This pic really belongs in the Dawn POV version of this story...but I haven't written it yet.
Starvation
It’s happening all over again.
I’m being completely manipulated by some woman, who knows all she has to do is tip her head to the side and make that noise and I’ll do whatever she wants.
You know the noise I mean. The mewing noise. The one that says ‘I’m not crying, but I could do, if you don’t fix it.’
Dawn’s started making it.
It’s not on.
When I said that finding one of those monks would probably involve a trip to Europe, she said “Fine, when do we leave?” I refused to take her with me and the next thing I know we’re deciding what to pack.
Women!
It’s because of how she’s got. The pale little waif who'd been wandering around the house like a Somnus demon disappeared. As soon as she’d figured out how to bring her sister back, it felt like the atmospheric pressure in the house had gone back up overnight. Dawn was suddenly more like her old self. A somewhat bossy fifteen year old, with the uncanny knack of knowing exactly how to push my buttons to make me give her whatever she wants.
It’d be annoying if it wasn’t so damn impressive.
Which is why I’m driving across France with her.
Which is ironic, really, considering how fanatical Harmony was that I take her. I can just imagine how she'd react.
"But Spikey, you promised you'd take me to France! They have like, beaches and stores and stuff."
"Spike, are you feeling okay?"
Did I say that out loud?
“Talking to yourself is the fourth sign of madness you know.”
Okay, I’ll bite. Well, not literally...
“What’re the first three?”
“Well, the fourth is talking to yourself, the third is answering yourself, the second sign is finding hairs growing on the palm of your hand.”
I take a hand off the steering wheel and examine it. My nails need repainting, but the palms are hairless.
“What’s the first sign?”
“Looking for them!”
She’s smirking at me like she took lessons from Angelus. If her mouth gets any wider, the ends will meet around the back and the top of her head will fall off.
I reach for the tape deck and turn the Stooges on at full volume.
She sulks for the next twenty miles.
*
“Just choose will you?”
“I can’t read it!”
“Dawn, it’s McDonalds. They have exactly the same menu whether you’re in Barbizon, Sunnydale or Timbuc-bloody-too!”
“Big Mac meal with a chocolate shake.”
“Big Mac et frites avec un chocolat frappé à servir, s’il vous plait.”
Once we've got her food, we leave the house of grease and walk out into the street. I’m wearing the huge black cloak Willow gave me before I left. It’s handier than my blanket, but it makes me look like I escaped from some roleplay game with a colon in the title. Vampire: The Masquerade. Changeling: The Dreaming. LARPer: The Laughingstock.
“Where are we going.”
I point across the street at a shop marked Boucherie.
“Butchers. You’re not the only one who has to eat y’know.”
We walk under the covered awnings and I can finally take off the coat.
Thank Christ! The fucking thing makes me look like Darth Sidious.
She’s a little ahead of me as we get to the butchers and she’s walked in, chomping on her fries before I realise I can’t.
There’s a barrier up.
What the fuck’s up with that?
I’ll just have to blag it that’s all.
“Are you open? Can we come in?” I ask in French.
Nice. Convincing. Certain to get rid of the barrier.
Except the guy walking out of the back room with a crucifix doesn’t seem to think so.
“If you can’t come in without being invited, then maybe I don’t want you in here at all bloodsucker.”
Dawn, whose French probably consists of ‘Le singe est dans l'arbre’ is confused.
“What’s he saying?”
The bald guy with the cross notices her and has a go at speaking to her in English.
“Girl, come away from that man. He is not good. He is vampire. Very dangerous.”
Me and Platelet manage to roll our eyes in unison.
“Vampire, yes. Dangerous, no. Look, I want animal blood, pigs blood. I don’t feed from humans.”
I do not like the way this guy is smiling.
“I know why you want animal blood. For the same reason as all the others, you are afraid they will see what you are if you feed. They will know you anyway, vampire. Your kind cannot hide from the Baptism of Fire!”
Oh great. Just what I needed right now, a little religious persecution to make the trip complete.
“Dawn, we’re leaving.”
She comes back to my side of the doorframe, just as the guy tries to pull her away. He’s about to come into the street to try and ‘save’ her, so I flash vampface at him and he thinks better of it. He stays in his shop and curses me all the way down the street. I’m vaguely annoyed by that. For all he knows I’m going to kill her. You’d think he’d make a bit more effort. Wimp.
