Barb
Dawn lay sprawled across her bed, headphones
blaring NSync, and stared down at the pages of her history textbook.
It slowly penetrated that she'd just read the paragraph about the
significance of the cotton gin for the third time. With a little
exclamation of disgust she slammed the book shut and tossed it to the floor
beside her bed. She lay back, adjusted her headphones, turned up her
Discman and directed her stare up at the ceiling.
She'd had a long talk with Dad earlier about
responsibility and growing up and all the usual crap. She was trying
to be sensible, though throwing a temper tantrum would have been a lot
more satisfying. For so long Mom and Buffy had been the mature,
responsible ones, and she could afford to have temper tantrums. In
the last few months it had all changed, and she'd been the responsible one,
patching up Spike's broken bones and trying her hardest to splint up his broken
heart at the same time. So why should she revert to spoiled little Dawnie
the moment her father broke some bad news?
Dad coming back shouldn't BE bad news.
It wasn't as if Los Angeles were the other end of the universe. She'd
spent two thirds of her life there, after all, and maybe it would be easier to
start fresh at a new school where no one remembered her as the Freak Girl who'd
tried slashing her wrists and had a public breakdown after her mother's
death. She'd come back this year with an iron determination to ignore the
whispers and the giggles, and it was working... sort of... but there was no
denying it was hard.
If Spike really did come
to Los Angeles, she'd know at least one person there. She hoped he
would. When he wasn't trying to get himself killed, Spike was someone she
could talk to about all the dark rotten stuff down in the bottom of her mind,
the stuff that scared her, because no matter how awful it was, Spike had seen...
Spike had done... worse. Nothing she could say could horrify
him. Besides, he needed someone to keep an eye on him and make sure he
didn't get himself killed.
She glanced
over at the clock on the nightstand. The glowing blue LED read
9:06pm. She didn't feel like getting ready for bed, and she wasn't
getting any good out of studying. Maybe she should call Willow
before it got too late and see if they'd found out anything about the
mystery van...
Her fingers found a loose seam
on the bedspread, and she picked at it, pulling out little bits of thread.
Mom had been going to sew it up, but she hadn't gotten around to it before she
got sick. Running it through the complex's washing machine and dryer
earlier to get the demon goo off had worsened the problem. Dawn rolled
over and inspected the tear. The old thread had just rotted and broken,
and the seam had parted. The material wasn't too frayed yet. Maybe
she could fix it herself. A pang of distress hit her as she realized that
she had no idea what had happened to her mother's sewing kit in the upheaval of
moving out of the house.
Dimly, through the
insistent beat in her ears, she caught the sound of something else,
something...tapping. She sat up and looked around. Sure
enough, there was a familiar face at the window. She hopped off the
bed and went over to open it.
"Geez, Spike,
we've got a front door!" she whispered. "Are you trying to
make Dad freak?"
The vampire swung himself up
over the windowsill a good deal more gracefully than he had the last time
he'd entered by this route, stood up and raked a hand through his
hair. He shot a look in the direction of the living room and said
low-voiced, "Sorry, love, but I don't feel like running the fatherly
gauntlet just now. Got some news."
Her
eyes lighting up, Dawn went back to the bed and sat down
cross-legged. This was more like. "Did you find out who the guys in
the van were?"
"In a manner of
speaking." Spike started pacing, always a sign that he was feeling
thwarted about something. The room wasn't large enough for him to do it
properly, and after a couple of turns he came to a frustrated halt.
He hesitated, head cocked, looking at her as if trying to gauge her
reactions. "They're trying to bring your sister back from the dead.
We've bollocksed them up for the moment by killing off the vampires they were
going to sacrifice to do it, but it's not exactly a chore to find more vampires
in the vicinity of the Hellmouth."
She felt
as if her joints had frozen. "Bring her back?" she said at last,
voice stiff with revulsion. "Like... we tried to do with Mom?"
She saw his shoulders twitch. None of
the rest of the gang knew about Spike's involvement in her failed attempt
to resurrect Joyce Summers, and Dawn intended to keep it that way. He'd
only been trying to help, and his presence during the escapade was the only
reason she wasn't currently Ghora chow. Over the last couple of months it
had seemed that maybe a few of them were beginning to go beyond just tolerating
Spike's presence for Buffy's sake. She didn't want to mess things up for
him, because she was pretty sure that Spike... well, maybe he didn't like
all of them exactly, but he wanted or needed their company. If loving
Buffy were all that kept him in Sunnydale, it would have been easy, after her
sister had died, for him to slip off and disappear into the demon underworld
without a trace.
