Lily’s pregnancy was progressing well but wasn’t yet public knowledge. Her father knew, of course and he’d made sure that a top Harley Street fertility clinic was poised to deny any involvement. This denial, would guarantee everyone’s belief that Spike was not the child’s natural father.

In the meantime, she and Spike were still slaying…

Dust was flying, in the stone circle as Spike and Lily fought, back to back against hoards of inter-dimensional vampires. They’d lost count of how many they’d dusted and Lily was beginning to envy Spike not needing to breathe the dust laden air.

Garri ran across the field towards the battle.

“Spike,” He yelled, “You wearing?”

“Yeah.” Spike yelled back, knowing Garri was about to do something clever.

The young warlock shouted something incomprehensible and threw a handful of powder into the air. There was a bang and a flash of light, like a firework going off and the field was suddenly daylight. Every vampire, except Spike, burned up and dusted.

“Thanks,” Lily gasped, coughing dust as the darkness fell, again. “Is this still about Dalton?” She addressed this last question to Spike.

“I hope not, if it is, they won’t give up ‘til they’ve got him.”

There had been a few attempts by the vampires of the other dimension, to retrieve the hapless fugitive. All Dalton could say on the subject was that Lilith didn’t like to lose.

“I really think it’s time you left the slaying to me, pet.” Spike said, gently, as Lily coughed some more dust from her lungs.

“That’s a bit Victorian, isn’t it?” She croaked.

“Well, that is the way I was brought up. The ladies have the babies and the gentlemen kill the demons.” Spike said, with a smirk.

“Nice sunlight spell, Garri.” Lily said, to her friend.

“Yeah.” He agreed, modestly, “Buy you two a drink? Clear the dust from your throats?”

They headed towards Lorne’s. Spike slipped his arm around Lily’s waist.

“Seriously, pet, think about it. Who knows what damage you breathing vamp-dust could do to little Jennifer Anne.” He said.

They had already named their child, in honour of both their mothers. Neither of them were comfortable with just referring to her as Her. It was only one step up from referring to a unborn child as ‘It’. Lorne had assured them of her gender and good health, it seemed right to treat her as a person.

Lorne had their drinks ready, by the time they worked their way through the other customers, to the bar; pineapple juice for Lily, Spike and Garri both drinking Jack Daniels but with different mixers. Spike still smirked over the night that a tipsy Garri had accidentally downed his ‘Bloody Jack’ and spent the rest of the night being violently sick.

Lily downed her pineapple juice in one.

“Keep them coming,” She said to Lorne.

He winked and slid another her way. Lily was obsessed. Everything about pineapple was wonderful, beautiful; the colour, the texture, the smell, the taste - oh God, the taste…

How had she lived this many years without realizing? Since the start of her pregnancy, she now loved pineapple so much, that she was seriously considering getting a tattoo, to proclaim her devotion for the world to see.

“How’s Dalton doing?” Spike asked Lorne.

“Oh, you know, terrified. He hasn’t been out of his room since that vamp tried to get him.”

A week ago, a lone vampire had come through the stones, wandered into Lorne’s and tried to stake Dalton. Lorne’s anti-violence spell had held and Spike had followed the vamp outside and staked him. Since then, more had shown up and were keeping Spike and Lily busy.

“Here’s to my last night of slaying,” Lily said, raising yet another glass of pineapple juice. “For a while, anyway.” She added.

Spike smiled, sensible girl. It would have taken loads more effort to persuade Buffy to give up slaying…

* * * * *

Buffy wandered into Giles’ office, without knocking, to find him on the phone. As she excused herself and turned to wait outside, she was sure she heard him say ‘Spike’. A few seconds later, Giles called her back in.

“Who was on the phone?” She asked.

“Andrew. He was ringing about the database. He was wondering if he should delete all the bad things that Spike did in his past, just because he died a hero.” Giles improvised, hurriedly; knowing that Buffy had heard him mention Spike.

“What did you tell him?” Buffy asked, doing her best to sound neutral.

“I told him no. The catalogue of evil deeds, serve to prove how much he changed and how different he was from other vampires.”

“Oh. Right.” Buffy could think of nothing else to say.

“Buffy, I know I said we’d have lunch, today but I’ve really got a lot to do and, thanks to Andrew’s pointless phone call, I’m running late. Can we do it another time?”

“Yeah, sure.” Buffy said, trying not to sound disappointed.

They were all so busy, now. She missed the group sitting down together, talking, eating, planning the demise of some evil threat…

Giles watched her leave. He felt bad about what was happening but it couldn’t be helped. There was no way he could sit across a table from Buffy, after what he had just been told. Andrew had phoned to tell him that Lily was carrying Spike’s child, just as the prophecy had said.

It had come to light, when Andrew was initially sent to England, to scan and back up the archives. He had come across the parchment and, out of curiosity, translated it. It stated that the ‘souled one’ would be reunited with a ‘warrior of his blood’ and there would be a child. With Spike dead, Andrew had assumed the prophecy referred to Angel and had flown straight to Rome to talk to Giles, in person.

