DISCLAIMER: Joss owns the characters and makes the money. I right the wrongs of the Evil Writers who refused to get Buffy and Spike together where they belonged.

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Chapter 10 – Black Feathers, Black Ribbons

London 1883

The moon, one day short of full, was setting and the sun was edging up to the eastern horizon when Angelus and his family arrived at the back door of what had once been Spike’s house. He hadn’t wanted to come back here, but that bleeding bogtrotter insisted and when Angelus insisted everyone better bloody well look out.

The house had stood empty for the past three years, waiting for someone brave enough or callous enough to purchase a house where a maid had been murdered and its owner and his mother disappeared. Those years had not been kind to the once tidy and neatly kept house. Paint on the curling gingerbread peeled and left weathered raw wood exposed to the rain and show. The copper gutters had been torn away and curtains and blinds were drawn behind the dirt-streaked windows giving the house a blank, unseeing look. Weeds straggled up between the bricks of the walk and the bushes surround the house were spindly and overgrown.

Drusilla drew a hairpin out of her chignon and batted it through the air. “My Willie misses his mummy.”

Spike growled to get her to shut up. He wanted no reminders of his past, least of all from Drusilla, whose remarks cut all too close.

“Get on with it, Willie,” Angelus said. “Open the focking door.”

“Spike. The name is Spike,” he said. He snatched the hairpin out of Drusilla’s hand and jabbed it into the lock. He wasn’t good at picking locks, a skill Angelus said was mandatory for nightwalkers, and having Angelus and Darla and Dru hanging over him, watching his clumsy efforts, wasn’t helping the process. He dropped the hairpin.

Angelus kicked Spike’s butt when he bent over to pick up the pin. “Hurry it up, Aunt Nancy. I don’t fancy being caught out in the morning sun because you’re so bleeding useless.”

“Sod off,” Spike said. He tossed the pin away and kicked the door down. “After you, poufter.” He held out his hand and bowed in mock reverence. He never let Angelus get away with an order or a kick without some rude remark.

Angelus slammed him against the wall and punched him in the gut. Spike collapsed, but made no sound. “You’re one step, missy,” Angelus said, “from getting a slat from the garden gate shoved into your heart.”

Darla and Drusilla giggled and patted their gloved hands together. They loved it when Angelus beat the crap out of him.

Spike giggled. Christ, that hurt. He wanted to cry from the pain and the mortification, but he wouldn’t, not in front of Angelus. Any sign of weakness would only encourage a more thorough going beating. Or worse.

“Next time I tell you to open a door, Willie, you’ll not be scaring up all the neighbors by using your goddamned foot.” Angelus smacked Spike’s face to remind him who was sire and master in their little family and ushered the two women into the house.

“It’s Spike. You’d do well to remember it,” Spike said after the others had gone into the house and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

He woke up the following afternoon in his old bedroom to an empty bed and the sounds of grunts and squeals coming from the room Angelus and Darla were sharing. It had once been his mother’s room. It wasn’t the first time Drusilla slipped off to the arms of her Daddy while Spike was sleeping. Spike wondered if she loved him at all or if he was only a handy plaything when Daddy wasn’t about.

“Willie!” Angelus roared. “Get in here!”

Spike pulled on his trousers and went into the next room. He took his time, although his dawdling didn’t disguise that he was forced to go whenever Angelus called.

Drusilla straddled Angelus and held her white nightgown gathered up in her hands. She moved her pelvis up and down, servicing him. Angelus occasionally gave thought to her pleasure – or pain - and pinched her nipples and she made little shrieks. Spike felt excited and resentful watching Drusilla pumping away on her sire. She belonged to him, or he to her, and Angelus had no right touching her. He got hard.

Darla sat on the other side of the bed, looking bored. She picked dried blood from under her fingernails with a thin, wooden stick. Spike wished he could shove the damn thing into her heart.

“Give your grandmother a jump, lad. If you think you’re up to it.”

He was horny enough to do it, not that getting a piece off Darla was any thrill, more like putting your cock into a side of frozen beef. He approached the bed and unbuttoned his trousers and slid his braces off his naked shoulders.

