Childe of my Heart ~ Chapter Thirty-nine
by Shanyah
 

Dawn whisked up a strawberry milkshake and left it in the cooler to chill while she went for a shower. Xander made pancakes, put a bag of blood in a pan of hot water and had a shower after Dawn. Spike smoked a cigarette then went into the bathroom, a towel hanging from his shoulder. Giles didn’t miss the fact that Xander was still in there. He brush sawdust off his jacket cuff, frowning.

“Would you like some on your pancakes, Giles?”

He glanced at Fred, who sat in her blood-smirched clothes beside him by the fire. “I beg your pardon?” He asked.

“Fred likes her ice-cream,” Dawn brought her milkshake and book over and sat next to Fred.

“Oh yeah. Ice-cream’s my ultimate pick me up,” Fred dipped a spoon into a one-litre tub, scooped out blob of melting ice-cream and tackled it into her mouth.

“Strawberry milkshake’s the ultimate for me.” Dawn settled the book on her lap and balanced her glass of milkshake atop the book. A lump of milkshake mix floated to the frothy surface. Dawn poked at the lump with a straw, giggling.

“What’s so amusing?” Giles asked.

“Strawberry toads,” Dawn said. “They have strawberry scented toads and mushrooms here and…”

And the recounting began. Dawn and Fred told stories of expansive markets stocked with gems and silk dresses and of gladiatorial games overseen by a giant named Tresten. Eating a dinner of rubbery pancakes, liquefied ice-cream and lumpy milkshake, they told him of restaurants where delicious food was served night and day. It all sounded a bit far-fetched to Giles and he wondered why they needed pick-me-ups, if life here was so grand.

His attention wandered from the impressionable young ladies when their accounts became more fanciful, lauding Spike as the veritable conqueror. He replenished his coffee mug from a pot on the fire, a flow of murmurs worming its way into his awareness. Spike and Xander, sitting across the fire from the rest of the group, were the font of the murmuring, holding a conversation of their own as Spike dabbed at a shallow cut on Xander’s chest with a ball of cotton wool.

“Nah…Harley…pollute…big, blue marble’s airspace…” Xander said, too low for Giles to fathom the gist of his sentence.

Giles strained his auditory senses, unashamedly eavesdropping on Spike’s equally low reply.

“…Rudolp…in the knacker’s yard, Xander.”

Spike’s use of Xander’s name was the first thing to stupefy Giles. He was damn certain he’d never heard Spike speak it and had concluded that the vampire believed the man’s name was in fact, Wanker or any number of its endearing derivatives. Second to stupefy him was Xander’s response to Spike’s ministrations. More knowledgeable on the predilections of vampires than a graduate Watcher, Xander smiled encouragement at Spike and, horror of horrors, angled his head at the perfect neck-baring angle, dipping his gaze from Spike’s eyes to his lips.

Spike’s chest expanded, his nostrils flared. He brushed his knuckles along Xander’s jaw in a most proprietary way and said something that drew a soft breath of laughter from Xander.

Stupefied no longer adequately described Giles. He set the pot carefully back onto the fire, mind grasping for a handle on the two.

Spike picked up the first aid kit. “Anyone else want patching up?”

“Me,” Dawn piped, tapping her nape.

Giles leaned back to scrutinize Dawn’s nape and saw no wounds there. Spike nevertheless indulged her, swabbing the unbroken skin and sticking a band-aid on her Claim Point.

Giles’ veins froze.

Spike traipsed to Fred. She had her sleeve rolled up and her arm straightened, showing a scratch just above her wrist. Surely Spike would discount it, Giles thought. Not only did Spike attend to the scratch with as much diligence as one would a severed vein, but he also nuzzled Fred. In full view and with no qualms, the vampire trailed his lips along the side of Fred’s throat, pausing to deliver a kiss on her Claim Point. Displaying a complete lack of timidity, Fred held still for Spike’s possessive overture.

Giles’ frozen veins thawed with the fervour of his displeasure. He watched a saccharine smile spread across Spike’s face and knew it to be a challenge: recognise the new order, Watcher?

“How goes it in Sunnydale, G-Man?”

“Glory’s dead – again,” he told Xander, recognising the changes in them all.

With honed reflexes and sleek confidence, Spike was not the bedraggled, pining vampire Giles had expected to find. Fred had come across as shy when they’d been planning the journey here. He amended that to not a soft touch and the least likely candidate to tolerate an attempt to usurp Spike’s position as pack-leader.

