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Forward to Time Past by Unbridled_Brunette
 
Chapter Thirty-Three
 
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Chapter Thirty-Three





William didn’t leave the hotel for two days. This was not out of choice. Mentally, he was ready to bugger off the moment he picked himself up off the floor. But his physical capability of doing so was another matter. He healed much more rapidly than a human male would have, but he didn’t heal overnight. For two days, he was forced to lie abed, stretched out on his side so as not to put pressure on the injured area. He couldn’t even hunt for himself; each night, Drusilla brought him his repast. Men, each time, because in a manner similar to himself, she preferred killing those of opposite gender. William would have preferred meals of the fairer sex, but he never told her this. He was merely grateful for the food, for the warm, healing blood of victims still alive and squirming in the bindings Dru had placed around them.

At any rate, the second of these two men William found oddly intriguing. Unlike the first man, who was clearly a person of some class, this fellow was rough and dirty. His face was black with the grime of the coal he delivered, and his clothes were coarse. A homespun shirt of unbleached cotton, dark trousers, and a long, dark brown woolen coat. His boots were worn to near raggedness, and those William left alone. But for all the rest, he was so impressed that he stripped the corpse.

When, on the third night, William sallied forth from his convalescence, he did so in these crude garments. They were intended for Angelus, of course. Angelus hated the working-class, and he scowled when he saw what his protégé was wearing. Yet his anger was prompted by not only the clothing, but also by what it represented. He suddenly realized that, in spite of his best efforts, he had still not succeeded in forcing William to submit. However, to William’s surprise (and, if he were honest with himself, his disappointment) the older vampire said nothing about his attire. He didn’t speak to William at all, but instead favored him with a brief and contemptuous glance, and then proceeded to ignore him completely.

When Angelus left, he took Dru with him, as well as Darla. This gesture was supposed to demonstrate his superiority to the younger vampire, of course. But William remained unfazed by it. Drusilla had little choice but to accompany her sire when he ordered her to; and it didn’t bother him overly much. Furthermore, he had his own plans for the evening, and they did not include any of the rest of them.

I don’t have to do what you say, anymore.

The thought was still burning in his mind, in his gut, when he swaggered down the street some moments later. The confidence was only partly genuine, for he was still in that state of confused transition. But to anyone watching him, he was full of dangerous self-possession. In his right fist, he clutched a dirty burlap sack full of railway spikes; in his left hand, held between thumb and forefinger, was a cigarette. The other pedestrians, reading his threat if not his intentions, stayed well clear of him.

Despite his purposeful stride, at first William had little idea of where he might be going. It was only the result that interested him, not the destination, and the result would be to prove to Angelus that he would not be dominated. When he arrived in Parliament Square sometime later, it seemed as good a place as any to begin. The headquarters of Scotland Yard was located not far off Whitehall, and when he saw it, William knew exactly what he was going to do. He also knew that the plan was a dodgy one at best. He simply did not care.

There was a loose stone on the road. He picked it up and threw it into the nearest window of the large, brick building. If that didn’t gain their attention, he thought, then nothing would.

The glass shattered beautifully, and the reaction that followed it was surprisingly swift. Not just by the police officers, but by the civilians, as well. Men poured out onto the street around him. Blue coats and dark coats, homespun and the finest wool, gentlemen and working-class, police and pedestrians, they all seemed to recognize him at once.

And, amazingly enough, they did not seem to be afraid of him.

It was the sheer number of them, of course. They felt no danger in his presence when there were so many of them. They shouted for their women to take cover, to bar the doors after them, but the men kept coming fearlessly. Someone shouted his name, someone else shouted “Spike,” and yet another started screaming something almost incoherent about his dead daughter. They swarmed around him, menacing in their own right, the constables clutching their batons, the civilians using whatever might make a fair weapon.

It should have been terrifying for William.

It wasn’t.

There was something delicious in that attention, something intoxicating. William swung the sack of heavy iron spikes at them. He shouted at them in a voice that was half working-class, half country gentleman. Tongue behind his teeth, he grinned at them, bobbed on the balls of his feet in a boyish, delighted sort of way, even as he crushed their skulls.

“C’mon you sons of bitches. You wanted William the Bloody. C’mon—”

Someone hit him from behind with something very hard, a shovel or a pickaxe. His upper back exploded in a sensation of painful throbbing, and he wheeled around to his attacker. Not a delighted boy any longer, but a slavering animal. Gold eyes and naked fangs. The man’s throat he laid open with a swift slash of teeth. The bloody body dropped to the cobbles at William’s feet, ignored by him, once it was in its final death-throes.

The group around him gasped in horror at his animal face, and they scattered like so many frightened chickens. Some merely moved considerably back from him, others ran away altogether.

“It’s a demon is what it is,” someone said fearfully. “A murdering devil straight from the pits of hell.”

“Fair close to the truth,” William replied. He was panting for unneeded breath, his sense of delight back tenfold. The air around him stank of sweat and of fear.

He thought he had them on the run, but suddenly a flash of blue appeared in his peripheral vision, and he staggered back with the weight of a body crashing against him. The painful thud of a wooden baton striking his head and shoulders.

