*TITLE: The Heart's Filthy Lesson 1/18
*AUTHOR: Mustangsally and RivkaT
*EMAIL: Mustangsally78@juno.com RivkaT@aol.com
*SUMMARY: In 2001 the evil from 1936 has reared its ugly head, a
Nazi demon with an unpronouceable name and a vampire
henchman has decided to use Sunnydale as a recruiting center for
the disenfranchised and discontented undead. How will Buffy/Spike
and the rest of the Scoobies manage to consign this particular evil
back where it belongs?
Let us make it abundantly clear that the Nazis are the bad guys.
SPOILER WARNING: Post - Fool for Love. The bulk of Season 5
Cheerfully ignored.
*RATING: NC-17 for violence & explicit sex acts (interetsed yet?)
*DISCLAIMER: The characters are not ours and we would appreciate not
being sued.
NOTES: Idle hands are the devil's workshop.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 1/18
"Shouldn't you be extinct or something?" Spike asked, and
knocked back another shot.
The Keshonte demon gave him a headachy look and got
himself a little deeper into his own beverage.
"Speak for yourself, vampire."
"I haven't seen your kind in nearly a hundred years," Spike
continued, swirling the Stolichanaya and A positive around in the
highball glass,
Sweet fuck, why was he yammering like a girl? He'd wanted a
drink, several in rapid succession, and not some escapee from
Bullfinch's Really Big Book of Rare Demons at his elbow. It had to be
the drink making Spike so chatty. He'd walked into the underground
bar with the intention of getting pissed and staying that way for a week.
He'd picked up some cash on an enforcer gig kicking ass for a little old
demon from Pasadena. Working that close to Sunnydale wasn't his
idea of fun, but getting paid for tearing some bugger to bits was.
Driving down Route 66 and converting lucre to liquor had been the
plan, but a Keshonte demon next to him at the bar was rare enough to
be interesting.
"I'm surprised you recognize 'my kind.' Not many ever left
Europe." The demon's tone was hostile, but not overly so. The
tentacles on his head, thin enough to pass for dreadlocks in bad light,
waved gently, showing that he wasn't in a dangerous mood.
"There weren't many to begin with, mate. Knew a few in
Amsterdam, though, last century."
The demon grunted, and Spike decided he'd run out of nice.
Waving his hand, he ordered another drink. The barmaid was a
slightly scaly lamia with big green eyes and big soft breasts. He
turned his attention away from her curves and concentrated on the bar
top instead. Women, couldn't live with them, couldn't be dead with
them. He'd spent roughly a hundred and twenty years, alive and dead,
moping over one female or another. Your problem, William-me-lad, is
what the daytime TV shows call a cycle of failure, he reminded
himself. You only want the ones who don't want you. Maybe he
should try another therapist. The first one had been tasty.
"They told me this was where all the demons come."
Spike looked up, distracted from his unusual depth of self-
analysis. Now the Keshonte wanted to talk, now that Spike was
settled in for a good wallow in self-pity. He almost told the Keshonte
to bugger off, but the blood-and-vodka combination swirling in his
stomach relaxed him.
"Oh, yeah, everybody comes to Rick's." His Bogart
impersonation, filtered through various accents, was so bad as to be
unrecognizable.
"Rick's? I thought this place was called Lovecraft's?"
"You don't get cable, do you?"
The demon's expression was quizzical. His kind had human
eyes, warm brown irises trapped in a scaly pink face.
"Casablanca?"
No dice; the demon continued to look blank.
Spike sighed, rummaged around for a memory of what polite
conversation was, and remembered, "So what brings you to the
suburban wasteland?"
"What's it to you?"
"You wanted to talk. If you don't, fine. Got some drinking to
do." His drink was clotting; he waved for yet another.
The demon hunched forward, obviously keyed up. "I'm here
looking for a Wirtschaftsministerium demon. Seen any?"
"That would be 'No'."
Which was a good thing since a Wirtschaftsministerium
demon was only slightly less nasty than a wolverine crack addict in
need of a fix.
"I have information that a vampire was trying to use the
Hellmouth to raise the Wirtschaftsministerium." The demon rocked
slightly back and forth on the bar stool. If he'd been a vampire Spike
would have identified his tone as bloodlust, but that wasn't like a
Keshonte. The Keshonte were just another bunch of loser human-
wannabes, swanning around Amsterdam reading poetry and eating
pastry. He'd heard vague rumors of some sort of healing powers.
Spike didn't like healing, unless it preserved the food for later snacking.
Wankers. But maybe this wanker was a wanker with cash.
"I might be able to help you out, old son. What's the story with
this Wirtschaftsministerium?"
"He was blown off of this plane in a magickal accident about
five years ago." Damn, Spike *hated* the ones who put a "k" on
magic. It was so nancy-boy. "But he wishes to return, and the
Hellmouth is the best place for a remanifestation. When he rises, I will
be here."
"And what's the cagey bastard done to get your knickers in a
twist?"
The Keshonte examined Spike, scanning his face with an
intensity Spike found troubling. The Keshonte seemed to be hunting
for cracks in the infamous Spike façade, but since the Keshonte was a
male of the species, it seemed unlikely any would be found. "I'm
Dracco. You are?"
"Spike."
"No, really."
"No, really," Spike corrected him with an edge worn to
sharpness from use.
"Spike, I'm looking for the Wirtschaftsministerium because he
is a war criminal."
Spike barked laughter. "Whose war? A human war, a demon
war, a war in this century, or from the beginning of time? Demons
have been doin' each other in since the first demon realized that he
could smack another with a bit of rock. It's not fuckin' worth it, mate."
He leaned over until he was almost nose to nose with the Keshonte,
"There's a Slayer within spitting distance of the Hellmouth. Unless you
got a pair big enough to deal with her, you better forget about the
Wirtschaftsministerium."
"I will never forget him -- Karl," finally, a name to cut down on all
the boring Germanic syllables. "I will always remember what
happened to my people." Dracco showed Spike the inside of his
forearm, the runes branded there. "You don't see Keshonte demons
because the Nazis destroyed almost all. Most demonologists think
we're extinct. They will be right, in two generations."
"Those bastards were efficient."
Dracco knocked back the rest of his beer and wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand. His voice stayed low and intense and his
brown eyes did not flicker from the vampire's face.
"Karl was part of the Schutzstaffel-Totenkopfverbande. He
was their JagdKriegspfarrer." The ridiculously long German words
twisted something in Spike; he hadn't heard those particular syllables
in a long time. Americans with their acronyms preferred the sexier
"SS," and left out the Death's Head part entirely. "He ran a
concentration camp near Birkenau for undesirable demons. Keshonte
wouldn't work for the Nazis, so we were undesirable. And, as you said,
they were efficient. The Wirtschaftsministerium demon known as Karl
I have hunted since May 8, 1945."
Spike, who could remember being impressed when halftone
pictures started appearing in London penny newspapers, wasn't
impressed with a mere fifty-six years.
"So how'd he manage to hide from you?"
"He's magically adept. He's good at hiding. And more than
hiding. Some colleagues of mine found him in Brasilia about twenty
years back. He tore them into pieces the size of postage stamps."
Karl sounded like he might be someone Spike would really
enjoy killing. Also Karl was a demon, which minimized the possibility
of Spike's brain feeling like it was going to explode, and Karl was a
Wirtschaftsministerium demon which made killing him even more
attractive. Karl sounded like a badass which made taking him out
downright fun. As a matter of fact, Spike was almost tempted to offer
to take out Karl for free.
"You are talking to the right vampire, Dracco, I think I can help
you out."
As she had so many times before, Fate stepped in and
slapped Spike across his sharp cheekbones. This time fate was
looking like a succubus walking through the bar's front door carrying
an infant's car seat in her shapely arms. Fate was a bitch.
"Bloody hell," Spike breathed and moved to intercept the
woman.
"This is not a good time," he told the creature in the baby seat.
"William, it's really nothing. You're nothing," Marranzano the
imp coughed and took a deeper drag of his cigar, "always broke,
always in trouble. I invested two grand in you and you're given me
nothing but heartache and agita."
The Imp looked like a cross between a melted baby doll and
Dennis Franz and was not on Spike's top ten list of favorite creatures.
"Shh, you're upsetting him," the succubus cooed and began to
rub Marranzano's belly.
"Later baby, you're givin' me a boner, " the imp told her, and
turned his pug-dog face back to Spike. "I want my two grand, Willie
and I want it by the end of the week or you're going to be perforated by
something that started out life as a tree. Capice?"
Marranzano began coughing and spraying Spike with hot imp
saliva, which was disgusting even given Spike's flexible aesthetics.
"Two grand. End of the week."
"Two and a half grand. Interest. And don't try getting yourself
killed to avoid me. I'll just have your skinny vamp ass resurrected and
kill you again myself. Capice?"
"Unfortunately."
Marranzano and the succubus took themselves off to a corner
booth and Spike slouched back over to Dracco at the bar.
"How much is he into you for?" Dracco asked.
"Two and a half grand."
"Right. You help me out with Karl and I'll bail you out with
Marranzano."
"Sounds like a plan," Spike said, and they didn't shake hands,
since a demon's promise is a demon's promise. "One condition."
Dracco's mouth twitched. "There's always a condition."
"I want to kill him."
Finally, the demon smiled, and Spike was mildly shocked to
see that his teeth were white and even, testaments to the power of
orthodontia and bleaching. "No. But you can hold him down while I kill
him."
"Right. But you buy the next round."
Three double-rounds later Spike had decided that Dracco was
the best friend he had ever had in his life, as he generally felt about
anyone buying drinks after a half-dozen or so. The next step in the
inebriation process was the telling of truth and Spike plunged into it
with the reckless disregard which was his habit.
"I saw one of the demon labs once," Spike said.
Dracco's predicament had shaken loose the shattered glass of
his memory and the shiny images rattled around his mind, a shimmer
here, an edge there, a flash of pain in eyes, of blood on lips, memories
that cut as they shifted.
"Were you ... a subject?"
Spike laughed into the A positive. "They tried to talk me into
signing up. I was more interested in the nightlife in Berlin. You didn't
get much more decadent than that." Spike liked to tell himself that he
was the model for the MC in Cabaret; it might even be true, since he'd
earned a fair amount of useless Weimar cash in one of the clubs,
snacking on unruly customers and terrorizing the girls into doing
whatever management wanted. "The SS liked having vampires; it fit
the image. The vampires liked the buffet. I didn't want anything to do
with it. Never could follow orders."
"The lab?" Dracco prodded.
Carefully, Spike stepped around the broken shards in his mind,
deciding what Dracco should see. There were things that he didn't
want to see again either.
"A woman, a vampire was with me at the time. We were
making merry picking off the locals." The liquor smoothed out the
edges of Spike's voice, returning it to the grammar and diction of his
living life. "It was a good time to be a vampire, so much chaos, no real
rules other than Heil Hitler and shit on everyone else. Snag is, my
Drusilla was mad as a hatter when she was changed and changing
didn't fix her, but she's got some other powers you might say -
psychic. You know Hitler was obsessed with the supernatural? Was
picking up every alleged magical object in Europe and hiding it in the
mountains? Of course you know, he probably boiled your parents'
bones to see if eatin' you would transfer your powers, whatever they
are." He paused, but Dracco did not enlighten him.
"The - what the hell were they called? It was a nightmare." He
drank again and let his brain cells relax. "Yeah, Schutzstaffel
Himmelfahrts Kommandos - say that five times fast. The SHK were
picking up demons and vampires as fast as the rest of the SS was
making up shiny new decorations for their valor in terrorizing Jewish
businessmen and raping their wives and daughters. Another vamp
ratted us out. Georg told his SHK buddies about Dru's talents, and
they picked her up. I went and got her out."
"What did you see?"
He had to close his eyes against the memories. Blood roses,
blood rising like the tide, blood washing away the dirt of a thousand-
year reich. "I saw too much," Spike admitted.
"They wanted to get the secrets of eternal life without the nasty
demonic side effects," Dracco said, unnecessarily.
"Yeah, well, I showed them exactly what nasty demonic side
effects look like, thank you."
And he'd spent the next day hiding in a warehouse sobbing into
Drusilla's lap, demanding to know why she had done this to him and
moaning about the awfulness of humans.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 2/18
Now that they were on the same side, Dracco was very chatty.
Spike thought he might be lonely, in the sixth decade of hunting the
demons who'd destroyed his people. "I used to have real resources
for this, you know. We worked with the Israelis -- why do you think
they were so effective? They were very committed to the task. But
now the humans are all dead or dying. On general principles, they're
willing to assist in the destruction of any entity that was on Hitler's side,
but it's not the same as it was when I could work with the men with the
blue tattoos on their arms. *They* knew why we had to keep going."
It had been a long time since Spike had that deep a
commitment to anything other than himself and longer since he'd seen
so much of a demon's emotions so close to the surface. Humans
usually wore their feelings around their necks like scarves for the world
to wonder at, and Spike didn't think it was appropriate for the
supernatural to do the same.
"Well, I'm all that you got now. Unlucky bastard."
Dracco showed Spike his pretty teeth.
"What are you doing in this half-assed town anyway?"
"I'm an unlucky bastard."
"It's a woman. It has to be a woman. You vampires are such
romantics."
"Well, there is one little chippie here I wouldn't kick out of bed
for conjurin' demons."
"So, this ... chippie, what's she like?"
"She's the Slayer." Spike got a kick out of the other demon's
reaction: he twitched, then gave Spike the once-over, checking to see
whether Spike was actually nuts. "Yeah, she's a sweet little thing, but
she won't have anything to do with me. She only dates boys with
*souls*." He couldn't quite manage Darla's contempt for the concept,
but he thought he'd conveyed the proper level of incredulity. "It's all
right though. Plenty of fish in the sea."
"Ah, but some fish are tastier than others, eh?"
They shared a manly laugh.
Keshonte demons were known for their sense of smell and
Dracco's nose drew them closer and closer to one of the many semi-
abandoned warehouses in the formerly industrial section of
Sunnydale. There were lights in the ground level of one of the
warehouses.
"No music, can't be a rave."
As demons, they had every reason to be in the area, so they
just walked up to the place. There was a big leatherboy vamp
guarding the door, with swastika tattoos blazoned over now-
meaningless muscles. Prison reject, Spike thought.
"We late?" Spike asked. He'd inferred that Dracco's
commitment to subterfuge did not include conversing cordially with
Nazis. He just hoped that Karl's sycophants hadn't been studying the
various demons Hitler had tried to wipe out, so Dracco wouldn't be
outed.
"You missed the introductions -- but the Great Leader is just
about to speak." It took a vamp to get that worshipful, idiotic tone just
right. He held the door for them, and Spike gestured for Dracco to go
first in case it was a trap. As Spike passed the vamp, he staked the
fellow with the stake he kept under his duster (no pun intended).
Nothing against the fellow, except that he might be in the way were a
rapid exit desirable.
The good thing about dusting other vamps was there was little
tidying-up required afterwards. Brushing off the mortal remains of the
vamp, Spike ambled into the warehouse with Dracco slouching
alongside. Sure enough there were some fifty-odd losers of the dead,
undead, mortal and demonic persuasions. A more pathetic group of
creatures Spike hadn't seen since Gencon in New York in 1976 when
Shatner locked himself in a hotel bathroom with a fire extinguisher.
At the front of the warehouse was a makeshift altar with the
usual accoutrements of skulls, goblets, and candles. Black candles,
and Spike could smell licorice, which probably was not the mood they
wanted to foster. On either side of the altar were a pair of third-rate
vamps wearing reconstructed Nazi uniforms that gleamed with
polyester. Spike remembered the smell of wool and blood from those
days and realized that, no matter what the vamps thought they were
getting right, they would never smell authentic. There was a rumbling
undercurrent of undead conversation and a shuffling of feet around
some really ugly folding chairs.
Folding chairs. Ugh. That was one of the problems that Spike
encountered with younger vampires - the species in general had lost
its sense of style somewhere around 1986.
There was the sound of drumbeats -- recorded, Spike could tell
-- and everyone quickly tried to line upp facist-style. Straight lines, and
even ones; Spike and Dracco got waved to the second row, where
there was a gap. They fit in, Spike on the very end and Dracco next to
him. The room held its collective breath, except of course for the
vampires who just looked worshipful. The drumbeats stopped.
A tall being in a long black cloak entered, carrying a candle.
Spike couldn't see its face, though it was man-shaped. The candle it
carried in bony white hands threw dramatic shadows across the floor
of the warehouse, and on the faces of the rapt audience. It lit the
candles on the altar until the flames seemed to dance in one
continuous line across the table. Spike couldn't help but shudder. He
was lucky enough to have avoided most of the centuries without
electricity, but he'd heard stories about elders who got careless with
fire, and he couldn't see why any self-respecting vamp would willingly
get close when there were flashlights.
The figure turned to face the crowd, and Spike saw that it was
wearing a silver skull mask. Spike flicked his eyes towards Dracco,
who gave a small shake of his head: No, that's not the
Wirtschaftsministerium.
It -- he -- began to speak, and his voice was compelling even
filtered through the mask:
" My comrades! Schutzstaffel-Totenkopfverbande! We meet
here for the fourth time. We have experienced in these four months
the miracle of a resurrection of a defeated and demoralized and
suppressed kind. Today this kind stands before us once more,
restored in outlook and heart. Each time we come to this city, we can
look back on a month of work, but also on a month of
accomplishments.
"What a spirit seized our kind! How proud and manly it has
once more become. It has overcome all the powers of destruction,
collapse and dishonor, and has found once again the path to honor!
Today we can again be proud of our kind! This miracle that has
renewed our kind, my fighting comrades, is not a gift from Hell given to
those unworthy of it."
The words had the ponderousness of a speech translated from
the original German. In fact, Spike could remember hearing
something similar on the radio in the late thirties. He and Dru had
been holed up in an opium den, feeding on the slow-moving dreamers
and sharing their hallucinations.
Silver Skull picked up a human skull from the altar and crushed
it in his hand. The fragments drifted to the ground. The humans in the
audience gasped.
"Now, the great transformation begins. The first sacrifice is
one unworthy, who we have cleansed, who will be our pathway to a
greater destiny."
From the side, two costumed goons half-carried, half-dragged
a young vamp. She couldn't have been more than sixteen when she'd
been turned, and she couldn't have been turned more than one night
ago, from the confused look in her piggy demonic eyes. She was
another fake blonde, dressed in basic hookerwear, blue bra straps
listing out from underneath her too-small pink tank top. Spike guessed
she'd been turned just for this ceremony, whatever it was. Her face
was switching from human to vampire and back, as if she were too
frightened to control the change.
When she was in front of Silver Skull, the two Naziettes
stepped back a little, each still holding on to an arm, so she was
pinned like Fay Wray. Naturally, she was none too pleased with the
position; nothing good ever happened like that. She could see the
panting audience and, even though she had to be able to sense its
lusts, for blood and otherwise, she still cried out, twisting her head to
address them.
"Help me! Please, help me!" Her eyes locked with Spike's,
and he had to force himself to watch Silver Skull instead. This was not
hard, because his next move was to reach out and plunge his hand
into the vampire's chest as she screamed. The hole in her chest was
ragged, and undead blood leaked around the edges, clashing with the
tank top. Spike reached out and put his hand on Dracco's forearm,
reminding the demon not to act yet.
Silver Skull removed his hand, displaying the vampire's heart
on his palm. It was about the size of a fist, with chunks of aorta and
vena cava protruding like stubby fingers. The vampire screamed
again as her heart continued to beat, coating Silver Skull's hand with
thick dark blood. Spike could smell the peculiar dead/alive scent as
large drops spattered the concrete floor. He'd never drunk another
vamp but Dru, but he could feel his face change and his fangs extend
in desire.
Silver Skull worked the moment a bit longer, then raised the
heart above his head and tilted it back, so that the blood began to coat
the silver teeth of the mask. Slowly, he squeezed, and blood gouted
from the heart. It must have been supernaturally linked to the body,
because the amount pouring down over the mask, through the eyes
and mouth, onto the hood and cloak, seemed unstoppable.
The heart burst with a wet popping sound, and fragments of
muscle and gristle flapped out of Silver Skull's clenched fist. The
vampire stared at Silver Skull for a moment, shocked into silence. Her
flesh, alive so recently, was still pink and glistening inside, wrapped
around her skeleton; Spike could see where Silver Skull's
investigations had exposed her spine. Then, heart destroyed, she
exploded into dust, darkening the blood on the silver mask still further.
The crowd, as they said, went wild, roaring "Sieg Heil!" and
other stupid Germanisms.
This was too much for Dracco, who roared a war cry of his
own and pulled out a short thick sword and a pistol. Spike was
impressed by the pistol; too many demons were still living in the
fourteenth century. He was less than pleased by the strategy, seeing
as how there was none. But with Dracco chopping off arms and legs
like he wanted to make a bouquet, Spike decided to follow along.
The first few moments were perfect, delectable chaos. The
crowd hadn't quite figured out that Dracco was not part of the show,
and Spike was able to stake three vamps before he encountered a
bleeding human. Unthinking, he reached out for a mid-battle snack,
and nearly fell over with the force of the headache. When his vision
cleared, there were two ugly bodies between him and Dracco. One
vamp, one thing he'd never seen before but that reminded him a lot of
Chewbacca. He growled and grabbed the vamp, whose cheap
uniform squeaked under his hands, and shoved it into Chewbacca's
chest. The demon went over like a big hairy tree, and Spike hurried
towards the altar. Dracco was already there, flailing with the sword,
the gun for some stupid reason back in his waistband. He kicked over
candles and chalices full of blood as he advanced on Silver Skull. The
only thing Spike could do was keep the others back as the showdown
began. Fortunately that wasn't hard because mystic freaks like Nazis
had a thing for mano-a-mano, no matter how much more sensible
overrunning the outnumbered would be. All it took was a nasty glare
and a shrug, as if to imply that, if Silver Skull couldn't handle a
Keshonte, what kind of leader was he anyway?
Silver Skull swept out a long leg and knocked Dracco over. But
Dracco rolled towards him, tangling legs and robe together so that
Silver Skull fell on top of him. They were punching and thrashing as
Dracco tried to get a decent angle with the sword. Smoke was
beginning to rise from behind the altar, where some of the candles had
gone over. The struggling forms grew even more indistinct, as if they
were merging through the force of mutual hatred. A bony hand
extended out of the fray and grabbed at something on the altar. Spike
realized that it was a knife as the hand raised it high above the
squirming bodies, impossibly high, and just then Dracco's tentacles
ripped the silver skull from Silver Skull and Spike could see his face.
The vampire had a round, pleasant face, or it would have been
apart from a scar from his left temple to his nose, destroying the
bourgeois symmetry, the plumpness that smoothed out any lines. His
one remaining eye gleamed absinthe-green from the fire now flowing
around the altar.
"Georg," Spike breathed, not even meaning to say it aloud.
Georg plunged the knife into Dracco's side, and the Keshonte
screamed, a high warbling sound like a teakettle. Spike leapt onto the
altar, ignoring the fire, seeing only Georg and a room five decades old.