Darla snarled and continued to pick her nails. “You can put your pecker away, Willie.”

She’d never let Spike touch her, whether Angelus gave permission or not. He wasn’t strong enough to force her, which he dearly wanted to do. He envied her ability to stand up to Angelus, as well.

Angelus flipped Drusilla over and pounded her into the mattress. After a few strokes, his body quivered and he roared as he climaxed. He shoved off her and got out of bed, his member still hard and slick and pointing out straight. “Boyo, you can have sloppies. Or, would you prefer a mouthful of my stalk?” He grabbed his member and wagged it in Spike’s direction.

Drusilla lay back on the pillows sucking her fingers. She turned to embrace Darla and the two rolled together while Angelus watched.

Spike ran out of the room, angry at Drusilla for preferring Angelus and Darla over himself, and angry at himself for allowing Darla to refuse him. He grabbed his boots and the rest of his rough clothes. He put on a collarless white shirt and short workman’s jacket and left the house as the sun was setting.

He straightened his coat and smoothed back his hair with his hands. You couldn’t catch a good kill looking like a maniac. He sniffed the air and walked down the street. He was hungry, but he liked to wait until the blood thirst was sharp before picking out his victim. It made the kill more exciting and the taste of blood keener and more satisfying.

An old man lamplighter climbed up the ladder at the corner and lit the last lamp on the street. Carbon clogged the gas hob and made the light gutter and spit. Spike sized him up, but rejected him as too old and tough. Full of cheap gin, too. If Spike had to have his supper mixed with gin, he preferred something better than the slop served at some local unlicensed gin sty. There were no other people walking on the street, all the local residents were tucked away in their tidy homes, the windows glowing yellow, behind their safe thresholds. He walked on with his hands shoved in his pockets.

It was good to be away from Angelus and the rest. He’d been a fool to stay with them so long. Living under Angelus’s thumb was no better than living with his mother. Worse. Rules for this, rules for that. A vampire has to have finesse. A good kill. A clean kill. A crack on the head if you didn’t do what you were told and Angelus dropping his trousers and banging Drusilla in front of you.

He’d tried to convince Drusilla to slip away after Angelus beat him black and blue up in Yorkshire, but she’d refused, and he didn’t feel confident enough to live on his own. He hated Angelus and Darla, and even Drusilla sometimes, but he craved their company. If only he knew some other vampires, preferably another lady vampire, he would skip town, leave Drusilla behind if he had to, but Angelus never wanted to go to any places where other vampires might be found and he refused to stay in any one area long enough for Spike to find any on his own.

He’d been walking about ten minutes, when he came upon a familiar sight – The Raven. How rough and exciting that night had been with Emma, beautiful as a picture card, her sweet voice dabbing silver notes in the smoky pub air. Pain stole across his heart. How different everything would have been if she’d lived. How different he would have been. He shrugged off the memory of his last visit and Emma. What was she to him now, but a foolish, romantic dream he’d had once? Drusilla and Angelus and Darla, they were the granite hard reality. Scrapping, killing, swilling blood, swilling booze until he chucked it back up, getting laid if Angelus felt like letting him tear a piece off his own girlfriend’s tail, getting his ass kicked no matter what. There was no place in Spike’s life for sentimental songs and pretty girls long dead.

The Raven was as good a place to pick up a victim as any. He might even start a friendly scrap with four or five of the men. A good fight would suit him tonight, get the bitter taste of humiliation out of his mouth. He went in.

Cagey Leander wiped the bar with a white cloth and handed out pints of guinness and ale. Spike recognized him and remembered with a blush how impressed William had been to know a tough character like Cagey. He’d met a lot tougher since then, hadn’t he? Spike tossed a coin on the bar and accepted a pint.

“Where’ve you been, young Billy?” Cagey examined Spike’s clothes with a critical eye.

Spike was surprised to be remembered by the bar man. It had been three long years since Emma brought him here and broke his heart. “Yorkshire and about.”