“It can be killed—” shouted the officer to the rest of the crowd. “It can—it bleeds—”

And the remainder of the group—those bravest of men—surged forward once again.

William’s bag of weapons dropped to the ground, momentarily forgotten. Anyway, it was better this way. Nothing but fists and fangs to protect him; nothing but the cunning mind he had developed in the preceding weeks. Nothing but the carefully cultivated brutality that marked his new self. They backed him into the side of the building. There were so many of them, he had little choice but to back away when they pressed forward. But he wasn’t afraid of them; he didn’t care about the numbers. He didn’t care about the blows that fell or the blood that streamed from his wounds. He didn’t care about pain. The kill was the thing, the risk of it. The lovely, drunken feeling it gave him.

Someone cut him with a blade. Right at the throat. It might have slowed him, had it been very deep. Yet it was hardly more than a graze, a thin half-circle of blood beading at the edges of a shallow wound. He didn’t know who held the knife, but he gave out a hoarse laugh and, remembering various bits of slang sometimes spoken by the servants, shouted: “Put a little force into it, ducky. Otherwise, the other blokes’ll take you for a pouf.” He pushed off the wall, forcing his way deeper into the crowd. They were beating him down. There were so many of them. They might have flattened his skull with their blows. The one with the knife might have slit his throat, sawed off his head. One of those wooden batons might have splintered and been driven into his heart.

He didn’t care.

“How d’ya like it now?” someone demanded. Mad voice, mad eyes. The man had powerful shoulders and forearms, a smithy’s iron. He used it well, all the time screaming at William. “How d’ya like it now, Spike? You can give it out, right good enough. Can you take it? My little daughter—”

“Bugger your daughter,” snapped William. He kicked out, driving the arm back, but not quite knocking the iron from the man’s grip. While he was focusing on the one person, another grasped him by the back of his coat, slinging him back into the brick wall. The iron battered his back and shoulders, then. When he turned around, it struck him on the head, right over his temple, and his vision blurred.

“You know your daughter’s last words?” he asked the blacksmith. He backhanded the man with a force that set him staggering. “She said I could fuck her if I let her go!” He had no idea if that were true of not, but someone had said it; it might have been the blacksmith’s daughter.

“You son of a—did you interfere with her?” demanded the father. William gave a hoarse laugh.

“Course not. I only knicker the good-looking ones—”

A lie. He had never raped anyone. But it sounded good, and it achieved the desired results. The blacksmith took another crack with the iron, and the rest of the men fell on William, knocking him to the ground, beating with fists and weapons. The blacksmith kicked William’s ribs and belly, all the while hammering him with the iron. Someone had tripped over his sack, earlier, and the spikes had skittered across the rain-slick cobbles. One had slid within arm’s reach, and William snatched it up. He stabbed blindly, driving the sharp point into any exposed body part within his range. Regardless, he realized that he was losing the battle.

He didn’t care about that, either.

Dimly, over the roar of the crowd, there was a sound of horses’ hooves clattering across the cobblestones. The men hastily scattered as a black coach drawn by two chestnut horses dashed into their midst. Some of the slower men were knocked to the ground; one became caught under the wheels. The carriage door was flung open from the inside, and a hand thrust out, grasping William by his shirtfront and pulling him into its depths.

It was Angelus, of course.

He threw William onto the bench seat opposite him. The door slammed and the driver whipped the horses. The coach rocked violently as the men outside flung their bodies against it, grappling to seize the door-handle, the horses’ bridles. They were calling William by name—by all the ones given to him by the newspapers. They were calling for his blood. The driver’s whip whistled through the air as he lashed the men that blocked his path. Within moments, the horses were carrying the coach down the street at a full gallop.

Somewhat dazed by the suddenness of it all, William pushed himself up into a sitting position. Across from him, sitting in a row, were Angelus, Darla, and Dru. The first two looked furious, but Drusilla was smiling at him with a complacency that was almost pride.

William wiped the blood from his face and then licked it from his fist. “How’d you find me?” he asked. His voice sounded strong, but his limbs were trembling from exhaustion and adrenaline. He had not eaten, that night.

“Pure chance!” Angelus bit out angrily. “There was a wedding—we happened to be driving by. You stupid ape! Are you incapable of learning anything—?”

“Guess your lesson didn’t stick, after all.”

He stretched his arm across the back of the seat. When Drusilla moved to sit by his side, he propped his muddy, bloodied boots on the cushion between Angelus and Darla.

“Nobody talk anymore. I’m right knackered.”

And to his shock, no one did talk after that.

Dru nestled into his side, and he rested his cheek against the top of her head. When he drifted off to sleep, it was with a smile on his face. He finally knew who he was.

And it wasn’t William.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





In Yorkshire, he called himself Spike. Not only because he liked the name (although he did, very much) but also because it had been given to him. He had earned it through his own actions. It was a name that was famous in London, a name that meant something.

He wanted it to mean something in Yorkshire, as well.

