Reveal All

The tunnel was crooked, contorting like a boastful yoga master. Its staircase seemed to lead to the Trail’s basement and its perspiring walls seemed determined to narrow the farther down Spike and his gang went. Outstanding of the tunnel’s features was its darkness, sticking to eyeballs with as much tenacity as sweetness sticks to molasses. Spike’s night-vision was impaired to a few inches beyond his nose and he was starting to re-think his rash strategy when the bends straightened out and the stairs levelled to a wide ledge.

 

Spike loosened his hand from Fred’s grip and loosened Giles’ grip from the torch shaft saying he needed the torch light for, “a good nosey round. Who’s coming with me?”

 

“I’ll come,” Dawn said.

 

“That’s what I like. Valour in the face of naught.”

 

Arm in arm, Spike and Dawn strolled along the ledge keeping close to the wall Fred, Xander and Giles had pasted their backs to. After a ten minute ramble, Spike and Dawn came across another staircase, this one cut into the wall face and leading upward. Spike could just about make out the shape of an archway at the top of the staircase. They walked on for a few more minutes, halting simultaneously when the torch dimmed a little.

 

“Gee it’s dark in here,” Dawn said lightly.

 

Spike empathised with her shiver. The air in the chamber was thick and dank, pressed on him like impending death. He turned them round so they were headed back to the dot of light that was Xander’s lamp. Back where they’d started, Spike swept the torch close to the ground as he and Dawn crept towards the edge of the ledge. They stopped a stride before the grey of ground gave way to the black of air. Dark up above and dark down below, a chute with no beginning and no end and bordered by a shadowy wall on the other side.

 

“Well here’s the rabbit hole,” Spike craned his neck, looking into the black nothing. “But where can Alice be?”

 

“That’s a girl’s book you’re fessing up to,” Dawn said.

 

“It’s a classic. Allowable to the macho reader,” he held the torch above the Void and saw the blackness better. “Any ideas?”

 

“We could say hi to She,” Dawn suggested.

 

“Go ‘head.”

 

“Hello? She? I said hi there!” Dawn laughed at her extended echo. “Sheee?” She called, then, “Helloooooo?”

 

“Hello to you, Dawn,” a voice said, welcoming as an Antarctic night breeze. “She is a much maligned name and one I prefer not to be called.” A sharp smell of scorching wood permeated the cave as orange light outlined a huge rectangle in the wall across the Void.

 

Spike hustled Dawn away from the edge, back to where the others where huddled. “What should we call you – Miss? Fraulein?”

 

“Hello Spike,” She said. “You may call me Indi.”

 

“Short for?”

 

“Independent, Indisposed, Indignant, whatever you like. It matters not to me.”

 

Flames covered the rectangle, flickering light illuminating the five visitors’ faces. They all looked suitably impressed by the pyrotechnics, perhaps even a little daunted at the fire-wreathed rectangle that was, in fact, a towering door. Spike had the feeling that he was standing on a riverbank, separated from the opposite bank by the Void.

 

“Why do you seek me, Spike?” Indi asked.

 

“Got some questions need answering.” 

 

“You must play to proceed,” pause, “shall we play Spin The Bottle?”

 

“Go on then, seeing as you’ve twisted my arm.”

 

“I have spun the bottle and it points at Spike. Truth or Dare?” Indi asked.

 

“Truth!” They all yelled, Spike thinking how wrong a dare could go with a dark void and a flaming rectangle close by.

 

“Spike, have you ever put your boy’s life up in exchange for a bracelet for your Seulement, your Slayer?” Indi asked.

 

Stunned, all Spike could think to say was, “May I switch to dare?”

 

“Truth Spike. Did you punish Xander for being deceitful whilst keeping from him the news of his mandatory attendance at Tresten’s Court in seven short days? Do you believe yourself a worthy Master despite banishing him defenceless, knowing full well that the determined Groza watches him as he sleeps, lusts over him no less?”