Instead he'd stuck around
and taken on the lion's share of Buffy's patrolling duties. She was sure
that a lot of that was because it provided a safe outlet for his natural
vampiric aggression. But in between slaying demons he didn't have
to drop by the Bronze to exchange insults and shoot pool with Xander, or saunter
into the Magic Box and argue with Giles over Manchester's chances against
Birmingham, or wig Anya out by trying to raid the cash box. Or take her on
after-dark excursions to Sunnydale Mall and point out the place where Buffy had
exploded the Judge and demonstrate to her the finer points of the five-fingered
discount. Spike would rather have been staked out to get a lethal suntan
than admit it, but his actions had been saying for a long time now that he was
family. Annoying, sarcastic, criminally-inclined family, but family
nonetheless.
He didn't look happy at the
moment. He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees and fingers
laced together. He had nice hands, but his nails were always bitten
down to the quick. Buffy had complained about it once, and Dawn had
observed that it was a little wiggy to obsess over the state of your mortal
enemy's fingernails unless you spent an awful lot of time checking out his
hands. Buffy had gone red as a beet and locked herself in the bathroom and
refused to come out for an hour. At last Spike said, "They've got a better
line on it than we did, snack-size. Will claims that they could bring her
back for real. No decaying zombie Buffy this time. Only problem is
it requires a spot of human sacrifice."
Dawn's fists clenched on her lap and she squeezed her eyes shut.
"It's not fair," she whispered.
Spike sat
down on the bed beside her. "Yeh, well, that was my reaction."
She looked at him suspiciously. Spike's
pale blue eyes were glittering with that intent, predatory gleam they got
when he was onto something, but he didn't seem as upset at the prospect as
she'd have expected. "You're not telling me everything," she
accused.
He raised a placatory hand.
"Give us a mo', pet. There's two ways of stopping 'em. One, we
crash the party Wednesday night and break a few heads. 'Course, then
they'll probably try again next time the stars are right. Or..."
He stopped and she punched him in the arm,
hard. "Or what?"
The vampire turned and
looked at her, his angular face serious. "Dawn, love... Will's got a
spell that can bring her back--bring her back right--before they
get to her. It's up to you if we use it. She's your
sister. You're next of kin... you and your Dad, I suppose, but I don't
think he's likely to deal well with me explaining it. Thing is, love, it
requires some of your blood."
Dawn flinched
and wrapped her arms around herself, shuddering. She still dreamed of
standing bound and helpless while the wind moaned through the struts of Glory's
tower, dreamed of Spike's last agonized look as Doc flung him off into the empty
wilderness of air and advanced on her, holding out the knife still wet with the
vampire's blood. She usually woke up when the knife sliced into her
ribs. Usually. After a couple of false starts, Spike reached out and
gave her an awkward pat on the back. "If you can't do it, love, you
can't. Say so, and we'll never talk about it again."
He meant that. She was sure of
it. But he couldn't hide the tremor in his voice or the burning in
his eyes, and she knew the answer he wanted more than breath or blood, the
answer he was steeling himself not to get. For good or ill, Spike had
always been a total loss at disguising his feelings. Now he was one big
aching mass of Buffy-longing wrapped up in black leather and hope, and she
wanted to hit him for putting this decision on her shoulders. Instead she
reached up and took his hand, and felt the slight twitch of muscles in his
fingers as he returned the pressure.
Before
Buffy'd started hanging out with Angel, she'd always thought that vampires
would be corpse-stiff or icy cold to the touch. Spike's hand was as
pliant as her own, allowing for his greater strength, and no cooler than
the air around them. It's a good thing we don't live in
Minnesota. She squeezed as hard as she could; she knew she
couldn't possibly hurt him. "I want her back too." Her throat was
dry and the words hurt coming out. "But I don't want her back like... like
Mom almost..."
"Christ, no!" Spike sounded
appalled.
"So is Willow sure...?"
His head dropped. "Nothing's ever
sure. But she was willing to stake more than her life on it."
Out in the living room the phone rang.
Dawn ignored it, and in a moment she heard her father's voice
answer. His words were indistinguishable through her closed door,
though from the look of speculation which sprang into Spike's eyes,
whatever was being said was something interesting. She took a deep
shaky breath. "Then--"
"Dawn, honey!"
her father called.
"I'm in my room,
Dad! What do you want?"
Footsteps
started down the hall, and Spike was on his feet and out the window in an
instant. A minute later her father opened the door and stuck his head
in. "Xander's fiancé just called. Mr. Giles' plane is coming
in tomorrow afternoon, and she wanted to know if you'd like to go to the airport
with them to pick him up." She must have looked surprised, because
her father smiled slightly and said, "I wouldn't be asking if you wanted
to go if I didn't think it was all right. I'm not a complete ogre."
Embarrassed, she dropped her eyes to the
counterpane. "Dad... yes, I want to go. Thanks."
