***************************************

Kehoe’s place seemed deserted when they pulled into the wide circular driveway.

“You live with anybody?” Spike demanded. “Bodyguard, housekeeper?”

“The maid has the weekends off,” Kehoe answered. “And you already chased off my men.”

Spike glanced at the backseat. Buffy had been nearly impossible to control as they grew closer to their destination. Even now, bruises were beginning to bloom faintly on Dawn’s skin. The…other Buffy had not appeared since their encounter at the club, but Spike wasn’t sure that Buffy’s condition now was preferable. She had worked herself into a frenzy and with her considerable strength, he worried that this could go on for hours.

He motioned Kehoe out of the car, then retrieved Buffy from Dawn’s strained grasp. He didn’t look at Dawn, only waited until she scooted out of the backseat and then slammed the door behind her. He pulled Buffy to his chest and listened to Kehoe unlocking the front door of the house.

Once inside, Spike took a cursory look around. The place was less like a home, he observed, and more like a museum – beautiful, clinical, lacking any discernable expression of life. Dawn’s eyes widened at the obvious affluence of the furnishings and artwork, and Spike noticed that her gaze lingered on the water beyond the sliding glass doors of the patio.

Kehoe reluctantly led them upstairs, past numerous guest rooms and lounges until they finally reached the master suite. The man bypassed the sleeping area and instead began rummaging in what looked like an enormous walk-in closet. Rather than clothes, however, this little room held an assortment of magical materials – offering bowls; ancient, crumbling statuary; scrying orbs and several unidentifiable liquids in amber-colored flasks. The whole setup looked like nothing so much as a miniature Magic Box – and wouldn’t the witchlets have a blast here?

At the thought he felt a sudden pang, followed quickly by loathing. He was not homesick for Sunnydale.

The icy metal of the shotgun’s muzzle brushed Kehoe’s ear, and the older man jumped. Spike smiled wryly. “Go to it, chum. You’ve got one minute to gather up what you need. You can try all the trickery you care to, but bear in mind: if this reversal doesn’t work, I’ve got no use for you at all. Do I?”

Kehoe grimaced at him, but immediately started assembling the necessary tools. His hands shook under Spike’s watchful gaze, and Dawn’s contemptuous one.

Standing there in the doorway to the closet, hearing Dawn’s breath at his back as it had been for weeks now, Spike felt utterly spent. It had been a fifteen hour drive from Texas – had they only arrived in Los Angeles this morning? Impossible. Seeing Buffy again after so long – and the memory of what had happened next. He looked down at her. She was just a wisp of a thing, but his arms were starting to ache. Ponce, he chastised himself. And he knew he still hadn’t recovered from the vision of Dawn, facing down these latest villains with Spike’s shotgun the only thing standing between her and certain death. He might never be the same again, he thought with growing ire, and it would serve the silly child right if he hung her up by her shiny hair –

“This is everything,” Kehoe announced stiffly, and Spike brought his attention back to their present circumstances. He inspected the items Kehoe had selected.

“Thought you said this was old religion,” Spike groused suspiciously. “I don’t see anything special – The Nathor Book of Shadows? Can find that in any glow-in-the-dark bookstore.” He flipped idly through the grimoire’s moldy pages.

“Don’t touch that!” Kehoe said tersely, and Spike raised his eyes in ominous inquiry.

“It’s required in the ritual. You – your nature – you’ll mar its purity.” Spike backed off sliently, still watching Kehoe, who walked to the center of the bedroom.

“The Huna religion focuses on spiritual peace, unity with self and nature. To divest Miss Summers of her higher self, certain…perversions of the tradition were required. That is where the magical influence is implicated.” Kneeling on the plushly carpeted floor, Kehoe began to fastidiously arrange the Circle.

Spike placed Buffy on the bed for the moment, bracing her legs and gripping her cold hands in his. “Dawn.”

