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
Trapped in the chapel by the rising sun, Spike and I curled up
together on top of the altar, covered by one of the abandoned robes. Warm and satiated but not quite ready to
sleep, we watched Freddy directing a clean-up crew of other Fyarls who were
removing the corpses, taking them out through the trapdoor located directly
behind the burnt out bonfire. From
which Freddy had made his grand entrance.
Idly curious, I asked Spike, “What’ll they do with
them?”
“Eat
‘em,” he said, toying with a strand of my hair, twining it around his
fingers.
“That’s nice. It’d be a
shame to waste all that meat.” My
mother had had a thrifty streak that I guess I’d
inherited.
“I
didn’t know the catacombs extended this far outside the city,” I remarked after
a couple of minutes.
“Isn’t really part of the catacombs, proper. There’re underground cemeteries all
around this city. Lot of them
haven’t been rediscovered yet. Like
this one. Not by the archeology
chappies, anyway. Magic spells keep
‘em hidden from humans, and they’re damn handy places to doss down in a
pinch.”
“Oh,”
I said, yawning hugely. Yeah, I
know. Vampires don’t need oxygen,
so why did I yawn? I don’t
know. I just know that when I’m
sleepy, I still yawn. So much about
us doesn’t make sense. Hell, our
existence doesn’t make any sense.
And speaking of not making sense -
“Magic? Magic’s
real?”
“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t it be? Though it’s a tricky bitch to
manage. Never been much in that
line myself, but Dru finds it fascinatin’.”
Speaking of tricky bitches, I thought, but didn’t say aloud. I did finally give in to my
curiosity. “Where is
Dru?”
His
hand tightened on the lock of hair he was still playing with, pulling it. “With Darla somewhere. I took it as long as I could: Darla sneering at me, being all po-faced
and butter wouldn’t melt, but I just had to get out. Tried to get Dru to come with, but she
wouldn’t. Seems she’s found
religion – again. Darla’s got her
all brainwashed with some scheme to find some mystical whosits that’ll free the
Master.”
“Who’s the Master?”
“Darla’s sire, older’n dirt, face like an albino bat. Got himself stuck trying to open the
Hellmouth. Very into the old myths
and rituals. The whole Order of
Aurelius thing.”
“So
let me get this straight.” I
counted it up on my fingers. “The
Master would be my great-great-great grandsire? Or have I missed a ‘great’? Is ‘grandsire’ a word? Aurelius as in
Marcus?”
“Yes,
no, no, and dunno. Never paid that
much attention. Ritual and
mumbo-jumbo bore me. Much
rather be out killin’ something. Or
shagging.”
I
chuckled. Yeah, in general, I’d
rather be shagging, too. But not
right now. Too comfy and
sleepy.
“What
would you be doing if I hadn’t come to Rome?”
“Prob’ly drinkin’ a lot more and having a lot less fun. You’re quite the tonic, you
know.”
“If
I’m the tonic, you must be the gin,” I said. It says something about my fuzzy state
of mind that I thought I was being terribly witty.
He
snorted. “Well, that was about the
worst joke I’ve heard in nearly one hundred years of unlife. Go to sleep now, before you embarrass
yourself even further.”
“’Kay,” I said, wiggling even closer up against him, pulling his arm
around me. His deep, rumbling
chuckle was the last thing I heard.
***
Now,
I don’t believe I’ve a prophetic bone in my body, but images from the dreams I
had that day still haunt me with their twisted accuracy. And I am, in a fashion, related to
Dru.
I saw
Drusilla and another woman, blonde with delicate features, performing their own
Latin ritual, dripping smoking blood from a chalice onto an ancient map of the
world the size of a large oriental carpet, the blood burning holes in it
wherever it fell. As they moved the
chalice over the part of the map where North America would have been shown, had
it been discovered at the time the map was made, I felt a burning pain in my
chest, not unlike the pain I’d felt when my first victim’s cross had touched
me. The farther west the blood
fell, the more it hurt.
I
tried to cry out, to beg them to stop, but I was voiceless. When they got to the western edge of the
map, I saw the hand that I had stretched out towards them imploringly turn gray
and start to crumble to ash.
Screaming in my head, I reached out to catch the falling ash with my
other hand, which had a strange gold ring on it with a green stone. I caught the falling ash and was able,
with the help of the ring, I somehow knew, to mold the ash back into my own
recognizable hand.
Suddenly disinterested in the arcane goings-on, I wandered out of the
dark into a brightly lit, generic college campus, locatable geographically only
by the palm trees and warmth. I
squinted in the bright light – the first full sunlight I’d seen since the
previous summer.
