Forever and a Day

Chp 21 Who’s normal?



A mud-streaked trio clambered up the track out of the Devil’s Punchbowl. Spike and Buffy walked on either side of Willow, ready to help her up the steepest, slippery parts of the path. The witch looked and sounded exhausted, at the end of her strength. Buffy had exchanged a private look with the vampire and then insisted that they needed to rest and eat before they followed the crimson light back into the tunnels.

“A hot shower would be great, although perhaps that’s asking too much.”

“You and Spike don’t need to rest, though, do you?” Willow said shrewdly, wishing she didn’t feel so tired.

“Not tired, but still hungry, Red,” Spike said. “I’m ravenous.” He glanced up at the dull, sullen sky. The snow had stopped falling, the mist had vanished, but there was no sign of the sun breaking through. He felt he would have given an arm and a leg for just one bag of pig’s blood.

Buffy glared at her lover. “You’re just dying for the sun to appear so you can check out the ‘I’m Invincible’ clause in your new vampire contract, aren’t you?”

Spike smirked. “Well, pet, you must admit it’s pretty cool. Long time since I got to sit in the sun.”

“Spike, we don’t know that you’re safe from sunlight! You could just vanish in a cloud of dust. And if that happens, I will not be pleased!”

Spike started to come back with another quip, then stopped. He had heard the underlying worry and fear under her words. He reached a hand out behind Willow’s back as they clambered up the path and felt her fingers reach out and twine round his.

“I reckon if molten muck can’t kill me, then nor can sunshine, but I promise I won’t take any risks, well, no more than you probably will trying to kill that thing, whatever it is!”

Buffy smiled at him, wishing she could stop worrying. But ever since New Year’s Eve when she’d turned round in the street to discover who’d rescued her from the muggers and found Spike standing there, she’d had the feeling that this second chance they’d been given could so easily be taken away again.

OK, the Plague mist had apparently made him invincible, but who knew how long that would last? It could just be a temporary fix and he could revert to ordinary vampire powers even without realising it had happened.

“Buffy – what do we do if we find the wild children are still – wild - that they haven’t turned back into adults?” Willow stopped again to catch her breath.

“No reason for them to revert, that I can see,” Spike said. “If me and Buffy still have our powers – and obviously Giles does if the size of that boulder he lifted is anything to go by – then the kids will probably stay the same as well.”

“That’s awful. You mean they’ll never go back to being the people they were? Buffy, we have to do something.”

“Will, I’m hoping when we kill the cave monster, then the power of the plague mist will fade. Perhaps then the kids will change back.”

“You don’t sound very certain.”

Buffy felt a flash of irritation. Why was Willow being so critical? She was a Slayer – that’s what she did, Slayed. She wasn’t little Miss Research Girl.

“Look, when we get some decent phone reception, I’ll call Kennedy and ask her to hit the books. We need research big style. We’re fighting in the dark all the time. We’ve lurched from one disaster to another and now that Giles isn’t on our side, we must have some extra input. I don’t think it’s sensible for you to just rush off and follow this thing.”

“OK. Sounds like a plan,” Buffy said quietly.

They continued slowly upwards through the saplings and bracken, dead twigs snapping under their feet. Buffy glanced back down into the great hollow, but the cavern entrance had vanished from sight.

As they crested the last few yards, the car park came into view and the A3, the road that ran right round the rim of the Punchbowl. Spike scanned the area, searching for any trace of Giles. He had a nasty feeling that at some time in the not too distant future they were going to have to have a reckoning with Buffy’s ex Watcher.

“There’s the car we came in,” Willow said. “But there’s no sign of Giles. Where the heck can he have gone?”

“At the moment I’m finding it hard to care. If you hadn’t removed Rocky we might well be out of the game altogether. And luckily there’s no sign of any of those kids,” Buffy said thankfully. She’d had a horror of having to fight off another gang of feral children. Feared that she might have to kill one if they came at her in a pack.

The mist had vanished completely leaving a sullen January day. The snow was melting but it was still bitterly cold. Buffy glanced at Willow; her friend was shivering violently. She was still wearing the lightweight coat and boots she’d travelled in from London. Buffy touched her hand – it was icy cold.

“Willow, you need to get indoors and warm up. You’re exhausted. Look – over the road – that hotel. We’ll get rooms and hopefully something to eat. And I need a map. A big one.”

Willow’s teeth were chattering; the effort of keeping the magic barrier erected around her and Giles for such a long time, especially when they’d been walking, had drained her of every ounce of strength she possessed. And she was scared because she knew how vulnerable she was to the dark side of magic when she was in this state. It was so easy to magic yourself dry, new clothes, light a fire from nothing, produce food to eat. All of which was harmless. But the slide into doing things which were not so innocent was so easy to start and once you began, it was impossible to stop.

