Never Ever Tell

Chapter 16

Receiving signals


Buffy was glad to be out patrolling. There was something soothing about pacing through the streets and graveyards of Sunnydale, killing the odd vamp, glaring at a demon who, OK, wasn’t exactly dangerous, but ewwww, the smell!

She supposed that at some time she would have to deal with the problem that was Harmony, but hopefully not tonight. The stars were too bright and with a warm breeze blowing through the trees and the scent of a hundred flowers in the graveyard hanging in the air, it was to nice a night to stake a former classmate, even Harmony.

Anyway, she had no doubt the ditzy blonde vamp would be shacked up with Spike by now, doing – well – doing whatever it was that vampires did, which had nothing, absolutely nothing in common with what she and Riley did!

She tried to push to the back of her mind the memory of the erotic dream she’d had about Spike when she was caught up in Jonathan’s spell. If only it didn’t still seem so real. Could you imagine bodily feelings like – well, like that! How could she ever in her wildest thoughts have dreamt up her behaviour in his crypt that night?

Could she, would she ever act like that with Riley? She shuddered. He’d be horrified. Riley was a nice boy. He liked their love life to be – well, nice.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that!” she muttered, viciously cutting off the head of a thistle as she passed it.

Walking past Spike’s crypt and trying the door tonight had only been a sensible, Slayer action, she told herself proudly. You had to know where your deadliest enemy was at all times, and OK, so not so deadly anymore, what with the chip and all, but still….

Somewhere a church clock was chiming two: time to head for home. As she turned, she realised she was outside the Harris home. It was an old house; one of the oldest in Sunnydale and it always had an unhappy air about it; no wonder Xander longed to get away.

No lights shone anywhere and against the starlit sky, the roof was a long black line – Not! As Buffy looked, a dark shape crawled up onto the roof ride and inched its way along towards the far end.

Grimly, without hesitating, Buffy leapt over the wall into the Harris yard and ran silently round the side of the house. She hadn’t often visited Xander when he was living upstairs, rather than in the basement, but Willow had told her that when they were children, they had used a big tree as a convenient staircase for getting in and out of the house undetected by Mr and Mrs Harris.

The tree was still there, wide branches reaching upwards. It took Buffy seconds to swing from branch to branch and finally drop down onto where a flat part of the roof jutted out over a bedroom.

Above her head, the demon had stopped being silent. A steady chinking noise cut through the night and as Buffy finally reached the top of the house and tightroped her way along the ridge, she heard a string of swear words ripping out, in an accent that could only mean one person.

“Spike! What the heck are you doing up here?”

“Oh great! The Slayer!” Spike’s words were muffled due to the fact that most of his fingers of one hand were in his mouth. “Here I am, bleeding to death, and you turn up!”

Buffy dropped down next to him, sitting astride the roof ridge. “Spike, you’re already dead! Now tell me what you’re doing on top of Xander’s house before I stake you and you won’t have to worry about bleeding because you’ll just be a pile of ash!”

Spike pulled his fingers out of his mouth, one by one, and Buffy felt the colour rise into her face. Thankfully the stars weren’t bright enough for him to see, although she had a niggling feeling from the glitter in his eyes that he knew what she was thinking.

“Look – the rotten spanner cut my knuckles.”

“Spike – “

“OK, Slayer, don’t get your knickers in a twist! I’m just, er, just repairing this satellite dish.”

“You’re doing what?”

“Has shagging soldier boy ruined your hearing, pet? This satellite dish is broken and I’m going to get in mended.”

“You mean you’re stealing it!” Buffy’s voice rose from a whisper to a shriek that Dawn would have been proud of.

“Want to wake the whole neighbourhood, Slayer? The Harrises don’t need it. They’re always too drunk to watch TV. I, on the other hand, do need it. There are programmes I want to watch, because I’m stuck in that bloody crypt, a helpless crippled vamp, unable to fulfil my role in life, pursued by the Slayer at every turn – ”

“I’ve never pursued you,” Buffy hissed angrily. “Well, only to kill you, when you were worth killing.”

Spike’s teeth shone briefly in the starlight and she knew he was grinning at her. “Pursued, hunted down, chased from pillar to post – I mean, why are you up here, pet? I reckon you fancy me.”

“I so do not fancy – Spike! Stop changing the subject. Leave the satellite dish alone and go home. And don’t steal anyone else’s. You’ll just have to manage with the TV channels you’ve already got.”

Spike sighed silently. Going home meant having to sit and listen to Harmony natter endlessly about nothing at all. Even when they were shagging, she talked about redecorating the crypt, what clothes she was going to steal, how she wanted them to move to Los Angeles. Watching TV was his last resort.

Surreptitiously, he felt behind him where the dish was attached to the wall. The nuts and bolts were much looser. He’d leave it for now and come back tomorrow night when the Slayer was busy with soldier boy.

As he turned, the spanner slid out of his hand and fell, crashing to the ground, hitting the glass roof of the Harris sunroom, smashing it to pieces.

Within seconds lights went on all over the house and Buffy could hear Mr Harris and Xander shouting and yelling as they raced out to see what was going on.

Spike stood, ran and jumped for the tree branches, flying through the air like a big bat. Buffy hesitated, wondering if she could possibly explain to Mr Harris why she was sitting on his roof. Xander would accept that she’d seen a demon up here, but not his father.

Reluctantly, she followed Spike into the tree but as she caught the branch, it decided that two people were one too many to support this evening, gave an almighty crack and she found herself pitching down towards the ground.

Then Spike’s hand shot out from the darkness, clasped her arm and hauled her back up. They stood, balanced together, swaying in silence as the Harris family shouted and yelled and finally went back inside.

The air was warm and dark under the shelter of the leaves and for ten minutes Buffy stood with a vampire’s arm tightly round her shoulders, her face pressed against a cool black T-shirt, hearing only her heart beating.

And later that night, she lay in bed and wondered exactly why it had been beating so fast.

tbc