At his feet Dracco was still screaming.
Spike had heard it said that people who killed for revenge
wanted their victims conscious, so they'd know whodunit. He didn't
care; he was going to stake Georg from behind. But the vampire had
always had an eye for the main chance, and he pulled the knife from
Dracco's guts and whirled to face Spike. Spike's fangs were fully
extended, borrowed blood roaring for vengeance within him, a stake in
each hand. Georg's gnarled face was wary but lacked a spark of
recognition, which annoyed Spike into a flash of good sense. Instead
of moving, which would let Georg set the order of battle, he stood and
waited for Georg's attack.
In the recesses of the warehouse, something exploded. Spike
did not blink against the hot smoky wind that buffeted them. Georg
looked him over, evaluating his stance.
"Spike." Even with the scar and the black socket where an eye
should have been, Georg managed a heil-fellow-well-met smile that
belonged in a corner pub rather than a Nazi meeting hall rapidly going
up in flames. "Small world, isn't it?"
Then Georg did a backflip and disappeared into the flames
rising around them.
"Bugger!" Spike considered following, but he only liked
shooting flames when they came from his lighter, and these were
growing out of control. Staying in the warehouse, even for a fight, was
just volunteering to become a charcoal briquette.
Beside him, Dracco wheezed and tried to stuff his insides back
inside. Spike shrugged and picked him up, heading to where he'd
seen some windows on the way in, just in case something nasty was
waiting at the main exit. His boots did a Ginsu on the boards blocking
the windows, and he kept his balance with Dracco-bits hanging out all
over him very well if he did say so himself. As they cleared the sill,
something large inside the building exploded, and Spike had to roll
himself around Dracco so that he'd hit the ground first, avoiding further
damage to the Keshonte (and the attendant stains on his prized
leather coat).
When he was able to stand again, Spike half-carried, half-
dragged Dracco back to the car. "You're going to be all right," he said,
not knowing why he bothered.
The Keshonte blinked up at him and wheezed like a cat toy.
"You know I'm not."
"I know a couple of witches, they'll fix you right up."
"No, I have no control over my own time." What the hell does
that mean, Spike thought, but then they were at the car and he was
struggling to get Dracco in, wincing at the green ichor that slopped on
the seats. The car had seen worse, though not recently. "You are a
good man, Spike."
"Bugger that. I'm just in this for the killin'. Of which there was
lots." He tugged the seatbelt around Dracco, trying not to hit any of the
wounds.
Dracco's gun was still stuck in his waistband. Spike pocketed
it for future use.
"I know the truth. I want to help you with your problem."
"My problem?" Could Dracco have guessed about the implant
and why Spike needed a nonhuman to battle?
"The woman ... the Slayer."
"Don't worry about that."
But Dracco was off in his own world, mumbling to himself.
After a while, Spike noticed a reddish glow surrounding Dracco's body,
which he tried to ignore while driving. A few wispy tendrils of the red
haze touched him, smelling of incense and peppermints, but he didn't
think they were dangerous.
"They shall not forget," Dracco whispered.
Dracco died as he slung the car into the handicapped parking
slot by the magic shop.
Oh hell. Oh bloody hell.
Spike sat in the car a moment, feeling vaguely ill and trying to
figure out how to dispose of the body. Blithe humans bumbled in and
out of the magic shop while he sat and nursed his growing nausea.
He decided that Giles had really gone to far with the neon sign at the
moment that he decided he was going to throw up. And he did, into
the back seat, with a spectacular wave of blood that would have killed
a human. It just made Spike feel even more sick. He grabbed at the
door handle to get the hell out of the car, but his blood-wet hand
merely slipped from the chrome and left marks on the upholstery. He
could hear the beating of his heart as he fell into it.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 3/18
"I want to go out and meet all the pretty people," Drusilla had
said. Sixty years in, and he still wasn't used to her childish diction.
"It's day, love, best we wait a few hours."
"Are you denying this wonderful creature her slightest whim?"
The hail-fellow-well-met voice from behind made Spike rise and turn,
snarling, to confront its source.
"What's it to you, mate?"
The tawny-headed vampire stood as straight as if a witch had
stuffed her broomstick up his ass. Only the smug smile on his face
kept him from looking like a mechanical soldier.
"Ooh, so pretty," Drusilla said, reaching out a long finger to
stroke the jagged silver lightning flashes on his uniform collar. "And
look at the lovely skulls!"
He smiled down at her, leaf-green eyes dancing merrily.
"Lovely skulls indeed, madam. And you are?"
She settled her wrap around herself and looked down coyly.
Spike put his arm around her shoulders, and she obligingly leaned on
him. "I'm Spike, this is Dru, what the bloody hell is it to you?"
"I'm Georg," he said, bringing Dru's hand up to kiss it. When
she retrieved it, there were two puncture marks, still bleeding, and she
giggled. "You're quite a poet, Spike."
Oh, that was really too much. He snarled and disentangled
from Dru, but Georg stepped back and shook his finger, tsking.
"Really, there's no need to get upset. I've heard many good things
about the two of you. You look like good solid Aryan stock, the kind the
Reich needs in its improvement efforts."
"I'm not so sure about this Aryan business," Spike told him.
"Seems to me they're all just as red and runny on the inside."
"Well," Georg winked, "the humans are stupid about things like
that. But let me tell you, friend, the Nazis are the best thing to happen
to Nosferatu since electricity replaced all those torches the humans
used to keep handy! They have plans to move the entire population of
Europe into camps, where they can be controlled. The cattle will be
corralling the cattle, without any effort on our part. What's more, the
Nazis *adore* Nosferatu. They offer us our choice of the lesser
races."
Nosferatu? The precious term rankled Spike down to his
shoes. This Georg with his berlinerisch accent, no better than Spike's
guttural English one, and his fancy manners was nearly enough to
encourage Spike to look around for something wooden with a point on
the end.
Drusilla shuddered next to him. "Oh, I can see the flames rise!
The gold is melting from their teeth and running, running on the
ground! The sky is black from burning bodies, they burn so *dirty*, we
can dance and the terrible sun cannot see us at all!"
"Sorry," he lied. "I think we'll just sit this one out."
"Your choice. But if you or your pretty lady want to get in on the
ground floor, you just come see me at local Party headquarters."
As he left, Drusilla began singing a song about skin, and soap.
****
It was a hangover. He knew it was. It was the vile twice-as-
bad-second-hand-hangover he always got from draining drunks. Bad
blood, less oxygen, fewer nutrients, less power, one hell of a buzz and
then a bitch the next evening. But he hadn't drained a drunk since the
sodding chip wound up in his noggin almost a year ago-and ---
Dracco, Karl, Georg, and Britney Spears flooded back into his
memory. Spike groaned and tried to sit up.
"He's awake."
"Is that a good thing?"
"Well, he could explain what he was doing in the Ford Explorer
out front. That would have been hard to explain to the parking police.
No Mister policeman, I don't know who left the unconscious vampire
and the dead demon in the handicapped spot, maybe it was a drive-by
dead demon dumping."
Oh hell, it was that nit-wit Willow and her *special friend* Tara
nattering on at him with their dippy witchy singsong voices. It was a
little late for any help from them for Dracco. He shook his head to
clear it and blinked at blonde and red hair, at the round eyes staring at
him with mild puzzlement. Inexplicably, he was glad to see them.
"Are you all right?" He couldn't tell which one spoke; he was
too busy trying not to see three of each.
"Oh I'm perfectly well. When I'm perfectly well I always vomit
blood and pass out in cars next to dead demons. That's the picture of
wellness for me. What do you think, you silly cow!?" The shouting
made his head throb a bit more and he winced.
"He sounds fine," Tara offered.
"Where's Dracco?" he asked.
"Xander and Anya took him down to the recycling center and
they're going to put him in the newspaper to steam burner."
"You're going to burn my friend in a rubbish tip?" Spike
demanded.
"He's being recycled, at least. Circle of Life and all that,"
Willow said. "Eco-Reincarnation."
"He was a Holocaust survivor, you git! You burned him in an
oven, you think you finished the Nazis' work for them?" Willow gasped
and staggered back. Spike's headache was getting worse and he
started to feel queasy again, as well as an unfamiliar heaviness in his
chest. Maybe he was having a heart attack. Did vampires have heart
attacks? He'd heard about one vampire in New Mexico who had
drained a human with food poisoning and had been sick for weeks
after. Maybe he had caught something from the bovine blood he'd
been stealing from the butcher shop - mad cow disease even. Now
Dracco was being burnt up with thrown-out newspapers and junk mail
like a sale circular from a discount store and the thought of it was
making him feel awful.
"I feel bad about Dracco, I mean, really bad."
"Well, he's dead, it's natural that you would feel bad." Willow
was still pale, but recovering.
"Unless you were a vampire. Soul is conscience. Spike has
no soul," Tara reminded them, "You must be feeling guilty because
you think that there is something that you could have done to prevent
Dracco's death."
"Hang about there. I'm not filled with guilt, thank you."
Head throbbing with his heartbeat, Spike sat up and realized
that he was lying on the floor beside the counter at the Magic Shop.
Fortunately, the sign was flipped to closed and there weren't any
human TV dinners wandering in and out. All he needed was a little live
food dangled in front of his nose and he would be off on one of his
impotent rages again. Instead, he rolled his neck to loosen the tight
muscles in his neck and shoulders while Willow and Tara stared at
him as though he was about to sprout an extra arm or two.
"I think he did something to me. Before he died."
"Was it revenge? Did you kill him?"
He glared at Willow. "No, I didn't kill him. Why would I punch
holes in a fellow and then carry him here for your help?"
Tara went over to the book table and retrieved one of Giles'
monstrosity catalogs. This one was bound in what looked like ostrich
skin, though it might also have been avian demon. "The Keshonte
demon's powers have to do with time manipulation. If he did
something to you, it must have to do with time."
"Do you feel older? Or younger?" Willow asked perkily,
hopping from one foot to another. Lesbianism and research
challenges really agreed with her.
"I feel *vile*," he explained. "I ... it's like I don't want to think
about Dracco bein' dead, but I can't stop. I keep thinking I should have
--"
"Sounds like guilt to me. Not time manipulation."
Tara tugged at Willow's poofy fake-Indian shirt and they had a
whispered consultation. He would have tried to listen in, but he didn't
feel it was worth the effort.
"We're going to try a little spell," Willow said.
"Do I need to get up and run?" He wasn't fully recovered from
Willow's last adventure.
"No!" For someone so socially awkward, she really didn't know
when embarrassment would be appropriate. "This is just a spell we've
done before. Actually a variant. And it's going to work this time,
'cause Tara isn't going to screw it up on purpose."
Spike rubbed his aching head. "Just give me a few minutes
and I'll leave you to it." But he was too dizzy to stand. Even leaning
against the counter took all his strength, and the dull snuffling of their
motion and chanting from the depths of the shop lulled him into
complacency.
Tara came bounding up to him. "We figured it out. I think.
What I think the Keshonte demon did was use time manipulation to
resurrect your soul. They can do it to replace damaged limbs or
eyesight or things like that, and it stands to reason they can heal souls
too."
"That's stupid! Vampires don't have real souls, they have
demon souls, except for Mr. Bloody Intense and Silent." Spike
struggled to his feet, with the counter in a supporting role, in order to
get some dignity back.
"Angel is different --" Willow had her hand on Tara's shoulder,
so the two could present a unified front.
"So I've heard," he drawled, heavy on the irony.
"Look, how much do you know about vampire demonology?"
"How much do you know about how your insides work?" he
snapped back at her, stuck suddenly into a flash of pulling ropes of
entrails from a fortuneteller's stomach -- Dru had said that if the girl got
such messages from chicken guts there must be much more wisdom
inside her, but the silly wench had died before giving any insights. He
felt nauseous, and furious.
"Off-topic," Willow shook her head as Tara continued, "Look,
when a vampire demon enters a dying person's body, it comes from
the netherworld. Usually they don't have much personality, having
been lolling about waiting for something to happen since, oh, the
creation of the universe. So the body's original thoughts and
memories come along, only all filtered through this evil demon's
viewpoint."
"So?"
"So the original soul is kicked out and goes to the etherworld
like all the other souls of dead folk. When the gypsies cursed Angel,
the curse just went and picked a soul out of the etherworld, something
that was hanging around, maybe waiting to be born, maybe just bored
with the un-life. Same thing happened as with the demon -- no
particular thoughts or memories, so it glommed on to what was
already in Angelus's head, only this time with a soulful viewpoint. And
then when he and Buffy --"
"So the old man's on his third soul, eh? Bit of a slut, don' you
think? Three souls seems a little promiscuous."
"The Keshonte demon didn't work that way. When I say it
resurrected your soul, I mean it pulled your body's original soul back
from the ether-world and rebound it into your body. Once it's restored,
that connection is natural, not magical, and you're stuck with it until
death. You can't even be revamped, because the demon already
inside you won't let that happen."
Spike let this sink in and swim around in his brain. He didn't
much like the idea of having a soul foisted upon him without consent.
Worst of all, it was his old, used, soul. The soul that belonged to a
milquetoast of long ago, a part of him that had ended with his human
life. What if that raving twit came back, what if he went all weak and
wet again? He'd rather be dead and in hell than be the pillock formerly
known as William.
"This is not acceptable. You have to help me get rid of this
soul thing," he said.
"Maximum 'No.'" Willow said and stepped back a bit.
"Come on, girl. No one opened my head so the chip's still
there. I'm still toothless. "
"Even if we could-"
"This doesn't sound like a spell. Not one that can be reversed,
anyway," Tara spoke with quiet confidence. From her, it was credible,
maybe because he hadn't known her back when she was still worried
about detention. "It may be a curse or a geas, but it doesn't sound like
a spell."
"So what do I do now? Move to LA and start brooding?"
"We have to talk to Giles."
Speaking of pillocks . . .
Grabbing his coat from the counter, Spike pulled it on and felt
the heavy leather enfold him like a devil's wings. He felt like himself
again. This made him feel only slightly better.
"Bloody useless the whole lot of you," he snorted. "Couldn't
figure your way out of a paper bag."
Taking that as an exit line, he made his way out and headed
home to his crypt.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 4/18
"Knock, knock," Giles poked his head around the decorative
ironwork door of the crypt. Spike didn't bother to look up from the TV
set.
"Go away," he suggested.
As an Englishman, Giles found it almost as impossible to
cross a threshold uninvited as any vampire did, so he stood in the
doorway and peered around. Spike reached for the remote and turned
the TV off.
"Might I come in?"
"Suit yourself."
"I've been talking to Willow and Tara," Giles' voice trailed off as
he stepped into the crypt. "Interesting what you're done with the place.
Quite nice for a mausoleum."
"It's a crypt. Mausoleums are completely above ground." Spike
felt around under his chair for the bottle of vodka he had left there a
few nights earlier. "The rumors of my soul have been greatly
exaggerated."
"Spike - if you're just being coy."
"A soul. You'd think I'd notice, right? No visible manifestation.
Take that back to the Scoobies and sod off, would you?" He opened
the vodka bottle with a fang.
"If you should develop a soul, it would change things."
"Look, been there, done that, not impressed." Chip or no chip,
Giles was beginning to piss him off and he hauled himself out of the
chair and advanced on the former Watcher, "Isn't there something that
you should be doing? Like looking something up in an old book?"
Giles straightened up and moved toward the vampire, caring
not that a very old being was encased in what appeared to be a young
body, and he spoke in his schoolteacher voice.
"Were you not so determinedly abrasive, one could almost feel
sorry for you."
Spike was seriously tempted to fling the bottle at the Watcher,
but it was his last bottle and it was full. Instead, he slumped back into
his chair and began to remedy the bottle's full state. What was it that
the world wanted to inflict a soul on him? He gulped down an easy
quarter of the vodka bottle and felt the liquid burn his throat.
Theoretically, vampires weren't supposed to drink anything but blood,
according to Stoker's infamous line "I never drink. . . wine." But that
hadn't been the only thing that Stoker had gotten wrong. The thoughts
of the past day were whirring around his brain like errant fireflies and
all he wanted to do was howl like a wolf in a trap.
"Save it for someone who gives a f---"
"Giles? Are you in here?"
"What is this? Bloody Grand Central Station?" Spike groaned
as the Slayer walked in.
As usual, she was decked out in the latest in teenybopper
wear, something strappy and filmy all gold and white and clinging to
her hard little breasts and frighteningly flat stomach. It was disgusting.
She never failed to make his undead heart hitch in his chest, her spun-
sugar and marzipan outside covering the black iron and steel
underneath. All creamy skin and candy floss hair and sudden death.
She had eyes that a boy could lose himself in for the better part of a
month, and even with the vampiric overlay, Spike was still a boy. She
stopped and turned up her upturned nose.
"What are you doing here?" she sniffed at Spike.
"I live here. Want a drink?"
"Pass," she said and turned to Giles, "Willow and Tara tell me
that Spike has gotten a soul from a Keywhatsis demon. "
"Keshonte," Giles corrected.
"Whatever. So the soul thing. Is this true or what?"
Spike was too entirely enraptured with the image of Buffy in the
altogether to answer immediately. She wrinkled her nose at him.
"Slayer, I didn't know you paid house calls."
"I'd say 'bite me' Spike, but you might misunderstand me."
"That I might." Her hair moved with a perky life of its own. It
probably had its own dates and fan club.
"He looks the same, Giles. All mopey and ... worthless."
"Listen, if I want your abuse, I'll come beg you for it." That was
really too close to the truth, he thought. "I don't feel any different."
Except for the part where the thought of killing made him sick. But he
expected to have the bloodlust back soon.
"With the chip, it might not much matter," Giles suggested.
"Unless the remorse overwhelms you."
Spike laughed and drank again.
"It will happen, Spike. You will know what it is to relive all your
murders, all your viciousness, from the perspective of an ensouled
being."
"That could be fun. I enjoyed the killin' so much the first time
around."
Giles held up his hands. "We might have an unprecedented
circumstance here. If Spike really has had his soul resurrected . . ."
"I told you. No soul here."
"Methinks the vampire doth protest too much." Giles had the
decency not to smirk at his own humor.
Buffy was walking the floors, sussing the place out for possible
attack. She wasn't paying him any attention, since he was no threat.
"Can we check? Is there some way we can find out if he has a soul?"
"Tara cast her demon-sensing spells, that's the most reliable
evidence we have at this point."
"It's bloody unfair, you make a decent financial arrangement
with a bloke and he goes and throws a soul on you at the last minute.
That is no way to do business," Spike complained and took another
pull on the vodka, "Now could you two just bugger off and leave me
alone?"
"We need to find out." Giles protested.
"You go find out, leave me out of it," Spike snarled and
brandished the bottle at him.
"You're being unreasonable-" Giles began.
"Go away!"
"Spike, there is an opportunity here to study the essential
nature of the soul and how it relates to the entire physiology and
psychology of a vampire demon ---"
Spike's face burned at he felt the change move upon him.
Fangs grazed his lower lip and he was out of the chair and moving on
the former Watcher before it became a formed thought. The air
moved like water around him, and he knew that he was moving at high
vamp-speed, blurring through time like a blade through the air. The
bottle shattered somewhere off on his left and he had his hands in
Giles' shirt front and was shoving him up against the wall, his fangs
extended and mouth opening to move in for the kill. Giles' expression
of frozen horror barely registered in the corner of his mind.
"NO!"
And he was slammed backwards and into the floor, the un-
breath knocked from his undead body, his mind spinning like tires in
the mud as he relived the last thirty seconds. He had attacked Giles
without premeditation, he had reverted to the lowest level of vampire
reaction, he had been angry and hungry and had sought to get rid of
the irritant and quench his thirst for blood at the same time.
No headache.
It was as though the chip was no longer implanted in his brain.
Well fancy that.
He started to laugh. Soul or no soul, he was a killer again.
Buffy was bouncing on the balls of her feet with her little hands
in fists while Giles picked himself up from the crypt floor. Her eyes
were flicking back and forth between Watcher and vampire as though
she were watching from cheap seats at Wimbledon.
"Giles, explain. He just almost bit you nearly."
"What a revolting development," Giles sighed and stood up,
rolling his head on his shoulders and stretching his back as though it
hurt him.
Spike stopped laughing and lounged on the floor.
"I suppose it wasn't nice of me to frighten an old man like you,
Rupert."
"Shut up!" Buffy snapped.
"It appears that the chip can't overpower his natural instincts
now that he has a soul."
Spike rose from the floor in a fluid movement, aiming a
predatory smile at Buffy.
"You know, I'm feelin' just a bit hungry right now."
Wrapped in his coat, he melted out into the darkness of the
cemetery.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 5/18
Spike made his way into the alleyway behind the Bronze. It
was last call, the college students wandering back to the dorms after a
hard day of wasting their parents' tuition money and a hard night
squandering their pocket cash on beer. He lit a cigarette and stuck to
some shadows just beyond the dumpster. A blonde. He really wanted
a blonde that night; he wanted one down to the pain in the pit of his
stomach.
Three drunken girls giggled out of the back door, flicking their
hair and clomping like deer on their platform shoes. Their skins were
so fresh; they still had that new-human smell, a smell that was rapidly
eclipsed by the familiar sweet smoke of pot. So young, so cute, so
bloody stupid.
He crushed his cigarette out underfoot and advanced on them,
pulling a fresh one from his crumpled pack. He smiled at them.
"Got a light?" he asked.
The blonde's head snapped around and gaped at him, decided
quickly that he wasn't a cop and giggled.
"Guess so," she said and held out a lighter.
"Ta ever so," he said.
One of the brunettes cocked her head to the side and gave him
a look of blatant interest from under her eyelashes.
"You're English?"
"Yes," he admitted.
"Been here long?"
"A very long time," he said and flashed her a ladykiller smile.
It took about ten minutes before he had them eating out of his
hand. It didn't take much in California. The girls lost it for the accent
and the bad-boy attitude almost as fast as they lost it for Ricky Martin,
and he didn't even have to wiggle his bum to do it. The two brunettes
finally figured out that he was more interested in the blonde and faded
back into the Bronze. The blonde, whose name he carefully forgot the
moment after she told him, had her tongue in his ear and his leg
sandwiched between her thighs and was rubbing against him. The
poor thing was obviously unsatisfied by the resident athletic prats
hanging about the University and was desperate for some kind of
sexual satisfaction. She smelled a little sweaty, but in a good, tasty
way.
He bent his head down, felt his face flare hot with changing,
tasted the salt on her skin.
And felt the tide of nausea, no the tidal wave of nausea, smash
over him like - well, a tidal wave.
The next thing he knew, Spike was half-sprawled on the
ground, his hand clamped over his mouth, feeling as though he was
about to spew up his vampiric guts. Fuck. The blonde hovered over
him, her face registering disconnected dismay.
"Too much to drink?" she asked.
"Hmmmm," was all he felt safe enough to say without throwing
up on her shoes.
"Ummm . . . Look, it's been real, but-" she scrabbled around
in her purse, came up with a slip of paper and scribbled on it, "Call me
sometime, okay?"