Dawn actually manages to go a full five seconds before the questions start.
“What was all that about?”
“He wasn’t going to sell me anything. The Baptism of Fire are in town. He’d been tipped off to keep an eye out for vampires.”
“The what?”
“Baptism of Fire. Religious loonies. I’m pretty certain they get some kind of subsidy from the watcher’s council. They’re a Christian group with a lot of support, but the wrong idea. They think that when you turn into a vampire, your soul is trapped with you, in torment. Kind of like with Peaches, except it’s the demon in charge and the soul that has to sit and watch instead of the other way around. Now, the Baptism of Fire converge on towns with a high vampire population and start slaying, since they think they’re putting the vampire’s souls to rest. It works out nicely for the townspeople, but it means big trouble for me, since it means they won’t give a monkeys whether I’m chipped or not and they’ve cut off my food supply.”
She thinks that over for a moment.
“We could find another butchers.”
I shake my head.
“They’ll all have been warned. As far as I know there’s only one other place in this town, where you can buy blood.”
“Where?”
“There’s a vamp hangout about half an hours drive away, but it’s out of the question. I’m not leaving you knocking around Barbizon on your own and I could hardly make you wait outside in the car, it’d be as good as tattooing ‘lunch’ on your forehead!”
“Buffy took me into the Alibi one time when I had to use the bathroom and nothing bad happened. Couldn’t you just, like, make sure they know I’m with you?”
I’m flattered by the implied compliment and stunned at her naivety. It’s nice that she trusts me to protect her, but I’m not the hardest vamp in existence and there’ll be guys at the club who could beat the crap out of me with one hand tied behind their backs if they chose. I’m nothing close to the protection of a slayer, but I don’t want to tell her that. It’d just frighten her unnecessarily.
“Willy’s a human, luv and the hellmouth’s fairly multicultural demon-wise anyway. Antonio’s is vampire owned and operated. The only humans you’ll see in there are your more reckless class of hooker and the occasional vampire wanna-be getting taken for a trial run before...”
No. I can’t. It would be criminal, but...
My stomach rumbles again and I decide to risk it.
“Did you bring any goth style clothes?”
We pull up outside the club. Its location is a closely guarded secret, so I’m not worried about the Baptism. What I am is extremely worried about Dawn.
I can’t believe I’m taking her to Antonio’s. If Giles ever finds out about this, he's gonna stake me and use my ashes in a novely hourglass.
“Okay, this is going to be a vampire place, so I need you to actually do as I say for once.”
She’s smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
This is such a mistake. There’s only two reasons you’d take a human in Antonio’s, they both begin with F and she’s too young to look like she’s there for the first.
She walks in there, she’s food.
“Ground rules. You do not say a word. You do not move from my side. You do not make eye contact with anybody but me. You go along with whatever I say. You do not betray the slightest amount of any emotion, especially fear and if I say run, you hitch up your skirts and get the fuck out of dodge. Clear?”
“Crystal.”
She’s way too confident. This is going to go hideously wrong...
“Tony!”
I walk in and greet the barman cheerfully. I’m holding onto her wrist tightly. It’s pretty busy in here and I don’t trust her not to get lost in the crowds.
“Spike my man! New World get boring?”
“One big yawn. Heard the God Squad’s in town.”
“Yeah. If they weren’t such annoying bastards I’d be grateful. Business is booming, cause nobody wants to feed in public.”
“Speaking of which, pint of the usual, Tony.”
“One pint of Chinese O-neg, coming right up.”
She’s mouthing ‘Chinese?’ back at me. I just squeeze her arm and try to look casual.
“William! Well I never!”
I bristle before I even look around. Since I was turned into a vampire there've been exactly two people I've allowed to call me by my old name and this wanker isn’t either of them. For a start he’s male. I swallow my annoyance and plaster a fake-looking smile on my face instead.
“Elliot! Fancy seeing you here. How’s Guilepta?”
Dawn’s following the conversation with her eyes. I rest my hand on the top of her head to make her look at the floor.
“Good. I heard you were out in California, hunting the latest slayer. Kill this one yet?”
“Not really. There were... complications.”
He’s smirking, the bastard. Christ I want to put my fist though his teeth.
