“What the f--” The imp leaped out of the cage, and latched onto Spike’s face before he could finish his sentence. It was a sickly looking thing—all bony, gray and wrinkly, with sharp little teeth, big pointy ears, and beady green eyes. Spike was getting far too close a look at the imp as he thrashed his head around, and batted at it angrily trying to dislodge it. But imp versus vampire? The battle didn’t last long, and by the time the crowd realized something was going on, Spike was holding the small, limp creature in the air by the neck, twisting a corkscrew into its chest for the pure satisfaction of it, and waiting for the last high-pitched scream to escape its doomed body.
The door behind the stage swung open, and dozens of stumbling, frightened people, their mouths taped shut and their hands tied behind their backs, stepped out reluctantly, propelled forward by a good shoving from Angus and his two minions. At the same time, the crowd of vamps were slowly regaining their mental independence, and looking around slightly confused and unsure of what to do about the free meal coming their way.
Angus stepped on to the stage, and instantly set his sights on Spike.
“Oh, Hell. I leave the thing alone for 10 ruddy seconds--”
“Rookie mistake, mate,” Spike sighed, thoughtlessly tossed the imp over his shoulder and jumped confidently onto the stage. “Now, are we gonna fight, or what?”
“You!”
“Yeah! So nice of you to remember. I thought with all the killing of the pregnant bint and well, me only being in your head and all, you might not recognize me,” Spike said dryly.
“It was you I felt, wasn’t it? Why?”
“Sires can just do that sometimes. Wasn’t by choice, believe me.” He shuddered.
“Sire?”
“Yep. Daddy’s home, sport. Give us a kiss.” Spike smirked, tapping his cheek, and going into game face.
“Get away from me!” Angus yelled, and bent over as if he might throw up. A look of disappointment washed over Spike’s face.
“Okay, you really need to practice the verbal sparring thing. Not intimidating, at all.”
“Leave me the hell alone.”
“See? Not intimidated!”
Realizing that there were roughly 30 people in the room who were about to be sucked dry, Spike tried to hurry things along. He kicked the kid in the face. Really hard. Somewhere between the second powerful uppercut that sent Angus flying off the stage and the jump-kick that had him curl in a ball on the floor, Angel had come back with the others. He, Gunn, Wesley, Buffy and Gwen easily began to gain control over the hungry crowd of Vamps. Spike found himself conveniently free to continue pummeling Angus, knowing that the humans were safe. And God, did it feel good! The boy had earned every wince, every whine, every crunch. Spike lost himself in his catharsis somewhere, laying punch after brutal punch on a body that was no longer making any effort to fight back.
“Spike!” It was Buffy. She was standing over him, watching as he thoughtlessly swung his fists at Angus, who lay on the floor, pinned between Spike’s knees. “It’s over!”
He looked up to discover that besides a few dazed humans and the rest of Angel’s gang, the cellar was empty. All the vamps were gone—escaped, or dusted.
“Oh,” he replied, dazed. He looked back down at the bruised and bloodied vampire under his legs, and tried to think. How was this possible? It all seemed too easy. This pathetic excuse for an Aurelian was Wolfram and Hart’s evil scheme? And Spike had managed to overtake him in a manner of minutes. What was the catch? Suddenly, his victory was leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. Still, he might as well finish the job.
“Well,” he continued, “this is embarrassing—I seem to have misplaced my stake.”
“Right.” Buffy handed him hers. He thrust it into Angus’s chest without a second thought, and fell forward when the explosion of dust left him with nothing beneath his legs.
“So I guess that’s it then,” Spike said, standing up, and brushing himself off.
“Spike,” Buffy enquired delicately, “that was your . . . I mean, he was yours?”
“Yeah. But like a test-tube baby kinda deal,” he said. There was a tinge of sorrow in his voice that surprised even Spike.
Gwen and Angel approached them , surveying the room for stragglers of the good and evil variety.
“That wasn’t so bad!” Gwen said, sounding quite pleased. “I haven’t had a good vamp rumble like that in, well, okay, ever. But I kicked ass!”
“Glad you enjoyed yourself,” Spike said sardonically.
“Hey! Speak for yourself. You didn’t look too keen on stopping with the repeated pummeling anytime soon,” Gwen smiled, kicking at the dust on the floor.