Again, fuck.
By the time he slunk back to the cemetery and to his crypt
again, Buffy and Giles were gone, leaving no trace that they had ever
been there. Ripping off his coat, he dug out one of the medical supply
blood packs from his stash and punctured the plastic with a fang.
Bloody hell, what good was being free of the chip when he
couldn't sodding eat? Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice was
suggesting that he ring Angel and get some advice on how to deal with
this whole soul thing. He told the voice to shut its bloody hole and
sucked on the blood bag in earnest.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 6/18
"This is a whole bunch of not good," Willow offered over
cappuccino at the espresso pump the next morning.
Seated across from her, Buffy crumbled her muffin between
her fingers and sighed.
"This is a high point of badness. We have Spike being Mr.
Pointy Teeth again plus he has a soul which makes me think that
killing him isn't---"
"Kosher," Willow finished for her.
"When Angel lost his soul, it was pretty obvious. Spike is
otherwise. It isn't much different except for the non-effective chipness
of it all."
"In Advanced Psych they were talking about learned behaviors
as opposed to personality traits," Tara offered between sips of tea. "A
personality trait might be formed in utero, as left or right hand
dominance is, while a behavior is something that you learn as you
grow up. Like the way that guys like cars. They like cars because all
the other guys like cars and it gets imprinted on them. Men living in the
jungle don't know what a car is, so they don't like cars. It's a learned
behavior. Now a personality trait is something like being a jerk or
being shy. No matter where you are you're shy. You're shy in LA or
you're shy in the jungle. There are probably as many jerky people in
the jungle as there are in California."
Willow frowned.
"Maybe not. But I see your point. If Spike's inherent Spikiness
is his personality, he might have been just as Spiky back in the day
and if he never became a vampire. Soul or no soul, he's Spike."
"I'm not comforted by that."
"No, it's not helpful at all, is it."
"If we figure out how to un-soul him to make the chip work it's
like we're turning him into a demon, which is really contrary to
Slayerhood. And I shouldn't kill him because he has a soul, but with
the soul the chip is as useless as last year's Vogue." Buffy sighed.
"This is a little out of my depth."
"Who wants to talk about Keshonte demons with your best
friend Xander?" he asked and plopped down in the chair next to Buffy,
slopping his latte onto the table.
"We were just getting bummed talking about Spike."
"Well here's something to brighten your day. That Keshonte
demon that Anya and I hauled away to the trash dump yesterday was
carrying a couple of interesting things. One of which was close to
eleven thousand dollars in cash, which Anya wanted to keep. The
other thing was this-"
Xander pulled a leather-bound notebook the size of a
paperback book from his back pocket and laid it on the table. The
worn pages fanned outwards and were filled with notes, drawings, and
photographs pasted within. "Seems like our mysterious stranger had
a past."
"Are those spells?" Tara asked.
"No, they're not. I stayed up most of last night reading this, and
it's amazing. That Keshonte demon was the Simon Wiesenthal of the
demon world. He spent his entire life hunting down demons and
vampires who worked with the Nazis and killing them. It reads like an
Indiana Jones aventure. Listen to this," Xander picked up the book and
began to read aloud, "Picked up Verteidigung's trail outside Jakarta.
Three days journey into the bush. Caught him after nightfall on the
third day. Cut out his heart and watched his body burn to ash. It is
just one name out of many that I can cross from my list. All will be
avenged."
"I didn't know that demons and vampires worked with the
Nazis," Tara admitted.
"Can't see that making it into the regular history books, can you?"
Xander put the book down and picked up his coffee. "The only problem
is that he wrote about what he did after he did it, so he mentions hiring
Spike in Pasadena to help him find something called Karl."
"And we can assume that Karl is one of the bad Nazi
demons?"
"Well, he can't be good. The Keshonte demon wouldn't have
been after him if he was a good guy. There's one other thing about
Spike in here. Apparently, the Keshonte demon was going to pay him
to find this Karl guy. The money is Spike's."
"Bet you had a hard time straightening that out with Anya."
Willow said with a grin.
"Oh, I'll be dating the sock puppet until she stops sulking."
"To summarize, " Buffy began, "The Keshonte was a good guy,
he killed Nazi demons and vampires and one of them must be around
here somewhere because he hired Spike and brought him here. I
have to ask Spike for information about the Nazi demon. I also have
to give Spike money. And Anya is mad at Xander so he'll be
experiencing secondary virginity for a while." She looked around at her
friends at the table. "Do I have to mention that this is a bad hair day all
around?"
There were red and black flags flying in the train station, and
Dru shivered each time they passed underneath. With his arm hard
around her waist, Spike half-guided, half-carried her through the dour
crowd of mortals trying to catch the trains out of Germany.
"Just follow the train all the way to the last stop. Angelus will
meet you in Moscow," he repeated for the millionth time since he'd
found the bite marks on her thighs -- bite marks that hadn't been his.
No matter how much Angelus hated him, there was no way
that the ensouled fool was going to turn away a damsel in distress.
Imagining Angelus freezing his pious ass off in Russia while reading
the telegram Spike had sent had almost freed his dead heart enough
to laugh. Angelus' curt "YES. STOP" had been the welcomest thing
imagined, even though it meant that he was now in debt to Angelus
once again. But it was a small price to pay for Dru's safety.
"What do you do when they stop at the border?"
"Show them my papers."
"If that doesn't work?"
"The gold coins."
"If that doesn't work?"
The madness brightened her dull eyes for a moment. "Why
can't I just kill them first?"
"Because if they find out what you are, they will send you back
here," he explained and dragged her to the last train on the tracks. "I'll
be on the next train, right behind you."
He was lying. There was a good possibility his plan could go
wrong, as his plans tended to, and he'd be in the cleaning Frau's
dustpan rather than on a train. Swinging her up onto the train, Spike
found that Dru's fingers were biting through the gray wool of his coat,
hard enough to break the skin.
"Come with me, the train carries death like packages."
"I'll be along shortly," he kissed her forehead and gave her the
best fake smile that he could, "Be a good girl and don't eat too many of
the passengers."
He thought he heard muffled moaning from a thousand throats
as the train pulled out of the station, but it may have been from his own
heart.
Spike killed an SS officer and took his uniform and papers to
get in to Party Headquarters. He could have killed a brownshirt, but
the SS uniforms were so much better-looking, and if he couldn't exact
vengeance while looking good, there almost wasn't a point. The big
black coat was a good thing. It fluttered heavily around him as he
stalked through the front doors and a minion Heil'ed him en route.
Georg's office was on the third floor. Through the glass door, Spike
could see him bent over paperwork. Paperwork! Vampires filing
reports was unnatural. The Nazis had taken all the fun out of random
killing.
Behind him, Spike heard the moan of a human not quite dead
yet. Reflexively, he wiped his lips. Wouldn't do to talk to Georg with
someone stuck in his teeth.
The doorknob squeaked as he turned it. Georg looked up.
Surprise flickered across his round, pretty-boy face and then was
sucked into oblivion by his practiced welcoming smile. "William the
Bloody! Come to join us?"
"Not Bloody likely." Georg's hands were lost behind the stacks
of paper; he could have a stake, or even a gun for the good it'd do him.
"You told your goosestepping friends about Drusilla."
"It's well known that she has weird powers," he said
reasonably. "She tells the fortune of every Nosferatu she sees."
Spike was tired of explanations, so he jumped onto the desk
and kicked Georg in the face. The vampire was already rising, a silver
flask in his hand, and his chair crashed to the floor behind them.
Georg staggered back and managed a vicious punch that caught
Spike in the sternum. Now they were both in the narrow space
between the desk and the back wall of the office, struggling.
"There's no need for this," Georg said, his face close to
Spike's. "Drusilla's got enough in that mad head of hers to go around."
Spike snarled and headbutted him.
The flask couldn't be good news. Spike slammed Georg's
hand against the wooden wall, trying to get him to drop it. A picture of
Georg shaking the Fuhrer's hand in front of a platoon of troops
crashed to the ground, goldleaf frame cracking, as they careened into
a filing cabinet. Papers swirled around them like angry ghosts -- lists
of names, train schedules, maps. Georg kicked Spike in the stomach,
pushing him back into the cabinet again, and Spike felt several ribs
crack.
He whirled and kicked Georg in the side, then followed up with
a fury of punches driving the vampire into a corner. Georg was still
fiddling with the flask, trying to open it. Spike saw the silver top spin off
just in time to drive the heel of his hand into Georg's shoulder. A clear
liquid arced out of the container, splashing across Georg's face.
The vampire screamed as his skin began to blister and
blacken, crumpling like paper in fire. Holy water, Spike reckoned, and
pulled back. He could hear cries from outside -- his handiwork had
been discovered. He could stake Georg, but it might make more
sense to let the youngster live out his undeath as a hideous cripple, so
that when other vamps saw Georg they'd whisper Spike's name.
"You shouldn't take what don't belong to you," he told Georg,
whose hands were clawing desperately at his face, and turned to face
the humans outside.
The first human through the door left a big red stain on the rug.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 7/18
"I have money for you," Buffy said by way of greeting.
Spike, who was shooting alone at a table, picked up his beer
mug and saluted her with it. "I been waiting years to hear that from
you." He must have an entire wardrobe of black jeans, black leather,
and cheesy red silk shirts. Never mind that the look worked for him, it
still lacked the necessary variation that was the true mark of style.
She wondered whether his underwear was equally monochromatic,
then shook the thought away with a shudder.
"The Keshonte demon owed this to you. For services
rendered."
She held out the rolled package of money to Spike and it
quickly disappeared into the inner recesses of his coat. He smiled and
flagged down a waitress. "Buy you a drink, Goldie?"
"We have to talk."
"Something else I've longed to hear. Two more of the same,"
he told the waitress. He turned back to his pool game, which annoyed
her no end. She was going to set the agenda here, no matter what
Spike thought.
Spike sank a last shot and turned to face her. "Social call?"
"The point, quickly. Fangs off civilians. Stick to the blood
packs from the medical supply and we'll call it even."
He hitched a hip up on the edge of the pool table. "Doesn't
sound even to me. What do I get out of it?"
Buffy took the beer mug from the waitress, sipped it and
frowned at the bitter taste. Maybe it was something that you got used
to after you killed a few million brain cells.
"You get to live."
"Are you threatening me, Slayer?"
"Duh?"
Barking a laugh, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "Erudite, as
always." She didn't know whether the smoking or the vocabulary word
bothered her more.
"Bottom line time. The Keywhatsis demon was hunting other
demons - big-time bad Nazi demons. He probably told you something
about it before you let him get killed. We want to take out the Nazi
demons. You have information. We have money. It's simple."
Hooking his thumbs in his belt loops, Spike narrowed his eyes
at her through his cigarette smoke. Well, she could pose as well as
the next vain vampire, and she shifted her stance and crossed her
arms in a way she knew made her look even cuter than him.
"How much money?"
"Four thousand now and five thousand when the demon is
dead."
She thought that he choked on the smoke, but he recovered
quickly. "What the hell kind of bake sale is ol' Rupert running in that
store anyway? Is he selling any illegal herbs out of those big glass
jars?"
From her jacket, she produced another paper package, bigger,
heavier and more expensive than the last one. His eyes bounced
between her chest and the cash.
"Nine thousand?" It made her feel better that Spike was
impressed too. He tried to swing the pool cue back and forth
nonchalantly and only managed to drop it.
"I can shop a lot on nine thousand dollars, Spike, and I hear the
Mall calling me."
"Better hurry. Bebe might be having a sale."
She could admit, at least to herself, that Spike's ability to banter
had probably saved him from Mr. Small Sharp and Pointy more than
once.
"One condition."
She raised an eyebrow.
"There are always conditions."
"Ask me nicely, say please," he taunted her.
She considered the corny routine of throwing the money at him
again. His eyes seemed gray in the low light of the Bronze, gray and
stormy, like he didn't understand himself either.
"Please, help us."
His fingers seemed very white and very bony when he took the
money from her outstretched hand. He had, she realized for the first
time, pretty big hands. The thought disturbed her so she tucked it
away.
After a brief stop for Spike to deposit his cash in his cache (the
Mellon family mausoleum), he led Buffy off to the burned warehouse
where he and Dracco had encountered the Nazis. As they walked, he
gave her a brief outline of events: Georg killing the girl-vamp, Dracco
attacking, the escape. She had the feeling that he hadn't really killed
seven at one blow; more likely he'd just slunk out while no one was
looking.
When they arrived at the warehouse, the walls were black with
fire and the windows were empty eye sockets looking out into the
night.
"Nice," she commented and stepped over some blackened
cinderblocks that seemed to have exploded from the warehouse.
"Well I only take girls to the very best places." He looked
around, sniffed. She could smell old blood, a truly lovely Slayersense,
but nothing smelled fresh. "They've moved somewhere. I don't
imagine that they'll be coming back here any time soon."
"Thank you, that information was so useful."
"You wouldn't know what to do with useful information if I drilled
your skull and poured it in."
Deal or no deal, Buffy took the opportunity to haul off and land a
swift one straight to Spike's nose. He bounced to the side and
grabbed at his face.
"Gob, enough with that, all ride?" he snapped in a clogged
voice. "Come up with something more original."
"What would a Keywhatsis demon be doing in Sunnydale?
What would he be hunting? What was going to happen here, Spike?
And don't waste any more of my time!"
She glared at him while Spike wiped blood from his nose and
unwillingly wiped it off on his black jeans. "The problem with you
young Americans is that you have no concept of history beyond the
founding of MTV." He spat blood into the night air. "Horrible things
happened not so long ago that everyone wants to cover up."
"Like vampires?"
"Like humans worse than any vampire. Hitler was responsible
for millions of deaths in a few short years, which puts his kill ratio far
and above any master vampire that ever lived. He had all kinds of
humans - Jews, Romany, Catholics, mentally and physically deficient,
homosexuals, and anybody who looked sideways at a swastika -- put
to death. He summoned demons to enhance his powers, he tried to
co-opt vampires - he wanted to make the perfect undead soldier."
The mist that came in from the ocean began clogging up the
areas between the surrounding trees, low to the ground, like
something in a dream. All Buffy could do was stand and listen to the
tale as the hackles started rising and dancing around on the back of
her neck.
"The Nazis captured Dru and tortured her in one of their
underground bunkers. I fought my way in and out. The blood was an
inch deep on the floor before I finished." He was looking in Buffy's
direction, but he couldn't see her. "Dru was tied down like a
madwoman, and her eyes were like the Hellmouth itself. They brought
her things to read - pieces of jewelry, a gun, and someone's skull, as
if her gift wasn't as mad as she was." He stopped and drew a long
breath. He didn't need the oxygen; he needed the pause.
Buffy couldn't move, stuck somewhere between feeling sorry
for him for the pain of the past and wanting to punch him in the nose
again for making her feel sorry for him.
"They had gotten vampires to sire other vampires, kept the new
ones locked up and starved for blood. Some had eaten away their
own hands and feet because they were so hungry. I turned them
loose on the 'scientists'."
The moon was coming into view behind the warehouse,
lighting the broken windows like a dollhouse. Standing in front of a
window, Spike turned into a solid silhouette, and she could no longer
see the twisted expression on his face, only hear the pain in his voice.
"They vamped a fucking baby. It couldn't crawl yet, it didn't
have any teeth. But it had the face, and the eyes. You don't vamp a
baby. I got Dru out of there and we left Germany, went to Moscow for
awhile. Europe sucked. There wasn't a safe place for a vampire
anywhere until 1947."
A snowball had formed in Buffy's stomach. Spike shook his
head, and she could hear his long leather coat flap against his legs like
wings.
"The vampire that Dracco fought, his name is Georg, he was
one of Hitler's pets. Georg is planning to raise a
Wirtschaftsministerium demon named Karl."
"A demon named Karl?"
"Well, he's hardly going to be named Manuel, now is he?"
Spike snapped. "Karl was the one who gave Hitler his little idea about
the Final Solution. He gave himself a fancy demonic title to go along
with all the other stupid Nazi pageantry. Karl and Georg got history --
way I heard it, they got together at the Wannsee conference and
slaughtered their way through the war together. They must have split
up to avoid the secret Nuremberg trials held for demons. But demons
forget, times change, their message can rise again in the brave new
world of California. All that you Yanks care for is spectacle, blowing
the budget. And Nazis give great spectacle."
"Well we can't let this Georg raise the Whoseywhatsit demon,
can we?" she asked. "And if Georg is a vampire, he must be staked."
"Georg is a master vampire as well as a warlock, he avoided
British assassins for decades, and he's halfway to raising Karl who
Dracco hunted for fifty-six years. What makes you think you can do it?
You and your pathetic little crew of losers?"
"We have to do it, Spike, failure is not an option."
"Get familiar with failure; it happens." He rummaged around in
his coat pocket for a moment, and came up with the big bundle of bills.
"Take your money back. I won't be helping you."
He lightly tossed the bills to her. Buffy caught them with one
hand and watched him turn to go.
"Spike," she called after him, "what happened to the baby?"
The wind rustled through the trees as he melted into the
darkness, and his voice was barely louder than the rustling as he said
three words.
"I killed it."
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 7./18
Nighttime Sunnydale. Not exactly a happening kind of place.
Spike leaned against a retaining wall near the center of town and
considered his options. He could go to Lovecraft's for a drink and try
not to pick up another demon that could lay something even worse
than a soul on him, he could go and tease the Romanian guy who ran
the Quicky Mart after midnight, or he could go back to his crypt and
see who was on Conan O'Brien. None of the options was really
appealing. The image of Buffy standing in the rubble outside the
warehouse was burnt into the interior of his brain like a cross. Damn.
A Ford Escort full of drunk teenagers screamed by. Spike
could smell the beer in their blood and his mouth started to water.
Maybe he's just go back to the Bronze and see if his stomach upset
had passed.
"Spike." The voice grabbed him and whirled him around. It
wasn't a human voice.
A tall man was standing underneath a nearby streetlight,
setting flame to cigarette. Something cold and ugly started creeping
up Spike's spine. The man was a vampire, that much he could tell,
and had something magical wrapped around him like a bad smell.
The cold and ugly thing knocked on the base of Spike's skull and
gained entrance.
"Georg," he said and assumed his toughest attitude. "I should
have killed you in Berlin."
Smiling, Georg snapped a lighter shut and advanced a few
steps. His hair was the same as always, sandy gold layered like
perfect brushstrokes, but he had two glimmering green eyes and no
scar.
"I was thinking the same thing."
Throwing back his head, Georg laughed, a normal laugh, which
stood Spike's fangs on end more than a howl of evil merriment would
have. He was holding his face together with magic, Spike realized,
psychic plastic surgery. If Spike had known Georg had the potential
for such power, he would have killed him back in Germany. Sixty
years of running from all the people and demons who were still mad
about the Nazi thing had obviously pressured Georg's powers into fine
hard diamond. The missing eye had been the only thing keeping
Georg from looking like the sleekest burgher in town, and with the
magical mask he looked like the president of the Better Business
Bureau, the one no one could ever believe liked messing with little
boys.
Clapping his arm around Spike's shoulders like a long-lost
friend, Georg pulled the other vampire close.
"You look really well, really, really well. Seems like California
agrees with you," Georg's voice dropped to a silky whisper, "Is it true?
Are all the women blondes with long legs? Prone to opening them at a
moment's notice?" His eyes sparkled with delight, like Santa Claus on
acid.
"Enough to keep it interestin'," Spike admitted, worried that
somehow Georg was rummaging around in his mind without letting
him know - it was an uncomfortable kind of idea. He shook off
Georg's arm and stepped back to where he could keep a better eye on
the other vampire.
"It's wonderful to be here, near so much demonic energy
bottled up, just waiting for a Nosferatu with a vision. *And* they have
two hundred channels on cable!" Shaking his head at the wonder of it
all, Georg reached out and smoothed the front of Spike's duster.
"This is nice, did you get that around here?"
"Look, I'm sure you just aren't here to chat about the weather
and my jacket-- "
"I've heard things about you, good things," Georg offered the
pack of cigarettes to Spike, who helped himself, "I hear that you're a
can-do kind of Nosferatu, that you've just about made this town your
own."
"So?" Despite his attitude, Spike's vanity spread its wings and
preened.
They smoked in silence for a moment. Spike felt creeping
unease, as if he were at a car dealership, about to talk himself into
buying chrome detailing and a ten-year maintenance plan.
"Imagine my surprise when you were with the Keshonte
demon-was he a friend of yours?"
"That's none of your fucking business."
"Don't you ever tire of being just a Nosferatu for hire?"
Georg's eyes gleamed in the streetlight's glow, and Spike could
feel the net of the vampire's gaze drop down around him. Not every
vamp could bedazzle another one; it was a talent like painting or
making really good Margaritas.
"If you've got a point, get to it and quit wasting my time."
Georg laughed his happy laugh again and the undead flesh on
the back of Spike's neck crept uncomfortably.
"I think we can help each other out, here. I need help rounding
up all the Nosferatu over sixty years old, I don't want them getting in
the way. And they'll be useful in the upcoming ceremony. When I
raise Karl, you can name your price. If I remember correctly, you never
could turn down a deal that would be to your financial advantage. "
According to the rumors back in Berlin, Georg had only been
turned in the late 1920's himself, during the bad Weimar years when
demonic possession might have seemed better than peddling your
ass for a wheelbarrow of cash whose value diminished with every
rotation of the wheel. By getting rid of all the older vampires, the ones
smart enough to survive a century of rapid change, and controlling the
young, stupid ones, he was cutting out any serious competition. Of
course, that also meant that Spike was ultimately going to have to go,
a prospect which didn't cheer him much.
"I don't-"
"You just think about it. Don't make your mind up now, " Georg
gave Spike a friendly clap on the arm, "I'll be in touch."
With that, Georg took himself out of the circle of light from the
streetlamp and promptly vanished into the darkness, leaving his still
burning cigarette on the ground as the only sign that he had ever been
there.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 8/18
"Right, changed my mind," the Magic Shop door banged shut
behind Spike, "Georg's gotten on my wick. You should kill him."
Buffy blinked, not really surprised, while Giles looked up from
the book spread open between them with an equally unfreaked face.
"He thinks he can pay me to bring him Nosferatu -- I mean --
vampires to sacrifice."
"So you're back on board?" Buffy asked.
"Yeah, but you still have to pay me."
"Tell us about the ceremony you observed at the warehouse,"
Giles asked.
Spike began pacing around in the open area in the reading area
of the store, his coat slapping against his legs. "I think it was a
preparatory ritual. One Nosferatu - fuck! One vampire is sacrificed in
order to prime the mask. Later, the wearer of the mask sacrifices
more vampires, with lots of magic circles an' other paraphernalia. I'm
not too sure what the result is, because I was out of there before I
heard the end of the story. But I'm guessin' it ends up with the
Wirtschaftsministerium on top of a pile of bloody corpses. Those
fellows generate slaughter like football players generate riots."
"Football players don't --" Buffy stopped, confused.
