Chapter 10 – Secret Revealed, Secret Kept



Buffy went to the Magic Box to give Willow the password for Riley’s computer.

Her mind whirled from her conversations with Spike and Riley. Who should she believe? Riley was all Normal Government Square Man who didn’t seem to be the lying type. If he was telling the truth and Spike was hunting again, she’d have to do something.

Spike, on the other hand, would lie about the moon coming up at night if he saw some gain for himself. She supposed he couldn’t help it, being a vampire. Was he lying now?

Willow was holed up in the shop’s tiny office working on Giles’ computer. Unlike the rest of the shop which Anya kept neat and organized, the office was cluttered with stacks of loose papers and busted up books that Giles had been promising to send to the bookbinders.

“This is bad, Buffy,” Willow said. “Giles’ computer is slower than an ectoplasm slurpee. He’s too cheap to pay for cable and I can’t surf and hack into the Initiative computers on a modem. I wish I hadn’t … I wish the school’s computer department hadn’t burned down. We could go over to the temporary lab, but there’ll be too many people now. I don’t want to hack where no one has hacked before with a lot of snoops looking over my shoulder.”

“No hurry. You can look it up later.” Initiative doings were fast taking a back seat and Spike problems were rushing to the front.

“We could go over to the Webby. They have pretty fast computers.”

“I was there a little while ago. It’s packed.”

The Webby hadn’t been all that busy, but Buffy didn’t want to go back on the off chance Riley was still sitting around. She was mad at him for burning out Spike’s chip, if he had burned out Spike’s chip and Spike wasn’t making up a lie. Maybe Riley wasn’t lying? Maybe they both were lying? And, just because she was planning to marry Riley, didn’t mean she wanted to spend time with him.

“What’s wrong, Buffy? You’re all Pensive Girl tonight.”

She wasn’t quite ready to spring her Riley Marriage Plan on her best friend. She didn’t have a clue what she could do about Spike and she’d feel stupid explaining to Willow how she found out she was pregnant with Spike’s baby one day and dumped him for Boring Riley Normal Guy the next.

“Mom wants Spike and me to get married.”

“That’s good, isn’t it? Married with baby?”

“When my mother told Spike we should get married and he should get a job, he sort of fainted.”

“Oh.”

Buffy didn’t want Willow to think Spike didn’t want to marry her. She didn’t know if Spike wanted to marry her or not, but she’d had more than enough of being Sunnydale’s Most Rejected. Admitting Big Bad hadn’t asked her to marry him was more embarrassing than confessing she was setting out to trap Riley into wedded bliss.

“He wants to marry me. The work part upset him.”

“Yeah, it would. Vampires aren’t so big on work. They’re more the Lay Around An Abandoned House And Wait For A Warm Victim To Pass By types.”

Buffy nodded. “Mom’s house was kinda hot. You don’t suppose it was the heat that made him faint? Do vampires faint?”

“I guess they do. Do you mind if I ask you something? You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want, like if it’s mortifying or humiliating in a terminal way. Are you and Spike in love?”

Buffy didn’t exactly know how she felt about Spike. She hardly wanted to admit she’d been having sex with Spike for months without totally loving him. She didn’t want to say she loved Spike either, because if she did love Spike, then where did that put her plan to marry Riley?

“I’ve worked my way up to Serious Liking. I don’t think I’m on the Love Train, yet. Our relationship is kinda backwards because of the whole control box mess.”

“Serious Liking is good.”

Trying to figure out how she felt about Spike and being embarrassed about trapping Riley into a wedding were teeny weeny problems. Spike without a chip was a Planet Bizzaro sized problem. What was she going to do about him if he started feeding again? Feeding on girls? Girls with sexy, thin bodies who hadn’t gotten themselves in a Baby-Having Condition.

“Can I tell you something, Willow? You won’t tell Giles or anybody?”

“Tu secreto es mi secreto.”

Buffy sighed. First Spike, now Willow. Was everyone conspiring to make her feel stupid today?

“It’s about Spike. Someone told me his chip is burned out and he can be all bitey vampire again.”

“Someone? Who?” Willow asked. She saw Buffy didn’t want to reveal her source. “Did you ask Spike? What did he say?”

Yeah, she’d asked and he been all kissy and evasive and not at all forthcoming. She was going to have to find out for herself.

“He claims he doesn’t know if the chip’s working or not. When you’re hacking around tonight, could you check the paper and the coroner’s office to see if there were any suspicious deaths the past couple of days?”

“Sure, Buffy.”

Buffy picked at the buttons on her top, while she made up her mind about what she was going to say next. She didn’t want this to get out, especially to Giles, but she needed to tell somebody.

“Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Promise?”

“Sure.” Willow drew a cross over her heart with her finger. A spray of fairy dust sparkled in the air behind her finger.

“Giles?”

“No way.”

Tears welled up in Buffy’s eyes. She’d made up her mind about one Spike-related problem. Not what she was going to do about Spike. She had no idea what she was going to do about him. But, she knew for certain what she wasn’t going to do.

“I can’t do it again. I can’t dust Spike if he’s gone back to Big Bad and Bitey Vampire. I have feelings for Spike and he’s the father of my baby. I can’t kill somebody I care about. Does that make me a terrible Slayer?” Buffy brushed the tears from her eyes before they dripped down her face and she embarrassed herself even more.

Willow squeezed Buffy’s hand.

“I haven’t read all 289 chapters of ”The Official Slayer Handbook”, so I can’t say how you rate on the Terrible Slayer Scale, but I think not killing your boyfriend makes you a pretty nice person.”