“Still. Looks like you bought back a souvenir.” He squats down a bit so he’s eye to eye with Dawn. “A bit young. You waiting for her to ripen a bit before you turn her?”
Tony’s brought me my blood. I take a deep swig and decide to brazen it out.
“Actually she’s a present for Dru.”
Elliot smiles like he ate the cat who got the cream.
“Funny you should mention Dru. I was trying to track down Penn recently. We’d lost touch. Turns out he’d headed off to LA and had a touching reunion of his own with Angelus. Dru said Angel staked him. Terrible business. Those gypsies knew what they were doing all right...”
He’s spoken to Dru?
“She also mentioned that you’d given up killing slayers and fallen in love with one instead. Said you’d taken up slaying yourself.”
Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!
“Well, you know how Dru can get. Losing track of reality and what all...”
Please buy it! Please buy it you annoying ginger-haired bastard!
“That’s what I thought. Then I see you here all chummy with a young girl who has a nametag sticking out the back of her dress with a familiar surname on it. Care to fill me in William?”
Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. I lean closer, confidentially.
“Just your face.”
I sock him in the mouth. Thanks to his macho posturing, he’s been in vampface the whole time, so I get the satisfaction of hearing one of his canines break.
He’s about to rally so I pick up my pint and throw the rest of the blood at him.
“Run!”
We start to run off, then I spin round at the last second and kick Elliot in the knackers.
He does not get to call me William!
Then we’re out in the street and racing for the car.
*
Once I know we’re not being followed I pull over and look at her dress. Sure enough there’s a label sticking out at the back saying D. Summers. I tuck it in and sigh.
“Who was that?”
“Elliot? He’s sort of my cousin, in a vampirey way. Angel sired Penn who sired Elliot who for reasons unknown to anybody on this planet married Guilepta.”
“Guilepta?”
“Regurgitating Frovolox demon.”
Which is almost as twisted as a vampire loving a slayer who’s in love with a different vampire.
“I just can’t believe he had the latest. He’s living in the middle of nowhere. I expected him to be decades behind. Bastard!”
It’s not that I want to be evil again. I’m just sick of being lonely. The Sunnydale vampires hate me because I’m not evil enough. The scoobies don’t like me because I’m not good enough. It was just comforting to think that I had friends back in Europe. People who’d be thinking well of me even if I never saw them. Is that too much to ask? Evidently, since Elliot’s going to positively revel in spreading his latest bit of gossip to discredit my side of the ‘family’. He’s always had that bloody huge chip on his shoulder because Angelus liked Dru better than Penn.
So now the closest thing I have to an actual friend is a fifteen-year-old human.
A fifteen-year-old human who’s looking at me with a disgusted expression.
“What?”
“You ordered human blood in there.”
Uh-oh.
“Well, yeah. I was hoping they’d think I was my bad old self and if I’d ordered pig’s blood they’d have smelt a rat. Anyway, I didn’t even get a chance to drink the stuff. I’m going to starve to death the way this is going.”
“There’s no other way of getting you any?”
“No.”
That’s the short answer. The truth is I could probably track down a cat or dog, but after the fuss she kicked up when Angel went evil and killed her guinea pig, I think the sight of me draining a puppy might really freak her out.
“I’ll just get some sleep, then carry on driving. I can eat at the next town.”
I climb into the back and lie along the seat. Dawn reclines her own seat back as far as it’ll go, then pulls my abandoned cloak over her like a blanket.
There’s a few minutes of silence as we both fail to fall asleep. I’m too hungry, really and I suspect Dawn’s a bit frightened of sleeping in the car in a strange country where she knows there are a lot of dangerous vampires around. She tries to be blase about things, but she’s just a kid. One who’s never left California before, let alone America and this might be her only shot at some answers about her fucked up creation and her last chance at a semi-normal life.
I don’t blame her for being scared.
Then she climbs in the back with me.
“I can’t get comfy there,” she explains, lying down beside me.
She falls asleep quickly, once she’s got some contact to ease her fears.
I don’t. Her head’s resting on my chest and the sound of her blood pumping is pretty much all I can concentrate on. Sleep is a long time in coming.
*
Ow!
I wake up on the floor of the car, in the most uncomfortable position you could think of. Dawn’s pushed me off the seat at some point during the night. Evidently she has issues with sharing even when she’s unconscious.
