Hands on his body woke Spike from his dream, a fist in his hair and hard fingers digging into one armpit, heaving and pulling him out of the water again and bringing him back to the world that had all the pain in it. Usually a fellow can get used to a sensation, smells stop bothering a bloke, fades to the background and all that; but the burning from the spell glyphs cut into his skin would not fade. The excruciating ache of broken bones in his knee and ribs and head would not go away, and the screaming in his lungs, desperate to expel water and take in air, refused to grow any less.

If Spike ever wanted to explain to someone what hell felt like, he'd be sure to use this experience in his description.

Maybe he was in hell already. Maybe he'd died without being aware of it and just been dropped at Lucifer's feet, the devil's latest trophy all gift-wrapped pretty as you please, trussed like a Christmas goose for his tormentors to enjoy. Bit of a vacation for them, he got to suffer and they didn't have to work for it, yeah? And no more than he deserved, after all.

And Drusilla thought Buffy would come for him. Spike couldn't decide whether to laugh or moan.

The hands were on his stomach now, forcing water out of his belly and chest, letting the smallest bit of air in to relieve that agony, at least. Fingers in his mouth; Spike remembered what happened last time, and tried to brace for the hunger that he knew would come, but…

Blood. Blood NOW. Feed. Hunger. Feed. Blood. Need it. Demand, crave, need, NEED, FEED, NOW. BLOOD…

Mindless, he bit down on what was pushed into his mouth. Faintly he could taste it, plastic, blood inside, a drop had leaked and he licked, bit down, bit harder, dug his teeth in, forced his jaw to clamp down…

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened.

Where was it, it wouldn't come, he needed, god, give it to him, give him the blood, mother, mama, nurse mama, suck mama, suck drink eat, need, give, please, please…

Fingers in his mouth. Blood? He suckled them, but there was nothing for him there.

Cord wound around his tongue. The hunger pushed away, somewhere unimportant, and Spike's mind gradually came back. Brought with it the realization that he was so severely starved, so desperately weak from hunger, that he couldn't even bite through the plastic of the bag to get at the blood inside. There was no way he would be able to feed without help, now. The magic was sucking Spike dry, hollowing him out just as he'd thought it would.

Vampires couldn't starve to death. Sure, they shriveled to walking skeletons, but lack of blood didn't kill them. They simply got thinner and thinner, weaker and weaker, and eventually, if things were bad enough for long enough, they became… dormant. Inert. If this spell didn't kill him, if no one came along to help him eat, Spike would remain like that forever.

Inert. Useless. Alone.

Hands under his arms, dragging; hands at his shoulders, pushing. Falling, splash into the cold, feeling it creep into his lungs again as the air bubbled out…

Surely, surely this was hell.

Drusilla said Buffy was coming. All I had to do was endure. With nothing else to hang onto, Spike reached for that thought and clutched it to him prayerfully. Drusilla said Buffy was coming. Just endure. But he was so tired now, so weak… Drusilla said… Buffy… Buffy was coming… just endure…

Just endure.

---

Back when Buffy first started college, she'd always been just the tiniest bit envious whenever she heard some giggling co-ed holler the words "road trip" down the hallway in her dorm. There was just something about the idea of being able to drop her responsibilities and take off, headed for an unknown destination for an unspecified length of time, with nothing but a set of keys and her own girly whims to direct her. Being the Slayer, of course, meant never allowing herself that kind of freedom, but a part of her had always kind of wished she could have. Just grab some friends who could drive and a sack full of munchies, and disappear for a weekend, to heck with Slayer duties for a couple days, you know?

It just… sounded nice, sometimes.

Now, however, Buffy was pretty sure that road trips were less of the good and more of the Things Not All They're Cracked Up To Be. In fact, if she were pressed she might decide that road trips actually kind of sucked.

Spike was alive. Undead – whatever. Spike wasn't dust. He was around somewhere and he needed her help, only she had no idea at all where he might be. Anywhere in the world was reasonable, given – well, given everything she knew about him, Angel, their job, and the mess that Los Angeles had turned into. They could have decided to hide in Timbuktu for all she knew. Perfect recipe for a road trip, right? He was heaven-knew-where and it would take heaven-knew-how-long to reach him.

Way less cool than it sounded like.

Or, you know, maybe that was just because she wasn't actually able to grab the keys and go the way she wanted to.

"We can take the pickup truck, right?"

"No good," said Xander, "no place to put him that's out of the sun. I can get a cargo van from the company – no windows."

"That'll do," said Buffy. "Better than wrapping him in a tarp, anyway… Okay, supplies. We'll probably need first aid stuff, food for us, blood for him… is there a butcher shop open this time of night?"

"Probably not, but I can ask the second-shift guys," said Xander.

"You have demons that drink pigs' blood?" asked Buffy.

"Even better," he replied. "We actually have a vampire on staff, works in receiving. Doesn't hunt. He was a Buddhist back in the Sixties, before he was turned, and the whole non-violence thing stuck with him."

"You're kidding." Buffy blinked at him.

"Nope," he said. "We do random screenings on him the same as we do drug tests for everyone else. He's been human-DNA free the whole time." When Buffy gaped at him, Xander just shrugged. "Hey, you have Spike, I have hippie vampire shipping clerks. Shades of gray, Buffster. You taught me that; it just took awhile before it finally sank in."

