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Chapter 5 - For All the Good He Didn’t Do

I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect.
-------------George Carlin

Concern should drive us into action and not into depression.
-------------Anonymous

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
-------------Voltaire

~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~

Buffy looked down into Spike’s face and struggled not to scream. There wasn’t an inch that wasn’t severely burned and she was sure she saw places where bone peeked through skin. Where his ears should have been were two fleshy nubs that barely covered the opening to his eardrums. His eyes were sunken to the point that she was afraid to look too closely at the crisped lids as she wasn’t sure there was anything behind them. His nose was severely lacerated and blood dripped out in a slow trickle. He looked long dead. Worse. He looked like he’d burned to death and then been left to rot for a few weeks. If he were human, that is.

Luckily...or maybe unluckily for Spike...he wasn’t human. Buffy kept repeating to herself that as long as there was a body he could recover but there was a large part of her that was afraid he was dead already. She looked up and saw the gang surrounding her with various looks of horror on their faces.

“Xander, help me get him into the Magic Box.”

It was a testament to how utterly trashed Spike looked that no one questioned her decision. In fact Xander gave Spike a pitying look before he bent down to carefully lift his legs and maneuver him into the open shop door.

They carried Spike through the shop to the back room where they laid him on a pile of workout mats. Willow, Tara and Giles followed like a funeral procession as Anya rushed to make sure all necessary doors were wide open.

Buffy looked up at Giles with tears in her eyes, “What do we do now? Is there any way to help him?”

Giles cleared his throat uncomfortably, “There are various healing spells we could try that would deal with some of the damage but the best thing for him would be fresh blood. A great deal of fresh blood. Unfortunately he would have to be conscious for that and with the lacerations in his throat I’m not sure he’d currently be able to swallow it.”

They both looked up in surprise when Anya burst through the door from the front of the shop.

“The authorities are here. Someone from the movie house called them”

Buffy’s eyes widened in shock. “What do we do?! They’ll think he’s dead and take him away before we have a chance to help him!”

There wasn’t time for an answer as the door banged open again and a police officer and two paramedics rushed through with a gurney. They quickly moved everyone away from the body as the paramedics knelt down to take Spike’s vital signs and the officer fired questions at the assembled group.

Surreptitiously Giles moved to Willow’s side and whispered to her. She slowly made for the door to the shop while Giles moved back towards Buffy.

“Do you know the victim?”

Buffy answered, a keening sense of deja vu causing her to feel panicky and out of control. “Yes. His name is William.”

“Full name?”

Buffy hesitated for a split second before improvising “William Blood.”

“Do you have any idea what happened to him tonight?”

“No. He’d been away for a few days and then showed up in the street just now looking like that.”

“When was the last time any of you saw him.”

“About 18 days ago.”

Willow came back into the room from the shop front and blithely made her way over to Giles.

“Does he have any relatives?”

Before Buffy could answer Giles interrupted, “Buffy here is young William’s fiancée and I am his uncle.”

Except for a minor choking noise from Xander none of the group disagreed with the Watcher.

The police office turned back to Buffy, eyes narrowing, “You’re his fiancée but you haven’t seen him for 20 days?”

Buffy actually started crying when the accusation in his voice clashed with the guilt she was already feeling for not finding Spike in the first place. She still managed to improvise, “We’d had a stupid fight over where we were gonna live after the wedding. I’ve got a little sister I’m take care of ever since our mom died a few months ago. I thought it was a bad idea to leave the house we lived in with Mom while Spike felt Dawn needed a fresh start.”

“Spike?”

“William. We call him Spike. His...hair is spiky.” She finished lamely.

“Do you know anyone who would want to harm Spike?”

She looked the officer directly in the eyes and avoided his question with a deft lie, “I have no idea who could have done this.”

Giles made his way over to Buffy and put his arm around her shoulder, “Officer, please, we’ll be happy to answer any questions you have, but can we do it another time. Buffy must be very distraught.”

At Giles’ signal, Buffy let her feelings go and burst into tears. Giles moved around to hug her while whispering into her ear. “We need to get this amulet somewhere onto Spike’s body and it will simulate vital signs until we can figure out what to do.”

He slipped a small charm into Buffy’s hand and visibly squeezed her tight before letting her go.

Buffy calmed her tears and moved over towards where the paramedics were working on Spike. They were just about to declare him dead when she threw herself onto his still form furtively lacing the chain securely around his wrist while hysterically screaming his name. Once the chain came in contact with Spike’s skin the portable heart monitor picked up a steady beat and Spike appeared to start breathing.

At the sound of the heartbeat Buffy reared back in unfeigned surprise and the paramedics hurried back to their original positions trying to “stabilize” the badly damaged vampire. Once they felt secure that that heartbeat wouldn’t stop again they shifted him onto the gurney and wheeled him to the ambulance. Buffy managed to get on and ride with Spike and the team promised to follow as soon as they found something that could help Spike heal.

~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~

Xander found himself staring blindly at the wall in front of him. Buffy had been gone for about 20 minutes and the remaining Scoobs had sat down around the table in a frantic effort to find something that speed up the healing of Spike’s brutal injuries. Xander kept seeing the badly beaten and burned face of the one being he honestly would have said he hated most in the world an hour ago.

Now?

This was the second time the vamp had been badly tortured because he was helping them. Actually, this time made the first seem like a sports injury or a bad fall. He didn’t understand why the vampire stuck around. All he seemed to gain was pain and suffering.

Questions continued to swirl about in his head causing a severe headache and irreparable damage to his world view as he vaguely listened to the conversation that went on around him.

“There’s ‘The Blood of the Sire.’”

“Not really applicable and we don’t know where to find Drusilla, anyway.”

“How about Slayer blood? That worked for Angel, right?”

“That was an antidote for a specific poison. In actuality it’s only urban legend that Slayer blood is any different than regular human blood. Although I believe some vampires do consider it to be an aphrodisiac in the way that humans consider oysters to be. I believe it has something to do with the heightened levels of adrenaline in most Slayer blood. It causes a rush, you know.”

“Well, at least since they think he’s a real burn victim one of the first things they’ll do is hook him up intravenously to human plasma. That’s the most effective cure for vampires, anyway. It’s not like he’s a Xytol demon and can heal by simply being exposed to air.”

The sound of Anya’s voice brought Xander’s thoughts full circle.

“I’m going to the hospital.”

The group at the table all stilled at the sound of Xander’s voice.

“They let friends and family donate blood for admitted patients and one of the only good things my genetics provided is the fact that I’m a universal donor.”

Tara raised her head at that. “I’m a universal donor as well. I’d like to donate some blood for Spike. In the mean time you might want to research aura sharing and chakra cleansing. If we all formed a protective circle around him I believe they’ll speed Spike’s natural ability to heal.”

She got up to walk with Xander to the door.

~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~’~,~

The vampire had escaped and would soon be back among the rest of his gang of villains. Doc smiled thinly as he sat back in his chair and waited patiently for his bomb to go off.





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