His tone was utterly aloof, Dawn noted apprehensively, and he still wasn’t looking at her. Spike had never been this angry with her before. She didn’t think she’d seen him this angry with anyone before, although she was certain Buffy had tormented him skillfully during their acquaintance.

“Run downstairs now. Go look at the water or something.”

“But I want to –"

“Get out,” he barked.

Her head lowered. “Fine.” She turned toward the door.

“Stay!” Kehoe called after her. Off Spike’s murderous look, he explained. “Two beings are needed to call up the powers. This is to prevent unauthorized, self-gratifying invocations.” Kehoe at least had the decency to appear to understand the irony of his admission.

“So what?” Spike shrugged. “You and me’ll do just fine. Now get to work.”

Kehoe shook his head. “Forgive me, but you are not adequate to participate. You are – how shall I put this? – corrupted. A vampire is the bastardization of humanity, and the Ho’omana will reject you, and our plea, as an insult.”

Spike waited impatiently.

“I need the girl –" Kehoe nodded at Dawn – “to complete the Circle.”

“The hell you do,” Spike snapped. “You think I’m letting you come near her with your bollixed-up magics?”

Kehoe was visibly daunted by Spike’s reaction, but he held fast. “Then there’s nothing I can do. You may as well wait for your friend to die, slowly and in significant pain.”

“Um, hello?” Dawn said. “Standing here, still in the room.” She turned her attention to Kehoe. “Hook me up.”

“Don’t touch her,” Spike told Kehoe. He grabbed Dawn by the arm and dragged her to the other end of the room.

“Now you listen to me, little girl –"

Dawn’s chin jutted out. “Remember what happened the last time you started sentence like that?”

Spike thought back. ‘I hate you!’ ‘I hate you too!’ Spike, cooling his heels outside the bathroom door. He opened his mouth to threaten her with bodily harm, because it was all his overtaxed brain could come up with. She plowed on before he could speak.

“You can't stop from doing this. If it’ll help Buffy – make her like she was before…God, Spike. I would do anything for that. So would you.” He looked away abruptly.

“Spike, it’s Buffy.”

And it all came down to that one irrefutable fact, didn’t it? On the altar of Buffy, what wouldn’t they sacrifice?

Spike scowled. “Don’t think this makes up for your foolishness before. Soon as I get the chance, I promise you I’m going to beat your ass raw –“

He broke off. Dawn was smiling at him, hopefully. His brow furrowed. “What?”

“Then…after that you’ll forgive me?”

He suddenly wanted to sit down, to fully digest the unavoidable realization that he was, forever, beholden to females with the last name of Summers. He had the odd, abrupt mental image of Dawn and Buffy’s tiny hands wrapped unyielding around his dessicated heart.

He cleared his throat, tried to sound gruff. “Yeah. After that I’ll forgive you.”

And then there was hugging again, and Spike wondered if he would ever become so used to this as to take it for granted. Not anytime soon, he reasoned. Dawn released him finally, and Spike’s gaze locked on Kehoe again. “What kind of involvement are we talking about?”

“Nominal. Her presence is required, as a kind of witness. The activities necessary to harness the aumakua will be performed by me.”

Spike said nothing, but it was clear to the three of them that the decision had been made. Dawn returned to the center of the room and knelt beside Kehoe. He took her hand and began to sprinkle a reflective, charcoal-covered powder across her fingertips.

“Hey,” Spike growled. “Keep your hands off the girl.”

Kehoe spared him a withering stare. Damn, Spike thought. The old boy was becoming less fearful by the second. Have to do something about that.

“It’s her entre into the spirit world we will be petitioning. It must be seen that she comes as a humble servant.”

Spike didn’t argue anymore, but the glinting greyness on Dawn’s hands made him suddenly restive, uneasy.

I am…

Candles flickered in the darkness, and Spike wondered when the lights had gone out. Had they ever been on? Dawn’s face was eerily skeletal in the glow.

And now the chanting began, because what would a depraved mystical ceremony be without a little somber droning?

