Dead Soul
RATING:NC-17
WARNINGS:graphic sex and violence, sadomasochism, bloodplay, implied character death, unrelenting cynicism and angst, and just a soupçon of blasphemy
PAIRINGS:Spike/Sunday (BtVS, Season Four, The Freshman), Spike/Drusilla, Spike/Sunday/Drusilla>
SPOILERS:BtVS - none past Season Four
DISCLAIMERS:I own nothing and no one.The story title is a line from the song Blank Generation by Richard Hell and the Voidoids.Chapter titles are the titles of Elvis Costello songs.
THANKS:to my terrific betas, SpikeMom, juliaabra and Lady Starlight who make me go back and describe things more, who slay the insidious typos, oh, and who make me use more commas (grumble, grumble).And to astraea for the gorgeousness that is her – eyeballs to entrails
FEEDBACK:might make me too happy to write, which may, perhaps, be a consummation greatly to be desired.Worth a try, anyway - deadsoul820@aol.com> or my LiveJournal
SUMMARY:a twenty-year vampiric globetrotting ménage a trois with lots of really twisted sex and yummy gore.Oh, and angst, lotsa angst.Sequel to Sunday Girl
Someone take these dreams away
That point me to another day
A
duel of personalities
That stretch all true reality
That keep calling me
- they keep calling me
Keep on calling me - they keep calling me
-- Joy Division, Dead Souls
“Like
Petroneus, perhaps, I take pleasure in committing suicide at
leisure.”
-- Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of
Kings
Spike
should have killed me then in that basement in the Bowery. Drusilla be damned. Which of course she will be, eventually,
and when she is, I’ll have been there, wherever there is, if there
is, long before. For that reason
alone, I hope she stays undusted for a good long time. I never want to share anything with her
ever again.
As I
drive west towards
I’ve
been listening to the tapes since I left
I’m
going now to the one place where I know he’ll eventually turn up. The Hellmouth. Where the Slayer is. If he’s not drawn there for me, he’ll
turn up for her. Maybe she’ll do
his job for him. Or maybe, just for
kicks, I’ll do his job for him. Get
one last dig in. Add fuel to the
balefire.
So I
may as well pick up where the previous tapes left off – nothing better to do as
I flee the rising sun and head for Sunny.
Dale, that is. Seems
appropriate that the
I
stayed in the basement for several months, learning my new strengths, my new
appetites. Feeding was easy among
the junkies, drunkards, and punks (oh my!). A careful bite could be disguised as
track marks in the ravaged crook of an emaciated elbow. Sprinkle some broken glass, make a few
gashes for show, and the victim of even the most vicious bite would look like
just the loser of a broken bottle fight.
Mostly I was careful to choose meals who hadn’t shot up recently, but
sometimes I’d get a loaded one and spend the next night or so floating in a warm
sea of viscerally realistic memories and, for a little while, at least, I
wouldn’t feel so alone.
***
Although my first hunt was rather a debacle.
I was
so high on my new power, my new strength as I strode into the club. Leather corset from the night of my
turning worn over a pair of Spike’s discarded jeans, the legs rolled up just
over my ankles to show off my glossy new spit-shined black kicker boots, tight
white t-shirt tied in a knot between my breasts, hair in a long tight braid, I
glittered with Spike’s abandoned silver and leather jewelry. I thought I was hot shit; hear me
roar.
He
was tall, pale and pretty. Slender
and gawkish, his black hair falling into his eyes, he had such a long, tender
neck, and he was so obviously an incompetent poseur, but god he was cute. We played eye contact across the crowded
club, although he looked surprised every time our eyes met as if he thought I
must have been looking at someone behind him, not him.
Slam
dancing must have been invented by vampires, for vampires. I could have had a quick nibble, a
friendly bite from just about anyone on the packed dance floor, salty, pale
flesh glistening with sweat, hearts pumping an adrenaline overload, even the
ones who weren’t speeding their asses off, but my appetite had its heart set on
him. I didn’t have to disguise my
strength as I shoved my way through the packed, smelly, hot crowd of puerile
disenchantment and sophomoric nihilism.
It
was so easy. So very, very
easy.
As a
human, I’d have wasted hours tossing my hair, pretending to ignore him while at
the same time stealing sidelong looks out of the corners of my eyes. The teenage mating ritual. The ‘no, no, yes’ that leads to so many
misunderstandings and missed opportunities.
But,
as a vampire, I saw what I wanted and I took it. If I’d known boys were this easy, I’d
never have had a free Saturday night since hitting puberty. I walked up, grabbed his hot hand and
took him home.
Once
there, I was too hungry to wait. He
was so warm and moist. He smelled
like fresh-baked brownies and roasting turkey and grilling burgers, like all the
food smells rolled up into one über-food smell. I had him down on his back across the
fainting couch, straddling him, kissing his heated mouth, running my fingers
over his neck, searching out the best place to bite to get as much of his blood
into me as possible, as quickly as possible. He had a strong, fast, excited pulse,
the veins very close to the thin, fresh, fragile skin.