I
found a secluded bench in full sunshine and was basking in the warmth, enjoying
the orange glow of the sun through my closed eyelids when I felt a cool draft up
the back of my neck. I shifted
uneasily on the hard concrete, raised a hand to block the draft, and stuck my
finger in Spike’s eye. He yelled
and pushed me off the stone altar onto the floor, where I landed in a graceless
heap, blinking up at him and wrinkling my nose at the now rancid smell of all
the blood we’d spilled.
One
hand clapped over his eye, Spike was laughing at me and my obvious
confusion. “Time to get
crackin’. Gonna be a long trek back
into the city.”
I
groaned as I got slowly to my feet.
“I was dreaming,” I mumbled sleepily, rubbing my tongue against the roof
of my mouth, trying to dislodge some of the pastiness. “It was warm and
sunny.”
“Dark
and moony, now.” I could hear the
leer in his voice.
I
exaggeratedly dusted some of the dirt and ash I’d collected off my ass and said,
“Better?”
“Positively glowin’, love, but we can’t stay here all night. Plenty of time for compliments once we
get back.”
I was
feeling disgustingly gaumy, what with the assorted dried fluids and other grit,
so I didn’t complain. As fun, in an
evil, blasphemous and depraved way, as the previous evening had been, a bed was
certainly more comfortable than an altar.
Spike
broke the chain that held the gate back to the tunnel closed, and we got dressed
in the small cell outside of the chapel where we’d left our clothes. He grabbed a candle to light our way
out. The Jaguar was still right
where we’d left it, but before I could open the door to get in, Spike scooped a
rock up from the ground and threw it through the windshield. The crash shattered the peacefulness of
the clear night.
I
goggled at him as I watched him poking around for another rock to throw. What on earth had he done that for? Not finding another rock handy, Spike
leapt up onto the hood of the car and finished what his rock had started by
kicking the rest of the windshield in, jumping up and down, denting the shiny,
black metal, laughing, appropriately, like a lunatic under the full moon that
looked close enough to lick. Hell,
it looked like fun, and, I reasoned, the car was stolen anyway – not like we
could keep using it, so I climbed up on the trunk and swung my own booted foot
at the rear window.
Wow!
What a rush. The noise of the glass
was music, underlain by the percussion of Spike’s stomping feet as he bounded
from the hood to the roof of the car.
Turning gleaming beauty into so much dented and shattered metal and
glass. It was a whoopin’, hollerin’
hootenanny of noise and glee and pure high spirits. Spike lost his footing and tumbled off
the roof of the car into me, knocking us both to the ground where we lay
laughing for a few minutes before getting up to complete the
destruction.
I was
inside the car, slashing the leather upholstery with a pocketknife I’d found in
the glove box when Spike pulled me out.
“Get ready to run,” he said, holding onto my arm, and pulled his lighter
and cigarettes out of his duster pocket.
He wrenched off the gas cap and tossed the lighted cigarette into the
tank, in the same moment, taking off running and dragging me along with
him. We’d not gotten more than a
few yards away before the gasoline in the tank exploded, the violently displaced
air throwing us up into the air, sending us flying.
I
landed hard, several feet away from Spike and fully expected broken bones, at
the very least. I lay still,
waiting for the pain, waiting for the damage to become apparent, but I hadn’t
even had the breath knocked out of me.
Duh, I thought. If you don’t
breathe, there’s no breath to be knocked out. Spike picked himself up, brushing leaves
and so forth out of his hair then reached a hand down to me. I let him pull me to my feet with a jerk
that brought me crashing against his chest. He clutched me to him and whooped once
more at the moon, eyes shining gold, before we set off on foot for the city, the
beautiful wreckage of fine engineering burningly merrily behind
us.
***
Either the body of the parking valet hadn’t been found yet, or the
police had come and gone because all was as usual when we returned to the
hotel. Other than there being no
parking valet, of course. But then,
we didn’t have a car anymore, so we didn’t need one.
“Dibs
on the bathroom,” I said, as we staggered into the lobby, still giddy from
running most of the way into town.
It had been the first time I’d really had a chance to test out my new
strength and stamina for things other than fucking and fighting. Running for the sheer joy of it, feeling
no pain, no labored breathing, no annoying side stitches. I had felt strangely wild and free,
thinking nothing, but being totally aware of my environment in a way I’d never
felt before.
“S’all right. I’m gonna
run out for some more fags, anyway.”
