by Melville
The Second Kill
New York City, 1977
The kill felt different this time. Different from the Chinese girl. Spike sat on the edge of the bed in his basement apartment in The Bowery. It had been the closest thing to a crypt he could find in New York City when he'd arrived six months before. The hunt had been good, the hunt that he'd wanted. And the kill itself, the kill was always good. But why did he feel different now?
He searched for the bottle of single malt he kept (Strange, he'd never felt the need for that kind of drink after a kill before) and thought about what had brought him to New York. He'd been at loose ends. It had been years since he'd seen Angelus. Wherever he went he heard the rumors: that Angelus had gone soft, even that he'd gained a soul. Spike scoffed at it all, thought of maybe finding Angelus and starting a new spree to prove them all wrong. But he depended on Drusilla's psychic powers to locate him and...Spike found the bottle of single malt and took a long pull at it. Dru, that silly, stupid little...running off again with yet another demon, he didn't even know what kind this time. Ahhh, what had he cared, he needed a hunt, a hunt for a Slayer, and when he'd heard about the new one in NYC, he was on his way.
He arrived in New York the previous summer and wondered why every vamp he met was so scared. This place was a happy hunting ground. It wasn't just the crime and the violence, so much of it that the people took it as a normal part of life, the police too overwhelmed dealing with the normal killings to worry about the ones committed by vampires. It was the mood of the place, the acceptance of the chaos. Spike felt it most in the music coming out of the dingy downtown clubs. All those yobbos singing their hearts out about their ugliest feelings, or about having no feelings at all. It made him feel at home, and he wasn't surprised to find that some of the bands had vamps as members. He loved that the music made them come out into the open like that, and adopted the look himself, the hair, the black leather. But even the punks were terrified of the Slayer. "You don't know this one," they told him. "She doesn't care about anything but slaying. She's a stone killer."
Not knowing if she'd learned of his arrival, he began to follow her. Her fighting style was impressive, and she was as ruthless as he had been told. He found her training space, a dojo in Brooklyn, and listened as her Watcher fed her the usual garbage about killing demons, on how she had to turn herself into a weapon. Those ridiculous tweedy toffs, what do they know about it besides what they'd read in their books? But she lapped it all up without question, training all day, hunting every night, sleeping 4 hours out of every 24, never seeming to tire. He found her apartment, too, and though unable to enter, he could see all of the single room through the window, and had plenty of time to inspect it when she wasn't there. Inside there was only a bed, an alarm clock, a table, a refrigerator, and a hot plate. No T.V., radio, or stereo, no pictures on the bare walls, no keepsakes of any kind, unless she was sentimental about the weapons he could see under the bed. Nothing. Nothing that could make anyone think that someone even vaguely human lived there. That's when he knew he could attack, and win.
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The single malt had run out, but he found a bottle of Irish. Why, he had asked Angelus many years ago, could vampires not enjoy food, but were still affected by liquor? "The blood is to make you feel alive," he'd answered, "and the booze is to make you forget that you're not." Or maybe he'd said "to remember that you're not." Ahhh, what did it matter, that damned bog-hopper, another one convinced that just because you spoke with a brogue and got soused every Saturday night that it made you a poet-philosopher. He probably had gone soft, at that. Soft as that bloody Bloody William. He needed another drink at the thought of him. He told himself again that that wasn't him, that it had never been him, that it was just a bunch of memories he had to carry around. The Slayer was no different. The Chinese girl had called out for her mother before he'd killed her, but she had no more mother, it was just something left over from her old life, before she was a Slayer. The girl tonight had gotten rid of all those memories. When he looked into her eyes at the end, he saw no regret or plea for mercy. There was nothing there. Nothing. "Nothing," he shouted aloud as if there was someone else in the room. Just the hatred of a killer being killed. That's all the Slayers were, just killers like him. There would never be one whose mission would amount to anything more. There would never be one whose mother would mean anything to her, not one whose Watcher would consider her anything more than a tool.
A new Slayer would arise somewhere soon, but he knew he had nothing to fear from her. Perhaps he'd stay here awhile, join a band, enjoy the spree that was sure to break out once it was known that the Slayer was dead. Dru would surely come crawling back like she always did, especially when word got out that he'd killed another Slayer. That's why I'm getting drunk, he told himself as he tossed away the second empty bottle, I'm celebrating. He fell back onto the bed and thought as he lost consciousness, my life is good. My life is good.
The End