"Never mind," he said, and grinned at her.
"I don't think we should pay him," Anya said primly from her
perch on the sales counter. "He has a soul now. He should be doing
this for the greater good."
"I don't see you volunteering *your* time here at the shop," he
pointed out.
"You're right. Giles, we should all get paid overtime for this."
She hopped down and came over to the table.
Giles threw his head back and rubbed his temples. "Anya, no
one gets paid for fighting demons."
"Then I think we need a union...." The massed force of the
glares from everyone else silenced her.
Spike tried to pitch his voice just for Giles. "I'm thinking maybe
one of your books has some sort of information about this soul
business. It's not cramping my style, but I'd like to know more."
"I'm a soul-man, da da da da," Xander sang, imitating Dan
Akroyd's deep bass.
"Fuck off," Spike suggested.
"Sensitive now, aren't we?"
"Was it the fuck or the off givin' you problems?"
Anya deftly stepped between Xander and Spike, forgetting once
again that she was no longer a vengeance demon.
"Transitions are rough. I know that. So maybe if you just
enhanced your coolness, it would go easier for you?"
Smiling, he snapped his teeth at her, "It doesn't get any easier
than this."
Giles tugged at his glasses. Spike wanted to cut his hands off;
that would stop that particular tic. "This whole progression of events is
amazing. Do you know you've answered centuries of speculation
about the impact of the soul on the physical brain?"
Buffy looked confused, flipping a stake idly from one hand to
another. Her hands were capable of such precision. Imagining them
on a male body, on his body, kept him tossing and turning during the
day. And now he was undead and ensouled and still all alone --
Anger boiled low in his chest. The others were smiling at him
as though he were a small dog that had done a particularly amusing
trick. Once again, they were thinking that he was safe. First chipped
and then re-souled like an old pair of shoes - as though the worst thing
that he could do was hurt their feelings. The hell with that, he thought.
And vamped, throwing an arm out to grab Willow who'd
wandered in too close. "The food just walks right up to me, beggin' to
be eaten. When will you people learn?"
Buffy went from indifference to rage before he blinked. "Let her
go."
With one arm around Willow's waist, he used his right hand to
brush her hair away from her neck, a slow intimate caress that made
Buffy's gold lame top shudder in sympathy. He was counting on Buffy
to stop him. There was no way that he was going to go down in a
nauseated heap in front of them, even if he had to let some fairly
spectacular bullshit fly.
"But she smells so good," he said reasonably. "Not as good as
you, of course. But hamburger's easier to get than caviar, right?" He
pressed his lips to Willow's throat, feeling the blood jump up to meet
his fangs, and extended them just enough to break the skin. He felt
slightly queasy but it was nothing that he couldn't control.
The sight of blood broke his hold on them, and suddenly Spike
found himself on the floor, Tara's arms thumping uselessly against
him. She was keening and hitting at him with soft fists like an
amphetamine-crazed rabbit, and he threw her off as Willow scrabbled
away into some book-lined corner. Tara quickly followed, and he was
on his feet facing the Slayer.
"I hate to steal a line, but we've had this date from the
beginning."
"I'm not the one who keeps breaking it," she said. And it was
true. He'd been a coward for so long, hoping that things might
improve. But the soul wasn't going to go away.
"You've passed up so many chances, Slayer. If you let me live
now people will start to talk." He could smell her, some ten feet away.
She smelled like milk and honey. The beads on what passed for a
blouse glimmered in the dark light of the room.
She snarled, the cute curl of her lip detracting somewhat from
the threat. "It's a real soul?" she asked, obviously directing the
question at Giles as she stared at him.
Spike answered. "Yeah, the full luxury package with the CD
changer. Even got those trick Firestone tires. The ones that go
boom!"
"I don't want to kill anyone with a soul. It sets a bad precedent.
Am I allowed to kill him, Giles?"
"Oh, now you're taking orders again? How decisive of you.
Come on, Slayer, take some responsibility for yourself." He feinted
forward, and she spun and kicked like some demented wind-up
ballerina in one of Dru's music boxes. A lamp went over and
somewhere something shattered. He smiled, knowing that it would
make her angrier. "That's my girl. Put on your red shoes and dance
the blues." His fist moved too fast for his own eyes to follow, and her
head snapped back with the force of the blow.
But she was already kicking him, and he was slammed back
into the wall, sliding down until his feet hit the floor and he swayed,
already moving to her side. "David ... Bowie ... you're ... not," she
gasped in between punches. He was at least as happy that she'd
gotten the reference as he was to be able to dodge her blows, and get
in a few of his own.
Hands from behind grabbed him away from the Slayer and
threw him to the ground. Surprised, Spike shook his head to get his
bearings. But then Giles was kneeling above him, blocking Buffy.
"Stop this provocation right now. I will not let you manipulate Buffy into
destroying you. If your conscience troubles you now you'll have to
make the decision to kill yourself *by* yourself."
Spike grinned up at his countryman. "What makes you think
my conscience troubles me, mate? Haven't you met enough humans
with evil hearts to know better? A soul just means you have a choice.
You know, humans hurt me worse than Angelus ever did, and he was
a master of the demonic arts."
"Suicide by Slayer?" Giles asked, ignoring Spike's logic.
Buffy narrowed her eyes from where she peered over Giles'
shoulder at him.
"You will NOT use me like that. You want to kill yourself? Do it
off my clock!"
"ALL RIGHT!" Giles roared loud enough to make Spike's
vampiric ears ring.
The former Watcher stood up and brushed off his trousers,
"We can debate all this later on. Just -- Spike, keep your fangs off
Willow and everybody else until further notice or I will let Buffy stake
you."
"I'm not an attack dog," Buffy groused and flung herself into
Giles' chair.
Spike stood up and went to hover near the door, fiercely aware
that he was getting a stereo glare from the witches in the corner.
"This is important, and we can't waste time fighting amongst
ourselves. Willow and I have been researching the ceremony as
Spike described it to Buffy. We believe the most likely explanation,
given what Spike told us about Georg and this Wirtschaftsministerium,
is that Georg has recreated the Schutzstaffel-Totenkopfverbande and
is trying to raise Karl, the JagdKriegspfarrer."
"Gesundheidt," Anya piped up.
"These names are giving me a headache," Buffy muttered.
Giles looked in need of aspirin himself. "As far as I can make
out from the book that the Keshonte kept, the vampire summoning the
Wirtschaftsministerium demon needs to be wrapped in the mantle of
Totenkopfverbande in order to have full control over the demon. The
circle of power Georg needs to raise the Wirtschaftsministerium is
created through the sacrifice of twenty vampires."
"You're just showin' off because you can pronounce those
names," Spike taunted Giles.
"In any event, they can't have the mantle. We have to get it
first. The Keshonte indicated that he thought it was with a group of
were-coyotes living in a freight yard outside Victorville."
"Oh yuck. Victorville."
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 9/18
"Don't talk to me," Buffy said and glared out the passenger side
window.
"I wasn't," he said and pushed the Explorer over the speed
limit, "I wouldn't waste my time."
"And you can also stop looking at me like I'm an Egg McGuffin."
The illogic of it stunned him to silence and he goosed the
engine up a few more miles an hour.
"Aren't you going a little fast?"
"Aren't you being a little bit of a bitch?"
"I'm being a bitch? You snack out on my best friend and I'm
supposed to be Miss Happiness?" she crossed her arms over her
chest. "And why should I care about some demon that wants to kill
vampires. Makes my life easier."
"Start the wholesale slaughter of vampires and it's just gonna'
lead to something even worse."
"And the wholesale slaughter of vampires is bad in what way?"
she snapped and did a little nostril-flare to show that she was angry.
"Your an' my perspectives aside, it just leads to somethin' else,
an' somethin' else. Next thing you know, they start sacrificing other
dispossessed minority groups." He paused and collected his
thoughts. "All the vampires, all the demons, all the witches, all the
Trekkies, and all the boy bands. Mind you, the latter one might not be
a bad thing."
"Vampires are evil, they kill people."
"Yeah? Got over that one pretty quick with Angel, eh?
Forgettin' that he wasn't exactly a choirboy back in the day. Vampires
are predators, and humans are prey, it's just a food chain, evil don't
enter into it. How you think that cows and chickens feel about you?
Eat hamburgers, Buffalo wings, wear leather pants?"
Tight leather pants, he reminded himself.
Very tight leather pants where he could just about make out the
non-existent line of the dental floss that passed for underwear these
days. Nice tight leather pants.
A piece of paper blew across the road. In his reverie, Spike
thought it was a cow and swerved. Buffy yelped and grabbed onto the
dashboard. She continued to huff and steam for the remainder of the
hour-long drive. Spike chain-smoked and threw the butts into the
desert outside, ignoring her glares and pointed throat-clearings. It had
been his experience that Slayers didn't live long enough to get cancer.
The lights were bright and far apart out in the desert, and it was with
many stops and turning arounds that they finally found the colony of
abandoned freight cars near the skeleton of a once-thriving rail line.
They exited the SUV. "Listen, we might try a bit o' negotiation
before you start your usual beatin'-things-til-they-squeal routine," he
said.
Cocking her head to the side, Buffy considered him, like a
golden eagle trying to decide if the thing on the ground was really food
or just bait. "You're different."
"Aren't we perceptive," he dripped ichor better than a chaos
demon. "I'm surprised that you manage a thought in that pretty vacant
little head of yours."
Spike the macho and William the Bloody Pratt were doing
elemental battle in part of his psyche and it was obvious enough for
even Buffy to see. Next thing he was going to be reciting more poetry
and listening to Celine Dion.
"Not as Spike-y."
Pulling himself up to his full height, he sneered down at her, "If
you think I've gone soft, girl, you better try to think again. I'm more me
than I've been in a long time."
"Meaning this is going to get royally screwed up?"
Spike opened his mouth and then shut it. Arguing with Buffy
was like trying to talk to a conservative talk show host. He never
understood her logic and all it accomplished was annoying both of
them. Instead, he made an "after you" gesture at the light coming from
behind one of the boxcars.
The weres were human tonight -- good news, that, because
their supernatural strength was slightly less. They were sitting around
a fire, the source of the light that had led Buffy and Spike to them.
Something big was turning on a spit. Spike tried not to look too close.
He couldn't risk a return of the nausea just now. One of them was
plinking out a song on an untuned guitar; the others were engaged in
desultory Spanish conversation.
"Que honda!" Spike called out. "Puedo hablo con el mas
chingon?"
He flashed them a gangsign he'd picked up from the Latino
vampires he'd met in LA. Buffy glanced over at him as though he'd
sprouted wings.
A girl who looked to be in her twenties, with hair curling to her
waist, Frida Kahlo eyebrows, and the kind of dark smoldering eyes that
gringos adored, detached from the group around the fire. She was
wearing khakis and an embroidered blouse that showcased truly
impressive cleavage. For about two seconds Spike forgot Buffy
Summers ever walked the planet. She gave Buffy the kind of
contemptuous scrutiny that blondes get from the greater nonblonde
world.
"La mas chingona, I'm in charge here, and humans aren't
welcome." She had a heavy Mexican accent.
Spike gave her a flash of vamp-face. "Not exactly human, are
we?"
Buffy got straight to business. "We're looking for a mantle that
has magic powers. The mantle of, of, of -"
"Totenkopfverbande," Spike assisted, so they both glared at
him.
"No me anden vacilando, and I don't know what you're talking
about."
"It's important," Buffy insisted. "There are some Nazis in town
and they're planning on using the Mantle to raise a really nasty Nazi
demon. I'm the Slayer; I can protect the Mantle better than you can."
The girl snorted and crossed her arms over her chest, to
Spike's dismay. "No chinges con migo .You may scare vampiros with
that, but usted no es nada aquí."
Buffy repeated the gesture. "I guess we'll have to see about
that."
"Matémosles," one of the other weres suggested, "Even the
vampiro can die."
Well then, negotiations were over. Nothing to be done but go
along with Buffy. "You know, I'm kind of in the mood for some Mexican
tonight."
The weregirl bared her teeth. Even in human form, they were
scary-sharp.
"No estamos asustados de usted."
"You should be afraid," Spike warned. "Thought you were
coyotes, not Chihuahuas."
Behind her, the other weres began to growl and rise from
around the fire. The guitar stopped, and Spike adjusted his stance.
There was a howl from the other side of the fire. The weres'
heads snapped back and forth, looking for something that couldn't be
seen through the flames, and hurried towards their leader. One said
something in rapid Spanish to her. Another, probably the pack
shaman, had what could only be the Mantle wrapped around his
shoulders; it looked heavy and metallic.
"You brought them here! Éste es su incidente," the girl
accused.
From around the edges of the fire, vampires began to emerge.
Spike counted eight when they stopped moving and paused for effect.
"All we want is the Mantle!" one of the vampires called out.
"Isn't that original. We got here first, now piss off," Spike
warned the tatty vamps standing too near the fire.
The wereleader looked at Spike and Buffy, then back at the
newly arrived posse. Eight vampires versus nine werecoyotes, one of
whom looked pregnant: the odds were tight, and in other
circumstances Spike would have wanted to watch. And then feed on
the leftovers.
The girl hissed something at the pack member wearing the
Mantle. He reached up and unwrapped it, folding it neatly. Then he
tossed it into the air above their heads as all the werecoyotes began to
run away.
Spike appreciated the strategy as he ran for the Mantle;
appreciated it less as he missed it with his outstretched arms and the
thing knocked into his head like the world's heaviest rain of toads.
Half-blind from the Mantle and a cut leaking black blood into his
eye, he fell on his ass when the first vamp slammed into him. He felt
burning pain across his midsection - a silver knife; the vamps had
come prepared for weres, not vampires. Cursing, Spike rolled on top,
grabbed a stake from his jacket, and staked the vamp without even
seeing it. He paused a second to adjust the Mantle around his
shoulders for safekeeping. It was shaped like a metal lionskin, and he
felt certain it was a good look, but then the next one was on him and
he had to box and kick without regard to fashion.
Behind him, Buffy was dispatching vampires with her usual
dispatch. He dodged as one rushed him, then lunged to drive the
stake into its chest as it turned for another go. Something solid hit him
in the back, staggering him, and he spun to find a vampire holding a
piece of firewood that had snapped like an overstressed crayon. The
vamp looked as confused as Spike felt, but he didn't question fortune
and kicked her into the fire, where she burned like a Roman candle.
Two more vampires converged on Spike, one on each side so
that he could only see both in his peripheral vision. The stomach
wound was slowing him, and he couldn't keep track of both.
Spike felt Buffy heading for them, and ducked. Sure enough,
she vaulted over him, feet thudding into a vamp's chest. The move
caused him to lose his balance, though, and he sprawled in the dirt as
Buffy pounded a stake into her victim. Bouncing to his feet, Spike tried
to locate the final vampire, but all he could hear was the roar of a dirt
bike heading into the desert. No telling whether Georg's crew had
reinforcements; best to get the Mantle to a place of safety.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 10/18
Spike followed Buffy into her house. The lights were out, Joyce
and the brat undoubtedly sleeping the sleep of the magically protected.
"That Mantle was pretty useful. Repellin' stakes and all that. I
should get me some of that - what - Kevlar? See if it does the same
thing."
"Bad idea. It would make you look *fat*."
"Far more frightening then death," he agreed, rolling his eyes.
By that time, Buffy had her hand on the doorknob of her
bedroom, and whirled around to face him, her hair whipping across his
nose.
"Why are you following me?"
"Do you think that our escapee didn't recognize me? If I go
back to my crypt I'm goin' to wake up dead. Safest place for me is
right next to you. They've got a bit of a fear of the Slayer, you know,"
he raised a scarred eyebrow at her, "Only 'cause they don't know you."
"I could have killed you many times," she snorted and sat down
on the edge of her bed to unlace her boots.
"And why haven't you?" he asked, leaning against the door so it
closed behind him.
"Extenuating circumstances," she enunciated and padded out
of the room on her soft little feet.
Spike waited until he heard the bathroom door close and then
he started undressing.
When Buffy returned from the bathroom, decked out in a baggy
pair of sweatpants and a loose top, she was something other than
happy to see him in her bed with the covers pulled up to his chin, trying
to look as innocent as possible.
"What the Hell do you think you're doing?"
"Hiding."
"Not in my bed you're not."
"For once in my profligate, facinorous, nefarious, and flagitious
un-life, a Slayer actually needs to treat me as a valued commodity."
"Not."
At least she understood the last part of the sentence. The truth
of the matter was that she was looking both pale and tired, a good look
as far as he was concerned, but with her stamina, it most likely meant
that she was tottering on her metaphorical platforms. As if to
underscore the point, she plopped down on the side of the bed and
gave him a tired glare.
"Get out of my bed or I'll stake you."
"Let's not fight. Climb in and I swear I won't lay a fang on you."
He batted his eyelashes at her.
"Not a fang or a finger," she warned and pulled back the
covers.
"No fangs, no fingers."
"Do you snore?" she asked.
"Do you?"
She slid down between the sheets. Compared to his, her skin
was boiling hot. The wound on his stomach began to burn as it
sensed her blood. Warm human blood would cure him in a matter of
moments. Only problem was that this human's blood was strictly off-
limits. He may have killed two Slayers and drunk the blood of one, but
this was an utterly different situation. He felt his fangs itching to extend
while another bit of him was starting to extend of its own volition. Yes,
he did want the cachet of conquering another Slayer, this time more
intimately. But it was something more than that, something he didn't
want to explore that deeply. Undue introspection wasn't his gig.
She was starting to breathe heavily, not quite snoring but it was
a close call. His chest started hurting again.
He could feel the warmth of her body.
She could want him (and he knew that she did) and she could
need him for this gig (and this he knew) but she wasn't ever going to
love him. She wasn't ever going to understand the feeling that
threatened to draw him into the undertow of her blood, under the
surface of her warm skin. But two out of three wasn't bad. Drusilla
had registered about .5 on each one of those attributes, so in a way he
would be moving up.
He reached out and touched her shoulder.
She was as hot as the teakettle he remembered at his
mother's house.
"Buffy?" he asked.
She didn't answer. She was asleep. Her pulse was beating in
her throat. He could get drunk from her smell; as sure as he became
drunk from those who carried alcohol in their veins. With her eyes
shut in sleep, she was like a sculpture on a tomb, an idol formed to
grace an ancient temple. He wondered if the ancient ones had
worshipped their slayers, nubile forces of death and destruction
protecting the villages from killers in the night.
Groaning, he turned on his side and faced a teddy bear.
"Sod off, you," he warned the bear.
The bear didn't even blink.
Spike dreamed of golden sun. Buffy had been wearing a white-
and-yellow striped swimsuit and a sunhat with a matching ribbon, and
telling him to put on his sunscreen so that they could have the picnic.
"Spike!" That was not the tone she'd had in the dream, he
groused as he opened his eyes.
"That's my name, don't stake it to death," he drawled.
"That's not your name, that's a stupid-ass nickname you
dreamed up because you thought it sounded cool."
She was wearing pajamas with little pink pigs floating on
clouds. Outnumbered among the pigs, there were a few blue dogs.
But that didn't entirely excuse her tone. "Feel free to stop being a
stereotypical California bitch at any moment."
"I need to shower and you need to leave."
"What, now?" he gestured out at the morning.
"When I'm out of the shower, you are to be gone."
So of course he just sat on her bed, legs crossed at the
ankles, lounging as if a sweet-smelling girl's bedroom was his natural
habitat.
When Buffy emerged from the bathroom, her arms were
raised and she was rubbing her hair with a yellow towel. "What?" she
asked. "I just brushed my teeth, there can't possibly be anything stuck
there."
He closed his eyes, and quoted: "Yet when we came back,
late, from the Hyacinth garden,/Your arms full, and your hair wet, I
could not/Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither/Living nor dead,
and I knew nothing,/Looking into the heart of light, the silence."
When he opened his eyes again, she was staring at him,
something wounded in her expression. Finally she moved, pulling the
tie of her robe even tighter and brushing past him. "I need to get
dressed," she said. "Get out."
If he didn't know better, he would have said that the look on her
face was fear.
Wrapped in a toweling bathrobe, Buffy's mother whisked into
the kitchen, noticing that there was a vampire drinking coffee at her
kitchen table.
"Buffy, I hope you made a full pot," Joyce Summers blinked
around the room for a moment, as groggy as a zombie pulled from the
grave, "Hello Spike."
"Mrs. Summers."
"Spike *just got here*," Buffy lied.
"Can I get you cereal or something?" Buffy's mom asked.
"Eggs?"
"He's a vampire, Mom, he doesn't eat food, and we're fresh out
of blood," Buffy said in a prissy little voice, not happy that her mother
was doing the Donna Reed routine with the Vampire From Hell.
"Oh," her mother said in her not-awake voice, "Should he not
be out now or something?"
"It's overcast, I'm not in imminent danger of bursting into
flames."
Rolling her eyes, Buffy hurried to the basement and shoved a
fresh dozen stakes into her backpack. Daylight or no, it never hurt to
pack wood. She folded the mantle of Tote-cop-for-bandy over the
stakes and zipped the zipper. Buffy could hear her mother's voice as
she headed up the basement stairs again.
"Well, you know, Angel has that detective agency in LA, you
could do something like that."
"Not exactly my scene, Mrs. Summers."
"Well what did you want to do when you were aliv-before you,
uh, became what you are?"
Oh God, her mother was having the Career Talk with Spike.
Everyone knew vampires didn't have jobs.
"Actually, I wanted to be a writer. I -"
"We have to get to the Magic Shop before it opens," Buffy cut
him off the best that she could.
"I know you're busy dear, but is there any way you watch Dawn
today after school?" Buffy's mom asked as Spike finished his coffee.
"Her ballet class was cancelled this week."
Sure that she was doing the big blush, Buffy grabbed the
coffee mug from Spike and jammed it in the dishwasher, "If she takes
the bus to the Magic Shop I can keep an eye on her there."
Great, Buffy, big-time slayer of demons and vampires had to
baby-sit. Spike was looking vague-ish and being quiet-ish which
meant that he was storing up the information to tease her with later.
Whatever was going on in his twisty head was not showing on his
face. She realized that she hadn't paid enough attention to him before
to know. He was so irritating, like a sandal strap that kept rubbing and
rubbing no matter how many times you wore the shoes.
.
Once her mother was gone, Buffy leaned across the table and
hissed at him, "Don't make nice-nice with my mother. She's not a pork
chop for you to drool over."
"I only drool over you, pork chop."
Buffy wasn't sure how she was supposed to take that, so she
settled for the Look of Death.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 11/18
"The texts say that the Mantle of Totenkopfverbande is
indestructible." Giles took off his glasses at the assembled group, as
if to impress upon them the seriousness of the matter. Spike had to
admit, the unbeatable foe just seemed less interesting after the third or
fourth time, sort of like the American presidential election. But Giles
fiddling with his glasses was eternally annoying. Maybe he could just
nail them to Giles' face and be done with it.
Xander snorted. "Indestructible and unpronounceable. What is
the deal with the names? Why can't we have the mantle of Steve?