“Thanks, Will.”

Her tears dripped down her face. It was a great relief to know she had Willow’s support.

“Don’t worry, Buff. We’ll find a way to make your Big Bad and Bitey Vampire behave.”

It was of the good to have a friend who didn’t mind much that she had a vampire boyfriend and didn’t blame her for not wanting to kill him.

Willow shut down the computer. “Let’s grab some sugary rings of dough, deep fried in hot oil and go over to the temporary computer lab. We can look up the newspaper articles while we’re waiting for the place to clear out. I can hack into the coroner’s office later.”

At the computer lab, Buffy ate a heroic four jelly donuts, two for herself and two for Spike Baby, while Willow surfed through the recent articles from The Sunnydale Sunset. To their amazement, they found no suspicious vampire-type deaths in over two weeks, even before Spike’s chip had gone kerblooey.

If Spike was planning on taking a walk on the bad side, he hadn’t started yet.

Buffy sighed with relief. How long would her luck hold?

***

Spike stamped down the street, shoving into people and knocking them off the sidewalk to see if his chip would fire. It didn’t go off, but pushing people wasn’t much of a test.

He hadn’t planned on testing out his chip any time soon, unless it was on his girl’s sweet, drinkable neck. He hadn’t planned on it, but his Slayer brassed him off beyond all endurance tonight with her play for G.I. Joe.

Tonight was as good a time as any to find out if he could wreak violence and mayhem.

“I’m a fighter,” he shouted. “My whole body is a lethal weapon. This whole chip thing is smothering me, trapping me like an animal. A beast this powerful cannot be contained. The beast will break free and savage the land again. If I want to.”

He headed for the Bronze.

“Slayer had no right to give me twenty bleeding questions on what I’ve been up to. I’ve changed and she doesn’t give me any credit for behaving myself. Doesn’t trust me, that’s what it is. She thinks I’m going to go all psycho killer like that wanker, Angel.”

“Course, I could go psycho killer if I wanted. Not like I’ve turned Nancy Boy like the Big Poof or anything. Taking a break from hunting and killing, that’s all. Enjoying my fling with the Slayer and sex is better than feeding any day of the week. Unless you’re peckish.”

Before going inside, he checked out the alley. A couple of biteable college girls dressed in clingy, slutty outfits were standing by themselves, smoking joints. He morphed into his vamp face.

The girls shrieked with laughter.

Spike’s vamp face dissolved. He’d been unable to keep up his vamp face! What was happening to him and why weren’t these two birds quivering in fear?

The blonde girl wearing cornrows and pigtails strung with clumps of pink beads laughed and elbowed her friend. “Get those teeth, Ashley. They’re so long and pointy. Hey, hottie, do the face thing again.”

“What else can you make hard and scary, baby?” Ashley said. She made kissy-smacking noises with her mouth.

The two girls giggled, turned their backs on him and went back to smoking. Like he was some poufter human!

“Bloody hell! Slayer’s ruined me.”

He went inside and looked around the bar for a victim to test his chip on.

“What do I spy with my little eye? The Whelp.”

He shouldered his way through the crowd and knocked a couple of frat boys on their arses. To his satisfaction, he felt no pain.

He vamped a college boy who was sitting on the bar stool next to the Nit and shoved the kid off his barstool.

“Jeez, buddy. You can have the seat. You don’t have to get all snippy,” College Boy said. He didn’t look at all scared at Spike’s fiercest vamp face.

This wasn’t going the way he’d anticipated.

“I’ve gotten soft, that’s what it is. All those months of lazing around Watcher’s bathtub watching the soaps destroyed my edge, not to mention lazing around the Slayer’s bed.”

He nicked Xander’s dosh which was lying on the bar and ordered a beer. “I’m still tough enough to do that.”

“Hey, Blood Breath,” Xander said, “Quit stealing my money.”

“Thinks she can rein me in with her golden hair and her cute titties. I won’t stand for it.”

“And, definitely quit talking to yourself.”

“What are you going to do about it, Poof?” Spike stared Harris down for good measure.

“Overbite, have I mentioned lately I detest you?” Xander pulled a stake out of his jacket pocket, showed it to Spike and returned to the deep meditative contemplation of his drink.

When his beer arrived, Spike sucked a drink from the bottle and tucked his boot under lackbrain’s barstool. Spike jerked his foot, sending the stool crashing to the floor, and the Whelp with it. Spike held out his hand to help Harris up and elbowed him in the gut.

Xander collapsed on the floor, wheezing.

Spike was about to test his dead chip further and even the score for various insults he’d endured from Harris for the past months, when Anya walked up.

“Spike? What are you doing to Xander? I hope you’re not getting him upset. We won’t be able to have sex later if he gets upset.”

“Poufter can’t hold his liquor. He fell off the stool.” Spike put an innocent look on his face. He was not completely successful.

“I think you’re lying,” Anya said. “Xander never falls off his bar stool until he’s consumed three alcoholic beverages and he’s only had two. I counted them.”

Xander recuperated sufficiently to talk. “Fang Face pushed me over and elbowed me when I was down. And, why didn’t you get a screaming migraine headache for doing that?”

No point in letting the whole gang know about his chip. Buffy might not get around to telling them right away, or ever. “It was an accident. Chip doesn’t fire unless I hurt someone on purpose.”

“What’s wrong with this bitmap? Maybe we can send you back to the Initiative for the 7.1 upgrade?”

“Fag off, Whelp.” Spike killed his beer and left the bar.