“Yeah, well, I had some issues to work out.”
“Ah. Channeling bottled-up emotions through good ol’ reliable violence,” Buffy sighed longingly. “A time honored American tradition.” She took her stake back from Spike, and the four of them made their way out of the cellar, collecting Gunn and Wes on the way.
“Not surprising,” Angel said “Ran into a few Puritans back in the day. Those guys are just creepy. Like zombie robots or something.”
“So, they gave us Thanksgiving, the Salem Witch trials, and a total inability to express our feelings in a healthy manner?” Gwen said.
“Yeah. It’s all about the funny hats, though. Right Fitchy?” Spike asked, referring to the logo on the ugly green trucker cap Angel was still sporting.
Angel quickly removed the thing and tossed it to the ground. He had obviously forgotten about it. “Shut up, Spike,” he grumbled.
They continued down the corridor, and had almost reached the service tunnel entrance, when a woman appeared before them. A woman that Spike recognized in a very bad, foreboding, dark clouds ahead kind of way. Her almost black eyes sparkled with power in the darkness of the long abandoned cellar, lit only by the flashlights of four humans.
“And where do you think you’re going?” She asked and blocked the hallway as if there was an enormous army standing ready behind her.
Spike was the only one who knew that the question was directed at him.
“Who are you,” Angel growled. “What do you want?”
“Angelus, a pleasure. The name’s Trixie. And it’s not what I want. It’s what I’m entitled to. Or more specifically, what They are entitled to,” she explained confidently.
Oddly, what did not occur to Spike at this time was “Oh, shit. This can’t be good,” or something along those lines. What did occurred to him was that she didn’t look like a Trixie. It just didn’t work. Trixies were sly, catlike, showgirl types. Childish and sexed at the same time. Gwen looked more like a Trixie than this woman. She was much too . . . brutish. She wore a conservative suit and black pumps that someone’s mum might compliment. But the most un-Trixie-like thing about her was her mouth. It was small and tight—and totally un-kissable. Trixies were always kissable.
“They? And why should we give a damn what they’re entitled to?” Wesley demanded, letting his grizzly alter-ego take command.
“I don’t know. Spike? Why don’t you help me out. Why should they give a damn about you?” She almost sounded genuinely stumped. Spike stared back at her thoughtfully. Her name was Trixie and she was real. She must be Wolfram and Hart’s link between realms, or some kind of interdimensional messenger, he thought. In any case, she was after him again. And he really had no idea what was going on.
“Spike,” Gwen asked “do you know her?”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t know what to say, honestly. He glanced at Gwen and then at Buffy. The two of them stood side by side, with their arms crossed, splitting their attention between Trixie and himself. It was almost funny really. They looked like best friends at a tennis match, their heads turning back and forth like that. And he knew it was only a matter of time before they tried to rip each others heads off in a ridiculous and really sexy catfight. He made a mental note not to miss that.
“Wow. You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?” Trixie asked.
“By all means, enlighten me.” Spike yawned, not letting the sinking feeling in his stomach get the better of him.
“Oh, Spikey,” she sighed, “didn’t anyone ever teach you to read the fine print when you sign a blood contract?”
“I read the bloody fine print and I –“ realization hit him like a crashing 727. The last lines of the contract. He had thought nothing of them at the time. But now, they took on a whole new meaning. “You putrid whore!” he hissed, glaring at her with eyes on the edge of a yellow blaze. “That wasn’t what it meant! You can’t do this! I had no choice! I had no fucking choice!” He slammed his fist against the brick wall of the corridor, breaking through skin.
“There we go. I knew you’d catch on.” She seemed patronizingly pleased with him, like a teacher praising a child’s horrible artwork.
“Does anyone else feel the evil, or is it just me?” Gunn asked.
“Okay then. Shall we?” Trixie said, holding a hand out to Spike.
“Whoa! No one is shalling any one!” Buffy ordered.
“Buffy, don’t.” Spike said. He was suddenly quiet, pained. There she was again, the Slayer, jumping to his rescue. But this time was different. He didn’t know where exactly Trixie was going to take him, but he knew he wouldn’t be coming back. There was no way around it. He was positive. You don’t just sign your name in blood on a contract in some other plane of existence, and get out of it with an expensive lawyer.
