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Two hours later, Spike and Nikki collapsed onto the cot in the basement. They could hear the Potentials clatter past upstairs, arguing about who got the last of the buffalo wings from last night's takeout order. "I do!" Spike hollered automatically, and the basement door was slammed shut in response. He reclined against the wall, spent.

"Oh...man," Nikki mumbled.

"That's about the sum of it," Spike answered wearily.

"They're so...I mean, I was with them earlier but I didn't...they're just so..."

"Yeah."

"When is this apocalypse scheduled for, again?" Nikki asked. "Because once it's over, we can send the girls on their way; I'll have killed you and made it look like you died in battle; and I can get started on that to-do list I'm working on."

"You Slayers are all heart, you know that?" Spike reached behind her, and she froze. He glared at her and produced two containers of blood. "Figured you'd worked up an appetite. But go ahead and starve on principle. More for me."

He'd no sooner allow her to starve than he would himself, Nikki knew. And in a few minutes, she'd think of something really vicious and snide to say. Right now, though, her stomach was rumbling and she couldn't even summon the obligatory mixed feelings about her current form of sustenance. Back from the dead, drinking blood, sharing a rather ill-washed mug with an evil murderous demon – none of it compared to the screeching and whining that still rang in her ears.

She watched as he filled the cup and offered it to her. She drank half the contents before pausing for breath. Grimacing, she passed the mug back to Spike. "I never really thought about this, but – blood tastes awful."

Spike took a healthy swig, nodded. "It's better straight from the tap." Nikki looked at him questioningly. "Human. You and I are sharing a refreshing spot of pig's blood. Butcher at Super Food World saves it special for me. Never say I don't still have pull in this town."

She took the mug back and stared down at it, then at him. She started to laugh. "Pig's blood? Oh, she's fixed you up good, hasn't she? I'm impressed. I mean, it's one thing to slay vampires; it's another to castrate them –"

The next instant he was leaning over her, in her face. God - he had that same hateful sneer he'd worn the night he killed Charlene. "Can assure you," he said evenly, "that's not the case."

She pushed him away. "Tell me about the eyeless men," she said. "The ones we fought tonight."

His gaze went from provoking to wary. "Harbingers. Of what's to come."

She considered this. "I don't know. I don't think they were counting on me."

Spike looked at her curiously. "That so?"

How much should she reveal? He probably had more answers than she did, which was frankly infuriating. And he'd certainly feed at least some of her tale back to Buffy. That was fine with Nikki. This motley bunch needed all the help they could get, and so far Spike hadn't seem compelled to divulge the other details of Nikki's recent – and not-so-recent – history. They could keep each other's secrets for a while longer, she decided.

"When I...showed up, they weren't prepared. I mean, you saw me. I was weak." Her voice hardened at the word. "But they were distracted, unorganized. I took out as many as I could, picked up this –" she gestured toward the elaborately fashioned knife she'd stabbed Spike with, that first night – "then got the hell out of there."

"Out of where?"

Nikki bit her lip, thought back. "Seemed like a high school, of all things. I didn't check too closely, but...yeah. Classrooms, banners. Smelled like depression and cheap makeup and fish sticks."

"That'd be Sunnydale High, then. Bloody cursed, that place is. First time I turned up there, Joyce – the Slayer's mum – hit me over the head with an axe. Beginning of the end, right there." But there was a strange wistful smile on his face as he spoke.

"Did you kill her?"

His head whipped around. "No! I wouldn't – no. Never harmed Joyce. I loved her."

"Excuse me if I find that hard to believe." Spike gritted his teeth but didnt' answer.

"So these Harbingers – they work for the First Evil I keep hearing so much about?"

"Right. And the First – not your standard crash 'n' bash baddie. It's clever, willing to bide its time. Like to mess with your head, too."

"So we hunt down these Harbingers, find out how to defeat the First – and what they hell they did to me – and then get to work. What's the problem?"

"To begin with? There are too many. They've already taken over the school. Students are gone, families have left town." He frowned irritably. "'Course, the principal managed to land here, more's the pity. Useless, if you ask me. Human, with a great sodding chip on his shoulder and lousy taste in clothes and he and Buffy have nothing in common –"

He broke off as Nikki began to laugh again. "What?" he demanded.

Her laughter grew. "You're pathetic. She threw you over for a high school principal? Does he have big coke-bottle glasses and a comb-over?"

Spike shot up from the cot. "There was no throwing, you hear? They're just friends. He's a handsome bloke, too, all rippling muscles and dark, piercing
eyes –" He stopped at Nikki's intrigued expression. "Just friends," he repeated peevishly.

"Uh-huh."

He stood for a moment, defeated, then flopped down next to her. "Suppose he's an improvement over all her other idiots. Me included."

She watched him curiously, this vampire who confused her so.

"'Bout the First," Spike went on. "You got to be careful. If its boys made a mistake they might come back to clean up the mess. They're nasty but the First is worse. Can take the form of any dead person it likes. Something to keep in mind if you start seeing familiar faces." He eyed her. "There were rumors about you, you know. Back in the day."

She stiffened, a different kind of fear than she'd felt yet creeping up along her flesh. "What kind of rumors?"

"That you weren't alone. Locals said you had a family, a brat stashed
somewhere –"

"A Slayer with a kid? Sounds like another urban myth to me."

