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Chapter 13


Sounds started to penetrate the fog surrounding his aching brain. Giggles, to be exact. When William tried to lift his hand to rub at his tired eyes, he found out his arms had been immobilized. Someone had tied him up. His cracked open his eyes and frowned at the sight of Darla and Drusilla leaning above him with evil smiles.


'Balls.'


Nothing good could possibly come from this. He felt woozier that he’d ever remembered being. Had they slipped something in his drink last night? Drowning his sorrow didn’t seem like such a good idea now. Not with the two of them around.


“We bought something for you,” Drusilla said.


Darla grinned. “Stole it, to be more precise. And I didn’t really like the unhelpful assistance. Had to punish her.”


Dru nodded. “She tasted like cherries.”


William shook his head, trying to clear his mind. “Did you drug me?”


“Little bit. We didn’t think you’d like what we had to do,” Darla said and snorted.


“Why is she laughing?” William asked Drusilla, but no answer instead another chortle of glee was forthcoming.


“Well, you know how much our Dru likes punk, right?”


“What? What does that have to do with anything?”


Darla glared at him.


“Well, yeah. Of course I do. She wouldn’t stop singing for a few days after we listened to the Sex Pistols.”


“Tell me about it. I thought my head was going to explode. Anyway… you know what? I think I’ll untie you.”


“Thanks,” he said with a sigh of relief as she undid the strong ropes. He rubbed his wrists and stood up. Something was off, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it as he went to grab a clean shirt. The one he was wearing seemed to get stained somehow. His unease rose considerably when the two vampires followed him with big grins and secretive glances. He was starting to get annoyed.


“What?”


They just stared at him as if expecting to see him sprout horns out of his head. He ran his hand through the hair the way he always did when frustrated and immediately froze.


The curls were gone. His eyes widened.


“What did you do to my hair?”


Darla collapsed on his bed in a fit of laughter. “Your face! So priceless!”


Dru snatched something from a table and slinked her way towards him. She was holding a camera.


William gulped. He was terrified to find out what they did to him while he was completely out of it. Dru took a picture and cooed at it. Patience wasn’t a virtue he possessed nowadays, so he closed the distance between them and took the camera out of her hands.


He stared at it, trying to recognize the man in the photo. It couldn’t have been him. The shock of seeing himself with white, short hair was overridden by how attractive it made him look. His cheekbones seemed more prominent, the blue of his eyes even more pronounced.


“Are we forgiven, sweet William?” Dru asked with a pout before she hugged his side.


He nodded mutely and kissed her on the forehead.


Darla stretched out on his bed, her shapely bare legs on display. “You really should think of some other name for yourself. You sound like a stuffy piano teacher.”


“Let’s go out. My belly is rumbling,” Dru said and bit his earlobe with blunt teeth.


*******


Four months later, he thrust a spike into his victim’s head, the skull cracking open under the invasion. Darla and Drusilla happily fed on another one as he watched the blood pool around his victim’s body. He was starting to get notorious in the demon circles, the sheer violence of his actions making them whisper in fear and respect. It was what he’d wanted, but it still wasn’t enough.


It never would be.


They called him Spike now, which he actually preferred to his human name. William wasn’t who he was anymore. He wasn’t the gentle, soft-spoken boy that would rather avoid a fight than seek it. The rules had changed and he had to adapt by molding himself into someone capable of surviving.


Spike thrived off the hunt, reveled in killing his victims. He didn’t feel anything but the rush of his demon’s itching need to keep killing and maiming as he sucked the blood out of his victim, tossed the dead corpse aside and stood up. It was almost worse than the pain digging into his heart. Almost.


He’d fallen into a haze these last few months, suppressing the last vestiges of human conscience as he let the mindless existence consume him. Death, lust, violence all seemed to blend together. The lines were blurring and human laws no longer applied.


Drusilla came up to him and licked the pale skin of his neck before sinking her fangs into it while offering him her wrist. He bit it without hesitation, the blood running in a circle of numbing pleasure and familiar connection between them.


The back of his neck tingled as Darla came up behind him and ran her hands beneath the tight material of his black t-shirt to caress his taut abdomen. He and Drusilla drew out their fangs and turned to face Darla. He’d been so flustered when he first caught the two of them in throes of passion, their pale limbs entwined as they laughed at his discomfort. He’d been both transfixed and embarrassed.


He’d become used to it since then. The two of them were always up to no good and they had no sense of modesty. Sex wasn’t about love. It was all about taking what you needed--quenching the demon’s lust. They’d taunted his inexperience with a promise to teach him things that would make William run for the hills. Depraved and sinful. Pleasure that verged on the edge of pain. It stilled the need for a while.


One thing Spike swore he’d never let either of them do was kiss him. Darla couldn’t care less, whereas Drusilla threw fits and babbled about sunshine that stained him. The part he’d worked so hard to bury deep inside, the tender and shy part of him that was William resented feeling their lips on his. Buffy was the last and only woman to ever do so and he couldn’t bear the thought of letting someone else have that part of him. In his mind, the intimacy of a kiss was sacred.


