“You have endured the required trials,” the demon announced sonorously.
“Bloody right I have.” Spike rolled onto his side and pushed himself up onto his knees. He raised his bruised and battered head and looked at the demon. “So you'll give me what I want. Make me what I was. So Buffy can get what she deserves.”
The demon looked down at him expressionlessly. “And just what exactly is that?” he asked. “Can you clarify your meaning?”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” Spike snarled. “You know what I asked for. I want a bloody soul. ‘Evil, soulless thing’, she says. Not going to be that any more. Would quite like the chip out while you're at it. Then if she can't bloody love me at least I can get a bit of payback by eating the whelp. Oh, bugger it, who am I kidding? I wouldn't do it. But I'd like to punch his stupid face in. Come on, chip out, soul in. Or one of them, anyway, preferably the soul thing.”
The demon grinned, and shimmered. His shape changed; distorting, wavering, and then reforming to reveal a human; an African shaman. He was clad in khaki pants and a Fela Kuti T-shirt, a carved and painted wooden demon mask concealing his face.
“You have conflicting desires, as I said,” he told Spike. “And far too high an opinion of the Slayer. ‘What she deserves’ is to be eaten alive by hyenas.”
Spike's face contorted in a snarl and he launched himself at the witch doctor. The chip did not go off, but the attack still failed. The shaman caught Spike by the throat and held him off with ease. “Don't bother trying anything,” the shaman told him. “I'm no mere demon or human. I'm a god.” He released Spike, and the vampire fell to the floor.
“A god?” Spike choked out, feeling his throat with one hand. “Bleeding Hell! Anyway, I don't care. Talk about Buffy like that again and I'll smash your face in.”
“Sorry.” The witch doctor removed his juju mask to reveal the face of a handsome East African in his late thirties. “I will rephrase that. Buffy Summers has treated you very badly over the past year. She has proven herself unworthy of your devotion. She doesn't deserve it. If I were to take you at your word and give her what she deserved, I'd take your chip out but not restore your soul. I'd remove your love for her and send you back to Sunnydale with a Kalashnikov.”
“No!” Spike was horrified. “Never! She's a good girl. She's had to deal with a lot. Not her fault if she came back from the dead a bit screwed up. I'd never want to hurt her. I did hurt her, but I never meant to. I'd rather you killed me than did anything to me that would hurt her, or the Nibblet.”
“Congratulations,” the shaman smiled. “You've just passed another test. I can do more for you than you requested. You might need some thinking time. Can I get you a drink? Beer? Coffee? Blood?”
“Could do with some blood,” the vampire admitted. “Good place for blood, Africa. Like the way the tribes that drink it get it without killing the cattle. Could live among the Maasai if it wasn't for Africa being such a sodding sunny place. And, after the blood, I could murder a cold beer.”
A few minutes later Spike was sitting at a table and pouring himself a Bell Lager. The shaman, or demon, or god, was sitting opposite him doing the same thing.
“You don't need a soul, Spike,” the shaman said. “I mean, listen to what you said a few minutes ago, about liking how the herder tribes drink blood without killing the cattle. I mocked you earlier about your fall from your status as a great Dark Warrior, but really I admire you. You are still a great warrior, as you have proved in my trials. You've just switched sides. You are a Warrior of the Light, and that's not a bad thing to be.”
“So, which side are you on, then?” asked Spike. “And what sort of god are you?”
“The dividing line between god and demon is thin in Africa,” the deity responded. “Moral issues lose their importance when famine looms every time the rains are late. I can make the rains come on time; my people never go hungry. So they worship me, and that makes me a god. I don't have as many worshippers as I used to, about eleven thousand, but that still makes me a fairly major player, and I've got a lot of residual power from when they numbered in the hundreds of thousands. As to which side I'm on, I'm not really on any side. I am opposed to the end of the world, of course. Other than that, I just do what amuses me. But I respect honour, and loyalty, and courage.”
Spike took a long swallow of his beer. “God, I needed that,” he commented, and licked froth from his lips. “Good stuff. Brewed in Uganda, innit? Better than the Yank stuff I've been getting by on. So, anyway, what's this about me having passed another test, and qualifying for more than I'd asked for?”
“I have power over time,” the shaman informed him, and took a drink of his own beer. “How do you think I came up with the opponents for you? They weren't minions of mine; they were other seekers after wishes. I moved them, and you, through time to bring you together. Had they defeated you, it would be their wishes I would be granting. Except that I can't see either of them showing the qualities which persuaded me to offer you something more.”
“Time travel? So you could send me back to fix things so that I never hurt Buffy?” Spike seized on the hint. “Bloody Hell, you could send me back a bit further so I could stop Buffy dying in the first place. All I had to do was grab Doc and take him with me when he threw me off the sodding tower. Just that one little thing.” He took another swig of his beer. “Christ, go back a bit further and maybe I could do something to save Joyce. Not that there's much I could do about a brain haemorrhage, I suppose - but maybe I could pester her into seeing the doctors a bit earlier. Taking it a bit easier after the operation. Might help.”