Since the last “lesson,” he and Angelus had spoken very little. William supposed that he should be grateful to his grandsire for saving him back in London. When he finally asked Angelus why he bothered to rescue him, the answer was short and vague: “Because you’re mine to protect, as is Dru.” Perhaps William should have felt gratified to know that the other vampire did care for him, in some twisted way, but he didn’t feel anything of the kind. Although the seething hatred would fade with time, he would never again look at Angelus with adoration or even affection. Now, with the defilement still fresh upon him, the closest thing to emotion that he could muster was hot loathing.

Beyond loathing, there was also rebellion. It was the rebellion that Angelus feared—rebellion and the loss of control. When they exited their coach in Yorkshire, the first thing Angelus did—actually, the second thing he did. The first thing was to kill the coachman, despite his promise not to if he delivered them safely. But the second thing Angelus did was to grab William by the lapels of his coat and shove him into the dirt.

“I want no more of this carousing,” he ordered tightly. “You’ll do as you like in Yorkshire, but you’ll do it quietly and without drawing attention to yourself. This isn’t far enough from London for them not to know you. If you spoil this for us, I will kill you.”

William sat in the dusty street and listened to this command, but he hadn’t the slightest intention of obeying it. In fact, once Angelus had departed (after the obligatory kick to his grandchilde’s ribs) William set out to do just what Angelus directed him not to do. This was partly to spite him, but also because William simply enjoyed the attention.

This time, Drusilla accompanied him. They strolled, arm-in-arm, down the narrow street, and William was pleased to have her along. He liked her again. She had cared for him during his recuperation from Angelus’ abuse, and cared for him so devotedly that he finally began to understand her. She had destroyed the book because she loved him, and because she was jealous that he did not return her love in the manner she wished him to. Once he had calmed down enough to think this over properly, it was almost understandable to him. If Elizabeth had been in love with another man…if she held some little keepsake from that man, even as she entered into a relationship with him, then William would have wanted to destroy the keepsake as well. He wouldn’t have done it, of course, as Drusilla had. But she was mad, and that was not her fault. Although he would never forget her misdeed, he eventually forgave her for it, and that made things much easier for both of them.

“Where are we going, my William. Are you planning to be naughty again?”

“Naughty as they come,” he answered, the words carefully spoken in his new accent. An accent he was still struggling to perfect and that, so far, it did not sound the least bit like Drusilla’s, not even to his own ears. Still, it sounded like something, and it made Dru giggle.

“William is a dark knight, now,” she said contentedly. William grinned, at first. Then, he frowned thoughtfully.

“Spike,” he said. “It’s Spike, now.”

“Spike,” she echoed softly. It sounded good to his ears, although she pronounced it “Spoik.” He was so pleased with her that he pulled his arm from hers in order to drape it around her shoulders.

“D’ya like it?”

“It’s lovely and sharp,” she answered. Which, given the origins of the name, struck him as wildly funny. He laughed all the way to the end of street.

The last building to the right of them was a tavern, a rather decrepit building of crumbling stone. Yet a tavern meant men, and lots of them. And lots of men meant quite a good battle. They stopped in front of the building and looked at it appraisingly.

Spike gave Dru a little squeeze before releasing her. “What do you think, pet?”

“Malt liquor and mortality,” she answered immediately. “They haven’t an idea of what’s coming.”

“My thoughts exactly. Want to come along?”

She shook her head. “It’s your game, but I should like to watch.”

Spike pushed opened the tavern’s rickety door and waited until Drusilla passed over the threshold before he entered. The barman looked up when the dented brass bell rang, and, almost immediately, he shouted at them.

“No women in here! This is a respectable establishment.”

“Sod off,” Spike answered.

He pulled out a barstool for Dru to sit on, and then turned to meet the wrath of the tavern’s owner. He met it by picking up a second barstool and smashing the man’s face in with it.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





In the span of an hour, they were all dead.

Well, perhaps not quite all of them. Some had fled out a side door while Spike was preoccupied with the rest. These escapees gathered the other men in town, and, much in the manner of their London counterparts, they found their courage in numbers.

Spike had no idea that he was about to be assaulted by an angry mob. Angelus and Darla had found them walking down the street after the massacre, and now the four of them were on their way to a hotel that Angelus had run across while hunting.

“You’ve got blood all over yourself, William,” Angelus grumbled to Spike as they walked. “What have you been doing?”

Spike glanced at Drusilla, and they both laughed.

“Just having a pint in the local pub, actually.”

Angelus pulled up abruptly, at that. The already dour expression on his face had become furious. He grabbed Spike by the shoulders and yanked him forward, so close that their faces almost touched.

“What in the fucking hell is that supposed to mean?”

Spike opened his mouth to answer him, but at that very moment, a group of irate Yorkshire men appeared on the street behind them. They were holding all manner of weapons: shovels and axes, torches and even pitchforks. The latter of these struck Spike as amusing—he had always assumed their use by an angry mob was just an invention of literature. He choked back a burst of inappropriate—and somewhat hysterical—laughter, and looked to his grandsire, wondering what they were to do next.

However, for a moment, Angelus just gaped at the approaching mob. When his eyes shifted back to Spike, they were filled with disbelief.

“Goddamn it, William,” he said.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~
 
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