Dawn was older. She fought like a dervish and looked bored while doing so, a girl-woman who’d seen it all, done it all, but who softened at the others’ cosseting.

Did he recognise the new order? Watchers were about identifying a vampire’s construction of crooked familial bonds. Spike had discarded his usual vinegar method and used honey to beguile the children. Honeyed tones and touches, honeyed smiles designating Giles as minion, Fred as mate, Dawn as the cosseted and Xander as the protégé, the one most like Spike; vicious in tonight’s fight, merciless.

What Xander lacked in fighting prowess he made up for with endurance, traces of inward insecurity outshined by outward poise. His tall, broad frame whittled down to bone and muscle, Xander was an overwhelming physical presence and Giles could see why an odd friendship had developed between him and Spike. They were men at the pinnacle of their strength, the younger looking to the older for guidance, and the older drawn to the wildness brewing in the younger’s eyes.

“How come Buffy didn’t come with you?” Dawn asked.

Spike banged the first aid kit shut and threw it unceremoniously onto the hammock where it joggled against Xander’s bag of goodies from Sunnydale. “Couldn’t be arsed I expect,” he said.

“That’s untrue and uncalled for,” Giles said. “Buffy attempted the journey, but the portal expelled her.”

“She’s not hurt though?” Dawn anxiously stirred the milkshake with her straw.

“No, Dawn, she’s not hurt,” Giles tagged truth onto lie, “and Anya is back, steering at the helm of The Magic Box.”

“Good, that’s great…and Willow?” Xander asked.

“Willow talks of you constantly. She’s sub-renting your flat – sharing with Tara - and forged a letter from the FBI to your employer requesting an indefinite leave of absence on your behalf.” Giles said. “Apparently, you were the only witness to an horrendous crime and the Bureau has whisked you away to parts unknown for your own safety.” 

“That’s a felony she committed,” Xander said, concern and amusement wrestling for supremacy on his face. “She could get into trouble for that.” 

“Just as I could get into trouble for claiming to be home schooling Dawn,” Giles said ruefully.

“Since we’re on the topic of trouble,” Spike glanced at the book on Dawn’s lap, “where’d you find Demony, Nibblet?”

“Demony?” Giles echoed.

“He means this,” Dawn scraped her nail on the book’s leather cover.

“I’d assumed that was the book with the portal-opening chant. It certainly bears a black, leather bound resemblance to the one I recall,” Giles held his hand out for the book.

“Tresten stole the portal book, and the Trail’s chocka with black, leather bound books. They all bear a bleeding resemblance to the one you recall. Which brings me back to you, Bit.”

“I borrowed it from the library,” she handed Giles the book.

“I don’t think so,” Fred said, stripping the barcode off the empty ice-cream tub. “I do the book borrowing and I’d notice something as ground-breaking as you helping me out with it.”

“I did too borrow it, that first day we went to the library.”

Fred rapped the side of the tub with her spoon, shook her head.

“Don’t shake your head at me, I’m not pulling a Pinocchio. Jude was the chief librarian and he gave me the book,” Dawn said. She widened her eyes at Spike and insisted, “I’m not lying.”

“Well one of us is and it sure ain’t me,” Fred said, implacable.

Dawn blew into the straw in her glass, bubbling the milkshake.

Spike tugged the Zippo out of his jeans pocket. “Did Jude give you the Demony book or not?” he asked.

Dawn made bubbles.

Spike flicked the lighter on and off.

“Jude’s a busy guy as it is, chief running and bookmaking,” said Xander. “Why would he volunteer for library duty?”

“Maybe he didn’t volunteer. Maybe Tresten ordered him and all this guessing is a sodding waste of time if he didn’t give you the book in the first place.”

Dawn blew a forlorn bubble and turned her back on Spike.

He flicked the lighter, on, off, on. “You thieved it,” he said, staring at the dancing Zippo flame.

“I had to do something,” Dawn turned to him with vehemence. “You were broken, crying…you have no idea how that freaked me out. We got to the library counter and Jude was snuggling the Demony Book like it was a Gucci-wearing Chihuahua. I figured I’d steal from Tresten’s Earned. Tit for bloody tat like you say Spike. A black leather book for a black leather book. So when Jude was processing Fred’s books, chatting to her, I lifted Demony and passed it to Fred with a heap of books Jude already stamped.”

Marvelous, Giles thought, all the growing up Dawn had done and that particular tendency remained unchanged. At least Fred and Xander wore identical expressions of reproach. Spike, the lout, grinned like a proud patriarch.

