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Xander carefully pushed open the door to Spike’s crypt, carrying a small cooler. He walked inside, trying to make out the features from the little moonlight that shined inside and from memory.

Buffy had returned to the Magic Box a few hours ago and had assured them that Spike hadn’t told Glory about Dawn being the Key. She had been slightly shell shocked at the loyalty to her and the Slayerettes that Spike had demonstrated. Buffy had sat down with Willow, and Xander had sat next to the redhead while Buffy told them exactly what Spike had said. All three friends realized right then and there how true the vampire’s feelings for Buffy where.

They no longer knew what to think about Spike. The line between love and hate was very thin in this case, and as much as he would protect them, Spike could betray them at any given time. But for the time being, they hoped Spike was going to stay on their side.

Buffy had taken Dawn back home shortly afterward, and the witches went soon after to their dorm. Xander had stayed to wait until Anya finished cleaning up the Magic Box with Giles. He picked up the Vampyr book, and started to skim through it.

Stopping to look at a specially gruesome drawing, he started to read the text beneath it. He skipped the part where it talked about why vampires needed blood to live, but stopped when he read about animal blood.

The Watcher that had written the passage spoke of a pack of vampires that had had to live on animal blood during some time because of a famine that had been killing humans by the hundreds. The pack had slowly lost their ability to heal rapidly and the strength fight to a point, where the Watcher was able to take on a vampire and killed it easily. The Watcher continued to watch the pack and came to the conclusion that human blood is the only that really gave vampires their powers.

An image of a beaten up Spike crossed Xander’s mind, and he got up grabbing his coat. Asking Giles to drive Anya home, Xander left the Magic Box.

Knowing that Willie had blood in his bar, for those vamps that decided that they wanted alcohol with their blood, he drove over the Alibi bar. It had been easy enough to threaten to sic the slayer on his clientele, to get Willie to give him a good part of his stash.

With almost a human’s worth of blood in the cooler, Xander drove to the cemetery. With a stake in his hand and another on his waistband, he felt more courageous.

“Spike, you in here?” Xander called into the darkened room.

“What do you want, whelp?”

Xander gasped as the moon illuminated the vampire’s face. It was worse now than it had been 3 hours earlier. His left eye was so completely swollen shut, it was hard to tell it was even there. He still wore the ripped t-shirt that showed the intensive bruises to the chest. Xander internally winced, knowing that what looked like cigar burns was something so much worse. Spike’s lip was split, his face was stained with his own blood.

The vampire got up slowly and painfully, so he was once again sitting up on the tomb, his legs dangling.

“I… uh, I brought you food,” Xander said, holding up the cooler.

“You can put it in the fridge with the rest of the pig’s blood.”

“Actually,” he said, settling his burden next to Spike. “It’s not pig blood. I hope you like O-Neg.”

Spike practically pounced on the cooler, tearing the lid off. He gasped in surprise as he saw the box full of blood – human blood packets.

“Whelp?”

“You need to heal. You need human blood. And Willie was kind enough to part with it for the Big Bad.”

“Are you crazy!? You walked half a cemetery with a vampire five course meal with a walking dessert!?”

“I was prepared. Besides, it’s almost day. Speaking of which, I need to catch some z’s. See ya around.” Xander turned to leave, but he turned at the door when Spike called him.

“Yeah?”

Spike looked up from the plastic bag in his hands. “Thanks.”

Xander looked surprised, but smiled. “You’re welcome.” After a second of silence that seemed to stretch out for eternity, he left the crypt, being sure to shut the heavy door completely.

Spike looked back down to the long denied human blood he was holding. And smiled.