"If you say so," she said. Half-smile feeling strange on her face. "Weapons?"

The planning went on into the night, but little by little things began to come together. Xander kept enough sharp-and-pointies on hand that she didn't need to worry about a trip in to Cleveland, at least. Both Xander's house and the construction company had excellent first aid supplies, no surprise there. The shipping vamp actually came by the house around three in the morning with some of his own stash of blood in a cooler.

"Hey, man, happy to help out my fellow vampire brother, stayin' on the straight and narrow, man, you know what I mean?" Buffy secretly thought that while he might be clean of human blood, Xander should consider checking him for other substances too. There was no way that smell on his… Buddhist-guy robes... was pure incense, but whatever.

Last but definitely not least, they had to track down a local witch, who could make a tracking talisman for them to hunt Spike with.

Xander had suggested getting hold of Willow and having her do a locator spell, but Buffy had vetoed. Partly, she was pretty sure the spell needed something of Spike's in order to find him; partly, she worried that Willow had been in on Giles' little conspiracy of silence. If she never asked, she didn't have to find out – didn't have to feel like her best friend had betrayed her right along with her Watcher.

At least Xander had told her straight up that he'd been in the middle of nowhere for most of the past year, out of communication range for everything except "find the baby Slayer" messages. He truly hadn't known Spike was still around… and if he had known, he'd changed enough in Africa that he wasn't completely sure he would have kept his mouth shut. A year ago, he admitted, yeah, probably; not now, though.

Anyway. So not important right now.

It was starting to look like Xander was turning into a one-man Watcher's Council, with all his contacts in the supernatural community in and around Toledo; seriously, the number of people he knew who weren't really "people" was nothing short of amazing. The local witch was yet another acquaintance of his – apparently they'd gotten to know one another over beer and stories of Africa. Xander's company had used her as an independent contractor more than once, to "do feng shui" and "harmonious placement" on a construction site before they got started. She wasn't anywhere close to Willow's league as far as power was concerned, but she knew a spell that could turn an ordinary object into a kind of compass needle, only instead of pointing north, the thing would have a magnetic pull toward whoever or whatever it was created to track down.

That was good enough for Buffy.

One of the few things she'd managed to keep from Sunnydale, oddly enough, was the skull ring that Spike had given her several years back, when Willow's spell had compelled him to propose marriage to her. Bended knee and everything, she remembered. The day they'd closed the Hellmouth, she'd kept it in her pocket. At the time, it seemed only fair – since he was wearing an amulet from her, she should be carrying something of his too.

She wasn't sure if the thing counted as a good luck charm or not, given how things had turned out that day, but she was still glad to have it.

It was four o'clock by the time the spell was finished. The skull ring hung on a chain threaded through with silk ribbon, another drop of her blood drying inside. Whenever she held up the chain and concentrated, the ring would swing toward Spike and the chain would pull taut. Right now, the pull wasn't very strong, but according to the witch the odds were good that he was somewhere between fifty and two hundred miles away. That was actually good news – any farther away and the talisman might not twitch enough to be noticeable.

So, maybe a four or five-hour trip, assuming the roads took them straight to him. Definitely beat "Timbuktu" as a starting option.

Finally the house was quiet again, all their visitors gone home, all the prep work done.

"Xander, I need you to talk some sense at me," Buffy said. Pacing in the living room, hands clutching her elbows. Shoulders up around her ears somewhere. Her stomach was hurting, again.

"Um," said Xander. "Eat your vegetables? Look both ways before you –"

"I want to take off now, Xan," said Buffy. "We have everything. If we're lucky we can find him before sunrise, make the trip back by day, get him into your garage and he's safe." Safe, god, please let him be safe, she thought, looking at the floor as she paced. Moved one hand to her stomach and rubbed.

"Ah," said Xander. "Where the other option is, you actually get some sleep and a decent meal into you for a change – don't think I can't tell how much you haven't been eating – and we leave later in the day or at sunset, with your batteries all charged up and ready to take on the bad guys." He leaned against the doorway and looked at her, arms folded. "Is that the kind of sense you're asking me for?"

"Kinda," she said. "I mean, I might sleep in the van on the way there. I could eat while you drove."

"Uh-huh," he said, "and I'd just wake you up every fifteen minutes or so to test out the tracking amulet, is that it?"

"Um, yes?" she asked in a small voice.

"Um, no," he said. Voice nowhere near as small. Wow. "Have I ever shown you my resolve face? 'Cause I actually do have one, I just don't use it much." He pushed off from the doorway, walked over to block her pacing. Took her by the shoulders, gently.

"You want to go to him three days ago – I get it," he said. "Believe me, I get it. But you won't be any good to him if you're still a wreck from the past week's emotional rollercoaster. Again, don't think I haven't noticed." He shook her, still gentle, eyes concerned. "You might fool everyone else, but I know you better than that. You're barely hanging on, Buff."

"I know," she said. Hating the way her voice started to wobble along with her lip. "I just – I really – oh, God, Xander," and just like that, she was crying and he was holding her. And then she was sobbing, and he was holding her up.

Guided her to her room, step by caring step. "I know, Buff," he murmured into her hair. "I know. We'll find him. We'll find him, and he'll be okay, and if he isn't okay you can help him get better and then deck him for scaring you like that. You're okay, Buff. It's okay…"

He sat with her while she cried, rubbing circles into her back until she fell asleep.