I was in the house of He who is upon his Mountain, Anubis… and I have seen the secrets which are therein.” – The Book of Going Forth by Day


They were bickering again, dancing around the topic that no one wanted to address. Spike could almost hear the words on the tip of Giles’ tongue – ‘Kill Dawn.’

Well, that wasn’t going to happen. He cared about the Bit too much, and her death would take all the fire out of the slayer’s eyes. He couldn’t have that either. They’d find some other way. They always did.

But that didn’t mean that he was going to sit here and listen to the Scoobies make pointless quips and sidetracked comments. It wasn’t like anything he said was going to keep them from wasting time, so when he heard the scuffle behind the store, the distraction was almost a relief.

He slipped off of the ladder, ignoring the desperate edge in Willow’s arguments and Giles’ poorly concealed anger. He was much more interested in Buffy, whose eyes had followed his own to the back door. Did she feel the same prickling buzz that he did down the back of his neck whenever another vampire was near, or did her slayer senses work differently?

“Back in a second, guys,” she said quickly, more to herself than to the Scoobies. Which was good, because the others didn’t even pause in their back and forth byplay.

Spike caught her shoulder right before she opened the back door. “Let me,” he said, when she whipped around, violence in her eyes.

“I need…” she started, every line of her slight body tense with the need to lash out at something. Anything.

“You need,” he stressed, “to make your sidekicks stop avoiding the issue and come up with a plan to save the Bit.” His eyes softened at the cornered, indecisive look in her eyes. “I’ll take care of this, stretch my legs a little, yeah?”

She nodded then, an emotion in her eyes that he had never seen there before. It wasn’t love, it was more like the faith a captain put in a trusted lieutenant, but he would take what he could get.

The fledgling wasn’t much of a challenge. Sending its hapless victim packing with a gruff warning hidden under layers of insult wasn’t either, but by the time Spike wandered back into the Magic Box, brushing vamp dust off his shoulders, the others were packing up and getting ready to go. It looked like he’d saved them a few minutes, and maybe that was something.

After all, a minute could mean everything.

A minute could mean the world.

*****

Day 16

There were plenty of people who worked in the Sunnydale Zoo, and times were when Spike would have simply found a cute one, turned up the charm, and wheedled all the information he needed out of her or him, in a pinch.

Not any more. It was silly, but the idea felt too much like cheating. The irony was that he had never quailed from using that tactic while Buffy was alive, so it made even less sense to shy away from it now. Nevertheless, the gut reaction remained. Besides, he doubted that he could muster enough enthusiasm to stage a believable flirt at this stage. He also still looked and felt like a half-starved addict, and his heart certainly wouldn’t have been in it.

So instead of doing things the easy way, he found himself poking around the zoo after dark, alone, looking for any hint of Ammut. Among other things. He didn’t really expect to find the goddess squirreled away in a secret paddock, but it was remotely possible. No, he was more interested in seeing the kinds of setups one might need to contain a large, angry animal against its will. He hoped that he would find something that would help limit his search, because the gods knew he had been grasping at straws so far.

Probably still was.

Still, it wasn’t that bad as midnight errands went, and it got his mind off of other, more painful subjects. However, part of him was remembering the cages of the Initiative, and he had briefly considered opening some of the enclosures for transferred spite if nothing else, but soon thought better of it. He didn’t need the distraction, no matter how amusing the move might have been.

He wasn’t long inside the zoo before his nose and ears told him that nothing major was amiss. And that he should avoid the primate house if he valued his sense of smell.

The natural and the supernatural had never blended well, and something as large and powerful as Ammut would have sent the earthly animals into fits of terror. Even cloaking spells were iffy when it came to animals, and only the most powerful of demons and spirits could make themselves pass unnoticed by members of the natural world. From what he knew of the demigod, she didn’t strike him as one for subtle magicks and elaborate facades. If she was at the zoo, the animals would have known it, and nothing short of tranquilizers would have quieted them.

