He hadn’t seen Spike eat, drink or sleep in a week. He was bossy, grouchy and Xander liked him even less.

 

Dawn lived on the water, bubblegum and chocolate Fred had brought in. The last Hershey’s Kiss got nibbled yesterday for breakfast and Dawn had been on a hunger strike since then.

 

“I’m not eating that crap spiced up with demon snot,” she’d said.

 

He and Fred ate the crap. Every other day, the guards poured it into stone troughs in the centre of the cave and Xander scrummed with the rest of his cave-mates, filled a bowl with the corn-barley-gristle gruel and shared it with Fred. If he didn’t chew, he could pretend he was swallowing cold and watery oatmeal. Lucky he was good at swallowing without chewing.

 

The rolled up sheets of paper they’d been given on the first day were Rules. They were supposed to learn the rules. He munched his sheet of paper. It was a bit chewy and the ink was bitter, but the rules had filled the gaping hole in his belly for a few hours.

 

Dawn and Fred were star pupils, read the sheets everyday.

 

Spike learnt the rules by chatting with the other Earners in the cave. Spike spoke French, wasn’t impressive with the Spanish. His Spanish sounded like English in a Spanish accent. Sometimes he listened in on Spike’s conversations with the Earners, but only when he thought there’d be some use of French because Spike’s French voice? Très bueno. Most times though, he was too pissed to care what Spike talked about.

 

Despite his best efforts, Xander learnt a few things about his holiday destination. They were inside a mountain called Tresten’s Trail and their cave was one of many on a ledge called the First Ranking.

 

Below First Ranking was Main Floor and the people who lived there were called the Unbonded. Their Earners had thrown them away and their bands were made from the cast-offs of the other bands in the Trail; all the colours of the Trail stitched together – except indigo. The Unbonded weren’t allowed to wear anything indigo, but they were allowed to do all the work. The tunics, boots, torches, wine, furniture, candles, silk and cotton in the Trail weren’t made by magic, the Unbonded made them. They made everything and were entitled to nothing.

 

“Bottom feeders,” Spike called them.

 

“I’d do anything to not become a bottom-feeder,” Dawn shuddered.

 

There was almost nothing Xander wouldn’t do to stay bonded, but he was admitting that to Spike when snowboarding became a pastime in Arizona.

 

A nook in their cave fascinated Xander. It was next to the cave door, got the best air circulation and the floor in that nook looked sandy, soft. An Earner and his fifteen Earned lived in the premium nook. Big, ugly guy with big ugly Earned. Spike called him a Gang’ral bastard. The Bastard and his belongings ate all the time, but never from the trough. Bread, fruit, mushrooms, small furry mammals, you name it, they ate it and he wondered where they got the eatables.

 

Spike, apparently, wondered the same thing because he asked an Earner, “how is it that I’m bloody starving and he has nosh to bin?”

 

“Nosh?” The Earner asked from the depths of the Gang’ral’s bin.

 

“Food,” Spike licked his chapped lips, “blood.”

 

“It is from the market on the Main Floor.”

 

“Right,” Spike unsheathed his sword, “I’m going shopping.”

 

“What will you give in exchange?” The Earner asked.

 

Spike looked at him blankly, “dollars I expect.”

 

“Paper currency? Mi Amo, you could not purchase a drop of blood with all the paper in the Trail. You must have something precious, silver, amethyst, rubies, gold,” he glanced at Dawn and slid Spike a sly smile. “Humans are always in high demand.”

 

“So basically, either we all waste away or I sell one of them?” Spike asked.

 

Dawn poked his shoulder, “I’m not for sale.”

 

“The gaming pit is an alternative option. Go down to Main Floor and ask for Jude, everyone knows him,” the Earner said.

 

Spike frog marched him, Dawn and Fred down to the Main Floor and asked for Jude.

 

“He is in the gaming pit,” someone told Spike.

 

“Which is where, exactly?”

 

“In the Town Square, of course,” the someone pointed at the flow of Traveler traffic on the cobbled street.

 

Into the flow, going past caves and under marble arches, past disintegrating pillars and demon kids fighting on boulders. More caves, one with steam blowing out of its wide mouth and miles of silk sheets hanging on the washing lines inside it. Caves with herds of woolly goats and moose-like beasts chomping on hay.

 

Spike went into a goat cave, growled at the Unbonded goatherds and pounced on a goat. Even Dawn, Spike’s number one fan, turned a shade of green as his fingers scrambled through thick fur to find a vein. The goat was bleating and Spike just stuck his fangs in, face pressed to the dirty grey pelt. Xander heard the hungry gulps from the cave entrance, saw the shakes in Spike’s hands as he gripped the goat harder.

 

It was skin crawling, that moment when Spike finished. Crouched over the dead animal and panting, a dribble of blood running down his chin.

 

“You’ve got…there’s…your chin, Spike, blood,” Dawn dabbed frantically at her chin.

 

Spike wiped his chin with his palm, sort of hesitated, shrugged, and licked his palm.