He looked at her in concern, and made a
little motion as if to come in. He stopped before completing
it. Well, she hadn't given him much incentive lately to think that
comforting fatherly gestures would be appreciated. "Hon, are you all
right?"
Dawn nodded, her eyes fixed on the
loose seam. "I was just thinking about Mom." She pulled
another thread out. "Do you know where her sewing kit is?"
He shook his head. "In storage with the
rest of the furniture, I guess." After a moment he added "We can go
over to the Store-All and look for it if you'd like."
It was just too strange, him standing there
with that worried-beagle look, trying desperately to pick up the threads he'd
let drop five years ago. Much as she'd wanted her father back over the
years, the two of them didn't know how to fit together any longer. Maybe
if she pretended that he was just some well-disposed stranger it would make it
easier. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement on the windowsill:
a pale hand adjusting its grip. Why was it easier to forgive Spike for a
century's worth of murder and mayhem than to forgive her father for five years
of simply having been elsewhere? At least Spike was paying
attention was just too twisted a concept, but it was uncomfortably close to
the truth. "Maybe. I should probably get to bed. School
tomorrow and all."
He stood there in the
doorway looking at her for a moment longer, then nodded. "Goodnight,
Dawn."
As the door closed behind him, Spike's
platinum head cautiously reappeared in the window. This was like
some bad episode of Three's Company with demons, Dawn
thought. "I'll do it," she said, before she could think about it
anymore.
He broke into a grin which wasn't
devilish in the slightest. It was as if someone had switched on the
floodlights inside him. "Thanks, Little Bit. We're going to
try it on Tuesday night, get a jump on the forces of
unrighteousness. Will'll run interference with your Dad."
"Why can't we do it tonight?"
The corners of Spike's mouth took on a wry
twist. "There's something Will needs to get hold of first."
"Very well." Rupert Giles looked round at the
circle of tired, angry, and otherwise unhappy faces. "We're agreed
on the second option, then?"
The planning
session had gone as well as could be expected, which was not very.
Wesley had checked in earlier; they had a few leads on the possible
location of the people slated for sacrifice, but nothing concrete
yet. Xander was glowering and depressed, Anya was snappish and
nervous, Tara cowered whenever anyone spoke to her, Giles was jet-lagged,
Willow was distracted and kept losing track of the discussion, and Spike lurked
in a corner and insulted everyone impartially. Half a dozen arguments
broke out and a good time was not had by all.
If he starts fiddling with those bloody specs one more time I'm going to
smash them, Spike thought. Giles immediately took off his glasses and
began polishing them, and the vampire gritted his teeth and restrained his baser
impulses. "Yes, we're going with the stupider option," he growled.
"Are we done yet?"
Giles shot him an
intensely annoyed look. Willow, whose gaze had been fixed blankly on
a spot approximately six inches above Xander's right shoulder, started and
shook her head. "Um. Um, yeah. Second option." She
looked helplessly at Tara. "What was the second option again?"
"Disguise the guys as the van people," Tara
reminded her.
It wasn't really all that
stupid a plan, though Spike was feeling too contrary at the moment to
admit it. Willow and Tara could provide the necessary glamour.
Spike was secretly rather sorry that they wouldn't get to use it.
He hoped.
"Right!" Willow nodded her head vigorously. "We'll get on it.
I'll go over to the campus library and, um, see if they have anything on
disguise spells in their occult collection? Tara, you look through
the books we've got back in the dorm. We need something that'll
stand up to some pretty rough handling."
"Willow," Giles said, "There's something I'd
like to speak to you about, if you don't mind."
Willow made an 'eek!' face. "Can it
wait till tomorrow?"
"I suppose so--"
"Cool. I'm much more of a tomorrow
person tonight. Later, Tara!"
There was
doubt in Tara's eyes, but she nodded agreement and picked up her book
bag. As the shop door bell jingled behind the departing Willow, Spike got
to his feet. "Right. If that's settled, I'll be off, then.
Places to go, things to kill, busy night all round."
There was only the barest touch of fall in
the night air. Spike headed straight for home through he darkened
streets, head down and hands in pockets. Willow had estimated that the
spell might take an hour, so with any luck they'd be done with it before
midnight and he could do a round or two of patrolling before heading over to the
Fish Tank... or possibly Willy's; he was spoiling for a good fight and showing
his face at Willy's these days was a sure guarantee of getting one.
As he usually did nowadays, he approached the
crypt from downwind and paused to listen before entering. Since
becoming a major thorn in the side of Sunnydale's demon population, he'd
been subject to an average of one attempted ambush a month--there was no
magical law keeping uninvited guests from sneaking into a vampire's
lair. It probably would have been wisest to move his quarters
elsewhere, but it would only be a matter of time before someone found him
again, and Spike was nothing if not stubborn. The crypt was his,
he'd gotten it set up the way he liked it, with electricity and convenient
access to the vast labyrinth of the Sunnydale sewer system, and he was
damned if he was going to let anyone drive him out before he was ready to
leave on his own.
