A Raising in the Sun

by Barb Cummings

 

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: All belongs to Joss and Mutant Enemy, and naught to me.

Summary: Post "The Gift", spoilers for everything under the sun; Pairing: None, 'cause of that inconvenient Buffy being dead thing, but it’s S/B in spirit



Chapter 5

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 that 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 doorbell 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 the 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 in the niches of 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 paraphernalia.  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 nowadays, 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 cemetery 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 a while, 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 shock and horror 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, he'd never felt quite right referring, as 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 that 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 that 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 to 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.

Continue to Part 6

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