“You were broken, Spike, crying?” He asked, flipping through the book of contention.

“Less gloat,” Spike pointed the lighter at him.

“As if I would gloat at your misadventure, Master.”

Spike snorted and refocused on Dawn. “Jude’s seen the book hundreds of times, but hasn’t taken it back. You’d think he’d recognize his Chihuahua.”

“Yeah and have you noticed how you can’t turn around in this place without bumping into Jude?” Xander asked.

“Not to weigh down the wagon, but I had to have strong words with him to end his daily sickbay visits,” Fred said.

Spike pushed the lighter into his pocket and jumped up. “From the gut, Nibblet. Is Jude friend or foe?”

“Friend,” Dawn mumbled.

“Harris?”

“Foe.”

“Fred?”

“Foe.”

“Rupert?”

“Abstain.”

“Why?” Spike asked.

“I haven’t been here long enough to assess him.”

“From the gut I said. Heart, not head. Off the fence, Watcher.”

Giles thought back to his one experience of Jude and repressed his instinctive distrust of demons. “Friend,” he said.

“I say foe. Makes it three to two.” Spike circled the fire-pit, “Early to bed tonight. Tomorrow first thing human time, we have a chin-wag with Jude. First thing, that’s six of the clock, people.”

“What other time is there but human time?” Giles asked.

“You have much to learn,” Xander said.

“Including where I’m to sleep.”

“You’re in the Pool House. End room on the right wing. Told the Drones to kit it out and get you regulation gear.” Spike stopped his circling to hop onto the butcher’s block, “Goodie bag, Xander,” he said, nodding at the hammock.

“It’ll keep,” Xander headed for the unit gates. “You ready for the tour Giles?”

Giles followed, Demony book inserted under his arm despite Dawn’s fretting. “I reckon you should curb the robbing till we get back to Sunnyhell, Bit,” he heard Spike say as he closed the courtyard gate.

*    *    *    *

“…astounding architecture…the style and use of mosaics parallel Greco-Roman splendour…although I tend to think the architect lost the plot when building the units. Their hodgepodge of Far Eastern and Mediterranean flavours detract from…”

“This is you,” Xander forcibly opened the door to a room in the Pool House, threw a log on the fire and lit a couple of lamps on the mantelshelf. “You know what armadillo scales look like Giles? Dawn’s back is astounding like that. Grey scales all down her back.” Xander’s cheeks were stained with angry colour and his breath a series of rapid bursts.

His awe of Tresten’s architects forgotten in the face of Xander’s winded anxiety, Giles steered Xander to the bed and pushed down on his shoulders. “Sit down, Xander. Please.”

Xander sat on the edge of the bed and crossed one leg over the other. Giles sat gingerly next to him.

“When did the first scale appear?”

“I don’t know,” Xander laced his fingers on his knee. “We only saw them earlier today and…she’s covered. I’m thinking green projectile vomit?” Xander’s foot tapped the air, upset twitching of the ankle. “It’s that book, Giles. It’s doing something to her, look how uptight Spike was about it.”

“Have you discussed this with him?”

“He’s got enough going on.”

“What’s Fred’s opinion?”

Xander’s tapping accelerated. “Fred and I keep it surface.”

Giles sat back in the chair, angry words capering in his mouth. Xander had no outlet for his concerns. He held everything in, just as he was holding his body together.

“I’ll do my best to ascertain whether the book could be a conduit for demon possession,” he said, shifting the book from under his arm to his lap. “Whatever’s there to find, I’ll find it.”

Xander’s hitched, “Thanks man,” undermined Giles’ resolve to not pass judgement. Spike was an idiot to damn the boy to solitary distress.

“How long have you been living here on your own, Xander?”

“Hey I’m a big boy, totally fine with having an apartment block to myself,” Xander hurried to the door. “Now get to decoding Demony with that Watcher brain of yours.” Xander’s smile was frail, a discomforting thing to watch.

“You’re the eternal extrovert Xander. Living in isolation from the others can’t be easy for you.”

“Bathroom’s downstairs behind the palm trees. Need anything else, I’m in the last room on left wing,” he ducked out and closed the door.

Giles cursed the absent vampire then compressed his lips together, astonished by the malevolence that had rolled uninhibited off his tongue. He’d be summoning Eyghon next, the rate at which he was succumbing to his unflattering side.

CHILDE OF MY HEART ~ CHAPTER FORTY

Index     Fiction     Gallery     Links     Site Feedback     Story Feedback