Tonight there was no one
(or no thing) waiting for him. He went inside and began hunting for
matches. He didn't have long to wait for Willow; she arrived, out of
breath, just as he was lighting the last of the candles. She plunked her
blue nylon duffle down on the lid of the sarcophagus, unzipped it, and
began pulling things out: more candles, a smudge stick of pungent herbs
(though not, to Spike's great relief, any more garlic) a selection of what
looked like chicken bones, and some less identifiable objects. Last
of all she took out a palm-sized, smoky crystal sphere.
"Need to set up anyplace special?"
Spike asked.
Willow shook her head.
"This is already way more atmospheric than a hospital bed. It just has to
be flat." She patted the lid of the sarcophagus. "This'll do."
The banks of candles the niches in the crypt
walls had grown measurably shorter by the time Willow had everything laid out on
the cold marble slab of the lid. Spike, sitting cross-legged on one end of
the sarcophagus, watched and smoked as Willow made yet another nervous
adjustment to the assortment of magical paraphanalia. In the center of the
arrangement was the Orb, sitting on a small red velvet pillow. The same
one, he wondered, as that other Orb had sat on, three and a half years ago
now? Around it were four short candles in square glass holders, each set
at one of the cardinal directions. A fifth, taller candle was set off to
one side. Between the smaller ones were the chicken bones, arranged in
careful runic patterns. Around the central clump of objects were scattered
the various little fetishy things he couldn't have named on a bet. He
pointed at the candle Willow had just exchanged with one of the others. "I
think that one's back where it started, pet."
"Gah." Willow stared at the arrangement for a moment, rubbed her
eyes, and gave up. "I guess we're ready." She climbed up onto
the opposite end of the sarcophagus and sat down. She handed him a
bundle of computer print-outs. Spike glanced over them uneasily.
"You're positive this thing cuts off before
making me all soul-having?"
Willow, who
was flipping through a book of incantations, nodded. "It's only the
first part of the spell. I might be able to fix the whole curse
thing if I worked on it, but it would probably take me another four
months... here it is." She squared her shoulders and sat up
straight, the candlelight making red-gold highlights in her hair.
"You're going to have to do both the Latin and the stinky herbs.
Ready?"
"As I'll ever be." He adjusted
his glasses, lit the smudge stick in the taller, separate candle, and
read, "Quod perditum est, invenietur."
Willow
intoned, "Not dead, nor not of the living."
The scent of burning herbs was thick in the still air of the crypt,
mingling with the hot waxy odor of the candles. "Qui errat, inveniat
pacem!"
"Aid us, powers of the upper
air! Gather, ye of light and ye of darkness! Bring to me what
I seek!"
"Qui disiunctus est, reficiatur!"
"We call upon the powers of the East."
"Audite et oboedite!"
“We call upon the powers of the West.”
"Audite et oboedite!"
“We call upon the powers of the North.”
"Audite et oboedite!"
“We call upon the powers of the South.”
"Audite et oboedite!"
As Willow called out the invocation to each
of the powers, Spike touched the smudge stick to each of the other candles
in turn; though it was already smouldering, the smell intensified.
"We call forth the soul of William the Bloody, lost to this world in Anno Domine
1880. By Akthiel, Arrundel, and Moleb do we call it. Yea, though it
be at the ends of time we call it. Yea, though it be at the ends of space
we call it."
Willow's body was tense with the
power thrumming through her, hands clenched, eyes wide and dark and alight with
reflected flame. However, she hadn't started spouting Romanian yet, which
Spike took to be a good sign. In the heart of the Orb, a feeble spark of
light glowed for a moment. A wave of nausea hit him out of left field, and
the vampire swayed, blinking down at the pages he was holding. The letters
swam before his eyes for a moment, then cleared. He managed to choke out
the next line. "Redite, redite, redite!"
If Willow noticed his momentary hesitation,
she was too far gone in the spell to do anything about it. "Gods,
bind him!"
"Aaah!" Something inside him
wrenched, and Spike dropped the herbs, clutching at his chest.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. It wasn't
a physical pain; it couldn't be pinned down or described. He felt as
if he were being slowly pulled apart, atom by atom. "Will...!"
Willow kept going, arms uplifted, her face
rapt. "Cast his heart from the demon realm! Return his soul to
the world of light! I call on you, Gods, do not ignore this
supplication! Let the orb be the vessel to carry his soul to
him!" The crackling aura of magic in the crypt built to a
crescendo. Willow flung her arms wide, then brought her hands
together in over the Orb in a clap that shook the crypt. The candles
went out, the Orb burst into light, and the intolerable pull on Spike's
insides cut off as mysteriously as it had started.