I ran
my tongue down his salty neck, grasping the collar of his shirt in my hands,
easily tearing it all the way to the hem.
His hands were busy too. He
pulled my white t-shirt over my head, baring my breasts. As I leaned in to bite, I pushed them
against the naked skin of his chest.
But before I could slide my fangs into his pulsing throat, I felt a
scorching, a searing against my breast, totally unlike the hot wax or even open
flame Spike had tortured, tempted, teased, and taunted me with. There was nothing erotic about this
feeling. It was entirely and
completely a ‘get it the hell off me’ kind of pain that felt like it had burned
a hole in me big enough for a fist to reach in and yank out my unbeating
heart.
Hissing, fangs out and face bumped, I reared back and stared in
disbelief at the tiny gold cross the boy was wearing on a long chain so that it
had been hidden underneath his shirt.
I was stunned. Why on earth
would a cross do that to me? I was
Jewish. Crosses weren’t a symbol of
my former religion. A burning Star
of David or Chai I could understand, but why would a cross affect
me?
As I
paused to consider this interesting metaphysical inconsistency, the boy was
screaming and struggling to get away.
Reflexively, I tightened my knees, crushing his ribs, holding him in
place. Recovering from his panic
enough to see where I was looking, and remembering some half-forgotten legend,
he grabbed the cross and thrust it out towards me. In spite of myself, I recoiled, and not
just from the memory of the pain.
Something in me couldn’t bear to even be this close to it. Like how, even when you know it’s on a
leash and you know you’re out of its range, if a dog lunges at you, you shy
away. Ya
know?
Yanking, he broke the chain and pushed the cross towards my
face. I had to release him in order
to get away from it. Looking at it
physically hurt my eyes, kind of like a too-bright light that wasn’t light. The torment came from a different
place. Maybe crosses do emit light
of a sort – light that is outside the spectrum visible to human eyes and that
vampire eyes can only detect as pain.
Have to remember to ask someone about that someday, I thought. Meanwhile…
I
reeled off of him and across the room, anything to put more distance between me
and the source of the brain-splitting agony. He scrambled to his feet and towards the
door but he made a mistake. His
last mistake. Disoriented, holding
his bruised and possibly broken ribs, instead of taking the door that led to the
stairs out of the basement he stumbled down the familiar hall to, you guessed
it, my old cell. All the better to
corner him in, I thought, as the discomfort finally receded enough for me to
act.
No
lights down there, but I could see well enough. Well enough to observe him banging
against the walls, feeling for a door, a way out. I let him go. Let him think that perhaps I was still
huddled, cowering and blinded by the might of his tiny, little cross, instead of
silently stalking him. This was
beginning to be fun again.
He
was feeling along the wall for an exit when I soundlessly entered the cell. Creeping up on him, I let him blunder
into me. I heard the tinkle of
metal hitting concrete when he dropped the cross, as he jumped back in surprise
and fright. I could see the gleam
of the faintest light on the whites of his wide-open eyes, glistening and
shining like something dipped in syrup.
No more messing around. I
was hungry enough, and angry enough, to suck those sweet eyeballs right out of
his head.
I was
also still inexperienced enough to be surprised by my own speed as I rushed him,
toppling him to the floor and striking at his neck with my sharp, famished
fangs. I closed my teeth over his
gorgeously protruding Adam’s apple and pulled. It popped into my mouth, a chewy, warm,
wet mouthful of deliciousness. I
sucked it dry and spit out the gristle then leaned down to bathe my face in the
river of blood still pumping from his mutilated throat.
I fed
like a wild beast. What was left
after I’d sated myself was hardly recognizable as having been human. A rag, a bone, a hank of
hair.
***
But
unless the hunger was on me, I spent my time in Spike’s old room, turning over
his detritus, his relics, burying my face in the smell of his unwashed clothes –
the smell I was never able to catch until I lay dying, just before I was
turned. I played the tapes he’d
left behind and scratched his name on various parts of my anatomy with the
safety pins I found, watching the bloody letters fade imperceptibly, the way, no
matter how closely you watch it, you never quite see the hands of a clock move
their way around the dial.
Evenings I was particularly missing him, I would smoke his brand of
cigarettes and use the glowing ends to brand myself his. These marks would be a little more
permanent, but they, too, would eventually fade.
I had
discovered his room down an unexplored hall. I guess it was remote from the others so
he could play his music and watch his ‘stories’ without disturbing
Drusilla. A typical masculine mess
– heaps of dirty jeans and t-shirts, the floor littered with cigarette butts and
broken cassettes, shiny mylar threads criss-crossing the floor like fallen
streamers in the aftermath of a wild party. Or the aftermath of someone packing in a
hurry.