No we have to get the mantle of Toten-ankh-amun."
"Germanic organization, Germanic demons, and therefore
Germanic names," Willow looked up from the tome she was perusing.
"Am I the only one, Jewish-ness aside, who is really creeped out by
this whole Nazi thing?"
"Well, Nazis are pretty creepy, Willow," Xander agreed. "It just
shows that demons haven't cornered the market on awfulness."
"Pound for pound I'm sure that demons out-nasty humans on
any scale," Anya piped up, as if feeling as though she had to bring in
the demon perspective on this multi-species roundtable.
"Anya, you play for this team now," Xander reminded her.
"Yes, well, it says here that the Mantle survived immersion in
the heart of a volcano. The author of this volume speculates that only
a trip to Hell could destroy it."
Buffy sat up straighter at that. "We are *not* opening the
Hellmouth just to get rid of this ... Mantle." It wasn't just the
blondeness that drew him, Spike thought, or her delicate wrists like a
wood-nymph's and blue eyes that begged to be filled with tears. It was
the contrast -- the fact that she could deliver sudden death with a
pirouette and only be concerned with how her hair had fared.
Fundamentally, she was more callous about death and destruction
than he'd ever been, just by the force of her self-absorption. He
admired that.
"What are our other options?" Willow asked.
"I'm afraid I don't know," Giles said.
Spike was still watching Buffy. He wanted her to admit how the
blood rushed and hummed inside her in response to the violence. Half
of her drama came from denying that she wanted the baddies to die.
She'd never accept a supernatural police force with trials and carefully
graded punishments. Even the minimal rules of the Council had been
too much for her.
"What are *you* grinning at?" she snarled. Her halter-top was
blue, with gold and white beads making little flowers across her chest.
Tight white leather pants completed the outfit, like God's personal
dominatrix.
"Well," Spike said, drawing out the word until they all were
staring at him. "There is one thing you could try."
They all gawped, until he gave up waiting.
"Tell us, please, Spike, what could we do?" he narrated in
falsetto, then switched back to deep-scary voice.
"Why, children, the answer is obvious. Grab yourself a
vampire, put the Mantle on him, and then cut off his head."
"I've got a thought about the proper volunteer," Xander said, just
as Willow said, "You know, I've always wondered why the clothes
disappear when a vamp gets dusted," and Giles perked up, opening
his mouth to offer an explanation.
"Stop!" Buffy said, and the incipient chaos calmed. "Giles, did
my ears deceive me or is that a good idea?"
The twit actually took off his glasses and rubbed his temple
before venturing an answer. "Erm, well, I'm willing to give it a qualified
perhaps."
"Qualified rapture," Spike said and rubbed his hands together,
"Now what do you say I go and find us a disposable vampire?"
"There's something different about you-"
Philip was the kind of vamp who'd spent just a little too much
time actually dead before the demon took control of his body, which
gave him eau du corpse and a tendency to drop chunks of flesh from
time to time. The general stupidity of the average person who became
vampbait explained a lot about the mean and modal vampire
intelligence level in recent decades. Spike looked at the other vampire
the way that a genuine Gucci bag looks at the kind made in Hong Kong
and sold by street vendors.
"Yeah, I had my hair done. Now can we get on with the show?"
"I heard there was some kind of chip in your head so you
weren't a vampire no more," Philip said, undaunted by Spike's
abruptness.
"I'm still a vampire," Spike explained. "I just have -- I just had
trouble eatin' regular-like for a while. But I've put that behind me, and
to prove it I'd like to stage a little massacre. And if you help me you'll
drink and make merry like never before."
"What's your plan?" Thank Hell Philip was easily led. Spike
noted the vamp's baggy pants, and the grimy T-shirt under the
multipocket vest with bloodstains indicating it was stolen off some kid
who'd been too cool for Philip in high school. Spike was doing
vampirekind at least a great a favor as humankind, and the fashion
police might even give him a commendation.
"There's a study group meeting in a building on the Sunnydale
campus. It's a public place, so we can surprise them, and it's
isolated, so no one will hear the screams."
Philip accepted this without further comment, and they headed
outside the bar.
The capture went down as smoothly as baby's blood. Xander
had rehabilitated a few of the Initiative taser guns abandoned in the
underground facility, and Philip folded like laundry into Spike's waiting
arms. It was even simpler to wrap the mantle around him, tucking it
into his pants in hopes of making it more clothes-like. Spike wanted to
wait until he woke up, just to see the look on his face, but Giles vetoed.
that.
They tied Philip to a piece of Buffy's training equipment that
looked to Spike like a cross between a torture device and a sex toy.
Rather appealing, really. Philip's head lolled above the post.
"Ready?" Buffy asked, twirling her sword like the cheerleader
she might have been.
"He's teed up like a T-ball in PeeWee league," Xander said.
"Just take a swing." Giles made his disgusted face, and Spike was in
agreement.
Buffy's vorpal blade went snicker-snack, and Philip's head
tumbled to the ground, bouncing two and a half times before exploding
into dust.
All eyes -- all remaining eyes -- turned to the headless corpse.
Was it a corpse even though Philip had not technically been alive?
Hadn't been dead, either. Post-corpsal, maybe. Spike was glad he
didn't have breath to hold as they waited for Philip's body to follow the
head. The Powers That Be were awfully inconsistent about that --
they liked making vamps go to dust dramatically.
It must have been half a second later, but to Spike it seemed
as long as the latest Britney Spears album. Philip's body crumbled,
leaving the restraints to flop loosely to the ground -- and the Mantle
went with him.
Everyone except Spike let out an audible sigh.
"Well that was anti-climactic," he said, smiling at the rest.
"The JagdKriegspfarrer will be quite enough to handle even
without the Mantle," Giles chastened.
Buffy pouted. "Party pooper. What does this monster do,
anyway?"
Spike smiled more widely. "It pretty much runs the demonic
gamut. Dismemberment, flesh-eating, grave-robbing, auto-
cannibalism when bored, arson, rape, wearing really loud clothes like
Xander-boy here. You get the picture."
"Auto-cannibalism -- That's *not* eating cars, is it?" Buffy
sounded worried.
"No, Blondie," he said, and could tell that Giles was the only
one to catch the reference.
Given what he now knew about Giles, he probably wasn't the
only one in the room who'd had nasty sex to Debbie Harry's rapping in
"Rapture." To tease her in a way she'd understand, he brought his
arm up to his mouth and mimed chomping down. She stuck her
tongue out at him and then looked appalled by her own casualness.
She was so used to him as a eunuch. Her conduct undoubtedly
stemmed from the easy way he'd sunk into ineffectiveness. The
Keshonte couldn't have been right about him, though. It was only the
soul that kept him here, and the desire for revenge on Georg.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 12/18
Buffy altered her regular patrol route. The Nazis were the
types to pick a warehouse for their ceremony so they could hang their
stupid bloody flags. They had no use for a nice roomy cemetery.
Spike followed her as they tramped through the gray streets of the
District Formerly Known As Industrial.
"What are all these empty buildings doing here, anyway?" she
groused as they strolled down yet another trash-lined street. "Empty
buildings are just asking for trouble."
Spike had heard from the local vamps that the area used to be
devoted to defense contractors. One vampire, who'd been around
when Spike first showed up to toast the Chosen One, told him that you
could eat well just on the military inspectors who came poking around,
trying to figure out why a widget cost umpty-hundred dollars. For
some reason they didn't get that the Sunnydale death rate kept labor
costs high. He thought this explanation would bore Buffy, however,
and remained silent.
He heard a skittering noise and raised his hand. Buffy stopped,
but knocked his hand aside anyway. He pointed toward the side
street, and they tiptoed closer, staying in the shadows. Two figures
hurried to the bricked-up building in the middle of the street. Buffy
made as if to go after them, but Spike restrained her. They knocked
twice on a black spot, which turned out to be a door that opened in a
blaze of silvery-blue light. Spike could hear eerie chanting, and wails.
"What are the odds that there are two eldritch ceremonies
going on down here tonight?" he whispered.
"Why would anyone have an Elvis ceremony anyway?" she
snapped.
"El-dritch. Black magic, demon and devil stuff."
"Let's go," she said, and he grabbed her again. She wrenched
her arm away. "Soul or no soul, you don't get to paw me every two
seconds."
Spike stepped back, held his hands up and set phasers on
killing sarcasm. "Regardless of your personal space problem, if Georg
is in there, he's got twenty vampires ready for sacrifice. Which means
he's got somethin' powerful enough to corral twenty vampires. Call
your Watcher, tell him to bring everything you've got."
She frowned, considering, then took out the cellphone.
They waited for the others, Buffy sitting on the hood of the car
and swinging her legs like executioner's axes because she refused to
let Spike smoke in an enclosed space. After five minutes she was
bored enough to talk to him. "Do you wish you'd never been vamped?"
"Kind of a personal question, innit?" He was in no mood to
indulge her. Truth or dare, now, that would have been tempting.
"I figure I'm entitled." She reached up and stretched,
deceptively small muscles standing out along her arms. Her top this
time was pink and asymmetrical, with cutouts in strategic places.
Though maybe they were tactical places; Buffy could be hard to
fathom.
"I'm glad I'm not dead," he admitted. "As for the rest, I enjoyed
myself more without a soul and its attendant bad poetry. Pain was
pleasure and pleasure was pleasure too, and there was no such thing
as regret..."
"Yeah, 'cause that explains the way you behaved when Drusilla
dumped you."
"She didn't *dump* me."
"Spoken like a true boy, vampire or otherwise."
"Anyway, it's not so different. That Keshonte demon had more
good in his little claw than most humans have in total, and he had a
demon soul. Human souls aren't the only ones around, you know, and
if you're tryin' to get rid of anything without a sanctioned, human soul,
that makes you no better than the Nazis. Kill anythin' that's not like you
or that makes you afraid of what you might be."
"Spike?" Her tone was hesitant, almost friendly now.
"Yessss?" he hissed, still mad about the touching thing earlier.
"What was Vancy?"
"What?"
"You said Georg and Karl met at Vancy."
"Oh, Wannsee. That was where the bureaucrats met to deal
with the administrative hassles of the Final Solution. Gas chambers
disguised as showers, furnaces for burnin' hundreds of bodies, all that
requires a lot of organization, a mountain of red tape, right? It had
been goin' on smallscale for a while - a massacre here, a
concentration camp there, but it had lacked efficiency. Wannsee was
where they worked on achievin' economies of scale, if you know what I
mean."
"Georg and Karl were part of that?" Her face was an unwritten
book; he couldn't tell what she was thinking but he shuddered anyway.
He'd have thought the history would be unreal to her.
"Yeah, creatin' McConcentration camp."
Spike let Buffy take the human guard at the door. She punched
him unconscious instead of breaking his neck, but Spike was really in
no position to complain.
Georg's voice boomed around them as they entered the
warehouse. It was as if he were speaking directly in Spike's ear,
though Spike could see the rock-star headset wrapped around the
silver mask.
"We have fought as one fights only for the most priceless gift
that this world has to offer. What have we given over these months in
work, in sacrifice, in devotion, in fanaticism, in contempt of death! We
were successful not only because I was your leader, rather far more
because you were my followers. The miracle of our coming together
moves us all."
Georg paced around a circle of captives, working the crowd
like the audience for Who Wants to Be a Neo-Nazi? Neon chalk
designs covered the ground within the circle. Spike looked away when
the rune that meant Cthulthu seemed to shuffle towards him. "Not all
of you can see me, and I cannot see all of you. But I feel you, and you
feel me! The belief in the greatness of our kind will make us large, it
will make us rich, it will make wavering, cowardly, anxious ones brave
and courageous! Through the sacrifice of these, unworthy to bear the
name Nosferatu, we will take the world as has been our right since the
beginning of time! "
The crowd roared. The chained vamps struggled more
frantically to get free. Spike could see the dust shaking from the bolts
in the floor, but they'd never get loose in time. Georg walked over to
the biggest vampire, smiled up at him, and thrust both hands into his
chest. This time, he crushed the heart in situ, and the vampire
exploded around his fists. Spike had to admit the dramatic force of the
image as the massed neoNazis screamed even louder.
"We can break this up any time now," Buffy said, but she
looked uneasy. Georg moved to the next one in the circle.
Spike couldn't stand the thought of Georg receiving all that
adoration one minute longer. "Right, slaughter time," he said and
strode into the crowd, a stake in each hand.
The first three fell without attracting any attention. He was
lucky that the crowd was vamp-heavy; he could shoulder humans
aside without any soul-protest, and that was good enough. Then the
muttering of the crowd grew louder around him, and demons who
weren't totally focused on the ceremony in front of them began to turn
and growl. He devoutly hoped that Scrappy-Doo and her gang were at
his back as he kicked in the face of a particularly nasty-looking green
fellow.
The commotion was beginning to compete with Georg for
participants' attention. Spike could feel the moment when Georg
realized that something was wrong; the other vampire's gaze flashed
across his face like sunlight.
"Spike!" the jovial voice stroked his ears from every direction.
"Come to sign up? We offer a complimentary bookbag and mug for
our new members!"
Spike rammed out an arm to the left, and something inhuman
squealed.
"I don't read and I already got china," he said, kicking a minor
blue demon in the stomach so hard that it squelched.
Georg stepped out of the circle, absently ripping the heart out
of another chained vampire as he went. "Then you must be here for
the slaughter." In his peripheral vision, Spike saw Buffy execute a
perfect somersault with a half-twist, landing between two vampires
who blew apart simultaneously.
Georg swirled his hands in a strange kung-fu motion, and the
path between them was suddenly clear. "And I'm always happy to
oblige when it comes to slaughter."
Spike preferred to skip further banter. He had the feeling he'd
come off the worse. So he shrugged, causing his duster to flutter
around him menacingly, and dove for the other vampire, planning to
knock Georg down and pin his arms to be safe from spells.
But Georg was like a brick wall, and Spike's ears rang as he
staggered back - not too far, because Georg had him by the
shoulders, wrenching his right arm out of its socket as Spike added
his own howl of agony to the symphony of chaos around them.
"You know, I never did know what Drusilla saw in you," Georg
smiled and pulled Spike a little closer, "and I bet she didn't know either
after I had her. I don't suppose she mentioned my name in any
awkward moments?"
Caught in Georg's cement grip, Spike's furious lunge turned
into a humiliating jerk. Before he could do anything else, Georg had
his hands around Spike's throat and was squeezing, hard enough for
black and red to sparkle in Spike's field of vision. Spike could see the
details of his Nazi colonel's outfit; this one, unlike those clothing his
henchman, was the real deal, down to the swastika-branded buttons,
which seemed to whirl as Georg's fingers cut into his throat,
threatening to pop his head off like a daisy.
"Fuck you," Spike choked.
"Not the answer I was looking for," Georg said.
Spike's flailing legs caught Georg in the nuts, and the other
vampire relaxed his grip. Then Georg's eyes widened in surprise as
an arrow emerged from his shoulder. He spun and saw Giles,
desperately trying to reload his bow. Cool. Go Giles. Somewhere
behind Giles, the rest of the gang goggled at the demons and
vampires and losers, oh my.
Georg grabbed at the crossbow bolt and pulled it free with a
snarl.
That was enough for Spike to regain his footing and lunge for
Georg again. They thudded into a squirming mass of demons and
Spike almost went down, but the memory of Drusilla screaming,
screaming had him by the throat with a tighter grip than Georg could
ever use. He managed a left-handed uppercut that knocked the silver
mask askew and sent Georg staggering, and then another kick in the
balls that put the vampire on the ground.
"I am doing this for the greater good of the race!" Georg yelled,
rising up on his elbows.
"We're vampires, asshole. We're not a race and we don't do
anything for good!" Spike was frustrated, and he stalked towards
Georg, pushing demons and humans aside.
Georg smiled -- Spike could see only one side, peeking out
from behind the mask, which made him look like a seriously deformed
Siamese twin -- and it was enough to stop Spike cold. "I guess you're
right," he said and reached out a hand to make magical gestures. A
vampire in stormtrooper drag sailed out of the main fight and into his
outstretched arms. For a moment their embrace looked cozy. Then
the vampire looked down to see the stake protruding from his chest.
"Master?" he said, looking deep into Georg's eyes, and exploded into
dust.
The earth groaned and a sudden wind rose through the
warehouse, tearing at Spike's clothes.
That was the twentieth vampire, Spike realized. Somehow, all
the ones we killed here counted too. He must have drawn a larger
magic circle than the one we can see.
"Aw, fuck," he said and launched himself toward Georg again.
Screaming triumph, the vampire raised his hands to the skies
(really the warehouse ceiling but Spike just knew that, in Georg's head,
he was reaching to the stars) as if everyone was supposed to stop
now and contemplate his victory.
He blinked and dropped his arms when Spike put the stake
through him.
"What are you --?" he said, looking honestly bewildered, like an
accountant confronted with years of false returns.
"Payback's a bitch," Spike advised as Georg blinked in surprise
and puffed into dust. The silver mask thudded to the ground, and
Spike quickly stuffed it into his pocket for later pawning.
Behind him, Spike could hear newly-minted screams.
Not wanting to make Georg's mistake, Spike turned toward the
circle. A cloud of oily green smoke was dissipating, revealing the oily
green Wirtschaftsministerium. It looked like a sea anemone. That is,
how a sea anemone would look if you were the size of a Sea Monkey.
Well, a sea anemone with rainbow tentacles, bullfrog eyes and a
circular maw lined with a triple-row of shark teeth. The
Wirtschaftsministerium looked like something Salvadore Dali would
have designed while suffering from food poisoning after a bad batch of
calamari. The Wirtschaftsministerium extended tentacles in all
directions, wrapping them around the left-over chained vampires.
"Oh good," said a cheery, insane voice that needed no
amplification, "hors d'oeuvres."
Spike's shoulder was screaming louder than the dying
vampires, and he staggered a little as he tried to get back towards the
circle. He could hear Xander yelling, a wordless war-cry that made
him wonder about the boy's stability. Now that the acolytes had seen
the Wirtschaftsministerium, some had changed their minds and were
heading toward the door. Demons, humans, and vampires buffeted by
him, each species managing to slam into his shoulder with its own
special elan.
"Hey there, Big Ugly." Buffy's voice cut through the clamor.
"Well, well," the Wirtschaftsministerium replied. "My own
private Princess Leia."
A Wirtschaftsministerium was bad enough, but a
Wirtschaftsministerium with delusions of Jabba the Hutt could do
serious damage.
"Where's Georg?" Karl called, waving his tentacles in agitation,
"Georg called me."
"Georg isn't available right now, can I take a message?" one of
the lesser demons stuttered.
"Oh damn," Karl sagged for a moment within his tentacles and
then perked up and sized the demon foolish enough to speak and held
the demon so he could look at the terrified, squirming demon's face,
"and I was really looking forward to working with him again. Oh well."
The Wirtschaftsministerium bit off the demon's head the way a
child massacred a gingerbread man.
"Can somebody get me a beer? I need a beer to wash this
down with."
Grunts and cries followed. Spike tried to get a glimpse of the
battle from over the remains of the panicking crowd. Buffy was
flawless, as usual, but the Wirtschaftsministerium was even better. It
moved tentacles every time before she struck and lashed tentacles at
her from where she could not see it. "She's outmatched," he shouted
at the rest of the gang, as Buffy hit the floor with enough force to
bounce. She tried to rise, but couldn't avoid another blow.
Tara and Willow ran forward, holding a piece of rope and
chanting. The Wirtschaftsministerium lashed out with one long,
tongue-shaped tentacle, and Tara was snatched away, towards its
central body. It continued to whip Buffy with several tentacles as it
wrapped others around Tara, bulging and rippling obscenely around
the witch. Tara's high scream cut through the noise, then stopped.
"Give me a darkness spell!" he ordered Willow, who was just
standing there. He began running towards the
Wirtschaftsministerium. Amazingly, Xander followed him, though he
quickly disappeared under three minor demons. He heard Anya yowl
and join the affray.
Fortunately, soft little Willow could whip up a mighty spell with
enough incentive, and before he'd gone three steps the whole
abandoned factory was black. Buffy was lying right where she'd fallen.
Spike felt a tentacle brush past his head as he picked her up. She felt
paper-light, as unreal as a pinup in a magazine. As he moved away,
he nearly tripped over another soft body, and a quick feel identified it as
Tara's. Groaning, he called on his reserves of vampiric strength and
picked her up as well. His shoulder had screamed its metaphoric
voice hoarse; the white-hot pain of it could only now be endured, not
relieved. There was something wrong with the way Tara's body
draped, but he ignored it.
Running on instinct and the low-level infrared vision that came
with vampirehood, he found the exit. "I've got them, go now," he
ordered. "Xander and Anya!" Willow said. Spike stood for a moment,
unable to understand what she meant. But Buffy would kill him if she
woke up and found her friend (and whatever Anya was) dead, so he
shifted Buffy and Tara to Willow and Giles and headed back into the
warehouse.
The demons and vampires were piled on top of one another
like the world's worst organized American football tackle, all of them
looking for the tasty ball of blood that was Xander. Spike worked his
way through the pile methodically, staking where necessary, breaking
necks where that was more effective, until he recognized a familiar
hairy arm. Bending at the knees, he dragged Xander out; the boy was
barely conscious, and didn't even scream at the pressure on his arm.
Anya had been knocked into the wall and was trying to stand. Either
the others hadn't noticed her or something residually demonic kept
them away. Perhaps it was her baleful expression. Spike tugged at
her with his left hand and hurried them all out.
"Where are his shoes?" Anya demanded as they all stuffed into
the Explorer. "Where are Xander's shoes? He's unconscious and he
has no shoes!"
Willow fussed over Buffy and Tara in the back while Anya
started the SUV. Behind them, Spike saw twenty or so assorted
losers pile into cars and onto motorcycles to give chase. "Anyanka,
shut the fuck up and drive."
She did, and he quickly realized that Ford and Firestone didn't
have to worry about killing them through shoddy design because Anya
was going to take care of it with bad driving. The tires squealed
through a turn and he actually felt the left side of the vehicle leave the
ground for a few bad seconds before it decided that flipping over would
be too simple.
Spike rolled down his window and looked back. They'd lost a
few who couldn't make the turn, but there were still five cars and four
motorcycles behind them. One of the motorcycles was gaining fast.
"Do we have any weapons left?" No answer. "There was a bag of
weapons in the back; someone give me something long and heavy or
I'll just use one of the unconscious bodies!"
Scowling, Giles rooted around underneath Buffy's tiny, curled-
up form, and came up with a baseball bat.
"Thanks, mate," Spike said, then swung the bat out the window
and decapitated the demon on the motorcycle, who was about to
climb in. The motorcycle twisted and fell in the road, where another
cycle ran into it, ejecting its vampire rider off onto the curb. The cars
and remaining cycles swerved around, but they were further back.