 

Spike felt the ground slide from under him and his breathing start up in panic. He cut off the breathing and dug his heels into the ground. “It wasn’t like that,” he said, solely for Xander’s benefit.

 

“Though I live below, the lamps in the Trail show me what goes on above. Since you dispute the truth of what I saw, I invite you to tell it in your own words.”

 

Spike didn’t have the words to salvage the situation. He stuffed his hands into his back pockets, managing an infuriated growl.

 

Indi sighed. “Play or go away.”

 

“Fine, okay, yes I gambled on Xander’s life for a bracelet. Yes I punished him and didn’t tell him he’s invited to Tresten’s Court. I moved him to the Pool House knowing Groza lusts after him. And yes I reckon I’m a smashing Master. Happy?”

 

“Exceedingly,” Indi said.

 

Dawn looked at him, her disappointment thick as London smog. “I really don’t like you right now, Mi Amo,” she sulked off to the wall and propped herself against it.

 

“When…the bracelet, when?” Xander asked, hurt and humiliation plain on his face.

 

Spike glanced aside. “I’m not doing this, not here.”

 

Indi did it for him. “When you were sharpening your stake in an unaided vampire kill Xander, on your last night on the Third Ranking,” she said. “He risked your life for the bracelet then.”

 

“Unaided vampire kill?” Giles grated, squaring up to him. “What possessed you Spike?”

 

“Spike’s just being Spike, Giles,” Xander raised his chin a notch and stared ahead. “Can’t be trusted and hasn’t changed. Nothing new there.”

 

That gutted Spike. He had turned down veins when he could’ve gone on a rampage, had taken shit from Xander that would’ve won Buffy a fat lip and several black eyes. He’d gone poncified to save this boy’s skin, had leashed his demon to protect Xander from its constant craving for childe. And in the small hours when there was nothing to hear except the demon’s whispers, it’s sniggering: once a cheat, always a slag…when there was nothing but these doubts giving him heartburn, he’d given Xander the benefit of the doubt, and Xander should have been the first person to not doubt the changes in him now. But it was Fred who said what he needed to hear from Xander.

 

“All I know is we can go into this thing trusting a disembodied voice we met two minutes ago or we can go into it backing someone who’s turned the Trail on its head trying to get us out. I’m backing Spike.”  

 

Chains rattled, wood croaked and Spike faced front to see the rectangle descend, forming a drawbridge across the Void. Fire swarmed from the underside of the bridge onto the topside, leaving a narrow path of wood along the centre.

 

“Please proceed,” the archway eddied with orange specks, fire-flies silhouetting a tall, curvy figure.

 

After the damage she’d just caused, Spike had half a mind to lob rocks at the silhouette of She, but he felt as though his choices had dwindled down to two. One: reach Indi. Two: reach Indi. He proceeded and after three steps, he felt Fred’s light steps on the runway behind him.

 

“You must all proceed,” Indi said.

 

Giles’ heavy footfalls then Nibblet’s plodding joined the trek.

 

He’d asked Xander to follow him enough times. If the boy wanted to stand around with spirits and souls winging like anguished bats on all sides of him, that was his lookout.

 

Another few steps and he heard Xander drag his feet onto the bridge.

 

Spin The Bottle, stupid bloody game. He should’ve gone for something predictable. Pool for example. Choose cue, rack balls, no nasty surprises.

 

Fred avoided glancing down. Unfortunately, a jingle started up in her mind, undermining her determination to stay calm.

 

…ten green bottles standing on the wall and if one green bottle should accidentally fall…

 

Giles was also thinking about a bottle. A bottle of Glenmorangie Whiskey and its assurance of drunken stupor.

 

Dawn missed school. At least there the nightmare ended when the 3:15 bell went.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Now his life made sense, those things he’d lived through? They made sense. They had happened to train him for the day he would walk down a burning bridge with a smoking heart in his chest, a hot lump in his throat and smarting eyes in his head and still manage not have emotional melt-down.

 

Jessica and Tony knew a thing or two about parenting after all.

 

He made it to the end of the bridge a together man wishing for a stake.