Spike, on the other hand, existed on the edge of the natural and supernatural world. There was a reason why many demons referred to vampires as half-breeds, but if used correctly, the so-called taint of humanity could be used to a clever hunter’s benefit. Oh, humans felt the same muted warning in the presence of demons as animals, but they paid less attention. Vampires set off fewer of their natural warnings as, say, an Old One would have. The fact came in useful for a hunting vampire. To an unwary victim, the instinctive signals, warning of a nearby vampire, were nearly indistinguishable from the intuitive caution-attraction to any bad boy, or girl, in the crowd. To an animal, vampires were things to avoid, the source of enough fear to elicit extreme caution, but not outright terror. So, unless someone had tapped a cloaking spell that could shield both Ammut from the animals and its own energies from a vampire’s extra senses, which was doubtful, simply nervous animals meant no penned up demigods.

Still, there might be something to find, so Spike kept looking around, searching through the vet and feeding lab servicing the reptile house, past the local fauna exhibit and the aviary, into the infamous hyena enclosure, and towards the large mammal section of the park. He’d keep an eye out in the paper for his handiwork tomorrow, because he was leaving more than enough rifled papers and broken locks to draw even the dumbest security guard’s attention. Not for the first time, he thanked his lucky stars that the Sunnydale police force was so incredibly inept.

Walking further into the zoo, the glowing eyes of the big cats, reflecting yellowy green in the low lighting, pulled at some dark corner of Spike’s mind, but it wasn’t until he reached the African wild dog enclosure that he saw something that made him stop.

The patchy canids were awake, yipping and cowering in the far corner of the enclosure. At first he thought they were reacting to him, he had already sent the parrots screeching by lingering too long near their cages, but he soon realized that he was mistaken. While some of the dogs were tossing fearful glances in his direction, the bulk of their attention was centered on another animal in the cage.

At first glance, it looked like the others, only larger and charcoal gray instead of blotchy browns and tans. But if he squinted, it looked kind of like a jackal.

A jackal wearing eye makeup.

“Very funny,” he snarled into the darkness. “You gonna come over here and talk, or are you gonna spy on me all night?”

The jackal turned its snout towards Spike, head tilted regally and rose in one fluid motion. If that wasn’t enough to convince Spike that he had guessed correctly, the animal stood up on its hind legs and started walking towards him. In a shimmer of twisting muscles and a shower of dark fur, the animal’s body started to change.

While the creature had completely shifted forms into a man by the time he reached the bars, it was still a fairly disconcerting thing to see, and sure enough, in that eternal moment between the god’s assumed forms, the animals around them went wild with fright. The lions across the way roared and in the distance, Spike could hear the monkeys chittering and the birds screaming. He winced a little at the furor, hoping that the racket wouldn’t pull down a night guard or something of the like. He wasn’t in the mood for dodging bystanders.

The last thing to change was Anubis’ head, shedding fur and collapsing inwards, but the change was reminiscent of the paintings of the jackal headed god so common in Egyptian tombs. Anubis passed a bejeweled hand in front of his face, leaving a shimmer like a mirage in its wake. And just like that, the panic amongst the animals seemed to calm and only a glimmer of residual energy remained to tingle along the edges of Spike’s senses. Subtle, powerful magic indeed.

“You have a sharp eye,” the god said by way of a greeting. His new, human face was lined with poorly hidden amusement.

Spike kept up his mask of nonchalance as Anubis waved a hand, parting the bars of the cage like a curtain before him, before stepping through and allowing the metal shafts to swing back into place with the ear splitting squeal of abused metal.

“The eyeliner gave you away,” the vampire said blandly, digging in his pocket for a cigarette.

One long drag filled his dead lungs with nicotine, and Spike used the pause to size up the god. Anubis was dressed in a long linen kilt, and his eyes were lined in enough makeup to make Tammy Faye Baker stand up and take notice. A few amulets lay across the god’s bare chest and gold tooled sandals were on his feet. Anubis wasn’t even making a nominal effort to hide who and what he was, save for the glamour that kept the racket down in the surrounding cages, but on the perfectly groomed pathways of the Sunnydale zoo, Spike guessed that it didn’t really matter.