He almost wished he was back in the caves, being tortured by the First. At least then, he could be angry at someone. Someone other than himself.
“Spike. What. Is going on?!” Angel said, grabbing Spike’s shoulder and turning him abruptly to face him.
“I made a deal.”
“Stuff we know.”
“I destroyed it.”
“What? Destroyed what? You aren’t making any sense!” Angel said, desperate and frustrated.
“The blood I gave them. I dusted him, and that destroyed it. I wasn’t allowed to destroy the sample.”
“What?” Angel’s mouth hung open. All the time he had spent trying to outmaneuver and outwit Wolfram and Hart played back in his mind. Shit, they were good. And now they had Spike. They even had him believing it was his own stupid fault. As much as the boy was giant pain in his ass, Angel couldn’t help feeling bad for him—a feeling that quickly turned to rage targeted towards this Trixie bitch.
“Piss off!” he snarled, spinning around and grabbing the woman by the neck. “Tell “Them” Angel says they can’t have him.”
She laughed. “You can’t be serious. Hello? They’re the ones who put your ass in that Italian leather armchair. They’re the head honchos, Angel. Your bosses?”
“The senior partners.” Wesley breathed.
“Huh?” Gwen said, and looked to Buffy, who only shrugged. Spike leaned against the wall with his forehead. For a moment, he glanced sideways at Gwen as she placed a hand on his shoulder. He felt her breath fall heavily on the back of his neck, and it was warm and soft. And he suddenly craved her.
Maybe it was because he knew it was over, that he would never get the chance to find out what might happen in time between the two of them. They might have simply become good friends. They might have become more. So he craved her, with the knowledge that the craving would never be satisfied. He just had to torture himself like that.
“He’s coming with me. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“You wanna make a bet?” Buffy said, and lunged towards Trixie. But the woman had grabbed Spike's arm before Buffy even touched her.
The two of them disappeared instantly, leaving only the confusion and shock reflected on everyone’s faces as a parting gift.
Gwen leaned weakly against the wall in the same spot where, a moment ago, Spike had been. No one spoke. He was gone, and no one had anything to say. It had all happened so quickly. The woman had appeared before them, and a few minutes later she had disappeared, taking Spike with her. Gwen felt cheated somehow. They hadn’t even been given a chance to fight. It was wrong.
She prayed that someone would say something soon because she didn’t have the mental capacity to speak at the moment.
“Angel?” Buffy looked to the vampire for direction and broke the unbearable silence.
“You, Gwen and Gunn are with me,” Angel began, with all the determination and confidence that made him a natural leader. “Wes? You get an address for Angus?”
“Yes.” Wesley handed him a slip of paper. Angel glanced down at it.
“Good. We’ll go check it out. Look for anything that might tell us something about Trixie. Wes-you, Lorne and Fred find out what this contract says exactly. We need to find a loophole, something. And if all else fails . . .” Angel looked at Gunn gravely.
“I break out the twister and party mix?”
“Gunn,” Angel said simply.
“Yeah. I know. I’m the White Room guy now, aren’t I?” Angel and Wesley shrugged. “Damn.”
“The white room with black curtains near the station?” Gwen asked, lost.
“The white room with black panther near the scared shitless,” Gunn replied. Gwen and Buffy didn’t look too satisfied with this explanation.
“I’ll explain on the way,” Angel said, signaling that it was time to get a move on. Gwen grabbed his arm before he could turn to go, and stared into his eyes, in search of some kind of truth.
“We’ll get him back,” he assured her.
“Damn straight,” Buffy added fiercely.
Gwen trailed behind the gang as they made their way out of the old cellar and through the service tunnels under Pershing Square. She trudged along, thoughtless of her surroundings or of her destination.
She shouldn’t feel this way. In a matter of days, emotions that she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in over 10 years had returned and torn away relentlessly at the barricades that had kept her safe and strong and impervious to hurt. How could she have been so careless? How could she have let this happen? What was so great about Spike anyway?
