffy did not want to discuss black, French-tickler condoms in front of Giles. She studied her fingernails so she could ignore his penetrating stare. “Yeah. Those were great … I mean useful … I mean ….” Her voice trailed off.

How did Willow know about the condoms, any way? Had Willow done another stupid spell that screwed up?

“Professor Walsh gave them to me. The government caught me when I hacked their computer before. Walsh said if I didn’t convince you to use the condoms, she’d throw Tara and me into prison for twenty years. I think there was something wrong with them. You can yell now, if you want.”

“Oh.” Buffy said. She ought to be upset, but she wasn’t. She touched her belly. She was getting used to the idea of being a mom, now the initial surprise was over. “That’s alright. I’m kinda getting used to the baby idea.”

She wasn’t just getting used to the baby idea, she was looking forward to having her baby, especially since Spike had been so nice about the whole thing. There would be problems – balancing slaying and being a Mom and adjusting to a new husband, whoever that might be – but altogether she was not unhappy that motherhood had been sprung upon her. She hoped she would be a good Mom. That worried her, but if Spike helped out…. But, he wouldn’t help out. Not if she went through with her plan to find a Normal Husband. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“Isn’t anybody going to yell so I can stop feeling guilty?” Willow asked.

“I think it would be more productive for you to obtain more information about this vampire mating program,” Giles said. “You can indulge in your … oh yes … Guiltapalooza later.”

“I can’t hack into the government computer again,” Willow said. “They’re on to me. The only reason they aren’t arresting Tara and me is because Buffy is pregnant.”

Buffy excused herself and went to the restroom. She pulled a Vampyro condom out of her pocket, tore open the packet and filled the condom with water. The condom spurted water from a dozen holes. The work of the Initiative. Did they have a whole department of white-coated lab technicians poking these things with pins? Vampires got invited in and, with the help of the Initiative, so did their swimmers.

She threw the condom out and returned to the group.

Willow and Giles were arguing about whether she could safely hack into the government’s computers. Buffy didn’t much care if Willow found more stuff or not, but she supposed she should keep tabs on the Initiative to make sure they didn’t mess with Spike.

“What if you signed on with a real user name and password from someone in the Initiative?” Buffy asked.

“They wouldn’t be able to catch me if I was using a legitimate sign-on. But, how could you get that?”

“Leave it to me. I’ve got to run. Riley is tutoring me in psychology this afternoon.” Buffy grabbed her patrol bag and headed for the door, ignoring Giles’ protests that he wanted to hear about that bite on her neck.

***

Buffy hurried to the Psychology Building so she could arrive early for her tutoring session with Riley. Riley hadn’t shown up yet. She glanced through the glass pane in his door and confirmed his tiny office was dark and empty. She broke the lock by gripping the handle and twisting hard, ripped the whole handle out of the door, which was what usually happened when she did this trick. She tossed the handle on the floor.

She switched on the fluorescent ceiling lights and began searching his desk drawers, the calendar on his desk, and the precisely organized papers sitting on the desk top. She replaced everything as she found it. Riley must be a neat freak to keep all his papers so carefully lined up on his desk.

Was being a neat freak worse than being a bloodsucking killer vampire? Oh, yeah.

She flipped over the keyboard of Riley’s computer and saw his sign-on name and password taped to the bottom. What a moron he was, leaving his password out where anybody could find it. She whipped out the notebook she used for their tutoring sessions, turned to a page in the back and scribbled down Riley’s password information.

Riley came into the office and tripped over the door handle she’d left lying on the floor.

“Hey,” Riley said. “What happened to the door?”

She banged his keyboard back down on the desk. She leafed through the pages of her notebook to the last place she’d written some notes. She pretended to read her notes. If only she had a pair of Intellectual Girl glasses.

“The door was like that when I got here, so I came in. Hope you don’t mind,” Buffy said, her eyes wide with assumed innocence. She’d practiced what she was going to say on the way over, because she was certain she’d get caught. You always got caught on the Hellmouth, if you happened to be named Buffy.

“No problem. I’d better call and get it fixed. I’ve got some sensitive stuff in here.”

While Riley was calling the university’s maintenance department, Buffy occupied herself by pretending to study her psychology book and sneaking looks at the papers on Riley’s desk.

Riley hung up the phone. “The engineers will be right over to fix the door, but I don’t think we’ll be able to study with the racket they’re going to make.”

Buffy never minded abandoning a study opportunity, especially when she could be doing something useful, like shopping or visiting Spike. Shopping would have to wait until she negotiated credit card access for her new wardrobe from her mother. Spike was mad at her, so visiting Spike was out for the moment, too. What good would visiting him do anyway? Seeing him would only make it harder to do what she had to do. She had to get on with finding Normal Guy to marry and be a father to her baby.

A normal guy, like Riley.

Riley was a cute guy and totally, completely and absolutely normal in ways Buffy was certain she couldn’t begin to imagine. Riley was the North Star of Normal. He was the Square Root of Normal Guy. How would a Normal Guy, like Riley for instance, feel about being the stepfather of a vampire’s baby?

Buffy’s belly seemed to be expanding by the hour. She was going to have to work fast if she wanted to trick, er, persuade a normal guy to marry her.

“Would you like to go for coffee?” she asked.

Riley couldn’t believe his luck. He’d figured he would have to endure two or three stupid study sessions before he could break the ice on a personal basis, and here she was, the little slut, breaking the ice for him. His face broke into a big, Iowa-sized smile.

“That’d be great.”

Wow. That was easy. I should have asked guys out for dates sooner.

She imagined herself, Technicolor Movie Montage Girl, wearing a floor-length white satin dress, with fingertip sleeves and a couple hundred of those tiny pearl buttons up the back and gobs of lace everywhere. Her shoes were – she didn’t know what kind of shoes she should wear. Well, plenty of time to shop for shoes. She saw herself walking up the aisle to where Spike – no Riley - was waiting. Her dream bubble burst, when she saw herself perching a bouquet of white roses on her huge belly. Ugh.

The building engineer appeared to fix the door and Buffy whisked Riley off on their first official date-like activity.