Released, he doubled over and tumbled off the
sarcophagus, rolling across the dusty floor until he banged into the armchair
and lay there, staring dazedly up at the cobwebby ceiling. He drew a
couple of ragged breaths and shook his head, hard. Willow, looking as
drained and dazed as he felt, was carefully climbing down from the lid, feeling
for the floor with her toes.
"Spike, are you
OK?" She made her way across the floor as if she were walking on the
deck of a ship in a high sea.
He took off his
mercifully unbroken glasses, rubbed his forehead, sat up and leaned back against
the armchair, taking stock. "I think so. What the bloody hell was
that, Will?"
She sat back on her heels,
frowning. "I don't know. Nothing like that happened last time.
The spell worked." She indicated the Orb, which was glowing merrily on its
cushion.
Spike looked down and patted himself over
suspiciously. He had an unreasonable desire to look in a mirror and see if
anything had changed, but that was hardly practical. The Grand Poof
had said that losing his curse-enforced soul had been painful, but he hadn't a
soul to lose; couldn't have been that. He couldn't recall if Angel had
ever mentioned anything about what getting it back had felt like. The two
of them hadn't exactly been on speaking terms since that had happened. In
any case, that couldn't have been it either; whatever else it might feel like,
he was fairly certain that the return of the soul of the man he'd been would
leave him prostrate with guilt... wouldn't it? "You're sure that cut off
before the soul-putting-in part?"
"Absolutely." Willow was rubbing her temples. "I didn't even put the
last few lines of the spell on the printouts, just to make sure. How do
you feel?"
What was a nice horrific memory?
1954, little village outside Seville, seven drained, mangled and
artistically arranged corpses lying in a row... no, the last one was still
twitching, madness in its eyes. Dru lectured Miss Edith and he
waited with fond impatience for her to finish with this lot. They
ought to be moving on, but he could never bear to deny his Princess her
fun... He thought that one over, and then called up to his mind's eye
a few of the particularly egregious massacres he'd participated in with
Angelus during the first twenty years of his undeath.
He didn't revel in remembering the deaths--the
fights, yes, the good ones still brought a warm nostalgic glow--but quite
besides the uneasy feeling that human death spurred in him nowdays, he'd gotten
bored with Angelus’ style of massacre ages ago. They were so...
impersonal. No challenge. All art, no fun. He didn't feel any
real guilt either, and he knew damned well what it was to feel guilt--all he had
to do was think back to the worst night of his life and the last night of
Buffy’s. He’d killed them, he didn't feel like doing it again, and that
was that.
He drew a breath of relief.
"Refreshingly soul-free." He got up and dusted off his jeans, and walked
back over to the sarcophagus. He picked up the Orb and examined it
curiously. It was slightly warm to the touch, and the light within it
faded and brightened irregularly. He tossed the Orb up in the air and
caught it. "So this is it? Not all that impressive."
"Don't drop it!" Willow yipped.
Spike grinned. "No fear, Will.
I'll look after it as if it were my very own." He rolled the sphere around
in his palm.
"You'd better. With the
weird way you reacted I don't want to have to do this all over again."
Equally curious, she poked the sphere gently with one finger. "Wow.
So that's a soul, huh? I never got a chance to look at Angel's, since we
put it right back into him." She looked up at him searchingly, her eyes no
longer dark with the power of the spell but human and worried. "Are you
sure you’re all right? For few minutes there you looked pretty hairy."
He shrugged. The mysterious internal tugging
seemed to have left no ill-effects. “I’m fit as I’ve ever been, pet.
Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”
Willow frowned,
her expression drifting dangerously close to resolve face. “I’m more
worried about it coming back.”
“Oh, come on,
Will.” Spike hopped up on the sarcophagus and crouched there like some
lithe feline gargoyle. “You’re not going to back out because yours truly
had a tummyache for a moment, are you? I’m fine.” He held up his
left hand, fingers raised in a Boy Scout salute. “Vampire’s honor.”
She snorted. “Is there any such thing?”
After Willow had packed up the remains of the
spell and left, Spike stood in the doorway of the crypt for a moment, looking
out into the darkness. The wind had picked up outside, and a few dry
leaves blew in through the high barred window of the crypt. Autumn ought
to smell like bonfires and gunpowder. He ought to introduce Dawn to the
proper celebration of Guy Fawkes’ Day. Now that was a thought, nip across
the border to get some fireworks... Her father would have apoplexy.
Buoyed by this cheering scenario, Spike went downstairs to pick up a few weapons
and a stake or two.