The accent. The eyes. The hands. The way he was despicably cocky and heat-wrenchingly vulnerable simultaneously. The lips. The ability to make her feel ten times stronger, wiser and sexier just by looking at her a certain way. The muscles. The hair. The way he seemed to feel everything so intensely, in a way she never could.
Her intensity came in three forms: amps, volts and watts. Her emotions were dulled—muted like cave paintings from a tribe long extinct. After a certain point, it wasn’t even necessary to hold back her emotions. They never came. What she displayed was not emotion, it was face-paint, it was entertainment, it was appeasement. Something to give her a personality and make her feel good about herself—nothing beyond that. At least, that’s how it had been for a very long time. Then came Spike. And everything went to hell
Like a volcano suddenly awakening after a long quiescence, she felt the emotions return. And she was suddenly 15 years old again.
~~*~*~~
~1990~
The school Gwen attended for 9th grade was not unlike the others she had been kicked out of. It was big and old and up an unnecessarily long driveway. And of course, it was in some yokel town in Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania. In general, the townies and the boarding school kids avoided each other. But there was one townie who managed to bridge that gap. His name was Anthony Paladini. He was 17 and read at a 3rd grade level, he lived in a trailer with his alcoholic mother and drug dealer uncle, his hair was veering dangerously close to the textbook definition of a mullet, and his best friend inhaled carpenter’s glue and referred to himself as The Black Eagle. Despite all this, he was the coolest kid that anyone in the miserable little town had ever met. And Gwen was in love with him.
She loved his big brown eyes, his tight angular jaw-bone, his ripped blue jeans that he cuffed at the bottom like James Dean. And she loved the way he leaned on his little red Honda. The motorcycle was the boy’s fifth limb, and it suited him perfectly. She was drawn to his arrogance, his total lack of interest in his surroundings (the town was a hellhole, and he knew it). He only smiled sarcastically—when he was being told off by various townspeople. He was brash but sullen at the same time, and it seemed there was nothing he was afraid of.
Gwen had never actually spoken to him, mind you. But she had walked very close to him a couple of times. And once, one of his friends had pointed at her and said something to him that might have been her name. She had blushed, and prayed that Anthony couldn’t see her very well from across the street. Half the time, Gwen could hardly believe that she was being such a dork. She was the creepy loner girl, a label she had earned through hours of sulking and avoiding eye as well as physical contact with the general populace. Having a crush on the coolest boy in town was so predictable, so pedestrian. But she just couldn’t help herself.
She tried not to fantasize about kissing him because the fantasy always turned into a nightmare. She would break away from the kiss, and before her would stand the crispy, charred body of Anthony Paladini, which she would reach out to touch just as he crumbled into dust.
So instead, she found herself reading about motorcycles. Anthony’s, she learned, was a 1975 Honda CB400F. She repeated the name in her head over and over, like a desperate prayer: 1975 Honda CB400F, 1975 Honda CB400F, 1975 Honda CB400F.
One day, in late march, she was shocked to see him hanging out with his gang outside the Dairy Queen, without the bike. He looked like a different person. Like a man without a purpose. Like Arthur without Excalibur. Like . . . just a guy. And it made Gwen’s heart break to see him like that.
At the convenience store, she asked Tina, an 18 year old townie who had been buying cigarettes for her for the past few months, if she knew anything about the missing bike. Apparently, Anthony had a few too many unpaid speeding tickets, and the local cops had finally impounded it. Gwen was shocked. She felt horrible. Something had to be done.
That’s how her life of crime had begun.
As far as plans go, this one wasn’t exactly rocket surgery. Break into impound lot. Find motorcycle. Take motorcycle. It wasn’t as if she needed much more than that. The impound lot wasn’t exactly Fort Knox. Her diary had a more impressive security system. She sneaked out of her dorm at 1 am, and walked the three miles to the lot. She assessed. There was an electric fence and a padlock not much larger than the one on her gym locker. Getting in was a breeze and the fence actually felt kind of nice—in a naughty, wrong way. Gwen shook her head. She had to focus.
She found the bike within minutes, and a grin spread across her face. It was a sexy piece of machinery, all red and chrome shininess. She almost wished it were hers. Almost. She fumbled around in the dark, searching for the ignition. When her fingers slipped across the key sized slit, she focused for only a moment and watched a few blue sparks slide down her hand and into the keyhole. The engine turned on. It was then that Gwen realized she would have to ride the thing. Fear came and went. She was too exhilarated to care. How hard could it be? She knew how to ride a bicycle. This couldn’t be that different.
