Chapter Nine
----====Giles====----
The safe house had the oddest effect on Spike and Wes; they got settled into their rooms and unconsciousness almost immediately. I wondered if either one of them had slept in the past few days– or weeks. I, on the other hand, was up again at sunrise. The long summer of care-taking didn’t look to be ending any time soon.
I took a quick trip into Oxford to pick up supplies for men and vampire. Luckily the butcher in the Covered Market was open for business, and he gave me a couple of days’ supply of blood. It was strangely familiar to be shopping for Spike, and thinking back to those Sunnydale days, I added some Weetabix when I was buying groceries for Wes and myself. Spike looked so unnervingly thin.
The mist had dried off the meadows by the time I got back to Marston. The neighbourhood was waking up; across the street a young woman was messing about with a bicycle when I pulled up in front. The bicycle bell rang out in the quiet when I got out -- and she called "Good morning!" as I tried to simultaneously manage the front door and my armful of sacks.
I grunted something, then turned back to greet her properly once I’d gotten the door open. And I blinked. She wasn’t there any more.
Clearly the strain was starting to tell on me.
Wesley was up and dressed, staring out of the three-quarters-shut blinds into the back garden. His hands shook slightly on the armrests of his chair. "Morning, Wes. Tea. Breakfast," I said, and went into the kitchen.
He followed me and watched as I unpacked the bags. Did nothing but watch, until I told him to put the kettle on. Honestly.
"What’s all the noise?" a half-dressed Spike asked. He stood in the doorway, rubbing at his forehead.
"Food service. I just put some blood in the fridge for you," I said. He looked – dear God, for a second I thought he was going to cry. But he blinked it away, crossed the room to get a mug and his drink.
Wes stood at the counter, staring at the filled bap I’d bought. "Giles? What on earth?"
"Wesley, you are from England. Don’t tell me you don’t know what a bacon roll is." I handed Spike the Weetabix, then grabbed my own roll, doused it with brown sauce, and took a bite.
"Bacon? Oh, yes." Wes eyed it as if it were a coiled cobra; then, with the earnestness of any insane California convert, he said, "It’s terribly bad for you, Giles."
"Absolutely. Nitrates, nitrites, all manner of evil." And I took another huge bite. Delicious. The tea was ready by that time, so I poured myself a mug and went into the sitting room. Flopped down in a chair and began to eat.
Wes followed me in, bringing his tea and a piece of citrus fruit. Spike trailed after, carrying his blood and Wesley’s disdained bacon roll. The two of them sat down and started their own breakfast. To any onlooker, it would have seemed a nice morning tableau.
Then Wesley said, "So this is a Council safe house, Giles? I hadn’t known that you were still in the fold to quite that extent."
"I’m not." Had to swallow some tea, while I framed my answer. "I’ve been doing some outside investigations for the Council in the six months. Some ghost-hunting, some basic fieldwork. There’s an offer on the table, however, for a full-time residency in London."
Wesley picked at his fruit. "Working under my father?"
Ah, John Wyndam-Pryce: second in command to Quentin Travers, albeit with clear ambitions to the throne; third-generation Council member; one of the nastiest gits of my acquaintance. "Working around him, more like."
That surprised a dark little laugh out of Wes, but he sobered almost immediately. Another bit of orange-peel was shredded by those long, nervous fingers. "You’re not going to tell him I’m here, are you? I don’t think he would approve of his scapegrace son fouling Council property."
"I wouldn’t use that description, Wesley." He threw a sidelong glance, but I made him look at me fully. Yes, the alpha-Watcher stare was deployed. After a minute he nodded to acknowledge my meaning, and I continued, "Still, I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to. And I might well take the job, as it happens."
Spike finished mangling a bite of food and said, "Hang on. London? What about Buffy, then?"
The little bastard. How dared he say her name, remind me of all the hundred thousand good reasons I had to stake him? Now, when he had called upon my sympathy and help? I took a deep breath. "Yes. What about Buffy?"
"She needs you, Watcher, that’s what!" He got to his feet, the restless movement of a wounded animal who couldn’t settle. "She almost broke last year, under the weight of – she needed more than I could – oh sod it." He paced into the hall as if to escape his own words, then back.
Wes put down his own food and looked narrowly at Spike. "Oh, I understand. Something happened with Buffy last year? Is that why you went out to earn your soul?"
"You WHAT?"
Spike turned. Somehow he’d lost his ability to project the Big Bad, even though he tried. "Shut your gob, Junior."
"Oh Spike, I’m so sorry – " Wes began.
I cut him off. "Wesley, be quiet. Spike, is this true?" When I looked again, I realised I didn’t need to ask. His torment in unguarded moments, the pain shining in his eyes now, the touch of something more: it all made sense.
"Yeah. It’s a laugh, innit?" He stepped back, avoiding my gaze. "Actually sought it out. At last I get what you’ve been yammering on about for years. Get the whole ‘evil’ concept." Then he did look up. "Which would be me. All me. Oh God --"
He bolted from the room, and I could hear the bathroom door slam. From the sounds within, he was losing what little breakfast he’d choked down.
It was the strangest thing. The only emotion I could feel was a loss: the sense of disappointment I always associated with Spike, evaporating into the morning air.
"He’s been having trouble eating," Wes said quietly.
"Yes, I would imagine so." I picked up the mug of blood. Spike had barely touched it. "I’ll be right back. And Wesley, if you start brooding about telling me his secret, I’ll kick your arse to Kidlington when I return."
I went down the hall and opened the bathroom door. Spike hunched on the floor by the toilet, shaking. I bent down. "Here, take this."
He could barely wrap his trembling fingers around the mug handle. But he managed. I dampened a face-cloth, folded it, and placed it on the back of his neck. That often was helpful in times of distress; I knew Buffy liked it.