“Look like you’re a bit on the down in them rags.”

This was another point of contention with Angelus. Daddy Bear wanted Spike to wear a suit and a shirt with a collar and a silk cravat when they went out hunting. They’d fought about this point on many occasions and no doubt would fight about it when Spike came in from the prowl in the early morning hours. Spike always refused. What good was being a vampire if you couldn’t dress as you pleased? He didn’t want the soft, tasteless victims that Angelus favored, anyway. He preferred someone honed by a hard life on the streets, someone who would put up a fight.

He might have to take this shite from Angelus, but he didn’t have to accept it from a quimlicker who called himself Cagey. “Can’t a man have a pint without getting a lecture?” He took a swig. The beer was adulterated with quassia, wormwood, capsicum and tobacco-juice. William had never noticed, sad bugger that he was, but Spike did. His vampire senses let him taste each separate dark ribbon of bitter ingredients He considered taking the matter of his piss poor beer up with Cagey, but decided to concentrate on the drink he’d come in here to get.

Cagey held his hands up. “It’s no skin off my arse. Just thought you would be spruced up to see the girl.”

He didn’t know what girl Cagey was talking about and wanted to avoid drawing any more attention to himself so he took his glass and looked around the crowded room for a likely whore to make his evening meal. Whores were easy pickings. They’d follow a man right into some dark alley with never a thought and no one would even think to look for a whore for days. Even Angelus approved taking a trull if nothing better offered.

He picked her out right away, a small, curly-haired blonde, sitting alone with her head down, her face hidden by the wide brim of her hat and the streaming black feathers and black knotted ribbons that decorated it. She slumped in her chair, cradling a glass of gin in her hands. She looked beat and miserable. Hell, he’d be doing her a favor to end it all for her tonight.

The wooden chair scraped the floor as he pulled it out and sat down. “Hope you don’t mind some company, this evening, Miss.” This was one useful thing he’d learned from that wanker, Angelus. Always be respectful to whores. They loved that. They’d do anything for a man who treated them like weren’t the worst kind of gutter trash.

The girl raised her head and opened her sunken holly green eyes. “Hello, Billikins.”

Spike opened his mouth, but no words came out, no sensible words even formed in his head. Emma. His Emma, alive, alive and sitting in this dreadful place alone. Her heart shaped face was gray in the subdued light of the pub and her eyes, ringed with black kohl, glittered with tears.

She’d survived. Somehow, she’d lived through the terrible attack. And, he’d run away, never thinking to return. He hadn’t even read the paper the next day. He’d been too heart-sickened at the thought of reading the sordid details of her death. He’d left her alone and she’d had no way to find him. He’d wasted three years. He’d wasted a good death. He could have been with her all this time and instead he’d mourned her.

She reached out a deathly pale hand. Her nails were chewed away, her fingertips raw and pink. She touched his hand. “Don’t you have a hello operator for an old pal?”

Her hand was cold, too cold. He should have known the minute he pulled up his chair. She hadn’t survived. She had become a creature of the night, like himself. “Who ...”

He didn’t ask the question. He knew the answer. His sire. Angelus had followed him, or Emma, for days, lurking in the shadow, licking his lips while he studied his victim, the way Spike had seen him do a thousand times since that night. A real kill. A good kill. It takes pure artistry.

Emma took her hand away. She picked up her glass of blue ruin and took a long drink. Spike could see that she’d been taking a lot of long drinks in the past three years. “Does it matter?”

Spike sprang out of his chair, knocking it over. He picked up his glass and threw it against the wall, sending a shower of adulerated alcohol and glass onto the heads of the men sitting there. “Bloody hell, yes, it matters! You were mine! I loved you. I wanted –,” he took her hand into both of his and held it to his chest. “I wanted to marry you and he stole you! He crushed the life out of you and made you into – this.” He dropped her hand and held his hands loose at his sides with the palms up, empty.

“Did you love me, my sweet boy? That makes me happy.”

Spike grabbed the chair and banged it back in place and sat down again next to her. “I want to know. Tell me everything that happened that night. I want you to tell me.”