Giles had shaken off his shock and was leaning out the other
window, shooting at their pursuers with a compound bow. Spike was
very impressed when Giles managed to crack the windshield of one of
the cars, sending it spinning around into another. Anya twisted the
SUV into a hairpin turn that actually threw him out of the seat, gravity
forgotten, and slammed Buffy into the side door, Tara piled on top of
her like unfolded laundry. Buffy groaned, but Tara was still out of it; red
stains were beginning to bloom on her white blouse and Spike didn't
want to look too hard at the patterns they made.
He remembered Dracco's gun, and used it to emulate Giles'
example, but with the pain in his shoulder flaring like a nova his
marksmanship was for shit and he stopped before he wasted all the
ammunition. Giles picked off the remaining motorcyclists, and then
there were only three cars behind them.
"We can't lead them back to the Magic Shop, Dawn is there,"
Willow choked. "We need a hospital, Tara's legs -"
"Anyone who wants to drive instead of criticize is completely
welcome to take over," Anya snapped, and turned again, this time into
four lanes of traffic going the other direction. Hunched over the
steering wheel, she ignored the horns and flashing headlights and
ground the accelerator into the floor to take advantage of the straight
road.
Around the Explorer, other cars roared and swerved. Spike
watched as a Ferrari crashed into a lamppost, creating more
obstacles for their pursuers. Another car twirled like a top as the driver
tried to avoid being turned into kibble. The honking horns sounded
almost like a chorus as Anya whizzed past fast-food restaurants and
gas stations, pushing the ocean of oncoming traffic apart through what
had to be sheer force of will. Finally the last car in pursuit determined
that it had a better chance of surviving a report to Karl than out-
chickening Anya and turned back.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 13/18
Spike wasn't quite clear on how he got Buffy custody.
Everyone else was still at the hospital, and after he'd convinced Giles
to pop his shoulder back into place he'd gotten a cab and couldn't work
up the energy to be surprised when Buffy joined him. But she got out
at the cemetery, same as him, and followed him back to his pad.
Vampiric healing had already set in; he could feel the small striated
muscles in his shoulder healing and reattaching in all the right places.
He closed the door behind her and waited, curious, to see what
she would do next.
Her eyes were sparkling like - sparkly things - and she kicked
the side of the sepulcher in the corner of Spike's crypt. Pressed
concrete crumbled under her boots as she stalked back and forth like
a cat pacing out the confines of the cage at the local animal shelter.
"We walked in there like Girl Scouts selling cookies," she raged
at him and her hair floated insanely around her bright, bruised face,
"Hello, like demon guys do you want to kick our asses or what."
All Spike could do was watch.
"And you, what good are you? 'They're in here, Slayer,'" to his
undying and undead shock, she gave a creditable imitation of his own
mutant cockney, "'Sorry ever so, but what a great bloody lot of you
there are. Just have at the Scoobies at your own time, old chaps.'"
"I sound nothing like that."
"I want that - that Workshaftmummy demon thing dead!" she
snarled and whipped around to face him, "Don't look at me like that,
you have no idea how I feel."
"Angry, frustrated, enraged, betrayed, and helpless?" he leaned
back against the nearest pillar and realized that he was not smiling, he
was more serious than he had been in decades. "No, that I know
nothing about."
She narrowed her eyes and the sparkles got smaller and
brighter. Breathing hard with the force of her anger, her chest was
heaving underneath the sparkles of her top. Sparkles not as bright as
her eyes. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun, Spike mentally
paraphrased, they are the points of blades.
"It won't happen again, I know what I'm up against now," she
announced and turned on the heel of her steel-tipped boot and
pounded for the door.
A mortal wouldn't have been fast enough to get between her
and the only means of egress from the crypt. Then again, a vampire
with any sense wouldn't put himself in front of a pissed-off Slayer. Any
vampire with any sense wouldn't have already killed two Slayers in a
century.
"You are NOT going back there," he shouted, feeling his face
warm into a half-transformation.
Damn it, he could smell the blood from the gouge on her wrist
and it was making his mouth water, make his control tenuous. She
just beamed angry eyes at him and vibrated with anger and frustration.
Fortunately, Spike was trainable and when he saw the telltale
movement of her right shoulder, he recognized the start of what
usually ended with a good punch in the nose, and he managed to
catch the slashing blur of her fist a half a foot from his face. Her little
fist was hot and hard in his hand, and blood from her wrist flowed onto
his fingers. He swallowed the rock in his throat and fought back the
heat and the need for her blood. He needed her to get to Karl, and he
needed to walk knee-deep in that demon's blood so that Georg would
not have the last laugh.
"Enough with the nose-punching! Do that again and I swear
I'll-"
"What? Kill me?"
Jerking her hand out of his, she danced back a step and
caught him with a clean roundhouse kick to the chest. Stepping into
her arc, he slammed his hand into her shoulder and she bounced
back a few feet. He struck at her face, but she came in low and drove
her shoulder into his side and he went tumbling across the room,
sending the TV to the floor with an expensive crash. He rolled to his
feet as she kicked at the base of his spine, danced back and flicked
hair back from her face.
As ever, she was beyond sublime. A rain of sharp punches
peppered his face and chest; he blocked most and took the rest
without breaking stride, forcing her backwards towards the sepulcher.
He put the pillar between them and they enacted a merry ring around
the rosy - death overtones and all. The strategy that was forming in
his mind was to wear her out. He knew that she didn't have a stake
left on her so his chances of getting dusted were low provided that he
prevented her from breaking any of the furniture. The adventure at
Karl's lair and her subsequent knockout had to sap her considerable
stamina. If he could just endure her attacks long enough for her to run
out of steam, he'd be home and dry.
The boot connected with his jaw and sent him sprawling to the
stone floor. It was painful, yes, but a pain that he could live with. In a
flash she was atop him, her little legs pinning his midsection to the
floor and she was punching at his nose with one hand while she
scrabbled around in her jacket with the other. She was burning into
him, her blood, her heat, her skin, and the bright sun of her livingness
was searing him like hot iron.
He smelled the wood before he saw it.
Fuck, she'd managed to come up with another stake. Where
in the fuck did she keep all of them? Her clothes must have all been
tricked out with secret pockets like a kleptomaniac kangaroo. She
was panting down at him, sweat glimmering on her face, sticking her
hair to her temples, and resting like a perfect raindrop between the
pink points of her upper lip. Their noses were scant inches apart and
her breath scalded his face. Things were moving around behind her
eyes and in the scant two seconds it took her to bring the business
end of the stake up and press it to the shirt stretched thin over his
chest and his heart, Spike's fingers finally found the grip of Dracco's
pistol.
Buffy sucked in a surprised breath from the sensation of the
metal of the gun's barrel against the bare skin of her midriff. Eyes
doubling in size, she looked down at him.
"Take me out and you're goin' with me-" and if his voice
hadn't cracked it might have been more impressive.
Maybe only Mexicans enjoyed Mexican stand-offs.
Face creasing in a frown, her eyes flicked from stake and back
to his eyes, and he could see that she was thinking again. Normally
this was like a commercial break where he could get up and get a
beer, but she'd been so full of surprises lately that he wasn't going to
risk losing focus again. Losing focus was how he had ended up on
the floor in the first place.
Now he was focused, focused on the sliver of wood brushing
against the skin over his heart and the beat of his pulse in the finger
tightened on the trigger.
"Come on, Slayer. We'll end this thing here an' now, you an'
me."
When the last fragment of his hoarse whisper dissipated into
the silence of the crypt, she moved.
Her lips were hard and tasted like salt. She bit his lower lip like
the youngest of vamps, her fingers reaching and clawing at his hair.
After a moment of shocked paralysis, his free hand wrapped
around the stake, getting a palm full of breast for his trouble, and
grabbed for the stake. But she was quicker, flicking the ash stake
away, and he heard it rattle off into a dark corner as she grabbed his
shirt and pulled him half off the floor. With her hard little stomach
digging into his and the bulk of her weight resting squarely on his
crotch, he pressed up against her, trying to grab some kind of contact
through the thick seams of two pairs of jeans. The button flies were
suddenly a very bad choice. Smelling like milk, honey and blood she
wrapped around him, her fingers in his hair, digging into his shoulders
underneath the leather of his coat. He groaned under her mouth, as
he'd groaned in a London alleyway a hundred odd years before, his
arms and hands crushing her against him, hard enough to bruise a
normal human.
A little mewing sound came from her throat as she dragged her
face along his, only to catch his earlobe between her teeth and make
him wince with the glassine lusciousness of it. By accident or design,
her gouged wrist slid over and past his cheekbone and coated his lips
with blood. His undead heart nearly stopped its frantic beating as the
rich rustiness of her blood filled his senses with the subtlety of a
nuclear accident.
"Oh God," she muttered into his jaw and her hands roved over
his back, stinging him with the edges of her short nails.
With a combination of sheer will power and vampiric strength,
he pulled loose from Buffy, slid a few feet away from her on the floor,
and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He'd already
swallowed the blood and his hand came away clean.
"If it turns out tomorrow that you're possessed or got amnesia,
things will get ugly," he warned.
On her knees, she crawled over to him, pulling the tie from her
hair as she came. Once again, she grabbed his shirt and made it
perfectly clear that she wasn't about to change her mind. His hands
cupped her ass and pulled her closer, until she was fully pressed up
against him again.
"Tell anyone and you're totally dead," she murmured and began
to circle his ear with her tongue.
"Quiet as the grave," he assured her.
There was fumbling with fastenings, unlacing of boots, and
clothes falling to the floor like needles from a Christmas tree. Naked,
she was a dream, peach and gold and shimmering in castoff light from
the candles. Unbound, her breasts were bigger than he had imagined,
but fit perfectly into his hands. She stretched and moaned underneath
him, her hair shining against the black leather of his jacket spread on
the floor. He licked every millimeter of her body, tasting her and letting
her smell sink into his skin, running tongue and teeth across each of
the raised scars he found scattered on her form. She polished the
whiteness of his body with her hands. Her fingers destroyed his
immaculate coiffure, until his hair flopped onto his forehead in its
natural state.
With a fistful of her silk hair he dragged her head back into a
graceful arc and she shuddered with pleasure rather than fear when
he scored the skin of her throat with his mouth.
Face pressed against the inside of her thigh, the demon rose in
him for a moment and his fangs broke the softest of skin there, and he
licked the few blood droplets away, the taste rich in his mouth, feeding
his hunger. But he shook his head and regained control before moving
deeper between her legs to explore new tastes from the gold girl
stretched out before him. She shuddered when he touched her,
shuddered and gasped with something like surprise. Smirking to
himself, with his head down and hiding his face, he bent to work to
show her a few of the things that he had learned. Moaning loud
enough to wake a zombie or two, she lifted her hips for more and
almost tore holes in the leather under her hands.
Looking soft and used, she kissed him, her tongue feeling his
canines as if testing the edges. Tasting her and her blood on her lips
was almost more than he could take and he pushed her back to the
floor, shoving her legs open with his knee. That should have been the
point where he graciously offered her another out, but he didn't.
God, she was burning hot, it felt as though she was melting like
wax around him. He groaned into her breasts and she grabbed his
hips to pull him further in. She hissed like a cornered imp when he
filled her at last. He couldn't remember offhand if he'd ever had a
willing mortal woman before and the sharp urgency of Buffy was
nothing like the graceful lasciviousness of vampires. Ankles locked
together at the small of his back, she demanded every molecule from
him as he began to grind into her with controlled determination. In
short order she was filmed with sweat and her nails had broken the
first few layers of skin on his ribs. She hissed into his ear, demanding
more, biting the tender flesh there. Finally she jerked and he could feel
her climax around him, nearly dragging him down with her. Sucking
the breath from her mouth, the sweat from the hollow of her throat, he
continued thrusting into her saturated depths. He dragged her up to
the edge and pushed her over time and time again, until she was
incoherent beneath him. Finally, he could no longer maintain any
semblance of control and came into her with a roar that shook
cobwebs and dust from the walls of the crypt around them.
Spent, half-dead, with his brain registering minimal activity, he
felt her curl up alongside him, her warmth flowing into him. Forgotten
things surfaced in his mind. A snippet of a sonnet: When do I see the
most, beloved one? / When in the light and the sprits of mine
eyes/Before thy face, their altar, solemnize/Or when in the dusk hours
(we two alone)/ Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies/thy twilight-
hidden glimmering visage lies, / And my soul only sees thy soul its
own.
Outside, it started to rain.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 14/18
"Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod."
If speed dressing was an Olympic event, the little man was
engraving "Buffy Summers" into the gold even as she was stuffing her
feet into her boots.
"Thinking bad, moving good, have to go, have to get out," she
chanted under her breath like a Dr. Seuss character on uppers.
"Would not, could not, should not think!"
As far as she could tell, Spike was still sleeping like the undead
in the extremely sleazy red and slimy polyblend sheets on the bed -
but she wasn't going to look because he wasn't there, she wasn't
there and the bruises on her knees were from fighting the demon. The
adrenalin was making her heart skip around like a CD someone had
used as a coaster. None of this had happened and when she woke up
it was all going to be a horrible nightmare just the way it happened on
TV.
"Thinking bad. Last night bad, Uber-bad. Gotta go. Don't look,
Buff, don't look, don't think, don't deal."
Her shoelace broke; she looked down at the blackish stringy
thing in her hand and had no idea what it was or what it was used for.
She threw it aside, and the shoelace landed on the bed right next to
the guy-shaped thing, which was doing something like snoring
underneath a retro-tacky red and black velvet bedspread. It was an
unnaturally blonde guy-shaped thing and it smelled familiarly of
cigarettes, sweat, and leather.
"Oh fuck the shoelace--" she choked and flung herself out of
the crypt.
Half a mile, half a mile, half a mile onward and she was running
full-tilt alongside the gray morning streets while the rain wet grass
soaked the bells of her jeans. She ran hard, harder than she needed
to, until she stumbled into the coffee-smelling kitchen. At the table,
Dawn narrowed her eyes at her older sister.
"You are *so* busted."
"Not now, totally and completely not now," Buffy hissed and
began sliding for the stairs.
"All night. You were out all night. I know you weren't at Willow's
because I called," Dawn folded her arms over her chest and gave
Buffy a sly smile, "you were with a *boy*."
"Listen, TWERP, Slayer business, all night-"
"Buffy?"
Buffy's mom wandered into the kitchen wearing her not enough
coffee face and went straight to Mr. Coffee for support.
"Where were you, honey?"
"She was out with a boy," Dawn gloated. "I bet she was having
sex."
"Shut up!" Buffy snarled to Dawn and then faced her mom,
"Slayer stuff mom, big time Slayer stuff. All night big time slayer stuff."
"Oh you are such a fucking liar!" Dawn blurted and her face
screwed up and reddened in pre-cry mode. "You smell like cigarettes
an' you got a hickey."
Sleep and shock wrestled on Joyce Summer's face.
"Dawn, there's no need for that kind of language," she said, far
less upset than she would have been if she were fully awake.
"Nobody believes me, no one listens to me," Dawn wailed and
flounced away.
Joyce frowned, "Buffy, you promised that you'd give me a call if
you were going to be out all night saving the world from destruction or
something."
"Sorry mom, I wasn't near a phone."
The magic shop was dark and cool. Too much like Spike's
place, but at least it had the comforting smell of herbs and candles
and old books. No cigarettes or leather at all.
"Buffy?" Willow emerged from the back of the shop. "How are
you doing?"
"Better," she said. "How's Tara?"
Willow's rounded shoulders slumped further. "Her legs are
broken. They, uh, think she should be fine otherwise. No major
scarring. But she told the nurses she didn't want visitors. Not even
me."
"Oh, Will," and then she was crying. She felt Willow approach,
hesitate, and then draw her into a hug. Willow awkwardly patted her
back, slow rhythmless pats that just made Buffy realize that Willow
had no idea what was going on with her.
Finally she pulled away.
"Would it be prying to ask what brought this on?" Willow asked.
"I mean, I appreciate the sentiment for Tara and all, but, this doesn't
seem like vicarious suffering."
"It's like so totally bad right now. The demon thing and the
Nazis and everything is just mega-suck!" Buffy dragged her hand
under her nose and managed to get maximum snot coverage on her
face.
All Willow could do was root around the counter for a tissue.
"Sounds like you might be suffering from some pre-demon-
syndrome. Darkest hour, dawn, you know what I mean. I have some
herb tea that might help," she handed Buffy a clean but crumpled
tissue, "but you have to go to stop with the coffee. Time for decaf
city."
"But I'm so tired," Buffy sniveled into the tissue, which was
coming apart faster than a demon's promise in her hand. "I am so
freaking tired. My hair is tired. And I hurt everywhere-"
"You did land hard last night. Blackout City. Maybe you shook
something loose."
"It's not that!" Buffy wailed and let loose a fresh tide of tears
and melted mascara.
Shocked, Willow patted her raccoon-eyed friend on the arm.
"Full disclosure, there is a problem. Sharing the burden, you
know the rest."
Fractionally, Buffy pulled herself together, blew her nose and
soaked the tissue to uselessness. Tissues gone, Willow had to offer
her a napkin from beside the espresso machine Anya had hidden
behind the counter.
She settled for the rind of the truth, if not the full orange. "I think
Spike likes me."
"Like like? Or Like?"
"Like. Boy girl like. He's acting so weird, I mean since the soul
thing he's been -- soulful. It's so not fair."
"I think it's sort of romantic. He got his soul back and now he's
in love with you."
"He is not in love with me. He -- likes me." Buffy pouted.
"Anyway, flowers and chocolates and useless promises are romantic.
Anything that involves the word 'soul' is not romantic."
"Except for Barry White's voice," Willow pointed out.
"Who? Well, that Keywhatsis demon had no idea what it was
doing. Now I have a responsibility for him."
"You could just let him suffer."
"No, that's too much like what happens to my real boyfriends. I
don't want him to be evil again -- I've got enough going on without
facing a vamp who's taken two Slayers. I can't date a vamp that's
offed two Slayers. I mean it's a serious conflict of interest."
"Um, Buffy, fighting and dating aren't the same th--" Willow
stopped and they looked at one another. "Anyway, we need a strategy
for fighting the Wirtschaftsministerium."
"What have you and Giles come up with?"
"Bupkis." Buffy stared at her. "Sorry, feeling the Jewishness a
little more strongly these days. He's on the phone with some monk
from Nepal who might be able to help. But nothing yet."
"Nepal?"
"Very lost tribe."
Buffy located Spike on the loading dock of the Magic Shop,
leaning against the wall in a halo of yellow bug-light. He was doing the
noir-ish thing of smoking a cigarette under the overhang with the
attitude of a man waiting for a bus.
"We need to talk," she said as the door closed behind her.
Spike mimed looking at a watch, "That took about twenty
minutes longer than I thought."
"Last night -- did not happen. Understand?" she said in what
was supposed to be a tough voice, but she had a suspicion that it
wasn't.
"I ought cancel the ad in the Sunnydale Daily then. SLAYER
SHAGS ANOTHER VAMPIRE," his hands drew the headline's outline
in the air. "Bad habit you got, love."
Her hands fisted and she stepped closer. Spike ignored her
movement and continued to smoke his cigarette. The smoke drifted
through the rain and the night air to turn into something nearly solid
around the light. It wasn't entirely clear what she was supposed to do
now, but in that respect, it was your basic dealing with a boy kind of
thing.
"Gonna ruin my rep," he crossed his arms over his chest like a
gangbanger and gave her a hard look, "bad enough with the chip ruinin'
my brain for a year, this damn soul thing, and now bein' the Slayer's
cuddly toy? Thank you no."
"Waiter, reality check? You're sorry about what happened?"
Face taking a strange twist, Spike looked down at her, "It's not
makin' my Top Ten List of smart things. Would you rather I gloated?"
"No," she said and watched the raindrops punch holes in the
shining puddles, "I just wish -- well, if it hadn't happened, things would
be . . . simpler. This is too hard."
"Free advice, Slayer," he said in a edgy, jerky voice, a voice
that sounded like someone was squeezing his throat, "When you do
something, you did it, and it does fuck-all to regret it afterwards."
With thumb and forefinger, he flicked the butt of his cigarette
into a puddle. The ember burned for a second and went out. In a
flash, he was millimeters away from her, the coolness of his flesh
bristling against the boundaries of her space. She backed up half a
pace and found wall behind her. He didn't have any smell of his own,
she realized. It was all cigarettes and leather, other dead things he'd
adopted, but there was no Spike smell underneath. The fine hairs on
her forearms stood upright and waved hello in an agreeably creepy
way.
"Just don't stand there and tell me that you didn't enjoy every
filthy little moment of it," he said in a voice that was full of silk and
broken glass. "Don't pretend that your knees don't get weak when the
thought of it crawls up into your head in the middle of the day. That
you're not re-running it like a videotape through your mind, looking for
excuses for a do-over."
If he moved a hair closer they would be touching. Instead, he
was staring into her eyes with his own colorless dark ones, holding her
gaze like a cobra stalking a sparrow. Naturally he was right, scary-
making right.
She thought that if he didn't touch her, she was going to die.
"If you're going to walk on fire, you prepare yourself to be
burnt."
In a fast vampire blur of movement, he was gone, and the door
was banging shut behind him. Her stomach did the big tilt-a-whirl thing
and she gulped down cold air. The wall was reassuringly hard and
real against her back, which was a good thing, because the ground
that she was standing on wasn't real steady anymore.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 15/18
Lovecraft's again. Fucking Lovecraft's or the fucking Bronze,
Sunnydale needed a couple more places to hang out in. Maybe he
should just pack the whole thing in and move out to LA. At least in LA
everything didn't close at 2 am. Fucking one-horse town.
Yeah, his mood was what you could call foul.
Spike sipped at the "Bloody Mary" the oh-so-funny bartender
had mixed, and looked around for a likely looking demon. Best thing
for a bloke to do over a girl was to pour a couple of quarts of alcohol
onto his brain and see if that quenched the fire somewhat. Alternately,
bars were a good place to get a bucketful of ice to shove down his
pants. Short of getting pissed as a newt on blood and booze the next
best thing as to find something to kill. That always made him feel
better.
He'd finally gone and made an ass out of himself. Yes, so he'd
shagged the Slayer, you'd think that he would have felt better about it,
felt some kind of triumph instead of feeling rejected once again. The
Sex With Buffy Thing had been a colossally bad idea. Despite the fact
that she hadn't exactly protested, and he was vain enough to think that
she had enjoyed it, Spike was pretty certain that she was going to use
it as yet another reason to punch him in the nose.
The bar was pretty crowded that night, demons outnumbering
most of the other creatures. There was one ugly mother of a chaos
demon in the corner making short work of the pinball machine, and a
trio of Calansis playing what looked like poker at a table by themselves
near a fairly large clot of down-market vampires. The leather and
tattoo crowd looked like likely Gregor recruits. He recognized a
vampire who'd been in the abandoned factory, hanging back to see
what happened. Vamps could be such fucking voyeurs.
Spike sidled up to the vamp and took a seat at the bar next to
her. "Buy you a drink?"
She tossed her blonde hair. Brown eyes though, and
eyebrows, classic bottle-blonde. "I hear you don't date your own kind
any more."