He rummaged through the tangle
of ancient, rusty flails, maces, and assorted things with nasty sharp edges in
the big steamer trunk where he kept most of his weapons. To his annoyance,
his favorite axe wasn’t in the trunk... he’d left it in the alley on Friday
night, of course, after flinging it at Broom Guy. Bugger. Someone
was sure to have nicked it by now, but he might as well take a look just in
case. The night was young.
He settled for a
smaller hatchet instead, and trotted back upstairs. About to head out into
the night, he paused for a moment and fished the Orb out of his duster
pocket. Wouldn't do to fall on it or anything. He knelt down to put
it away in the crate for safekeeping and hesitated a moment, gazing into its
flickering depths. His soul. Or William’s soul, if you wanted to get
technical. Even in life he’d had little hankering for a conventional
harps-and-robes afterlife. Hopeless, starry-eyed pansy that he'd been,
he'd yearned after something romantic, something Blakean and fey...and he’d
gotten it. Spike gave a little growl of laughter and dropped the sphere
into the crate. Come on then, Tyger. The forests of the night were
waiting.
The graveyard was a wilderness of black
and silver shadows in the light of the moon, only a few days away from
full. Spike made a cursory sweep through the new graves, though he didn’t
expect to run into much here; this cemetary was his territory, and barring the
occasional ambush, the other vampires in Sunnydale mostly avoided it. The
rising breeze was moaning faintly in the treetops as he strode out through the
wrought-iron gates, a shadow among shadows, and headed off towards Main.
The wind was alive with sound and scent, the
darkness as transparent as noon to his eyes, and he flowed through the night
like quicksilver, like death in ivory and jet. God, but he loved this
feeling, loved the effortless power of his own body and the keenness of his
senses and the challenge of pushing them to their limits. Past midnight on a
Monday in Sunnydale, the houses and shops were shuttered and silent as he passed
by, making thin pickings for any prowling vampire. If anyone were hunting
tonight they’d be downtown or out by the docks, where there were always a few
hookers or drunks to be had. He’d favored downtown himself back in the
day--better class of meals.
Now and again he caught
the hot salt scent of a living human, students or hookers or thieves or
late-night drunks, and turned aside to follow them for awhile, alert for the
presence of any others of his kind doing likewise. He'd track them for a
block or two and be off again, slipping from street to street through alleys and
back yards. Once in awhile the more perceptive among them would stop in the
harsh pool of light cast by a streetlamp, looking uneasily over a shoulder, the
hairs on the backs of their necks rising in response to his unseen presence,
close enough, sometimes, that he could have reached out to touch a shoulder,
caress a cheek, snap a neck...
Human blood had lost
none of its allure for him; nights when he could beg, buy, or steal some were
golden. The thought of feeding on a live human, though, raised such
ambivalent emotions in him that he tried to avoid dwelling on it.
He stared down at the girl in his arms.
Her head lolled drunkenly on her broken neck, not quite dead yet but further
beyond saving with every moment her lungs failed to pump. He could feel
her heart faltering. Dru looked up from the boy, fangs dripping. The blood
scent was maddening, delicious, nectar of the gods, and his princess’s
expression was both commanding and impatient. She’d killed for him, as
he’d killed for her when she was too weak to hunt; why didn’t he eat?
He felt the last flutter die away in her chest
and still it took a conscious effort to shift into game face. Even then he
hesitated, and when he finally sank his fangs into the dead neck there was no
joy in it, or in him. He’d never hated himself more, even as he drank like
a starving thing, loving the blood burning its way down his throat...
He still didn’t understand that moment. He
couldn’t have cared about the girl, whose only fault had been to be
making out in the Bronze when Drusilla happened to get peckish. Doc’s
words on the tower came back to him sometimes: I don’t smell a soul anywhere
on you. Why do you even care? Doc had meant about Dawn, but the
question applied far more widely. Why did he care about any of these
people? He was a vampire, killing was his nature, and he’d reveled in it
for over a century. That he’d taken the opportunity to feed when Dru
offered it was normal. That he’d felt even the slightest unease about it
was... perverted. The only time he’d ever felt like that before had been
the very first time, when Angelus had thrust the drunken, half-drained whore at
newly-risen William and laughed at the shock and horror in his face when he
realized what he was supposed to do, and worse, that it was what he
wanted to do. The orgasmic taste of blood had knocked that nonsense
out of him right and proper, and he’d never looked back. Still, it was a
little unnerving to remember that even after having lost his soul,
tender-hearted William had balked at his first kill.
Until very recently, the question of what happened
to the human soul when that human became a vampire had been one of supreme
indifference to Spike. Even in the last year it was something he'd
considered mainly in the context of What's Angel got that I haven't, damn
it? What did Angel, with both a human soul and a demon
constantly battling for dominance within him, have that he didn’t?