After the slight confusion of finding the accelerator and the gear shift, she discovered that riding a motorcycle for the first time was, well, fun. Gwen was having fun? Was it so? Actually, she was having a fucking blast. The power she felt between her legs was incredible, like an extension of herself. She was a part of the bike as she whizzed down the streets, her thick brown hair flying out behind her. She felt free. And she felt in control. Finally, she had done something real, something that felt like living.
She parked in front of Anthony’s trailer, and walked confidently up to the front door. As she knocked though, she couldn’t help but feel extremely nervous. He opened the door, and stared at her blankly, along with two of his friends who stood just behind him.
“Uh. . . can I help you?” he asked, as if helping her would involve impaling himself with various blunt instruments.
“No. I just . . I brought you something,” Gwen mumbled. She stepped aside and pointed out at the motorcycle.
“Hey! My bike! How did you get it?” He didn’t sound happy. Just suspicious, and a little surprised.
“Who the fuck are you?” asked one of Anthony’s friends.
“She’s one of the rich brats from up the driveway,” added the other one.
“Did you, like, buy his bike back for him, rich girl?” They both laughed.
Anthony glared at her.
“No. No. I stole it,” she yelled over their laughter. Anthony looked back at his friends, who were practically rolling on the floor. Then, to her horror, he started laughing too.
Of course. Why on earth would they believe that a pathetic little 15 year old private school girl would have the guts, let alone the skill, to break into an impound lot and commit grand theft auto? It was ludicrous.
Before she could run away, before she could give them the finger or tell them to go fuck themselves, or even decide what to do next, the door was slammed in her face.
Something inside of her died at that moment, as she learned that even without having a real relationship with a man—which she knew she would never have—even without really expecting more than a smile and a thank you, she could still have her heart broken. It made her angry.
She was a few houses down from his when she turned back. She stood over the bike for a moment, and stared at it in eerily peaceful contemplation. She unscrewed the cap for the gas tank. Then, she rubbed her hands together, the way one would to roll a small ball of dough, and watched with pride as a blue ball of electricity materialized between them. Satisfied, she threw the ball into the gas tank, and ran like hell.
From a block away, Gwen watched the red Honda become engulfed in flames, and smiled. Cold and heartless—that was their game, and she could play by those rules.
~~*~*~~
Spike couldn’t tell if his eyes were actually open. It was too dark, even for a vampire. Trixie still had a firm grip on his arm, but as he reached over to pry her off of him, he began to see. It was as if a bubble was growing around him, and as it grew, his surroundings appeared, until the scene was complete.
They were on a cobblestone street and it was night. A miasma of fog hung over the buildings, or perhaps it was smog. In any case, neither the moon, nor the stars, nor the sky were anywhere to be seen. Spike looked up the street and found that even the next block was barely visible.
Trixie let go of his arm.
“Home, sweet home,” she sighed.
Spike, finally coming to his senses, grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Where the sodding hell have you taken me?” he yelled.
Trixie smiled a frightful, lipless smile, not acknowledging Spike’s anger. “The Emerald city.”
“Tell me!” He shook her again.
“Where do you think, Toto? It ain’t LA.”
Spike’s arms fell limp at his side. “This is . . . .Hell, then?”
“Oh please. Hell is so outmoded. Besides, you barely qualify for the waiting list.”
“Waiting list?” Spike replied skeptically.
“Certainly. Do you think the average evil doer’s idea of a good time is an afterlife filled with eternal warm and fuzzies? Hell’s got reservations booked up further than the Rainbow Room.” Spike looked less than convinced, and more than a little impatient. “This place? Well, let’s say if Hell was New York City, this would be Jersey. Home to many commuting blue collar workers, and some of Hell’s more illustrious employees. Also, a dumping ground for shmoes such as yourself stupid enough to get mixed up in a blood contract.”
“What do you mean, a dumping ground?”
“You’ll be out of the way here. Wolfram and Hart owns you now, and this is where they want you—for all intents and purposes, gone—for now.”