“You must be cold, too,” she muttered to Buffy as they ran across the road and up the steps to the hotel lobby.

“Oh, not so much. But dirty, yes. And very, very hungry.” Buffy peered round the hallway; there was a bell push on the reception desk and she banged her hand down on it. The ‘ping’ rang out, but no one appeared.
“Where is everyone?” she muttered. “Did the mist get them all? If so, where are the kids?”

Spike flung open the door into the bar and vaulted across the counter to get to the bottles stacked on the shelves behind. “I reckon people fled in front of it, pet. You know, bad news spreads fast. Phone calls, e-mails of something nasty happening further south. People probably just panicked, packed up, got in their cars and left.” He poured himself a large Scotch and downed it in one gulp.

Buffy shuddered and helped herself to a can of soda and a packet of salted peanuts. She was ravenous and realised that the hunger was growing more and more every second.

“Buffy – the hot water works!” Willow’s jubilant shout from upstairs echoed down the stairway. “I’m going to have a bath.”

“Great! No problem, Will. Hey, remember to c all Kennedy. Explain about the research we need doing.”

“OK. See you both later. We’ll sit and figure this out, slowly and sensibly. Just like Giles would do if he was still Giles!” There was the slamming of a door, then silence.

Buffy stared at Spike, then nodded her head towards the front door. He frowned for a second, then understanding dawned in his eyes. Silently, they sped across the lobby and clambered into the big car that Willow and Giles had driven to Hindhead. Buffy dug down the side of the door and found a map book as Spike turned the keys and with a spurt of mud from the wheels, they shot off down the road.

“Red won’t be happy about this,” the vampire said.

“I know, but we can’t take her with us. She’s exhausted already. That barrier she put up to protect her and Giles has taken everything out of her.”

“And it didn’t protect Rupert that well!”

“I think he was infected before she raised it,” Buffy said, trying to follow the route they were taking with her finger. “Are you driving west?”

“Yes, reckoned you’d want to head that way. You think the monster is going in that direction, don’t you?”

Buffy nodded. “The tunnel we went down ran east to west and we know it came from the east. Whatever it is, it’s heading west.”

“So you never meant to go back underground to follow it?”

“There wouldn’t be any point. I don’t want to be behind it. I want to get in front. To be there when it arrives. Take it by surprise. We can’t do that if we’re tagging along behind it shouting, “Stop, monster!”

Spike frowned and swerved to avoid a small herd of cows who’d wandered through a broken fence onto the road. “Couldn’t you have explained that to Red? Told her where we were going? Where are we going, by the way?”

Buffy bit her lip. “We’ll handle it better on our own, Spike.”

The vampire glanced sharply at her for a second. He’d seen that expression on her face before. “You don’t trust her? Come on, pet, she bloody well saved us. She magiced the boulder away from the cave entrance. She’s not infected by the mist. What’s not to trust?”

There was a long silence and finally, he swung the car onto the grass verge and braked sharply. They sat gazing out over the quiet English countryside, Buffy’s breath misting the inside of the windows. She leant forward and rubbed a clear space with her hand.

“Come on, sweetheart. What am I missing? Willow’s on our side, isn’t she?”

Buffy wriggled in her seat. She could feel her stomach growling. She was so hungry! The packet of peanuts she’d eaten back at the hotel had done nothing to stop the pangs.

“I don’t know, Spike, and that’s the truth. All she seems to want is for us to slow down, do research, not follow the monster.”

“That’s just Red being cautious. You know she’s never been the one in the front of the gang waving a big stick.”

“I know that.” Buffy hesitated. How could she put into words what she felt; that somehow Willow seemed a different person now. A different type of person from her. Spike had changed, she had changed herself and they knew Giles had changed. But Willow? Willow had stayed the same and now Buffy realised that that was what made her feel alien. Being a human being was no longer normal.

“I can’t explain, Spike. You’ll just have to trust me on this.”

Spike pulled her close and kissed her. “Mmmmm, long time since we had any together time, sweetheart. If I hate this monster for anything, it’s that it’s stopping us being together!”

Buffy grinned at his irritated tone. “Just concentrate on your driving, vamp boy! Put us in a ditch and I won’t be happy.”

Spike started the engine and swung the car back onto the road. “And where exactly are we heading, pet? Or rather, where do you reckon the plague monster is going?”

Buffy stared down at the map, her eyes travelling westwards from Hindhead, across southern England. She was looking for a clue, something, somewhere old, very old. Winchester Cathedral? That was old and certainly in the right direction, but somehow this didn’t feel like a religious sort of apocalypse. This was older, far older.

Then her gaze swivelled a little further west and a chill ran over her body. Her finger jabbed down on the page. “There, Spike. That must be it. I bet that’s where it’s heading. It’s going to Stonehenge!”


tbc