"You hear wrong, baby. Papa's got a brand new set of fangs,"
he licked his lips to emphasize the points. "Which is good since it
seems like now is a great time to be undead, what with the
JagdKriegspfarrer in town."
"Why do they call him that, anyway?"
"It means 'Hunting Priest,'" he said, waving for another drink for
both of them. "Way I heard it, it's sort of a nickname, like 'King of the
Hill,' or 'Lord of the Dance,' only a tad more mystical and a whole yard
more deadly."
She hummed, and swirled her new drink, the blood and alcohol
adhering to the edges of the glass and sliding down in little, tasty-
looking strings. "The name seems to fit, looking at the way he
smacked down the Slayer."
"Pity she escaped, though. I have to admit, I wish I knew how
he managed to trounce her so thoroughly. I don't like to say so, but I
had a harder time with the two I did."
"He probably just read her mind," the vamp said, leaning
towards him to emphasize her cleavage, which Spike did his
gentlemanly best to appreciate.
"Read her mind?" the absent distraction in his voice as he
contemplated the shadow between her breasts was not entirely
feigned.
"He can do that, y'know? It's wicked cool. He can read
demons by touch, but humans are just, like, transparent to him. He
can't be surprised, so he can't be stopped."
"That's a good trick, all right," he acknowledged, and took
another drink. He'd have a few more with the chippie, just to keep her
suspicions to a minimum. Then they'd go outside, and he'd feel her up
or dust her, maybe both, but he was pretty sure that his cold heart
wouldn't be in it.
"Ramona, get away from that asshole," one of the redwood-
sized leather and tattoo boys called as they advanced through the
tables.
"The caliber of vampires these days makes me weep for the
future of the race," Spike drawled in his old, old, and grand voice and
hunched more nonchalantly into the bar.
Predictably, the vamp grabbed Spike's shoulder and whirled
him around on the barstool, "What did you say to me?"
"I said you were an asshole, asshole."
The young vamp, who was over six and half feet of polished
coffee toned muscle, pulled Spike to his feet.
"Faggot. Human-pet faggot."
"C'mon, you can do better than that, surely."
"Don't fuck with me, man, we're bigger and there are more of
us."
The stake slid out of his belt like a dream and sank neatly into
the meathead's heart like a hot knife through butter. Surprise
registered on the big vamp's face before he disintegrated into ash and
sand.
"Yeah, but I'm older and meaner." Spike advised the pile of dust
on the floor.
Two rushed him and they all went down into a tangle of
vampire arms and legs through the fragile wood of a nearby table.
Spike gut-punched one of them and began kicking the other in the face
with his steel-tipped DM's.
"No fighting! Take it outside!" the bartender roared.
Spike grabbed the leg of a nearby chair and jammed it into the
chest of the nearest vamp. The remaining one howled with rage and
got his fangs kicked in for his troubles. Skittering to his feet, Spike
found that the remaining vamps in Lovecraft's were advancing on him
like the mob in the original Frankenstein movie. Chains were
produced, broken wood came into hands, and brass knuckles and
knives came out of pockets. The femme vamp he'd been charming
even had a wicked butterfly knife in one hand.
Chair leg in one hand and stake in the other, Spike faced the
crowd and laughed. This was like the good old days, cornered, and
hunted, with his back up against the wall. The adrenalin filled him like
heroin.
"Right then, who's next?" he demanded.
He took out about six of them before he was backed out into
the rainy night, catching the edge of a knife across forehead and scalp
before he dusted the baby Viking. The rain washed the blood from his
face and into his eyes. Even with his enhanced night-vision, it was
hard to keep track of all of them in the unconfined space. The blonde
leapt at him, and a split-second of hesitation at the sight of the flow of
gold hair in the moonlight was enough of an advantage for her to tackle
him into the mud underfoot. He rolled with her, twisting his body so
when gravity caught up with her, she drove her own voluptuous chest
onto the point of the stake. Chick-dust mixed with the blood in his
eyes.
Scrambling to his feet, Spike counted four remaining vamps in
the street. The others were either mixing with the mud or had taken
themselves off somewhere else.
"The leader wants to meet you," one of the leftovers called
from a safe distance across the muddy parking lot.
"You tell me that now? Fuck off!"
"He wants to meet you, he's heard about you, William the
Bloody-"
"That's Spike. Don't forget it," he held his head up to the sky
and let the rain wash some of the blood away from his eyes. "You tell
your master that I remember when he was a trumped up little bullfrog,
and I'll meet with him when I'm damn well ready."
Hurting in about a dozen places, Spike squared his shoulders
and sauntered away like the meanest motherfucker who had ever
walked the planet. Once he was out of sight of the vamps, his
shoulders slumped and he began limping.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 16/18
There were only a limited number of enormous empty
warehouses; Spike found the Wirtschaftsministerium and his crew in
the fifth one he checked. A red Philomena demon with facial hair that
looked like extruded Play-Doh tried to block his way.
"Name's Spike," he said. "Your master sent me an engraved
invitation."
He really did not have the reserves to fight, and he was grateful
when the scarlet fellow returned, much more respectfully, and ushered
him in.
Karl had already begun to rearrange the inside of the
warehouse. The walls were covered with vines, and the vines had
fleshy pink flowers the size of beach balls. They moved as Spike
walked by, wavering towards him, petals curling and uncurling like
beckoning hands. Green-orange lizards with a few too many legs
clung to the vines, flickering white forked tongues at him. Small
cracks in the cement floor produced a purple grass that looked slick,
almost bloody. He noted that the Philomena demon leading him in
avoided walking on the grass, and followed suit.
The Wirtschaftsministerium had set up shop in the center of
the warehouse. Old crates had been hastily hammered together to
create a sort of throne, with a mini-moat made of kiddie pools for a
pink liquid that some of the demon's tentacles bathed in. Monkeys
chattered in the vines, and occasionally the Wirtschaftsministerium
would spiral a tentacle around one and bring it in to its central body,
then spit out bloody bones onto an already large pile off at the side. A
wall of oversized televisions flickered through every channel known to
humankind. One of the Wirtschaftsministerium's eyes watched TV
while the other looked down at the vampire standing in front of him.
"Spike," the JagdKriegspfarrer boomed, as if the statement
were only true because he was saying it.
"Jawohl," he said lightly.
One of the tentacles advanced, holding a squirming,
screaming simian.
"Monkey?"
"No thanks, I had baboon for lunch."
"You're Nosferatu," Karl stated, waving the monkey around like
a human with a buffalo wing. "What are you doing with those puny
humans?" he asked and popped the monkey in his mouth.
"Biding'm time," Spike explained. "I owe the Slayer a dirty trick
or two."
A tentacle swept toward him. This one was mottled green-
gray, covered with stiff hairs that brushed against his cheek. Spike felt
a chill as it draped around his neck and trailed down his spine. "I see
you do," the Wirtschaftsministerium said, and hawked up a ball of hair
and bones to punctuate. "So what's the deal?"
"Georg took somethin' of mine a long time ago. I got it back
but, me, I'm the type to carry a grudge."
The demon grunted acknowledgement.
"But now that Georg is out of the way, it seems to me that you
might be needin' a right-hand vampire. And if I was to bring you the
Slayer, away from her backup band so that she couldn't get away,
perhaps we could come to some sort of mutually satisfyin'
arrangement."
The tentacle had developed suckers, cool against Spike's skin.
He imagined Buffy, bound and bleeding, for the thing's amusement,
and was rewarded with a caress from his waist to his neck.
"I like the way you think, Spike," the Wirtschaftsministerium
said. "Are you sure you don't want a monkey?"
"Okay, brains, the night before we raid the demon's lair you
pick a fight with, like, all the vampires in town?"
Sitting at the kitchen table, Spike winced and dabbed at his
lower lip with a napkin. Buffy crossed her arms over her chest and
leaned against the counter.
"They started it," he muttered.
"Did you at least learn anything useful?"
"Yes, draw the line at twenty to one."
Things were now officially beyond the twilight and into the zone,
Buffy realized as she stomped to the laundry room, the pant leg hems
of her yummy sushi pajamas dragging on the floor. The Nazi Thing
was bad enough, the soul thing was worse, the Sex With Spike Thing
was unspeakable horror, and the Doing Spike Laundry tempted reality
itself. At least she had the answer to one of her longest-running
morbid questions: boxers or briefs? The answer was one she hadn't
thought of -- neither. And this kind of was just more than she wanted
to know; the fact that Spike went around commando was not
something she wanted to think about. Grip was lost and she was
thinking that maybe there was no getting it back. Her brain was doing
the hamster dance to keep Spike Thoughts at bay. The jeans were
still pretty wet so she set the dryer for another ten minutes and
returned to the kitchen to make sure he didn't try to make a Dawnwich
midnight snack.
Smirking his Spike smirk, he drank the beer she'd brought from
the basement. "Isn't this cozy?"
"Not. Your clothes dry and you are out of here."
In the other room, the dryer hummed and she could hear the
clatter-click of buttons and zippers hitting the metal inside. Spike
drank his beer and the hands crawled around on the clock for a while.
"So," she sat up straighter and folded her hands on the table,
"how's the soul thing working out for you?"
"My spirit is to weak -- mortality/Weighs heavily on me like
unwilling sleep/and each imagined pinnacle and steep/of godlike
hardship tells me I must die/Like a sick eagle, looking at the sky. /Yet
'tis a gentle luxury to weep."
The words swirled around their heads like fog and she blinked
away the sound-spell.
"Did you write that? I heard you tell Mom you wanted to be a
writer."
"No, John Keats did, and before you ask, I didn't know him, he
was long dead before I was even born," he said with some of his old
sharpness and pushed at his hair which had flopped down over the cut
on his forehead.
The dryer buzzed. Buffy got up and went to the laundry room,
Spike trotting alongside her like a guard dog. She felt in the tumbler
and wasn't pleased with the dryness so she put ten more minutes on
the machine. "Do you know any more poems? I never can memorize
them. I had to do it for school once and it was like blank-o change-o
right in front of the class."
He looked blank for a moment, blank as Buffy had been back in
the sixth grade.
"More Keats?" he asked before continuing, "Ah -- She dwells
with Beauty -- Beauty that must die;/and Joy, whose hand is ever at
his lips/Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh/Turning to poison
while the bee-mouth sips:/Ay, in the very Temple of Delight."
And she knew that her face had gone all red again; the dryer
had really heated up the laundry room and even Spike's pale vamp-
skin was looking a little blushy.
"Is there more?" she squeaked.
"Er . . Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,/ though seen
of none save him whose strenuous tongue/Can burst Joy's grape
against his palate fine;/His soul shall taste the sadness of her
might,/And be among her cloudy trophies hung."
She didn't mean to move, but then she tasted beer and the ash
of cigarettes on his lips. He muttered something into her mouth as
she tugged his shirt from his pants, her palms smoothing up and over
the coolness of his chest, underneath the sweatshirt. It really wasn't
fair, he was entirely too good at kissing, just the right amount of hard
and soft, the hint of teeth under lips, and she felt equal parts stupid and
happy. And it was terrible and it was wonderful. It was terrible
because he really just wasn't a nice guy, vampire or not, and not the
kind of guy that she should be letting into her house late at night, even
if he was---
"Shouldn't do this--" she mumbled into the familiar gray
sweatshirt.
The fizz died out of her thoughts like an opened can of Diet
Coke. Under her frosty pastel blue tipped fingers, the muscles on the
back of his neck were hard and solid as the dryer pressing against the
small of her back. Her breasts were mushing against his chest, even
through the flannel of her pajama top, and the un-gelled parts of his
hair were wrapping friendly-style around her fingers.
"Shh ... My mother will hear," Buffy mumbled against his throat.
His hands rounded up over her ribcage, her back, pushing up the
flannel like tissue paper in a gift bag.
"She got demon-ears or something?" he teased, and she felt
his voice move through his chest.
"Moms go all super-woman when guys are around."
He licked kisses around her hairline, over her eyelids, a brush
of teeth where her pulse jumped in her throat. "I did want to be a poet,
you know. That much was true," he whispered, and the wistfulness of
his tone made black and red sparks dance behind her eyes. She
shuddered and pulled him closer.
"Why weren't you?" she asked in a breathy, squeaky voice as
his hands rounded back around her front and homed in on her breasts.
"I sucked," he admitted.
Okay, she couldn't help it; an ugly little snicker escaped from
her once the pun registered, and his hands dropped from where they
had been testing her breasts as though he were checking for
freshness in cantaloupes. "Very funny," he said into her ear in a way
that made the left side of her body break out into gooseflesh, "you're in
trouble now."
Hands doing a vise-thing on her waist, he hoisted her up onto
the dryer, which was shuddering and thumping like a Maytag sex toy
underneath her, the heat from the coils inside warming the backs of
her legs and her behind, even as her head brushed against the cold of
the glass window behind. As Buffy eeped in surprise, Spike deftly
peeled her jammie bottoms away from her sweaty skin, dragging a
pair of one of her better Victoria's Secrets panties along with it. She
squealed and wriggled, but he pressed his hand over her mouth.
"Let's not wake Mummy, shall we?"
His free hand wandered slowly down her body, making her
jump and shiver and mouse-squeak into the musky mustiness of his
hand. Finally, his scary hand reached down between her legs and she
jolted with the shock of the hard dryness of his frightening fingers in
her wettest and softest parts. The dryer humped and bumped hotly
underneath her. Squeaks melted into moans as his fingers worked in
and out, following the thumping of the dryer, his thumb doing
something that it shouldn't where it wasn't supposed to be. All she
could do was arch her back and try not to scream into his hand now
hot and clammy from her captured breath. Buffy shut her eyes, not
wanting to see his dark eyes burning down through her. When The
Big One hit, she bit down into the unyielding skin of his palm and
screamed inside her head.
Wobbly, she let him ease her off the hotplate of the dryer, her
hot face against his cool chest. His skin was so soft, hairless and slick
under her tongue. He quickly shed the sweatpants and shirt that had
made him look so fragile, and underneath he was all long bones, arc of
arm and thigh against her. Red round bruises, healing nearly Slayer-
fast, dotted his chest, and she scraped her nails down his smooth
skin, catching a nipple as she went. With her back braced against the
machine, he bent down so that he could trace the contours of her
breasts with his tongue and fangs. She clung to his shoulders and
tried not to fall. A fang nicked her right nipple and she made a sound
she didn't think she'd ever made before. Pulling himself up to his full
height, he presented a human face to kiss her with. She tasted her
own blood.
"Turn around," he said into her ear, sounding more than a little
rough. He didn't breathe except to talk, she realized, that's why he
didn't need to come up for air --
"Turn around," he demanded again.
"Oh God," she explained to no one in particular, and let him
turn her to lean over the rumbling, panting dryer, his fingers digging
hard into her arms, her hips and her ass. The heat boiled past her,
wrapped her in an embrace like his arms. He pushed into her slowly,
then pulled out quick and repeated. She gritted her teeth and tried not
to whine. The angle was different; better, sending silver streamers out
to the ends of her hair. Her toes were barely brushing the ground and
his hands were smoothing over her back, tracing her backbone as he
grunted something that might have been her name.
She gripped the controls of the dryer, feeling her heart thump
with the laundry inside, thump with the thrusting inside of her that
threatened to boil her brain. EXTRA DRY, MORE DRY, COTTONS,
BUZZER ON, TIMED DRY. Her weight was on the dryer, her toes
curled over the tops of his bare feet. He was buried deep inside her,
deep enough to amaze, deep enough to hurt, deep enough for her to
break her fingernails on the wood-tone control panel. CLEAN LINT
FILTER BEFORE USE. She hummed with the dryer, from
somewhere within her belly. The pleasure bubbled up inside her,
passed through her skin and into his as he lay over her half on the
dryer, thrusting deeper still and harder, making her gasp for the hot air
to breathe.
"OhGodohgodohpleaseohpleaseoh," she choked between
lung-fulls of hot air.
She hit her chin on the top of the dryer when it hit, and she
barely heard the gonging of the dryer case as the cannon and
fireworks were going off in her brain and the rest of her nervous
system. Dimly, she was aware of pain in the back of her neck and
indistinct endearments partially swallowed by the thumping of the
dryer.
The buzzer on the dryer went off, loud enough to wake
everything in the nearest cemetery, but Buffy couldn't have moved if
the fate of the world was at stake.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 17/18
It was one of the half-dozen nice days allotted an English
summer, and the watery sun spilled down through the green leaves
overhead, dappling the grass with blotches of darkness. Across the
lacy blanket, Buffy rummaged in a wicker basket and frowned.
"There's tea and Diet Coke, I didn't know what you wanted,"
she fretted.
"Diet Coke's fine," he agreed, accepted a can and wondered
why he was wearing the cream linen suit he'd had when he was
human.
Just then the storm troopers began to goose-step by.
"It doesn't get better than this," she enthused, pulling a rabbit
wearing a white pinafore over a blue dress out of the basket. The
rabbit began to snuffle around the grass at the edge of the blanket and
nibble at the blue ribbon tied around its head.
"Er, no."
"I'm late!" the rabbit whined in a nasal voice, "I'm late and
mom's gone and I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Shut up," Buffy hissed at the rabbit who began to cry.
There had to be better ways to wake up than this, Spike
thought as he fought back the surrealist dream. The good news was
that he was still in Buffy's bed, she hadn't staked him in the middle of
the night, and he wasn't missing any of his more essential bits. The
bad news was that Buffy was arguing with her brat of a little sister in
the doorway.
"It's not my fault you're too stupid to drive!"
"You should have thought of that before you missed your bus!"
Abruptly, Dawn jumped back and goggled at Spike.
"Oh gross."
"Feeling's mutual," he grumbled and was relieved to see that
his pants were still on the bottom of the bed where he'd put them after
carrying Buffy upstairs the night before.
"You're havin' sex with another vampire. I'm telling Mom,"
Dawn warned.
"And I'm telling Mom you were trying to ditch school by missing
the bus."
"I'll drive her," Spike offered before he could stop himself, "I
have to get back anyway."
Dawn looked from bare-chested Spike in the bed to her
disheveled sister in her bathrobe and her canny little eyes narrowed in
an unattractive way.
"Give me your purple sweater, to keep, and I might not tell."
"Go get ready!"
Buffy slammed the door shut behind her extortion-minded
sibling and looked down at the floor while Spike clambered out of the
bed and pulled on his jeans.
"Spike --" she started in a pale copy of her usual voice.
"Yeah right, nothin' happened. But you better get the brat
straightened out before she tells your mum that nothin' happened." He
pulled his t-shirt on over his head and found that it smelled April-fresh,
which was slightly unnerving.
Rolling her eyes, Buffy leaned back against the door. "The first
time's an accident, the second time's a mistake, and after that it turns
into a bad habit."
"You could use a couple of bad habits," he advised and
advanced on the closed door.
She was all sleep-soft and languorous underneath his hands
and his mouth when he kissed the tender skin over her jugular vein.
Squirming agreeably against him, she leaned back against the door
and signed happily, her skin warm and silky underneath her bathrobe.
How long would it take for the kid to get ready for school, he wondered
as he examined the flavor of Buffy's collarbones.
"Buffy! NOW!" the evil child hollered from the hallway.
"I could make it look like an accident," Spike offered.
Rubbing her face with one hand, Buffy shook her head.
"We got stomped like narcs at a biker rally," Xander
complained and touched the black eye that was almost swollen shut.
"Speak for yourself, floppy-boy - I killed my man."
"Yeah, only after he unleashed the Wiffle-minister on us. Real
effective." Xander's contemptuous snarl made Spike decide that he
could tolerate the nausea, if he could only hold the boy down long
enough to drain him.
"Get stuffed."
"Go stake yourself."
"Oh, and which of us is magically adept enough to maybe
*notice* that the circle of power included the whole warehouse?
Huh?" Spike demanded, thumping a hand on the back of Xander's
chair, making Xander wince, "I'm thinkin' a little witchcraft might have
warned us *not* to go killin' vampires during a ceremony that required
as a main ingredient --- killin' vampires!"
Giles looked over to where Willow and Tara should be and
sighed. "Unfortunately we're not able to analyze that aspect of the
situation. But the Wirtschaftsministerium demon is here now, and we
have to deal with that."
"Spike says he's vulnerable if we can get him while he's trying
to consolidate his power by putting the whammy on a bunch of
vampires and demons, which he's going to do in order to enslave
them," Buffy offered, and then blushed. She was never going to be
able to keep the secret that she was doing the nasty with the nastiest.
He coughed, to draw attention away.
"From what I gather from the local vampires, Karl's havin' a big
hoo-rah tonight. Humans aren't invited -- they're on the menu. Karl
will be distracted what with trying to control hundreds of vamps and
demons. I say me an' the Slayer here sneak in and tie Karl up in a big
bow."
"What you have to remember about Walmartsteries demons is
that they can only be killed by removing the heart. Of course finding
the heart in a mass of tentacles and the -- uh, body part can be tough,"
Anya advised, "Normally I'd advocate going for the genitals first, but
Walmartsteries don't have them."
"I don't want to know how you know that." Xander flashed her a
dirty look.
"I'll come," Giles said, already reaching for his weapons.
"No." Spike folded his arms. "I can get one human in, sort of a
BYO beverage thing. But no more."
"Buffy?" Giles awaited some wisdom from the Slayer, which
Spike could have told him was about as likely as blood from a
grapefruit.
"I'm ready," she said. "No problemo."
There were entirely too many vehicles parked outside the
closed-down factory. As a matter of fact, the parking lot was virtually
full, and Spike could see lights inside the many-paned windows big as
the moon. The cool night air thrummed with a pulsing beat.
"Are you sure that this is the right place?" Buffy asked, her
hands automatically touching each of the weapons attached to her
person the way a Ninja nun would cross herself.
"Looks like a party," Spike admitted and shut the driver's-side
door of the SUV behind him. How Buffy could have grown up in
California without ever learning to drive escaped him.
"Partying demons?"
"Hey, demons throw one hell of a party, I remember in Paris,
oh, there was this one cavern in the catacombs --" he grinned at the
memory, "the gin flowed like water, there was an all-demon jazz band,
half the dancers from the Follies Bergere were there dancing naked,
and Picasso got drunk and started crying. Hemingway . . . the size of
a tangerine -- I mean, I don't usually look but, it was pretty spectacular.
The party, that is."
"Whatever," Buffy agreed and began striding her purposeful
booted stride across the parking lot. "How's this going to work?"
"I'm sure we'll figure something out once we get inside."
"You're pretty confident for a guy who couldn't kill this demon
last time."
"I was hauling your ass out of trouble last we were at his little
abattoir. That's a slaughterhouse," he amended as her nose wrinkled.
"I know what an abattoir is!" Buffy protested. "My death and
destruction vocabulary is unmatched among my peer group."
Spike was caught between advising her that she was peerless
and asking her to spell the word.