 

Dawn turned away.

 

Xander looked on, jubilant. If only Buffy could see Spike now, a fucking animal.

 

“Bring it out,” Fred said.

 

Spike cocked his head at her.

 

She flicked her tongue over her lips, “The goat.”

 

“You’re not thinking of-”

 

“Xander. I need food, meat. Bring it out here, Spike.” 

 

Grinning, Spike brought the goat out.

 

Eating vampire left-overs was one of the things Xander wouldn’t do to stay bonded. It was too squicky a prospect and he wanted no part of it. He dawdled behind the group, watched Fred collect wood shavings and splintered logs from the garbage heap in front of a cave and kicked a stone when Dawn scavenged a sheet of leather from another heap.

 

*    *    *    *

 

They came to a wrought iron gate. Waist high, it hung open and lopsided on its hinges and was the entryway to an expanse of space. A bird’s eye view would have shown seven roads ending at seven wrought iron gates that opened onto each side the heptagon shaped space.

 

Faintness overcame Dawn at the food smells coming from market stalls on the other side of the gate. She followed Spike through the gate and crowds, wanting to follow the scents that filled her nostrils. Baking bread and roasting peanuts and chicken on a bar-b-que. Rosy apples, fat bananas, dates, pears…food everywhere and they had nothing precious to buy it with.

 

A girl about her age came running towards her, real thin and pale, wearing a smudged white uniform, a multi-coloured leather apron, a long blonde braid and a snarl. She was like smoke weaving in and out of the crowd unlike the three soldiers who were bumping into people as they chased after her. Dawn braced for impact when Pale Girl came right at her, gasped when the girl sailed over her head and eeped as a hand on her collar dragged her out of the soldiers’ way.

 

“You okay?” Spike asked, letting go of her collar.

 

“Yeah,” she turned to see if the soldiers had caught the girl. They had stopped and were sweeping their eyes over the crowd, no sign of the girl. “Did you see that girl in the apron, Spike?” 

 

Spike saw people playing in the Town Square. Sitting on stone benches and at round tables in front of market cafés, they imbibed in boot-leg liquor from 2 litre glass flasks, drank coffee from earthenware mugs. They Gambled on card games, chess, Dyulin’s version of jenga.

 

“Place your bets, my good friends. Seven to two odds on for the Grang’al,” a nasal voice sang in a hotchpotch of French, Spanish and English. “Come now, play the game, ladies and gentlemen, juegue al juego. Jouez le jeu,” and the sing-song voice went into a demon dialect Spike didn’t understand.

 

He tracked the voice through the throng and there, flitting around a shoulder-deep dirt pit, was a wiry demon with a dusting of green warts over his pugnacious nose. While a Gang’ral and a Lei-ach demon squared up to each other in the pit, the warty demon took jewellery and precious stones in exchange for betting slips. He ignored the copper pieces one spectator held out, but grabbed for an indigo wrist band another threw his way.

 

“Jude?” Spike asked then louder, “Hey, Jude!”

 

The demon looked across the pit at him.

 

“I’ll place a bet. Them two against these two,” Spike raised his fists and the goat slid off his shoulders, lolled deadly at his feet.

 

Laughter from the gamblers, Jude gave the woolly goat an inexpressive stare and spoke to the fighters in the gaming pit. “The rules, as always, are simple-”

 

“No wait,” Spike wanted to let some steam off, needed it. He picked the goat up by it’s scruff, “hold this, Harris,” and turned to where Xander was – or should’ve been - standing. “Where’s the boy?”

 

“Huh?” Fred jostled her armload of wood onto the leather sheet Dawn had spread on the ground.

 

“Harris. Where’d he go?”

 

*    *    *    *

 

“Where is your Amo?”

 

This was a word Xander hadn’t learnt the meaning of. He racked his brain trying to remember what his amo was and where he’d put it. The yellow bananas on the stall in his peripheral vision prompted a vague connection between his yellow band and amo, and Xander lifted his right arm to show the soldier that his amo was on his wrist.

 

The soldier smirked with the other two goons and said something in Dyulinian. Xander caught the word ‘spirit’ and was mulling this over when the soldier grabbed his hand, twisting until his wrist bones creaked and pain coiled through his forearm.

 

“Watch it,” he gasped as he was yanked closer.

 

“You are Earned and the Earned walk behind their Masters,” the Soldier said, his hand sliding up Xander’s tunic. “Where is your Master?”

 

Xander recoiled from the touch, starting to take offence when one of the other soldiers stepped behind him and gripped his shoulder from struggling. Sandwiched, his nipple pinched and his backpack pushed aside as a broad hand mauled his ass, Xander called for, “help! Sexual harassment, hel-”

 

The third soldier covered his mouth, assaulting his ear with hyena like hooting. Xander jerked his head away from the laughter, yelled “Spike,” behind the soldier’s palm when he saw his Amo striding through the crowd with a goat under his arm, a holdall on his shoulder and a sword in his hand.