“You’re saying I’m stuck here. . . forever?”
“Give the man a Nobel prize!”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re fucked enough for the two of us, Spike. There’s no secret passageway, no mystical portal or magic beanstalk. The only ones who can come and go are like me. And we are under strict orders from the Big Three. Your life is over. From now on, you can roam the streets of our little necropolis, eating rats and the occasional human vagrant, wallowing in self-pity. Enjoy your stay!” she said cheerfully, and began to walk away.
Spike called after her. “Screw that! I’m William the Bloody! And I won’t be held hostage in sodding Toontown! I’ll find a way out if it kills you.”
Trixie turned back. “You’re a fool,” she said, abandoning her cheerful sarcasm. “You think you can control your destiny? That the decisions you make are your own? Look at yourself. You really thought that you would get the better end of the deal by signing that contract, didn’t you? That you had it all worked out. Well big surprise, no matter how much you think you know, how well informed your decisions are, there are a thousand little secrets, tricks of light, sleights of hand and false bottoms that will mislead you.
“You know what they say, there’s no such thing as a sure thing. Waste all your time trying to make your mark on the world, and the world will inevitably beat you to a pulp. The changes you effect are fleeting. Control is an illusion. One second, you’re sure it’s in the palm of your hand, and the next, someone is pulling it out of your ear.
“You’ve built yourself this prison, Spike, and there is no escape,” Trixie said, and disappeared into the fog.
Spike lowered his head, and blinked at the cobblestones under his feet. Each sentence she said had destroyed a little piece of hope that he clung to. There was no anger or determination left in his eyes, only pain, and a few tears waiting to slide down his cheeks.
All of this was his own doing. And like quicksand, the harder Spike fought against it, the deeper he fell. HE made the decision. HE signed a contract with W&H. HE staked Angus. HE screwed himself right and proper. And what was it all for? So he could come back? So he wouldn’t be sent to hell? That’s it? What a selfish prig he’d been. He felt foolish, ignorant. He’d been duped. And he could have prevented it. If only he’d been more careful. If only he’d remembered the final clause in the contract. If only he’d never signed the damned thing in the first place! Trixie’s words rang out like a death toll in his head: “You’ve built yourself this prison, Spike, and there is no escape.” Even if there was, did he really deserve to find it?
Hours had passed. Spike wandered dejected and defeated, sulking passed dozens of strange new demons uncaring, and in turn unnoticed. The sweet aroma of hot blood swirled up Spike’s nostrils, and he took a deep breath, realizing that he was seriously hungry. The smell was coming from a street vendor’s cart. Nearby, two well dressed charcoal-black demons immerged from a discreetly hidden nightclub on the side of an ancient, moss spotted building. The thick, pulse-like sounds of house music escaped onto the street while the door opened and shut again. The male approached the cart and bought his date and himself each a pint to go. Dosh, Spike noted, seemed to be American dollars, which was weird but strangely fitting. He needed to feed. But all he had was a bit of pocket lint and a sinking suspicion that there weren’t any vampire soup kitchens round these parts.
In the recesses of a narrow, garbage laden alley, Spike spotted his first human. The man was ancient, and looked frailer than a leaf fallen from a tree and left to dry in the sun. He wore layers of ragged filthy clothes, and smelled barely different from the piles of trash that surrounded him. He muttered to himself, and scratched at the air with a hooked index finger. Spike watched him, and his mouth watered.
It wasn’t as if the old guy looked very happy, and Spike was damn well starving. He still had to remind himself that the chip in his brain was gone. It had trained him like a Pavlovian puppy, and he half expected it to zap him just for contemplating a little tooth on neck action. God, he was hungry. But he just couldn’t do it. Even if the man was totally out of his macadamia, and wasting away in a hell dimension.
Just as Spike was about to turn away, a rat came scurrying up the alley towards him. Spike snatched it up, with little effort. It squirmed in his hands, its tiny clawed toes scratching his palms. Spike held it up to face him, and watched as it bared four little yellow teeth and wiggled its wet pink nose at him.
“Sorry, mate. Your number’s up,” Spike said with a grimace, knowing full well just how nasty rat blood tasted.