“Sorry,” the shaman told him. “If I send you back, I'm afraid I have to wipe out your memories of the intervening time. I can let you keep your moral development, even though you'll have forgotten the experiences that were responsible, but the actual memories have to go.”
“Then what's the bleeding point? Send me back, everything happens just like before, I end up here again - Christ, we'll be stuck in a frigging time loop. Might as well just end the world.”
“Which will happen in about twenty minutes, by the way,” the shaman remarked, as if it was unimportant.
Spike spat out a spray of beer. “What! The world's going to end in twenty minutes?”
“Don't worry; something will happen to stop it. I'm not sure what; the prediction is unclear on that point. Quite possibly my own actions in sending you back in time will be the reason. I can't reliably foresee events in which I am involved. It's not important. What is important is that I am impressed by your selfless thoughts when you realised that I could send you back in time. I'll do it.”
“But, if you wipe my memories, there's no sodding point!” Spike almost howled in frustration.
“Oh, I beg to differ,” the shaman replied, and took another swig of beer. “I told you, your present level of moral development is equivalent to possession of a soul. You will do things differently. Hopefully, it will work out better. After all, it could hardly go worse, could it? The woman you love dying, being brought back to life suffering from clinical depression, using and abusing you, beating you to a pulp, dumping you, and driving you to the point where you snapped and tried to rape her. Then there's the whole world ending in seventeen minutes thing, of course. Are you willing to take a gamble, with so little to lose?”
“Well, when you put it like that, I suppose I've got to say yes,” Spike admitted. “I'll do it. When are you going to send me back to? Wait a minute, how's it going to work if I suddenly start acting all goodish? No-one's going to believe I've changed, I'll just get into a situation where I either get staked or have to kill to defend myself. There's got to be some explanation that makes sense. Has to make sense to me, too, or I'll just think I've gone bloody mad. Actually I think I have gone mad, getting a bleeding conscience like the great poofter, without even getting cursed with a soul like he did. We need time to think this out. Which is what we bloody don't have, seeing as how the world ends in quarter of an hour. Bugger it!”
“Don't worry about it. I've just slowed time down. We can take as long as we like. Another beer?”
“So we are agreed it needs to be at a time when you could be expected to have experienced some sort of epiphany,” the shaman summed up. It was half an hour later, by their time, although only five minutes had passed in the outside world. “You needn't have experienced one in actuality; it just needs to be a logical possibility. And you need to have some sort of protection from being staked by those you term the ‘white hats’ until they can be convinced of your good intentions.”
“Yeah, that's about it,” Spike agreed. “This cattle blood is a damn sight better than pig blood, y'know. Dunno why I never thought to try it before. Any chance you could leave that little bit of memory behind? Make it a sight easier living on the bagged stuff if it was something I actually liked.”
The deity frowned for a moment in thought. “I suppose I could,” he conceded. “It's trivial enough not to break any rules. Anyway, back to the serious stuff. I think I have a solution to the timing problem. The point when you found the Gem of Amara.”
“Not a bad idea, mate, except for one thing,” Spike objected. “Okay, so I'm stake-proof while I convince them to listen to me, fine, but it was before I was bleeding well chipped. So good guy Spike ends up with the sodding chip in his head, and gets to be an even more bleeding pathetic wanker than I was then in this time-line.” He paused. “Christ, I'm getting the bleeding sci-fi jargon off pat. I definitely watched too much TV back in Sunnyhell. Anyway, point stands. I'd probably not even escape from the Initiative.”
“Ah, but with the Gem they might not catch you in the first place. You never found out if it gave you immunity to tazers, did you? You probably won't lose the Gem if you don't try to kill the Slayer, so you should be okay.”
“Might not. Probably. Should. Give a vamp some bleeding hope, why don't you?”
“Hope. Of course. I will give you one more gift. Just a little something I found in the bottom of an old box.” The shaman grinned. “Spike Wars, Episode Four. A New Hope.”
“What the Hell are you on about? A new - hang on, this old box wouldn't happen to have belonged to a Greek bint name of Pandora, would it?” Spike shook his head at the shaman's answering nod. “God, I'm buggered, aren't I? You're going to rely on me having the dodgy conscience that I acquired from getting electric shocks for three years, give me the useful knowledge that beef blood tastes nicer than pig, arm me with a ring that the Slayer nicked off me in five minutes flat last time, and send me back to save the world. I should bloody well think I need some hope. A hope and a prayer.” He gave a rueful grin.
“Okay, do it. Just call me Pandora's boxer.”