He’d pulled out his pack and was feeling it carefully, making sure not to
crush the stray last cigarette that might be hiding. Feeling none, he wadded up the pack and
tossed it at the bored and sleepy concierge who had straightened up at our
entrance but was obviously having a hard time keeping his eyes open. The ball of crumpled paper and
cellophane bounced off his forehead before he had a chance to evade or try to
catch it. Spike strode
magnificently back out the door of the hotel, leather coat swinging with an
appropriately Italianate brio.
Soaking in the tub, I had a chance to mull over the events of the
previous night. So that was
evil. Felt an awful lot like plain
old fun. Spike would doubtless
accuse me of thinking too much again, but I tried to compare how I felt about
the events of the previous evening now and how I would have felt about them when
I’d been human.
Well,
that’s what I set out to do, but quickly found that there was no basis for
comparison. The catalyst, the
matrix of it had been the blood, which, of course, would have held no more than
an ick factor for the human me.
And, of course, a fear of the consequences. That’s what seemed to be the major
change in my attitude. I had no
fear of consequences anymore. I had
a supreme confidence in my ability, my demon’s ability, to do whatever I wanted
and get away with it. And a total
lack of empathy or sympathy for the humans we’d killed and would continue to
kill. Those, I’d found, when it had
been me in danger of dying and being nothing more than relieved when they’d
killed someone else, were no more than surface emotions I’d paid lip service to
until it was me or them. And could
a sentence be any more convoluted?
No more convoluted than my thoughts at the time, so I’ll let it
stand.
The
water had cooled, and I was tired of thinking. I gave myself a mental shake and sat up
to let the water out. Once it had
completely drained, I ran some more hot water into the tub, sloshing it around
to rinse out the ring of blood, semen, and just plain grime that had come off of
me. Once the tub was clean, I
filled it again and got in for a final rinse, thinking that sometimes a shower
is much more convenient than a bathtub.
The tedious details lend verisimilitude to the story, n’est-ce
pas?
The
sheets had been changed while we’d been gone, and I slid blissfully between
them, the Egyptian cotton, worn smooth and soft by thousands of washings, cool
against my bath-warm skin.
Pleasantly exhausted, I only idly wondered why Spike wasn’t back
yet. I had left a light on for him
on the other side of the room and was feeling sleep’s pull when I heard a
scratching at the door. I could
smell that it was Spike, so I lay back, wondering what in the world he was
doing. A few minutes later, the
door swung open, and I could see Spike kneeling in the hall, looking fairly
pleased with himself for having successfully picked the
lock.
“And
that was in aid of…?” I asked, as he stood then stooped to pick up a large paper
bag that he’d set on the floor.
“Just
keeping my hand in. Didn’t have the
key and didn’t want to pull you out of the bath.”
“You’re just all full of useful tricks, aren’t
you?”
“Well, even though it isn’t as much fun as kicking the door in,
sometimes you gotta be a little stealthy.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“Knocked over a chemist’s.
Got a few things I needed.”
He set the bag on the bed before stripping off his clothes. “Need to get these things washed,” he
remarked as he started emptying the pockets of first his coat then his faded
jeans which did, in fact, look kind of grubby.
I was
poking through the paper bag. He’d
gotten a couple of cartons of cigarettes as well as three boxes of hair dye,
black nail polish, a fifth of scotch, and several lengths of clothesline. I raised an eyebrow at that, looking at
him, ready to make some sort of suggestive remark when I noticed that he was
just standing still, holding his jeans in one hand while frowning down at
something he’d apparently pulled out of the pocket.
It
was a length of red ribbon. Without
another word, he dropped his jeans and went into the bathroom. I distinctly heard him lock the
door. Damn Dru and her reminders, I
thought. I got out of bed, pulled
my robe out of the closet, put it on, and collected his discarded clothes into
one of the hotel’s laundry bags, hanging it outside the door to be washed by the
hotel staff. I can’t say that I
wasn’t as motivated by making him stay with me as I was by doing as he’d
indirectly asked and getting his clothes clean. Although I’d no doubt that, had he been
determined to leave, he’d have had no compunction about taking off wearing
nothing but duster and boots.
My tranquil and contented mood spoiled, I unscrewed the top of the scotch and
took a long pull straight from the bottle, trying to decide whether to try to
distract Spike out of his Drusilla-inspired moodiness or to confront him about
it, about her, about me and where this was going. I was young. I hadn’t yet learned about sleeping dogs
and the advisedness of letting them tell themselves lies.
TBC...?