Spike rolled his shoulders, settled himself on the bed next to Buffy. She, at least, appeared to be merely tangential to this particular effort. Neither Kehoe nor Dawn spared her a glance as they concentrated.

“An appeal from your slave Rodger, member of the Order of Kane,” Kehoe intoned. “I beseech you, Ku, to reconcile the Afflicted One. Restore her aumakua, extend the silver cord to unihipili and uhane. Make her whole again.”

There was angry rumble, but to Spike it seemed soundless; it was vibration, shifting planes of disharmony. He held on to Buffy tightly, although Dawn and Kehoe seemed unperturbed. Unaware, in fact. To Spike’s supreme anxiety, Dawn appeared consumed by the ritual, although she took no active part. Her eyes were glassy and without focus, her lips parted slightly.

I am the very soul...

Beneath him, Buffy’s thrashing became, inconceivably, even more desperate. It was all Spike could do to keep them both from tumbling onto the floor. Finally he gave in and pinned her, wrists above her head, legs between his. She was beyond awareness, little more than an animal now. The suffocating, soundless tremors increased.

“Manawa! Now is the moment of power! Now is the triumph of self!” Kehoe’s voice was wild and demented.

Spike could no longer hear the words, or see the two kneeling figures; everything was blunted and blurred until unrecognizable. Distantly he could still feel Buffy’s writhing body, and he wrapped himself tightly around it. There was nothing else, no room, no house, no ocean outside or constellations above them. Just this bizarre blitzkrieg, the music of a thousand muted roars, a hundred thousand silenced screams of anguish.

And then the screams coalesced into one: Buffy’s.

I am the very soul of vexation.

***************************************

Spike hadn’t felt this hung over in a long time. The prospect of opening his eyes was an unworkable one, so instead he lay very still – very, very still – and tried to think of a time when he’d felt worse. Being dumped by Dru in a Brazilian café, of all places, came to mind. So did having a large church organ dumped on him. But neither quite captured his current head-to-toe wretchedness.

Underneath him, a warm body stirred. Spike’s interest was mildly aroused. Well, now. Things couldn’t be all bad. He risked a glance downward.

It was Buffy. She groaned and put her hands to her temples, then opened one eye and looked at him balefully.

Then it all came rushing back – a bloody kitchen knife and Buffy smirking ‘Get down with the sickness’ and he and Dawn going fugitive and drinking Buffy’s blood at the Mayan and Kehoe saying ‘certain…perversions…’ and Dawn asking ‘you’ll forgive me?’

For once, there were no words in his throat. So he just held her, perhaps too forcefully, but she didn’t object. She held on to him too.

***************************************

An hour and a half later, Spike, Buffy and Dawn were in the suite at the Bonaventure. As he slid the last of the locks on the door into place, he heard Dawn ask, “What did you do with Kehoe?”

He didn’t turn around when he answered. “Chained him to the sink in his bathroom. Guess you were too out of it to notice.”

She and Buffy were out of it yet, he observed. Questions could wait until tomorrow. Or never. Now there was just, secretly, love and relief and joy crowding in him, elbowing for space in a heart not meant to expand.

Buffy had been subdued since they left Kehoe’s. It was she who had shaken Dawn from the ritual-induced reverie, and then held her shocked and elated sister to her breast. Buffy buried her face in Dawn’s silky hair, and watched Spike over Dawn’s head all the while.

Spike knew, just from her gaze, that she remembered everything of the last weeks. But that, too, could wait until tomorrow.

Now Dawn was leading him by the hand into the bedroom, where Buffy was already curled up on the bed. She blinked at him drowsily as he walked in, then moved over. He didn’t resist as Dawn pushed him gently down on the mattress next to Buffy, and then settled herself at his side. In seconds both sisters were asleep.

He wrapped an arm around each of them, let himself be lulled into oblivion by the twin rhythms of their stomachs heaving with deep, healthy, sustaining breath.

“My girls,” Spike murmured. “My girls.”

Part 11: Healer To Heaven, Hunter Comes Home

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