He put down the mug, buried his head in his knees. Sobbed.
I had to clear my own throat, too. Embarrassing. "I guess this will teach you not to scoff when I suggest that you might have a higher purpose."
A laugh mingled with a sob. "Wanker," he said indistinctly.
"Ah. Good to know that not everything has changed." He choked on another laugh. I gave his shoulder a brief squeeze, then said, "Well. We’ll need you to help us with the research on the DH’s in a minute or so. Soon as you feel ready, Spike. We need you." He looked up, and I nodded. "Now drink all your blood. You look like shit."
He dug at the tear-tracks with the heel of one hand. "You have a real way with words, Rupes."
"One of my many gifts." I closed the door behind me, to give him time to collect himself.
Wesley was staring out the blinds again when I walked in. "I trust you’re not brooding, Wes."
"No, of course not." Liar.
I finished my sarnie and my tea – because, goddamn it, I needed it. Then I said, "All right. Now, what do we have on the basic problem? Besides the inhalers? You two haven’t been particularly clear."
"Oh, right!" At the thought of work, he visibly shook off the clouds benighting his brow. The man had true Watcher instincts. "Well, we have two. Spike, er, liberated a PDA from one of the DH’s that we encountered at Wolfram and Hart."
"You found DH’s at Hell’s law firm? How is it that you two neglected to give me so many salient details last night?"
"I’m sorry, Giles."
"Well, you can plead jet-lag and exhaustion only once per crisis," I said. "No more allowed this trip. And stop saying you’re sorry every five seconds, please."
Wesley half-laughed, a disturbing note in his voice. Then, pulling himself together: "Right. It’s likely important that the Wolfram and Hart creatures seemed quite at home there, although not of the firm itself."
"Yes." I’d left the computer bags downstairs, and so I went over to mine. As I pulled my laptop out of its case: "And? You said, two. "
"Spike first came upon a DH, a lesser type it seems, seeking a CD of mine at Angel Investigations. When he refused to give up the data, there was some violence, and the continued attempts on us seem to be derived from that."
"Does the CD have anything we need to work on?"
"No. A paper of mine: I’ll consider later why they would need it. I suspect our best chance at unravelling this is the PDA."
"Right then. One of us can work with the device, the others compiling a database and doing online searching if the findings require it. The two laptops could come in handy." I connected my laptop to the telephone jack, just as Anyanka had shown me. "That is, if Spike can handle either a palm-thing or a computer?"
"Yeah, I can. A little of both, although Wes might have to help me in the tricky bits." Spike walked in, seeming more himself. I was pleased to see him drinking his blood. He sat down in one of the chairs and said, "What do you need?"
Wes said, "I recommend we start with the address book."
"Research. ‘s always the information age with you two," Spike grumbled. "So what are you going to do, Giles?"
I pulled my mobile from my pocket. "I’ll be back to help you both in a minute – give me whatever task calls for the least contact with those infernal machines." They both snickered, the gits. "First, though, I’m going to ring my contacts in Devon. They’re a coven, not far from Exeter: a powerful source for good, but they’re fully aware of evil outside their bounds."
"Exeter? There’s a history of witchcraft trials there, as I recall," Wesley said, and rather surprisingly, Spike followed with, "1682, yeah? Nasty business, as so many of them were."
"Yes. These women reclaim the past from darkness. We all know a little something about that, don’t we."
They looked at me, then at each other. Then, as a unit they dove for the bags with the computers and assorted spoil, muttering about getting down to work.
As I’ve often demonstrated with the Scoobies, a well-placed banality is a bloody effective spur to the research process.
I went outside into the Oxfordshire sunshine of the back garden (being careful not to let any stray beams into the vampire’s work area when I went through the door). And I rang Imogen. She was the coven’s seer, an incredibly wise woman. She might be able to guide me through this wilderness.
"Yes?" The voice was curt.
It also wasn’t Imogen. "Hello – is that Regan? Rupert Giles here."
"Oh, Giles!" Yes, it was Regan, the coven’s healer. "I tried your home number several times this morning! We– we’re having some difficulty here."
"Some difficulty," it turned out, was her euphemism for Imogen convulsing and going into a vision-coma the previous night. Just about the time that Spike and Wesley arrived in Bath, as it happened. The coven members now attended Imogen, waiting for the prophecy which would be revealed when she awakened.
And then there was the second problem. During the past two nights, dark shapes had prowled the boundaries of the coven’s sacred space. Regan didn’t know what they were exactly, but she and her comrades had heard growling.
And they’d heard a strange hissing sound. Inhalers, I was very much afraid.
I gave her the outline of Spike and Wes’s arrival and our trip, and told her that we were working on identifying more about the "dark shapes." When she pressed, I promised that we’d come to Devon on the following night and patrol for them.
As soon as she rang off, I put the mobile away post-haste. If I called anyone else for help, we’d likely have yet another task placed on our shoulders.
It looked as if we three would have to find our own answers.
Walking through the back garden, I went to the boundary line –a row of shrubs – and sat down on an almost-hidden bench. Time for a break. I breathed in fragrant air, let the breeze cleanse me. And just for a moment, just to make myself feel better, I repeatedly pounded my boot into soft earth.
Bugger. Bugger. Bugger. Another souled vampire. Another lost soul. Another crisis I’d have to fix. My sodding destiny, wasn’t it. Bugger. Bugger. Bugger.
When I’d finished my venting, I looked down. Before my eyes the indentation that my boot had made in the ground filled with water, which bubbled clear. A spark of fire-blue leapt into the air above the magic puddle.
Right. Fine. Power kept escaping me in the strangest ways, it seemed. But I didn’t have time to deal with that now.
Other tasks, other care-taking beckoned.