“My feet convey me, Anubis having hesitated at ‘Having no Limits’… The sunlight, which his wish made, remains.” – The Book of Going Forth By Day


Spike had fed well before setting out to the Magic Box. Pig’s blood was fine and all, (okay, not really) but it tended to sit in his stomach like lead. The slayer might not approve, but Willy’s top shelf stuff tended to give him just a little extra zing whenever he drank it. Human blood was funny that way.

And with a showdown with Glory imminent, Spike had decided that a little extra zing might go a long way.

He soundly blessed his foresight, thanking gods that had no business caring for a lone vampire, fighting a fight that ran counter to his nature, when the extra bounce in his step and added strength in his arms translated into Doc flying over the side of the tower’s walkway before any harm had come to Dawn. The little demon had been quick, but since Spike had fallen off of the wagon with a resounding thud that afternoon, he had been quicker.

O neg, the breakfast of champions.

*****

Day 45

“Did you believe that I would not notice?”

Spike nearly jumped out of his skin, spinning around with fangs dropping in alarm to find Anubis draped casually across a tombstone that had been vacant moments before. He thought. The truth was that he hadn’t been paying much attention, but Spike would have said he was pretty sure the god hadn’t been there a couple of seconds ago.

Where am I again?

Spike instantly regretted his distraction, because every line of the god’s frame radiated danger, despite his relaxed pose.

Acting on the instinct for self-preservation that had seen him through the long decades of his unlife, Spike grabbed at the only option available to him – denial.

“Notice what?” he asked blandly, tensing for what he knew would probably be a futile fight or flight.

Anubis’ eyes narrowed, becoming heavily kohled slits. His hair and sheer linen kilt fluttered, as if caught in a breeze, but the muggy southern California air was still. Spike took a step back as threads of darkness condensed into tendrils which danced and wove around the god. Anubis slid down from the tombstone, sandaled feet skimming along the surface of the grass as he walked towards, no, stalked, the vampire.

Not one to be cowed, despite the circumstances, Spike steeled himself, holding his ground even as the wafting darkness coalesced into a snarling, jackal-like mask which obscured the god’s aquiline, human features. “You went against my express orders and spoke to one of the humans. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

“Yeah, what took you so long?” Spike growled around the fangs he had instinctively brought to the surface.

At that, Anubis laughed uproariously, shattering the jackal visage into shards of smoke. The deadly tension that had been staining the air evaporated as if it had never been. He grinned toothily, clapping Spike across the shoulder. “I like you,” he announced abruptly.

Spike staggered under what was, admittedly, probably a light tap from the god, and had to clench his jaws to keep his mouth from dropping open in shocked confusion. What he did instead was glare.

“It is of no matter; you did not disclose anything of any particular import. Nothing the one who watches would not have determined on his own, given time.” Anubis folded his arms across his bare chest and cocked his head to one side. “Sit with me.” For once, it wasn’t a command, but the god nevertheless dropped onto a tombstone and waited expectantly.

Spike didn’t trust his mercurial companion’s mood changes to remain stable any more than he trusted his own. “I’d rather stand,” he grumbled. Running was still an option that way... Maybe.

“As you wish.” Dark eyes seemed to bore right through him. “You are lucky that Ma’at is not here. She would not be so forgiving of your small transgression. Thankfully, she is occupied with formulating ways to ease the damage to the balance until this matter with Ammut is resolved. A matter that brings me to you.” Anubis smiled slightly, a benign expression that still made Spike’s insides twist. “You have not been arduous in your mission.”

“Been a little distracted of late,” Spike ground through clenched jaws.

Anubis cocked his head to one side, as if listening to a voice only he could hear. “You are having doubts,” he said matter-of-factly.

The denial was hot on his lips, but Spike couldn’t quite shape the words. He had responsibilities, to Dawn and, hell, even the Scoobies. He had a place here, a miserable, misbegotten hell of a place, but a place just the same. Spike wasn’t happy, far from that, but, to misquote the phrase, wasn’t the hell you knew better than the one you didn’t?

Anubis just nodded, as if every jumbled thought running through the vampire’s head had been spoken aloud. “They are reasonable doubts. You are a survivor, and though your ka is that of a demon, your mind still retains many human traits. Mortals have learned to handle much grief during their short lives. Your pain will lessen in time, vampire. In fact, it already has.”

Spike dropped down on a headstone of his own, knees suddenly too weak to support him. In the back of his mind, he was railing against the idea. That part of him clung to his grief, spreading it before the altar of Buffy Summers’ as an offering. I owe her that at least, don’t I?

But another part of him, a more rational voice, recalled the burning, aching emptiness of the first few days after Buffy’s death, and could recognize the difference. That Spike could not have drawn Dawn from her depression with little promises of contraband and teasing asides. That Spike could not have patrolled with the BuffyBot, no matter the impetus placed before him. That Spike would still be moldering away in his crypt, or drowning in holy water, or sunbathing: whatever it took to make the pain stop.

That Spike was locked away in a closet in the back of the vampire’s mind, screaming away in the darkness. He still occasionally slipped his lock and came flooding back to the surface, but that had happened less and less as the days, and then weeks had passed.

His wounds were far from healed, and the slightest jarring ripped them open to bleed anew, but they had started to mend. He had even caught himself on the brink of an honest smile a time or two. Was that so wrong?

Spike slumped forward, weighed down by his thoughts. He was no closer to an answer, or even the right question, than he had been before this visitation. “Fine,” he said with resignation, “Say I am havin’ doubts. Still gonna dust when all’s said and done, according to you, so where’s that leave us?”

Anubis’ dusted an imaginary speck of dust from his pleated kilt and replied in his cool, alien inflection, “Other than saving this dimension, a feat that you were willing to perform even before becoming… attached to a select few of them, there is always the payment mentioned on our first encounter.”

Sharp blue eyes met fathomless black.

“We have not forgotten our promise, even if you have. The time seems right to elaborate. If you return Ammut to the Tribunal, we will grant you one life, as long as your choice does not upset the balance.” Anubis’ face was smooth and too still, but his eyes glittered, dark irises open pools that soaked in every aspect of his words’ impact on the vampire.

Spike’s mind flashed immediately to one name, but before he could articulate the obvious choice, the god was already shaking his head.

“That is one resurrection you cannot ask of us, vampire,” Anubis’ voice was grave. “She has already crossed over, and to raise a slayer is an extremely dangerous thing. I am sorry, but you will have time to choose another beneficiary. And it will be you choosing. I am more certain than ever that Ammut is here.”

They both lapsed into silence after that.

Spike stared at his hands, stared through his hands to the grass beyond, without really seeing either. Anubis was dangling a pretty big carrot in front of him. A life. Any, well almost any, life he chose. Not Buffy, and the gods knew that stung, but there were so many others. The possibilities were endless, and, if he let his mind humor the idea, endlessly diverting.

Bela Lugosi, John Lennon, William Shakespeare, hell, Sid Vicious…

Joyce Summers…

His mother…

Himself…

If Anubis had been hoping to get his trusty hound back on the trail, he could not have picked a better bait. Spike knew that he was being dangled from the ends of marionette strings… but the payment? This prize was worth being played. At least to some extent.

“Don’t suppose you have any helpful hints to set me in the right direction?” Spike asked, still boring holes in the ground with his unfocused gaze. When no response was forthcoming, he glanced to his left, where the god had been sitting.

The tombstone was vacant.

“Right, real helpful,” Spike grumbled, growing irritated with Anubis’ here again, gone again antics. “Wanker.”

Nevertheless, he was soon up and headed to his crypt and the scattered notes he had left there.

After all, he had a demigod to find.