Spike didn't answer. She turned away from him. "I want to get cleaned up." No lie there; she was covered with dirt and Harbinger remains and vamp dust -- and how very sick and depressing was it to discover she'd actually missed the fine leavings that once coated her every stitch of clothing?

Spike nodded, took the mug from her loosened grasp. "Right, then." He rose and climbed the stairs, and Nikki detected a fatigue in him that would have been an affront to the vampire she'd danced with years ago.

Later, rubbing her hair dry, she reflected on his behavior with the Potentials that evening. She'd been poised to strike as soon as he threatened them, in whatever way he could – seductive entreaties coaxing promises of blood from them (just a bit, love, you won't even feel it), or something even more irreplaceable.

But it never happened. He'd been coolly impersonal instead, issuing orders and dispatching demons with brutal efficiency. Every so often, he'd let slip some sign of amusement or exasperation or even a sort of clandestine tenderness. Other times...other times the girls pained him, somehow, with their youthful giddy presence. She'd feel the tension coiling inside him and then he'd catch himself, gaze going flat and opaque once more.

She thought about sleeping but the dreams – of carnage and charred lands and Nikki standing over it all – made her reluctant. She knew she ought to sort out what she'd learned today but her mind was filled with faces and facts, jumbled together, linked with words like different now and Wicca and big evil that somehow didn't lend any appreciable order to the chaos. It was too much, and she couldn't handle one more single bit of sensory data.

Of course, that was when the yelling started.

A clipped, increasingly irate female voice. One of the Potentials? And Spike's as well, lower and seemingly disinterested but with a razor-sharp edge. Nikki slipped out of bed and up the steps, opening the basement door quietly.

Spike and a slim, dark-haired girl held court at opposite ends of the kitchen table. Nikki thought back – Dawn. The current Slayer's sister. Some sort of bizarre backstory there, too, but Nikki couldn't recall the finer points. Between the vengeance demons and the witches and the dime-a-dozen resurrections, Nikki needed a scorecard. Didn't matter now, anyway – the two people before her were clearly wrapped tight in a misery that wasn't magical.

Spike was angry - Nikki could tell that right off, despite the way he lounged diffidently in his chair. Hands gripping the drink in his hand as if to keep them from grabbing Dawn around her thin shoulders. The girl, for her part, merely glared at him with deathly, damaged – glistening? – eyes.

"You can't tell me what to do. You don't have any say around here."

"Not so, Britney. I have a hell of a say when you try to walk out of the house dressed like a goddamn streetwalker."

"I am not –"

"No arguments, now. Go to your room and change." But he still wasn't looking Dawn in the eyes, and Nikki suspected that he'd begun something he was suddenly unwilling to finish up.

"Fuck you!"

Nikki raised her eyebrows. Liking you more and more, kid. She waited for the eruption from Spike -

But there was none. Just that same sense he was part of a conversation he had no right to be; the same way, Nikki realized, that he and his words had slunk around her when she first came back. "You watch your mouth, Bit –"

"I'm not your Bit! I'm not your anything! I'll wear what I want." She leaned forward and when she spoke again her tone was husky and dangerous. "What's the big deal?" she taunted him. "Suddenly remember your promise? To take care of me?"

Nikki was unwillingly fascinated by the tableau: this awkward colt of a girl (and didn't Nikki recall those years well) spitting out accusations at the weary vampire who seemed cowed by her very presence.

Dawn braced her hands on the table, lowered her head to meet his gaze. "Or maybe seeing me like this you're afraid you might lose it."

And damn if that didn't rouse Spike from his studied, self-imposed inattention. He stood, features no longer schooled into blandness but desperate now, around the edges. "Get out. Go upstairs and –"

"Afraid you might rape me like you tried to do to Buffy –"

A noisy crash as the kitchen table was overturned, glass flying, smashing and the new pungent odor of scotch in the air. There was nothing separating the two of them now but their own thick rage. Nikki stepped forward but neither Dawn nor Spike spared her a glance.

"Come on," Dawn taunted him. "Show me. Show me how you hurt Buffy. You think you've fooled everybody but I know you." She was shuddering now, fighting back sobs but not backing down.

And Spike was shaking too, taking deep unnecessary breaths as he looked at her. "You've always known me best, haven't you?"

"You hurt her," Dawn gasped out. "You hurt her – like that – and then you left and you don't even see me anymore, like I'm nothing, and just because Buffy was stupid enough to forgive you doesn't mean I will, ever –"

"I kept my fucking distance!" Spike shouted. "Thought that's what you wanted! How do you think I felt, you miserable bitch, when you were troubled or pained and I couldn't get near you? Would've given everything, given my worthless useless life to keep that look from your eyes, that look you get when you're afraid to be alone with me and you never were before, never afraid of me, my Dawn so I stayed away from you and from her but you won't let me! I love you two more every minute, every second and I can't win with you!"

Dawn was weeping unchecked now, arms wrapped tight around her stomach as she bent with the force of her tears. "No," she choked out. "You can't win with us. Not anymore." She backed up, away from him and toward the living room. "I don't need you. I can take care of myself now. And Buffy has Principal Wood – Robin," she sneered.

Nikki jerked violently, and for the first time Dawn and Spike registered her presence. Dawn gave a terrible twisted little smile and turned to Spike again. "As soon as this apocalypse is over, you'll be gone. One way or another." She whirled around and fled the room.

Part 9: Low Place Like Home

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