Buffy had believed with all her heart that Angel
and Angelus, man and demon, were completely different people. Angel
believed it too. To have believed otherwise would probably have driven
them both mad. But the line between William and Spike had always been
dangerously fuzzy--why else had he devoted so much effort to ruthlessly erasing
every trace of his human self? He'd told Willow that he wasn't William,
and he wasn't. He knew he'd lost important parts of who William had been,
and William had been an ineffectual, simpering little ponce anyway, but like it
or not, William's life was in the first person for him, not the third. The
person who’d clawed his way up out of the earth three days after his midnight
encounter with Drusilla in a filthy London stable, ravenous for blood, had no
memory of existence unshaped by William's thoughts, William's emotions,
William's memories. By the same token it he'd never felt quite right
referring, some vampires did, to ‘his’ demon as if it were some sort of family
pet. The demon was his own temper, his own cruelty, his own bloodlust--not
his, but him.
Of course,
it was also his humor and a large part of his passion. And William, with
his desire to look only upon the beauty of the world, had contributed a good
portion of his indifference to human suffering. Dividing himself up into good
and bad halves like some victim of a bloody transporter accident and trying to
squash one of them just wouldn't work. Do I contradict myself?
Very well, I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes... Oh, get over
yourself, you wanker, and watch where you're walking.
The alley where he’d killed the Ghora demon was in
the poorer section of town, insofar as affluent middle-class Sunnydale boasted
one, down close to the docks. Spike stalked through the empty streets,
past overflowing trash bins and graffiti’d walls. He slowed as he
approached the general area where the fight had taken place. He hadn’t
exactly been keeping close track of street signs during his pursuit of the
Ghora, but after a few moments he recognized a storefront, a little carneciera
which had moved into the previously abandoned building last winter. He
slunk past the window full of brightly lettered placards with their specials in
English and Spanish and around the next corner--yes, there was the head-sized
hole he’d smashed in the brickwork in the process of breaking his fist.
He looked around. No axe. The alley was
deserted, probably due to the fetid miasma of rotting demon-flesh. Spike
gagged and beat a hasty retreat as the wind shifted and sent the overwhelming
stink pouring out onto the street. Apparently the city hadn’t gotten
around to sending out whoever it was that cleaned up dead animals off the
streets yet. He didn’t envy them this job. At least vampires had the
consideration to dissolve into dust upon being killed.
He was about to head off again when a noise caught
his attention--the familiar rumble of a particular engine. Someone,
apparently, was returning to the scene of the crime. He slipped into the
shadow of the carneciera’s doorway and waited until the van drove slowly
past. Bloody hell. “Knew we should’ve killed them,” he
muttered. Obviously they considered Bryce’s organization a bigger threat
than two witches and a vampire, and were out trolling for more sacrifices.
Tonight was a bad night for it. Spike
grinned. It was about to get worse.
He broke
into a trot, then a run, across the pavement and onto the street, his boots
making little noise on the asphalt. They couldn’t have heard him coming
over the noise of the engine anyway. He took a leap at the back of the
van, which luckily had a step bumper, clung to the door handles and bashed the
window in with the butt end of the hatchet handle. The introduction of
shatterproof auto glass had made that task a lot less messy and dangerous than
it had once been; the back window fractured into a mosaic of faintly greenish
pebbles. Another blow pushed it in. The vampire kicked off the
bumper and into the back of the van.
A
dazed-looking girl was lying on the floor of the van, her arms twisted behind
her back. Wrists and ankles both were both bound securely with wire, and
an oily rag had been stuffed in her mouth. Smart; she’d started breathing
as soon as he burst in. What nice lungs you’ve got, Grandma, the better to be
rescued with. She stared up at him with eyes that blazed with hope,
then hatred as she recognized him. She began to thrash on the filthy
length of old carpet they’d laid her out on, trying to sweep his legs out from
under him. Spike sidestepped her flailing and kicked her in the stomach,
hard. Her eyes flared yellow and she snarled around the gag. “Yes,
it’s good old Spike, and you’re going to be stone dead in a moment. Be
quiet, ducks.”
He flipped her over roughly and
brought the blade of his hatchet down on her neck with one economical
motion. As the spine was severed, breaking the mystic connection between
body and the demon which inhabited it, she crumbled away into dust even before
her blood had a chance to stain the blade. Not a twinge of inconvenient
compassion now, he thought sardonically. He stepped up to the front of the
rear compartment and peered through the window separating it from the passenger
compartment. Driver Guy and Paint Guy were sitting in the front seat,
their lips moving in an inaudible argument. The window was double-paned
glass. It was also covered by a heavy mesh screen; he might be able to
tear it out given time, but he certainly couldn’t get through this window
without alerting the driver and giving them opportunity to stop and get out.