I pull myself into a sitting position and rub my legs to get rid of the pins and needles. This takes an insanely long time, since I have no circulation to speak of.
I’m ridiculously hungry.
I clamber into the front and start the engine. I figure I can be in Chalons-Sur-Marne by ten and get something to eat.
Christ, I’m starving!
I head for the road out of town, scowling. The last time I went this long without feeding was after I escaped from the lab. The time before that was because of the bloody Baptism again. The United States isn’t perfect by any means. You can’t buy proper chocolate anywhere, the beer tastes like piss, watered down piss at that and nobody can pronounce aluminium, but at least the Baptism of Fire haven’t set up shop there yet.
Speaking of which...
There’s a roadblock up ahead. Bollocks! I pull the car down a side road and double back on myself. I stop the car to gather my thoughts and Dawn wakes up.
“Yeurgh! Okay that was like, hugely uncomfortable. We’re not going to have to sleep in the car again, right?”
I just manage to stop myself from making a snarky comment.
“Good morning.”
“Morning, Spike.”
She clambers into the front and starts examining her hair in the rear view mirror. She’s pulled it into a ponytail before she looks at me properly.
“Oh my God! Look at yourself!”
She pauses and looks at her unaccompanied reflection.
“Well, I guess you can’t, but you look awful. Your face has gone the same colour as your hair.”
Fan-bloody-tastic.
“We can’t leave. The Baptism have blocked the roads out. No vampires to leave town.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How are they stopping cars? Most people don’t even know vampires exist. They can’t exactly just pull people over and say ‘Hey, are you undead?’ can they?”
“No, but they can get you to roll your window down and see if you burst into flames. They say they’re collecting for Christian charities. On a cloudy day or at night, they’ll hand you a cute little crucifix keyring as a reward for donating. If you’re right about my having got paler though, they probably won’t even need that,” I add gloomily.
The last time this happened we had to unharness the horses from the coach and ride off over the fields. Can’t see that working in the DeSoto.
“No, the only way past that roadblock is to be human.”
I think about that and glance over at her speculatively. A huge grin splits her face as she realises what I’m considering.
“I get to drive the car? Awesome!”
*
The trunk opens and Dawn’s face appears in the gap. I shrink back reflexively from the light, but she’s parked under some trees and I’m not in any direct sunlight.
“Who's the man?”
She’s done it.
“You're the man,” I tell her. “They didn’t ask any questions?”
“Of course they did!” She says exasperatedly as she helps me out of the trunk. “Blacked out windows? All your criminally ancient tapes spread across the dashboard? C’mon this car screams ‘bloodsucker’.”
I rest against the ‘bloodsucker’ screaming car and light a cigarette with trembling fingers. I feel all light-headed. I need to eat, ASAP.
“They asked where I got it, so I told them that I was vacationing nearby when ‘some guy with a deformed forehead’ kidnapped me and I managed to escape by stealing his car. Then I was all ‘you think I’m gonna get in trouble for taking it?’”
She’s demonstrating the little-girl-lost expression she used on them. I’m beginning to see the plus side to her being so damn manipulative.
“They said to keep driving until I got back to my hotel, then dump the car. They said they’d clear it with the authorities for me and then waved me on. How cool-under-pressure am I?”
“Very.”
I smile at her and try to stand up. Try being the operative word.
“Fucking hell.”
She’s looking at me, worried.
“Spike you should probably feed off of me,” she says matter-of-factly. “You look really bad!”
I shake my head.
“I’ll just drive us to the next town and stock up is all.”
“Yeah, and when you pass out at the wheel and send us ploughing into a tree, I’ll be able to say I told you so. Come on Spike, I don’t mind. I swear.”
I want to so badly. Not just because my stomach feels like it’s full of helium or some other less-dense-than-air gas, but because I miss Buffy so much that it aches and if I could just taste her again in Dawn...no.
"No!"
But she’s already fished my pocket-knife out of the cloak and run it across her hand at the webbing where her thumb meets her first finger.
“No,” I tell her again, but even as I say it I’m moving closer towards the forgone conclusion.
Stupid, weak-willed, feeble, brainless, twat! You’re going to hate yourself for this afterwards and you know that...
“Buffy!”
And I’m lost to the world.
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