“It’s no good. We can’t go back.”

“No, but I can stake the bloody bastard who did this to you.” He wanted to hear the words. He wanted all the details to feed the anger firing in his heart. The anger would give him the strength to kill his sire.

She drained the taps of her glass and stood up. “I should go.”

“No! You can’t go. Don’t you see? We’re the same, both stalkers of the night, living in the shadows.” He dragged her onto the small wooden dance floor. “We’ll leave town. Go to Paris or Rome, or even New York, if you like. We can get married, like we planned.” He crushed her close. She wasn’t warm and tender as she’d been when he’d first seen her, but she was Emma, still his Emma.

She danced with him a while, their shoes scuffing on the floor to the sound of sour notes Cagey played on the untuned piano, and sang in a soft voice. “When the silv'ry moonlight gleams, Still I wander on in dreams, In a land of love, it seems, Just with you.” Her voice was different, coarse where it had once been sweet and clear, but still it was her voice, the voice he’d longed to hear and had despaired of ever hearing again. She placed her head on his shoulder and allowed him to take her hand and press it against his dead heart.

“He said you’d come here tonight,” she said. She stopped dancing and took off her hat. The black ribbons and feathers trailed in the sawdust. Her green eyes flickered with yellow.

“Who said? What do you mean? I didn’t plan to come here.”

“Drusilla told him you’d be here when the moon was full. He told me to wait for you.”

Spike froze. Every muscle cramped tight as his eyes darted around the room. Angelus must be here somewhere, watching, waiting. “What’s his plan?”

She took his hand. “I’m supposed to walk you out into the alley. He’ll be waiting. He wants to kill you when Drusilla isn’t around.”

She knew about Drusilla. Spike didn’t want her to know about Drusilla and how he’d spent the past years trailing around after his dark plum. He didn’t want her to know about the trail of blood and bodies he’d left behind night after night, even though she was a demon herself and must have done more than her share of killing. Now that he’d found her again, he wanted desperately to cling to some tiny sliver of the good man William had been, but the remnant was gone. It didn’t matter. They would have something else, a century or two of something dark and bloody and full of terror. “Let’s go. He can’t fight both of us if we stick together.”

“I can’t fight him. I can’t.” Her eyes filled with tears and her mouth trembled. She turned her head and refused to look in his eyes.

Then, he understood and his heart broke all over and his anger flamed up in his silent heart. Emma was here to betray him. She would lure him out into the alley where Angelus would ram a barrel stave or the handle of a shovel through his chest and rid himself of Spike forever. She would betray him for Angelus who she loved.

“I thought you loved me. You said --”

“I never said, Billy. I never said I loved you. I couldn’t be so cruel.” Her hand touched his face.

His heart burned. She was lying. She must be lying because Angelus told her to lie to him. “It’s not true. You loved me.”

She said nothing, did nothing.

“Then, why? Why chase after me? Why act pleased to see me? Why draw me on? Why kiss me and touch me?” He clutched his hand in her hair and pulled hard as his anger blazed. He kissed her hard. He made it hurt. “I didn’t have any money. You must have known.” He shoved her away.

“You were so kind, so sweet. I knew you would help me escape. My mother arranged for me to be with men. Important men, rich men, whoever who could pay for my company. I wanted to get away. I saw you at the store that day and you were so sweet, fussing over scarves and things for your mother. I knew you’d never hurt me. I thought you might marry me and be kind to me. Was that so evil? I would have loved you if I could.”

“Let’s go. Your lover is waiting for you.” He turned and headed for the door without looking back.

“Wait! Don’t go out there!”

“Why not? It’s why you’re here.” Spike picked up a bottle and smashed it against the doorframe. He gripped the jagged neck as he went out into the night. The busting glass sounded loud in the night air. He wanted Angelus to know he was coming.

Angelus stepped out of the shadows into the circle made by the gas streetlamp. He slapped a flat, splintery stake in his hand. “I believe, Willy, your wheel of destiny has taken a spin for the worse.”