 

Spike stopped, lips twitching with amusement. Twitches gone when the Muffling guard licked a slippery stripe up Xander’s neck from collarbone to jaw. Spike dumped the goat and threw the sword into the Mauling guard’s side.

 

Mauler gurgled, fell and Xander felt instantly lighter. And yeah, Spike was a fucking animal, had the sword out of Mauler before the other two could ask, ‘where is your Amo?’ Whisper of cold steel between Xander’s legs and the First Guard was twisted up on the ground, hands clutching his groin, blood flowing between his fingers.

 

Muffler pushed Xander into Spike and melted in the crowd.

 

“I turn my back for one minute,” Spike grouched, sheathing his sword.

 

“Trouble follows me,” Xander made sure to follow Spike. “I only have to show my face and trouble’s all over me.”

 

Dawn and Fred were waiting beside the fruit stall, had each grasped an end of the leather sheet and held it like a sling between them, wood, shavings and goat heaped on it.

 

“What was that all about?” Dawn asked.

 

Xander shrugged the rucksack back into place, “I got licked.”

 

Spike lifted the goat off sling, loaded it across Xander’s shoulders and closed a fist on one of the metal rods holding the fruit stall canopy up. He wrenched it free, told the startled trader behind the stall, “Am borrowing this, alright?”

 

She watched the corner of her canopy sag and jiggled a screaming baby on her hip.

 

*    *     *    *

 

Fred skinned and gutted the goat with her dagger, cut it into to strips and threw the carcass over the First Ranking ledge, littering Main Floor. She spread its hide out to dry on the ledge railings, built a fire, stacked flat marble slabs on two sides of the fire, balanced the rod across the stacks and got down to roasting the strips of meat.

 

Dawn buzzed around the makeshift spit.

 

Xander looked along the ledge at the Earners playing card games just outside the cave entrance. Further along the ledge was a smaller cave. Streams of raw sewage poured out of ceiling level pipes and into trenches in the smaller cave, and although Xander hated going into the sewage cave, he had to. He went in every morning because his bowels were regular as the Six-Fifteen train into Sunnydale from Oxnard.

 

He sighed and looked along the other side of the ledge. Spike lay on his duster a couple of feet from him, had his head cushioned on his holdall and the sword lying across his stomach. Xander picked up a rock and set to sharpening the blade of his axe, mixture of gratitude and ire as he watched Spike dose. Gratitude that Spike was here, ire that he needed Spike here.

 

Spike taking care of him was, hell it was unnatural. It gnawed on him like a rusty saw.

 

“What you looking at Harris?” Spike asked without opening his eyes.

 

His hand halted at the soft tone of voice; intimate somehow and totally not how Spike spoke to him. He searched for a sneer, but saw only the contours of a tired face.

 

Movement slow and pondering, he glided the stone over the blade. “Thanks, for, you know…earlier.”

 

“It’s time you earned your keep, starting tomorrow,” Spike said.

 

“Earned meaning?”

 

“Training, fighting. These bastards are waiting for me to slip up. The devil help you when I do."

 

Feeling desperately useless, Xander glanced at the fire as the sound of crunching made its way from there. “What and how, Dawnie?”

 

Cheeks bulging, she crunched a couple of times and swallowed. “Apple and I found it.”

 

“Good on you, Bit. Tit for bloody tat.”

 

“How’d you figure that?” Xander asked.

 

“She nicked it, same way Tresten nicked our book.”

 

“I found it,” Dawn insisted. She rummaged in the leather sheet bundled on the ground beside her and pulled out another apple, tossed it to Xander. “They’re juicy.”

 

Xander caught the apple and twisted its woody stem out, “You’re Psychic Spike now? You know for a fact that Tresten has the book?”

 

“It’s a Traveler’s book, we’re in a Traveler’s dimension. Tresten owns the Trail. Connect the dots.”

 

Fred transferred strips of roasted goat to a marble slab, “any ideas on how we get the book back?”

 

Sitting up, Spike laughed at the million dollar question. He an idea, on how to improve his chances of survival. Take Nibblet and walk off. Harris would be dead before he noticed he’d been left. Fred had gone five years alone in a demon dimension, didn’t need him to hold her hand.

 

Dawn tore into a strip of meat, picked another from the slab before she’d gulped down the one in her mouth. “So how do we steal our book back?” She asked around her mouthful.

 

Wishing Buffy had bothered to teach Bit to fight, Spike surveyed the ledges in rock-face across the way. Firelight shone from pigeonholes in the ledges, more and more torches the higher up he looked and becoming a beacon at the very top. That was where Tresten lived, he’d wager, in the lighthouse up top.

 

“We’re moving up. Closer to Tresten and our book,” Spike said, clueless on how to climb the slippery pole to the higher Rankings. “Just you buckle up, kids.”

 

Two of the kids tucked into roasted goat. The third one shined his apple on his tunic sleeve, Stubborn if Spike had ever met it.

 

*    *    *    *

Juegue al juego = play the game.

Jouez le jeu = play the game.