“I shall remember that the next time I actually care to hide amongst my earthly children.” Anubis sounded bored, and Spike had given up translating intentionally oblique comments when Dru had sent him packing for the last time, so he opted for ignoring the maybe-sarcasm, maybe-serious statement instead, especially when the god didn’t seem inclined to elaborate.

Spike turned on his heel and made for the staff area behind the big cats’ pens. Divine visitations or not, he was going to finish his search. Anubis strode, it would have seemed silly to describe that particular motion as merely a walk, after him, smiling with a cold glint in his eye when one of the lions bristled at his passing.

“That you in the chintz cabinet last night?” Spike finally asked, breaking the silence when he reached the locked door. The knob was flimsy, and there didn’t seem to be an alarm system, so he just grabbed it tried the brute force method. The entire locking mechanism bucked and tore free in his hand. He tossed it, and the half-smoked cigarette butt, into the flowerpot flanking the door.

The god was watching the proceedings, dark alien eyes inscrutable. “Yes,” he finally replied. “I had to stop you from telling the humans without causing a scene. I am afraid that the dramatics were unavoidable, given the circumstances.”

Spike let the broken door swing open and stepped inside. “Not that I’m singin’ their praises and all, but that crew of humans, well, this kind of stuff is what they do.”

“I understand that, but Isis has reported human magicks cutting into the edges of our domain.” Anubis followed Spike into the room, eyes gleaming green in the semi-darkness. The color, reflective like an animal’s instead of actually glowing, disappeared when the vampire found and flipped the light switch. The god blinked lazily, taking in the sterile, white lab area. “None can be trusted until we determine if this latest incursion is related to Ammut’s disappearance.”

Spike lifted the top papers of a clipboard which was hanging on the far wall: medication records. “That’s a little…”

“Over-cautious? I can promise, vampire, the situation warrants it.”

“I was going to say ‘paranoid.’” Spike replied sarcastically, letting the papers fall back into place before moving on to the paperwork hanging on the freezer door.

“Perhaps,” the god conceded, “but the condition stands. The humans must not be told.”

Spike passed the freezer inventory, and bent to read through the phone records instead. “Fine, no humans it is, any other changes to the deal you’re gonna make midstream?”

“None for now, though I can make no promises. The situation is… fluid.” Anubis smiled slightly in the face of the vampire’s hateful glare.

Turning back to the task at hand, Spike flipped through the most recent pages, skimming past the vague scrawls and innocuous messages for family members. One caught his eye on the fourth page:

Sanderson – tranq dosage ~800 lbs? Will call

The date at the top of the page was right, one day after… he stopped that thought short and amended: one day before his first abortive suicide attempt. Well, that’s interesting.

“So, how much would you say your AWOL beastie weighs?”

When he was answered with nothing but the hum of fluorescent lights, Spike looked over his shoulder again and found nothing. Anubis had disappeared into thin air.

“Yeah, right, thanks for all your help…” Spike grumbled while tearing out the page in the notebook. It disappeared into his pocket with the four other slips of paper that had caught his eye in previous buildings around the zoo.

Tossing one last sneer of contempt into the empty room, Spike went back out into the night. He could finish the entire park before the first shift of keepers and janitors appeared in the early predawn. Even so, he doubted he would find anything more useful. All of the papers in his pocket were long shots in the extreme, but one wild goose chase was as good as any other.

At least this one had interesting scenery.



A/N: I thought that I might take this opportunity to give everyone a gentle nudge in the direction of the Fang Fetish Awards Best of Round.

http://www.athenewolfe.com/fangfetish/

Voting is open through July 10th and you'll find a few of my fics amongst a sea of crazy stiff competition (re: great reads, check 'em out). If you feel so inclined, drop by and cast your vote.