As they drew closer, Spike could hear the music, Acid House,
dance beat. A beat that vibrated his heart and made his toes itch,
catchy as hell. They reached a door marked "Emergency Exit Only"
where a short line of demons, possible vamps, and possible vamp-
groupies were lined up for entrance. For all intents and purposes, it
looked like the line outside Studio 54 back in the day.
"I hope there's no cover charge," he muttered and felt around in
his coat pocket for his cigarettes and lit one.
"Could you please not smoke," she hissed as they took places
in line.
"Beg your pardon, but I'm a bit apprehensive, right?"
They shuffled along in line, and Spike put his arm around her
shoulders in a careless, possessive way. Naturally, she glared holes
in him.
"I am the vamp, and you are my fang-candy. Got it?"
At the door, Spike showed the bouncer his teeth and Buffy
gave the vamp her sweetest smile, which was almost enough to give
Spike a hard-on right then and there, and even the bouncer melted
under the warmth of her expression. Spike was sure that the leather
and tattoo vamp was hiding a Mr. Pointy of his own somewhere under
his jeans.
"Have a good time," the bouncer called after them in a wistful
voice.
Inside, the music was loud enough that conversation could only
take place at a bellow.
"This is fuck off amazing," Spike marveled, "He's been
watching MTV."
The cavernous space of the factory had been transformed into
a club the likes of which he had never seen before, and Spike had
seen plenty of clubs. The foliage was less noticeable, the walls
covered with scarlet fabric to hide it, and if the fabric moved most of
the guests would assume that it was a breeze or their own alcoholic
daze. The center section of the factory floor was three stories high,
surrounded by girder balconies. The required swastika flags were
hanging from the balconies, rippling with the music and the canned
smoke rising up from the dance floor. A DJ booth was tucked in a
corner, and stadium-concert sized speakers reached for the sky
visible through the skylights above. The floor of the factory was
crowded with vampires, humans, demons of almost every description,
and a few things that Spike couldn't identify. Strobe lights fought with
their colors over the dance floor, cut by artificial smoke and a green
laser dance through the whole thing. The dance floor and the
balconies were packed. Karl must have been able to attract every
demon, vampire, and whatever, from Seattle down to Tijuana, no
mean feat.
"Well this certainly attracts the sixty and under crowd," Spike
admitted. "Hell, I'm attracted."
"So how old are you, anyway?" Buffy asked.
"That's none of your business!" he snapped.
She might have blushed in that cute human way of hers, but
the lights were turning her face blue so it was difficult to tell.
"After everything that's happened, I think I deserve to know a
few things about you," she shouted over the music.
"Fair enough," Spike agreed and began heading around the
dance floor.
"I asked you a question," she yipped and followed him.
"Yeah? So? This isn't a date, we have to stop Karl."
"Well aren't we focused."
"All this," Spike gestured around them, "is generating powerful
psychic energy. I'm thinkin' Karl is goin' to use that psychic energy to
brainwash everyone here into helping him create the Fourth Reich. All
the noise will help conceal us, but we're still going to have to sneak up
on him."
"Sneak up on him. Gotcha," she said and snapped back into
Slayer mode.
You know, Spike realized, if you broke things down into bite-
sized chunks, she picked up fairly quickly.
"You all should know this one," the DJ said smoothly. "Let's
have some audience participation here!"
And you don't stop sure shot
Go out to the parking lot
And you get in your car and drive real far
And you drive all night and then you see a light
And it comes right down and it lands on the ground
And out comes the man from Mars
And you try to run but he's got a gun
And he shoots you dead and he eats your head
And then you're in the man from Mars
You go out at night eating cars
You eat Cadillacs Lincolns too
Mercurys and Subaru
And you don't stop
You keep on eating cars
Then when there's no more cars you go out at night
And eat up bars where the people meet
"They had best not quit their day jobs," Spike muttered.
"And now, the monster you've all been waiting for: the
JagdKriegspfarrer, here to give you the very best in German
philosophy and bloodcurdling terror!"
The red-and-blue lights focused on a raised dais in the middle
of the dance floor. The beams swirled and flashed at an epilepsy-
inducing rate. A flashpot burst and coated the dais with dry-ice
smoke, and a few tentacles seeped over the edges like some crazy
demonic striptease.
Karl's cavernous mouth distorted in a grin large enough to
swallow a cow. "Thank you, thank you very much. I'm sure you're all
wondering why I called you here tonight."
His cadence changed, slipping back into the bloodcurdled
rhetoric of the Thousand-Year Reich. "I have built a new home for our
kind, and have given those who dwell in that house a new spirit and
new meaning. All those who may think that they can shake this state,
or even bring it to collapse, should take note. They should not deceive
themselves! If our old enemies and opponents should seek to attack
us once more, our battle flags will fly high and they will learn respect
for us!"
The masses cheered, and Spike wasn't a surprised to see a
few lighters lit by the more foolish humans in the group.
"We are not careless and foolish. History has given us hard
lessons. But we are calm and self confident. I am so when I see you. I
know that there is a unique movement behind me, a wonderful
organization of men and demons. I see before me endless columns
of the flags of our new Cause. I make this prophecy to you: This
Cause has the first days of its youth behind it. It will grow in the
coming centuries, becoming strong and powerful!"
"He's paraphrasing Hitler, and not well at that," Spike hissed
into Buffy's ear.
"These flags will be borne by ever new generations of our kind.
Schutzstaffel-Totenkopfverbande is healthy once more! Our kind is
reborn! Fight as you have never fought! Be upright and determined,
fear no one and do your duty! If you do so, the power of Hell itself will
never desert our kind!"
"We'll go on three," Buffy whispered, and he felt her tense
beside him. "One, two --"
"Three." He said and grabbed her wrists.
Her squeal of shock was a terrible sound to his ears as he
snapped the handcuffs around her wrists.
"You asshole!" she shrieked.
The lights went up, and it was like something out of Star Wars,
with the varied demons circled and watching, the
Wirtschaftsministerium leaning down from his throne and somehow
Buffy was front and center on the dance floor, kicking at Spike.
"I told you I could bring her without her little spellcasting
friends," he said, jerking Buffy up by her chained wrists, as she twisted
her head to glare at him. "No fuss, no muss, no blood on your nice
dirty floors."
"You lying, cheating, vampire asshole!" she raged.
"Good job, really. I'm impressed," the Wirtschaftsministerium
admitted.
"And my reward?"
"They're going to make up a new word for what I'm going to do
to you," Buffy promised him, her braid lashing his cheek as she
struggled, but he'd got leverage and he wasn't going to lose it.
"I think 'fellatio' is a perfectly acceptable term," he said
reasonably.
"You are so dead -- asshole," she growled.
The Wirtschaftsministerium ignored her. "I've had them
change one of the offices over into a love lounge. I would like to
watch," and there was something about a green-thing-with-tentacles
leer that made it much more lascivious than a regular leer.
Spike rubbed the crotch of his jeans with his free hand,
causing Buffy to gasp and try even more frantically to wriggle away.
"Oh, we'll have a grand opening, all right. After an initial, private
breaking-in period."
Once the Wirtschaftsministerium laughed, the rest of the
bunch knew it was all right to chortle along. "This way, then," the
monster waved a tentacle to his right, indicating an opening that
headed deeper into the abandoned factory system.
A pair of biker vamp chicks took Buffy away from Spike and
hauled her off while she glared holes into Spike.
"So," Spike looked around, "Nice place you got here, lots of
space."
"The first thing we do when we attack LA is take over the
Staples center. Now that has room to stretch some tentacles in."
"Good choice, " Spike rummaged around in his brain for other
small-talk one could have with a megalomaniac demon and wasn't
coming up with anything really useful.
Fortunately, the vampchicks came back with Buffy in tow, a
splutteringly furious Buffy decked out in some filmy white gown that
looked like it had been filched from a Hammer House of Horror movie,
and bare feet. She had, he realized, blue toenails.
"I let you into my house, I gave you protection, and I let you
drive my sister to school. I trusted you! You turn me over to
NaziTentacleBoy? I even slept with you and--"
Unfortunately, the demon manning the DJ booth was changing
records when Buffy spoke and the last sentence fell into silence like
ball bearings into a tin bucket. Spike winced, and Buffy looked around
into a circle of amused inhuman eyes.
"Walk of shame time," she muttered.
The Wirtschaftsministerium squinted at Buffy. "You already
*slept* with him? Slayer, what part of 'evil demon' don't you
understand?" Her cheeks were so red now against her white face that
she looked like Drusilla had been playing dress-up with her. Her
death-glare intensified to warp factor nine. I canna' hold her, Cap'n, he
thought and grinned.
"Humiliation's a good look for you," he told her and took her
elbow, dismissing the girl-vamps with a wave.
"I'm-going-to-stick-you-outside-until-you-turn-into-Spike-jerky!--
Then-I'm-going-dunk-you-in-a-baptizing-pool,-nail-a-mezuzah-to-your-
forehead-and-make-you-watch-Barney-videotapes-until-you-beg-to-be-
staked!"
As Spike and his struggling captive passed the
Wirtschaftsministerium, Spike ran his hands over Buffy's pert derriere.
She spit and managed to spatter his cheek, but he came away with
her emergency stake, which had been taped to the small of her back.
"I think we'll just take that away, too," he said, and turned and buried it
in the laughing demon's chest.
The rest of the demons froze as if Spike had hit their "pause"
buttons, and he pressed the handcuff key into Buffy's hand as the
Wirtschaftsministerium screamed. Sadly, it did not turn to dust, but
yellow ichor flowed around the stake, and Spike took the opportunity to
thrust his index fingers into the thing's eyes. The eyeballs burst like
grapes, really big, slimy, hot grapes, and then chaos really began to
swirl around them.
Karl's voice was distorted, as if it were coming from within a
deep well. "You are a lying asshole! You're supposed to be on my
side!"
The fight was too difficult for him to think of a snappy reply and
live. The tentacles swooped and lashed, forcing him to jump like a
child at double Dutch, and he realized that the safest move was closer
in to its torso, where it had less control over the thick tentacles. He
dodged closer, nearly tripping over a decapitated demon body. In the
background, he could see Buffy swinging the ceremonial sword she'd
recovered from one of the vamp-attendants. She moved like a child
whacking at a piñata, but with better accuracy. Heads popped off
hither and yon, some bodies exploding into dust, some not.
Unfortunately, Spike had paid attention to Giles and Anya's briefing on
the Killing of Wirtschaftsministerium demons and knew what he had to
do to get rid of this particular monstrosity. Closer and closer, he
fought his way toward the heaving green mess, staking and stabbing
whatever came at him. The Wirtschaftsministerium howled and
thrashed as Spike grew nearer. Finally, he was within arm's length of
the blind creature and he pulled the knife out of his coat. Well, it wasn't
so much a knife as a machete and if Giles found it missing, he was
going to be bloody furious, but would just have to get over it.
"Come on, old thing, this won't hurt a bit," he hissed at the
Wirtschaftsministerium. "Actually, it should hurt a lot."
It howled and thrashed more, tentacles seeking him out.
Presumably it could still see through others' eyes, but it must still be
disoriented without its own. Spike saw his opening and threw himself
at the demon, the eucalyptus and mothball smell of the
Wirtschaftsministerium nearly making him gag. The thing felt like a
plastic bag that had been rubbed with Vaseline and he couldn't get a
good enough purchase between the tentacles to know if he was
aiming for the right spot. Taking a deep breath, he plunged the
machete in where the Wirtschaftsministerium presumably kept
whatever it used for a heart.
The Wirtschaftsministerium screamed in rage and pain and
lashed out, a tentacle stinging deep into the flesh of Spike's leg and
then he was upside down, looking down at the gaping maw of the
beast under its blind eyes while the Wirtschaftsministerium shook him
as though it were trying to break every bone in his undead body.
Pocket change, old keys, lighters, and a few of Buffy's earrings
rained down from Spike's pockets as he was shaken, jiggled, and
waved from side to side. Feeling as though was on a bad round on a
Big Dipper, Spike concentrated on not throwing up his medical supply
dinner.
"Buffy!" he shouted, "Sword? Now?"
"'Fellatio' is a perfectly acceptable term?" She de-capped a
vamp with grim glee. "Grand opening? Private breaking-in period?" A
demon staggered back minus a hand and part of its tail.
"Humiliation's a good look for you?"
"It's going to eat me!"
She paused in mid-massacre long enough to put her fist on her
hip and give him Amazonian attitude, "Well pardon the*fuck* out of me
if I'm not totally and completely concerned for your welfare."
A leather vamp rushed at her. Buffy held out a stake and it
impaled itself. She didn't move a cell.
"I'm your ride home!" he reminded her.
"Shit," she swore and tossed the sword towards him.
If Slayers and vampires participated in the Olympics, the track
and field events would have a whole new performance level without
the use of drugs. The sword easily sailed the length of the factory
floor, and Spike managed to wiggle his body into position so he barely
caught it, the blade nicking his fingers and blood running uselessly
down his fingers and into the air.
"Time to rock," he said and cut the tentacle around his leg
clean through.
Hitting the floor was a welcome pain; he bounced back up, cut
the arm off a polyester Nazi vamp and staked him for good measure.
Rounding on the Wirtschaftsministerium, he held out the sword like a
child in a holiday pantomime.
"Okay fat-boy, let's dance," he told the heaving green
monstrosity.
"I'm going to suck the flesh from your bones, vampire."
"Is that your final answer?"
The sword hit home. The Wirtschaftsministerium yowled with
pain and then began to spray yellow ichor everywhere. Screwing up
his nerve and his stomach, Spike stuck his free hand into the beast's
gut and rummaged around. Karl wheezed, wailed and heaved, nearly
knocking Spike loose, but Spike persevered while swearing horrible
oaths under his breath. This digging around in the
Wirtschaftsministerium's gut was beyond the call of duty; it was like
sticking his hand in a very old bag of kitchen garbage without the
eggshells. Finally, he grabbed something with a little more gristle than
the rest of it and pulled. With a sickening pop, Spike fell backwards,
covered in bilious goo, holding the sword in one hand and what felt like
an over-ripe watermelon in the other. He dropped the watermelon
thing onto the floor. It bounded a few times before landing with a splat.
Shaking goo from him like a dog shakes mud from its fur, Spike
scrambled to his feet and rammed the sword with both hands into
what he hoped was the demon's heart and not its liver. The blade of
the sword went a good six inches into the cement floor, skewering the
foul organ to the factory's substructure for good. The
Wirtschaftsministerium heaved horribly and Spike grabbed one of the
lighters that had rained from his pockets during his spate of inversion,
and ignited it over one of the long streams of ichor leading from the
heart back to the demon proper.
Bloody hell, what was it that Dracco had said right before he
died?
"They shall never forget," he suggested and dropped the
lighter. The merry flame zipped along and hit the mysterious organ
and the main body of the demon at about the same time.
The Wirtschaftsministerium went up like a recycling bin full of
gasoline-soaked newspapers and smelled like the down dump was
ablaze.
"See you in Hell," he told the flaming mass that used to be the
monster's body.
He turned and Buffy was standing in the midst of a field of
corpses. With Karl's demise, every vamp and demon with two
neurons to rub together had decided to see what the party scene was
like in, maybe, Schenectady. She looked to him like Venus rising from
the waves, if Venus were covered in gore up to her elbows. The blood
soaking her nightdress plastered it to her chest in a most attractive
way.
Buffy was staring down at her feet. He hurried over to her; the
demon-bonfire was going to spread fast.
"They took my shoes," she told him. "I paid two hundred
dollars for those shoes."
"I'll reimburse you," he said, and she shot him a look of pure
surprise.
He took off for the back door. Halfway there, he turned back.
She was limping, leaving dark smears on the ground behind her. She
refused to meet his eyes, just continued moving forward stiff-legged.
She was not going to beat the fire. Cursing, he galumphed
back to her, hoping his coat would protect him from stray sparks.
Buffy smacked him hard enough to make his head spin when
he picked her up. "Listen, I don't like this any more than you do," he
said, struggling not to vamp out on her from proximity to so much
blood.
Her face moued in disgust and disbelief. He was seriously
tempted to drop her on her delectably firm ass, but instead he slung
her over his shoulder, smiling when she oofed surprise, and began to
run for the exit. Burning slicks of liquid -- alcohol, demon blood,
demon vomit -- made the dance floor into a maze, and Buffy was
beginning to cough from all the smoke rising. Her dress fluttered
around him like a hundred tattered butterflies.
Outside, he stopped and looked around for the SUV. The
warehouse boomed and groaned behind them. Fortunately, no one
had stolen his stolen vehicle, and he shoveled Buffy into the
passenger side just as the warehouse went up like Chernobyl.
"Well, there it goes, the bonfire of the wannabes-" Spike said
over the howl of the flames, fumbling for the seatbelt to buckle Buffy in.
He was so proud of himself that he didn't see it coming, so
when her right hook caught him square in the nose, he staggered back
in pain and surprise.
"Dob't *boo* dat!" he whined, hands clasped over his snout.
Shoulders square, nose pointing to the moon, Buffy wrapped
the tattered remains of her dress and her dignity around her and
jumped out of the Explorer. Spike shook his head to clear it and stared
after her with a mix of rage and wonder.
Then he got into the SUV and started it up, bringing it around to
crawl beside her. "That can't be helpin' your feet," he said.
She limped onward.
"You saved me so I could drive you home. If you don't let me
do it, you'll have saved me for nothin'."
This made her stop and think, and after a minute (probably the
most serious cogitation she'd ever done), she got in.
The Heart's Filthy Lesson 18/18
Spike carried her into the crypt. By this time she was almost
used to it, but not so used that she didn't notice him feeling her ass as
he went. He plunked her down on the black-and-red bed and
disappeared into crypty darkness.
If he thought she was going to sleep with him just because he'd
carried her out of a burning building, when he'd killed her shoes in the
first place --
Spike reappeared, carrying a metal basin and some red
towels. He knelt by the bed and took her dirty, bloody foot in his hands.
With unexpected gentleness, he began to clean her feet. The
water was warm and comforting. "The reason the
Wirtschaftsministerium beat you the first time is that he could read
minds. Because you're human, he could sense you coming; you
never could have surprised him. You had to believe that I was
betraying you."
He finished one foot and began on the other. "How can I be
sure you weren't doing your usual trick of switching to whatever side
was winning?"
"You can't I suppose, but it takes a lot of arrogance to think that
you were going to overpower that monster horde all on your own with
your hands cuffed behind your back. If I was playing the odds, I should
have just snapped your neck. It would have prevented the private
show I promised the Wirtschaftsministerium, but he wouldn't have
killed me for that. Probably." His touch was so gentle, patting her feet
dry. She could feel every loop on the terry towels.
"So how did *you* fool him?"
Spike looked her in the face for the first time since they'd
entered the crypt. "When I met with him, I didn't think about betrayin'
him."
Buffy stared at him. You couldn't just not think about
something -- everyone knew the joke 'don't think about a pink
elephant.' You'd have to have, like, two separate brains, one evil and
one good.
Or two separate souls -- demon and human.
"What? I got something in my teeth?"
She shook her head unnecessarily. He was still holding her
right foot in his lap, and he returned his gaze to it. Slowly, carefully, he
raised it to his lips. She jerked in surprise when she felt the cool lap of
his tongue, rough over the newly forming scabs, but he held her firmly
and she felt a bolt of white heat travel from her feet to her crotch.
He washed her feet a second time with his tongue, cleaning
away the dried blood. Willow said the feet were maps of the body, but
she'd never known it could feel like his tongue was everywhere at
once, her breasts, between her legs, even her forehead, phantom
kisses as his mouth grew red with her blood. His eyes never left hers;
even when she had to toss her head back he was still watching her
face when she turned back. Vampire saliva contained a clotting agent
to combat the large wounds the vamp made, she remembered Giles
saying, but it hardly mattered now as she writhed like a music video
star on the slick scarlet sheets. When his mouth left her feet and
began to trace a path up her legs, meandering to explore the backs of
her knees and the outside of her thighs, she began to moan in earnest.
This is crazy, crazy. The thought was like a mantra in her
head, drowning out the sound of herself panting. Her hands clutched
at the sheets, which pooled and slid away from her grasp like her good
sense. Spike licked her through her white panties, smearing blood
there as if her virginity had been returned. She arched up into his
hands, hard against her thighs. The silk moved against her, guided by
his tongue, and the white noise thrumming in her ears blew all
thoughts out of its path with tornado force.
She was still shuddering through her orgasm when he ripped
her underwear off and pushed inside her. He was still wearing his
clothes, he'd just opened the fly of his jeans, and the chuff of the
denim against her thighs was painful, and almost intolerably arousing.
His cock -- Spike her first lover she could think of as having a cock,
like a separate part of him designed just to give her pleasure -- burned
inside her, throbbing in response to the pulse of her blood. She
managed to pull his black T-shirt off, quickly lost against the sheets.
He'd lost all finesse, groaning into her collarbone, plucking at the
tatters of the flimsy nightgown as he slammed her into the bed.
"Slayer -- Slayer -- sweet beautiful fuck --"
She cried out as his fangs grazed her shoulder, but he didn't
bite down, only buried his face in her neck as he rode out his own
extended orgasm.
This is not good, she thought as he rolled off of her and
snuggled into her side, smelling of salt and blood.
And, I'm going to need to borrow his clothes.
It took nearly fifteen minutes to cover up her various cuts and
scrapes with makeup. There was a thin red line where Spike had
nicked her shoulder the last time; his other visitations were already
healed. Blood sports, she thought uneasily, and remembered arching
back to meet his mouth.
She needed to talk to someone. Things were not okay. In fact
Buffy thought Okayville might not be on the same planet with her. So
she headed to the Magic Shop, where okay was
"Willow, I, uh, have a confession to make." Buffy stared at her
toes intently. Teal had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but
now she thought it might clash with too great a percentage of her
wardrobe.
"What is it?" Willow had that hushed best-friends tone, like she
was really excited to hear a secret to show that she and Buffy were
still tight despite the whole Tara thing.
She took a deep breath. Best to be straightforward. "I, uh, I
kinda, accidentally, slept with Spike."
"You slept with *Spike*!"
"It's not certain that the neighbors heard you, why don't you yell
again."
"Accidentally? Like, he was naked and you were naked and
you just fell on him?. . ."
"I didn't *mean* to. It just -- sort of -- happened." She paused,
knowing it would come out eventually. "Three times."
"Three -- Not going to repeat any more, I swear," Willow put up
a hand. "But -- Buffy?" How could you, she meant.
"I don't know," she said miserably. "I wasn't doing a lot of deep
thought at the time." Deep breathing, maybe.
"He has a soul," Willow said hopefully. "And, on the positive
side, he's nearly as strong as you are, so the whole insecurity thing
won't be such a problem, and compared to his ex you're like a model
of normalcy."
"Also there's the sex," Buffy offered. "On the positive side."
"Bad image, fast forward," Willow said, and blushed from her
hairline to the neck of her peasant blouse. "On the negative side, he's
still kind of a psycho killer."
"That's the big question mark," she admitted. "But if he just
kills bad guys, isn't he just like me?" Or, she thought, aren't I just like
him?
- 9 -
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