No one trusted Angel, anymore. His Wolfram and Hart involvement had seen to that but this prophesy was important. It was while they were discussing what to do, that the ‘Dana’ problem came to light. Giles made, what was probably, the least thought out decision of his career, he sent Andrew to L.A.

His reasoning was twofold. Firstly, Andrew was expendable. Secondly, he could assess the Angel situation and report back, in a ridiculous amount of detail. It turned out to be a good move.

What he reported back was wholly unexpected and put a new slant on things. Spike was back. His soul intact, he was back from the ‘dead’ and working in opposition to Angel and the others, or at least, independently. Best of all, he hadn’t contacted Buffy.

Now that Giles knew that Spike was alive, he was fairly certain he knew who the ‘warrior of his blood’ was. Before relocating to Sunnydale and the battle with The First, Giles had been fascinated by Lily’s case. A potential slayer, comatose and manifesting severe injuries. A strange form of stigmata, which seemed to suggest that the girl was psychically linked to someone else. Strangest of all, she had woken, from her coma, the instant she had become a slayer.

Giles had flown to England, at once.

The girl was only a teenager but seemed older, more confident, especially when you consider she had spent so long sleeping.

“Rupert.” She had said, coldly, when he had first walked into her room. After, she had instantly reverted to ‘teenage girl with unexpected super powers’ but the recognition had been there.

Giles had known, for certain, then.

He watched her fight, under the guise of an assessment and was struck by how like Spike’s her style was. This became more obvious, when she wasn’t fighting and was clearly right-handed. Somehow, while in her coma, Lily had been ‘channelling’ Spike.

Giles sat Lily and her father down, to talk.

“How are you finding the life of a Slayer?” Giles asked, watching her, carefully.

“It’s different.” She said, brightly.

“You got your kit, I see,” He said, gesturing to her watch. “You really don’t have to take it off when you fight, they are designed to be very tough.”

Giles was, of course, grateful that she had taken it off. It had made it easy for him to replace it with the ‘enhanced’ model.

“Our head of technology, Andrew Wells, put in a lot of time, testing them. He also came up with the creative alternatives for weapons, specifically for use in countries where the authorities frown on its citizens going armed. It wouldn’t do for us to have to bail slayers out of jail.” Giles said, with a smile.

Lily and her father laughed, dutifully.

“I need to talk to you about a special project. In L.A., there’s a vampire.”

More than one, I should imagine.” Lily said, dryly.

“Yes, quite.“ Giles laughed. “This one is special, though. He has a soul. His name is Spike.” Giles watched Lily’s face, carefully and he was certain he saw her eyes change, just for an instant. She was hiding her reactions well. “He might be coming to England. We have seers, looking into it and we should be able to determine, when and where. We would like you to take care of him.”

“When you say ‘take care of him’…”

“I mean exactly that. He has a soul, he fights on the side of good and he needs to be protected from… slayer misunderstandings. He had a very narrow escape, in L.A. recently and we want to make sure that nothing like that happens here.”

“You want me to act as a bodyguard to a vampire. Sounds fun, sign me up.” Lily said, politely enough but Giles got the idea that she was fighting the urge to hit him.

“Good. I’ll leave you a copy of Spike’s file - read up on him. As soon as we know when he’s due to arrive, we’ll let you know.”

Giles risked shaking Lily’s hand, before he left and, looking into her eyes saw something he had last seen in Buffy and Dawn’s eyes. A look that said he had betrayed someone they cared about.

When he got back to his hotel room, he found that Andrew had emailed a file of Lily’s family history. Several generations back, in the late 1800s, the younger sister of one of Lily’s forebears had been taken abroad for her health. A seemingly unremarkable occurrence, she had left in the company of her adult son, William. After they had left, someone had entered their house and brutally murdered all their servants.

It had been a bad year for society people. There had been mysterious disappearances, a house full of dead servants and then, some of young William’s peers had been tortured. Each had had a sharp object driven into their skulls, slowly, until they died. The sharp object was a railroad spike.

Giles came to the obvious conclusion. Spike and Lily were of the same blood.

* * * * *

Spike was having fun. He was fighting at the stone circle, he was hopelessly outnumbered and best of all, he didn’t have to worry about Lily or Jennifer Anne. Lily understood that it was for the best but she wasn’t happy about staying home, while Spike patrolled. At least she knew he would be safe, he had the gem of Amara, after all.

One of the vampires Spike was fighting, threw something from a small jar into his face. Momentarily distracted, Spike realized that it was blood, just as three of his assailants charged at him, overbalancing him onto the centre stone, where the portal was. There was a blinding flash and then a huge net was thrown over him. Swiftly the vamps bundled him up and dragged him off the stone.

“Lilith wants to see you.” One of the vamps said, nastily and Spike realized, with a sinking feeling, that he was on the other side of the stones…






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