The
unbroken tapes, I’d listen to over and over on his singularly clean and pristine
stereo system, the bass and the volume turned all the way up so I could feel the
vibrations of the huge speakers thumping through the cold concrete floor as I
lay there, memorizing the short, frenetic songs full of fuzz guitar, feedback
and screams of alienation, boredom and self-congratulatory
silliness.
I
also found a Polaroid camera and several packs of film, which came in handy as I
was learning to do my make-up by feel.
The early ones, the ones that looked particularly clownish, I saved to
show Spike one day. I thought it
might give him a giggle. But one night in a fit of self-loathing and despair I
tore them to tiny shreds and set fire to them. Why should I be saving things to show
him if I was never going to see him again?
What
finally broke me out of this funk, was a taste of others of his, my, our
kind.
***
The
simplest way I’d found to catch a meal was simply to walk out by myself late at
night. There was always some
mugger/rapist/thug type hanging around who thought he’d found himself an easy
mark. The fun of pointing out his
mistake could momentarily alleviate the gloom – especially if I let him, or
them, if I was lucky, beat up on me a little first. But one night the muggers weren’t
human.
Since
I’d become one myself, I hadn’t been around other vampires, so I didn’t
recognize them as such right away.
And since I was so young and looked so small and helpless, they didn’t
peg me as one of their kind immediately, either.
I was
doing my scared-scurry impression of a girl out too late in a bad part of town
when I heard them stalking me. I
walked a little faster, throwing pantomime glances of fear over my shoulder, but
really thinking that if they didn’t hurry the hell up, I’d get to ‘safety’ and
lose my shot at them. Finally they
surrounded me and pulled me into a handy alley, all grabby hands and grubby
clothes. Grubby hands too, to judge
by the taste of the one held over my mouth as I pretended to
struggle.
I was
hungry and not really in the mood to play with them, so I made my move to break
free and attack, but, to my surprise and extreme irritation, I couldn’t break
the hold of the attacker clutching me from behind, pinning my arms to my
sides. Angry and a little genuinely
scared, I vamped out. As soon as I
had done so, so did the ring of four or five others. They looked like such typical minions
that I was ashamed they’d gotten the drop on me, but I was still pinned, held
off my feet, against the chest of one big motherfucker whose grasp I couldn’t
wriggle out of or break.
I
still wasn’t seriously frightened.
I guess I figured that as soon as they’d realized their mistake, that I
wasn’t a late night snack, they’d release me and we’d go our separate ways. No harm, no foul. Neither Spike nor Drusilla had thought
to mention how territorial your run of the mill vamp gang is, and now, it
seemed, I was trespassing.
Shit,
I’m about out of gas.
***
Funny
how the taste of motor oil cuts through the flavor of the blood, completely
ruining it. Note to self: no more mechanics for breakfast. Although the smell of gasoline does
continue to appeal to me, sharper and even more intoxicating than I remember it
being when I was human. Mmm,
brain-buzz.
Where
was I? Oh yeah. That lame-ass vamp gang. Who really gives a shit about them? I’m here, aren’t I, so I must have
gotten away. I’m bored with that
subject, although the incident did give me my first understanding of how truly
flammable we are. A lesson I’ve
since put to good use.
What
I want to talk about is Rome and what happened there.
If I
were going to wax literary, I’d justify the topic jump by saying that linear
narration, while logical and expected for this kind of story, reminds me too
much of this motherfucking highway.
Could you guess that I’m in Kansas now? Mile after mile, event after event, all
of it going nowhere. If I jump
ahead, maybe it’ll help me imagine the Rockies, which must be up ahead there
somewhere. Wax
off.
And a
question. Do all these pop culture
references make this a work of postmodernism? Or is it just the gasoline fumes causing
an overweening sense of self-referential self-importance and mock-hubris? And is the metanarration really called
for?
***
So
anyway, once I got my ass in gear I took to hanging around JFK, trolling for a
girl traveling by herself who looked like me and had a passport and a plane
ticket to anywhere in Europe on a flight that both left New York and arrived at
its destination after dark. A
fairly specific list of requirements, but it only took about a week for all the
elements to fall into place, and I found myself in a seat in coach on a flight
to London’s Heathrow airport. Train
to Dover, ferry to Calais, more trains to Paris, and then to Rome. First class sleeper car tickets, paid
for with the travelers’ checks and American Express card I’d swiped along with
the passport and plane ticket in New York.
Once
in Rome, I had no idea how I was going to find Spike or even if he was still
there. Best I could figure was to
hang around the rough areas of town and cause some trouble, maybe get him to
come to me.
So I
was in this alley sucking on the neck of some young guy who’d had the nerve to
pinch my ass when I smelled something familiar. Something I hadn’t smelled since the
last night I was alive. Something
I’d only caught the faintest cold memories of from unwashed jeans and t-shirts
two thousand miles behind me.
Nonchalantly, I took a last sip and snapped his neck, letting him slide
to the rough paving stones. I shook
off my vamp face and turned.
Wiping the blood from my mouth, I said, “I don’t know what Dru was talking
about. I love eating Italian.”