What to do? He couldn’t easily kill the
wankers, much as he would have liked to. Ride around in here and stake
their captives as soon as they tossed them in? Time-consuming, and ten to
one they had the tranquilizer gun with them; he’d be a sitting duck if they saw
him. Vespasian and possibly Bryce himself were arriving Wednesday morning,
so the Van Guys had only tonight and tomorrow night to collect more vampires...
Hah. If he couldn’t take them out, he could bloody well take the van out
of commission.
He opened the back doors of the van
and stretched himself at full length, belly down on the floor of the
compartment, head and shoulders leaning out over empty air. He scrunched
over as close to the left rear wheel as possible, holding the door open with his
right hand and hefting the hatchet in his left. He was right over the
tailpipe, and very glad that he didn’t have to breathe. Spike took a few
practice swings and then let the hatchet fly at the tire.
THUNK! The hatchet was wrenched out of his
hand, the tire exploded with a deafening bang and the van lurched, skidding to
the left and throwing him against the tire well. They hadn’t been going
more than thirty miles an hour. The vampire somersaulted out of the open
back and found his feet as the van shuddered to a halt. The hatchet,
slightly the worse for wear, was lying on the pavement further back down the
street, and Spike went to pick it up; no sense in losing two of them in one
weekend. He strolled back to the van, swinging it in one hand, and by the
time the Van Guys had piled out he’d put a sizeable dent in the rim of the
wheel.
“Hey!” Driver Guy was yelling. He
didn’t have the trank gun so Spike ignored him, walking up to the front of the
van and ripping the hood open. “What the hell are you--” He saw Spike’s
face, realized who he was, and immediately backpedaled.
“Sabotage, mate,” the vampire replied cheerfully,
putting the hatchet through the radiator with a resounding clang. A column
of boiling steam hissed into the air and Spike jumped back. “Diabolically
clever, innit?” He stuck the hatchet handle through his belt and stood
back to admire his new fountain. “Now--got the boiling water, do I see a
lobster?”
Paint Guy was coming around the other
side of the van with the trank gun in hand. Spike shifted position to the
side of the keep the bulk of the van in between them and ducked down, peering at
the other man from beneath the raised hood. Paint Guy dropped down almost
as quickly, whipping the gun up and taking aim. Spike jumped back, grabbed
the hood, and slammed it down. It clipped the end of the muzzle of the
gun, jerking it out of Paint Guy’s hands, and Spike leaped over the hood in an
instant.
Pain slammed through his head as his boots
connected with Paint Guy’s chest. Both of them went down, scrabbling for
the gun. Luckily Paint Guy wasn’t a large man (Spike had always been
rather miffed about the fact that humans had kept getting larger over the last
century; in life he’d been on the tall side of average, but the average had
caught up with him some time in the nineteen-fifties. His only consolation
was that Angel was in the same boat) and a hundred and sixty pounds of vampire
landing on his chest was enough of a handicap that Spike didn’t need to do much
else. The breath went out of Paint Guy with a whoof! and his skull
cracked nastily against the asphalt. Spike, desperately trying to suppress
a yell of agony, didn’t notice. Once the shocks faded and his vision
returned to normal, he yanked the gun out of Paint Guy’s hands and staggered
backwards. “Right, lads,” he gasped, “Are we going to get together and
play patty-cake again tomorrow night, or are you going to blow town like
sensible little minions before big bad Bryce discovers you’ve buggered things up
again?”
Driver Guy stood there with his
non-descript hair flopping into his face and his pale eyes darting back and
forth, frozen. Spike looked down at Paint Guy, who hadn’t moved, and his
eyes widened a bit. Paint Guy’s breathing was uneven, and he could smell
the blood beginning to pool where the back of his head rested on the road.
Spike strode over and grabbed him by the front of his coveralls, hoisted him
into the air one-handed and shook him. Blood spattered onto the
pavement. “Looks like your little friend's come all over dead.” He
flung the limp man onto the hood of the van; the radiator was still fizzling
angrily underneath it. “Oh, well, three’s a crowd. Just you and me
tomorrow night, then, all cozy-like?”
Driver Guy
broke and ran. Spike watched him go and heaved a sigh. He spared
Paint Guy a look; he was still breathing, though probably not for long. He
began to smile, then to chuckle, and finally he was laughing all out. He’d
managed to beat a human within an inch of his life, even it had mostly been by
accident. God, but that felt good. Better than good.
Fan-bloody-tastic. He leaned against the van and considered. Be all
white-hat and pussified, and take the bleeder to a hospital, or wait till he
died and eat him? Spike stared at the man, licking his lips. After
all, these were bonafide minions of evil and nastiness, not poor hapless sods of
college students... maybe he wouldn’t feel bad about it. Maybe it would be
fun again...
And maybe it wouldn’t.
“Oh, bugger,” he said crossly, shouldering the trank gun and setting off down
the street at a brisk walk.