“Horace!” was the cry that came from the old man, as Spike bared his fangs. He lowered the rat without loosening his grip on it, and rolled his eyes at the vagrant.
“Right, don’t tell me. This here’s your best pal, Horace, who was turned into a rat by an evil warlock,” Spike groaned. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he had stooped to feeding on a rat in the first place.
“Gimme back my Horace!” the old man hollered in an American Midwestern accent. “You ain’t gonna eat ‘im! He’s mine.”
“Oh, bloody hell.” Spike tossed the rat somewhat gently towards the old man. “There. Are you satisfied? I suppose you’ve got names for all the vermin in the city, then.”
The old man ignored him. He grabbed the rat, and stroked its matted brown coat firmly. “Horace. Horace. So sleepy.” He then took the rat by its haunches, and slammed it violently against the stone wall. “Sleepy Horace.”
“Hey!” Spike cried.
The old man bit into the side of the dead animal, taking a substantial hunk of flesh into his mouth.
“That’s just unfair!” Spike whined. “And fucking gross.”
“I found it first, vampire,” the old man said, suddenly sounding much more lucid.
“Yeah. And you let it go.”
“So did you.”
“Right. Deep,” Spike replied, unimpressed. “Still starving here.”
“What do you expect me to do about it?” The old man let out a low, guttural laugh, that made Spike clench his jaw in frustration.
“Don’t suppose you know where a bloke might find some fresh pig’s blood?”
“Got a city card?”
“No. What the hell is that?”
“ID. You won’t get anything without it. Every vendor asks for your city card. It’s how they keep the populace divided—how they keep us in the gutter, eatin’ Horace.”
“So I’ll lift one.”
“You nimrod. You can’t use someone else’s. They’ve got pictures.”
“What do you know, old man? I’ll steal the sodding blood then.”
The old man simply laughed some more, and took another big bite from his rat, which had by this point left his hands completely covered in blood.
“I’ve been living here for 623 years. I know,” he said, and licked his lips.
Spike watched in disgust as he tossed the rat carcass away, and licked his sticky fingers. 623 years he had been there; eating rats, sleeping between garbage cans, muttering to himself. Spike wondered what he had looked like on his first day. The old man glared up at him with long dead eyes.
“Give up,” he said.
Spike looked back at him, and thought about what might become of him if he did. If he lived in the alleys of this god forsaken city, feeding off rats and whatever blood he could manage to steal. How long would it be until he smelled just as disgusting, and looked just as mad as this old loon here?
And that’s when it hit him. He would not end up like that. Ever. Because he was getting the fuck out. The more pathetic this old geezer in front of him became, the more powerful, confident and angry Spike became. It was crazy—like Ebenezer Scrooge starring into his own grave, and saying: “bugger that!”
The fight was back in him. And he could hear that voice in the back of his head again, screaming, “Keep fighting! Just keep fighting!” It didn’t really matter why, did it? So what if the only thing on the line was his own sorry ass. He had to fight. It was all he had left.
Spike lunged at the old man, lifted him by the neck and shoved him against the wall.
“Not today mate. Now. Who do I see about getting out of this shithole?” he snarled, tightening his grip around the man’s neck.
“Ugh . . . I . . . I told’ja,” he rasped. “There ain’t—“
“Bollocks!” Spike wasn’t showing signs of letting go any time soon.
“Look, kid, even if I told you, you’d just be wasting your time . . .”
“You’re wasting it now, you rancid piece of flesh! Tell me!” Spike almost followed that by: “Or I’ll break your bloody neck,” but figured actions spoke louder than words. Since both his thumbs were currently bruising the man’s larynx, it would probably be overkill.
“They won’t help you, Vampire,” the old man coughed.
“Who? Who won’t?” Spike’s grip finally eased up.
“The Jeyets.”
“Where?” Spike hissed.
“Kevral’k Lounge. Coat check room,” the man sighed, rubbing his neck as Spike turned away. “Hey! Don’t you want to know who they are?”
“Don’t care,” Spike snapped back, and strode swiftly back into the city streets without a second glance at the pathetic figure left behind in the alley. He had a mission.
~I’m a street walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm.
I’m a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb.
I am a world’s forgotten boy.
The one who searches and destroys.~
~Search and Destroy, Iggy and the Stooges
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