Their hands ran all over his body, stirring the flames of raw lust. He could see the dark desire in their golden eyes as they dragged him to the bloodstained ground and ripped his t-shirt off. Their gaze devoured his muscled chest before leaning down to mark him with their teeth, their nails digging deep into his skin. Spike hissed in pain, growling as he tried to quiet down the desperate voice in his head telling him not to do this. The image of Buffy’s hurt expression flickered behind his closed eyelids before he gave into his demon completely.


********


Buffy scooted against the headboard of her bed with a battered old book in her hands and drew up her knees. The content of it had taken her breath away the first time she looked at it. The day she’d forced herself to sort through William’s things, she’d stumbled upon the little note book. It was full of his poems.


Poems about her.


She caressed the worn-out spine with a bittersweet smile and opened it. Even though she knew all the words by heart, just looking at his handwriting made her feel closer to him. There were a few torn out pages and Buffy presumed they had been devoted to Cecily before she’d so cruelly stomped on William’s heart. But all the rest belonged to her.


The emotion he’d written them with made the lump in her throat swell with grief. She knew he loved her, but she never really realized how much. It was as if she had been his whole world, the only thing that had ever made him happy and Buffy knew without a shadow of doubt that she’d never be loved that way again.


The door opened with a creak and Buffy wiped at her eyes as she hugged the note-book to her chest.


Faith walked in and sat beside her on the bed. “I’m going to a club. Come with me?”


“I don’t really feel like-”


“Do you want me to get eaten by vampires?”


Buffy knew very well that Faith was baiting her. She could hold her own in a fight and often went patrolling along with Buffy, but if something really happened to her, Buffy would never forgive herself. “This is blackmail.”


“Never said I played fair.”


*********


Giles paced around his living room, waiting for Buffy and Faith to come back from their night out.


The door opened and they came in, Faith obviously inebriated from the slight stumble in her walk as Buffy supported her and greeted her Watcher. “Oh, hi, Giles. Didn’t know you would be up this late.”


“Can we talk?”


Buffy frowned at his serious expression and nodded. “Sure. Just let me put Faith to bed. She’s going to have a major hangover tomorrow.”


Giles was sitting tensely in his armchair when she came back, so she sat in the chair opposite him. He’d been a great Watcher and even a better friend in the last three months. She often thought of him as the father she’d never had.


“What’s up? You look all serious.”


“There has been… trouble. I thought I could spare you because you’ve been going through a difficult time, but the Council is pressing on me. They just called, forcing me to divulge the information to you.” He stood up again and turned away from her.


“Giles?”


“The Aurelius clan is in the country.”


“Who?”


“They are one of the oldest, most evil vampire bloodlines in history. They have been sighted near London, leaving a generous trail of death in their wake.”


“Since when has this been going on?”


“A while after you became the Slayer,” Giles admitted and turned around to glimpse her expression.


Buffy stared at him in shock. “Why haven’t you told me?”


“I was trying to protect you. I was foolishly hoping that they would get bored and move-”


“To kill people somewhere else? You know I can’t let that happen. You should have let me know. I’m the Slayer, I can-”


“No, you can’t! You’re not experienced enough to take them on. Since their leader, Angelus, was cursed and shunned, they have been devoid of an alpha male. From my resources, they seemed to have found a new addition to their family. They call him Spike. He’s a fledgling, but his reputation certainly precedes him. Buffy, I can’t let you face them.”


“I can’t just sit here and twiddle my thumbs while they’re out there killing people!”


“You don’t understand. They’re unlike anything you’ve ever faced, and it’s three of them against one of you. The only thing you’d get accomplished is to get yourself killed. Just like the last Slayer.”


Buffy frowned. “What about her?”


“One of the Aurelians killed her. Drusilla, I believe.”


The name hit her as a splash of cold water. Drusilla. Why did it sound so familiar? Where had she heard it before? “Do you have a picture of her?”


Giles looked puzzled but went to retrieve a book from his bookcase. He found the right page and presented it to her. “Here. This is the last archived picture of her the Council has.”


A memory of a lost forgotten dream fought its way to the forefront of her mind. Buffy gasped and shot to her feet. “I know her. I-I’ve seen her before. In a dream. Right before… the night you found me. They killed a girl. It was the Slayer before me, wasn’t it?”


“You had a vision about her?”


“It felt so real, but I didn’t realize it really was at the time. Dru… that was what the other woman called her. And let me tell you, I did not like either of them.”


“What did the other one look like?”


Buffy furrowed her brow. “Umm... Blonde, powerful, kind of bossy.”


Giles let out a heavy sigh and nodded. “That would be Darla. The Master’s Childe. She’s one of the oldest vampires around. You see why I was hesitant to let you know. And this Spike… he seems almost as bad as the two of them combined. The killing seems personal, almost desperate from what I read. He doesn’t only limit his carnage to humans. He’s killing everything in his path without mercy.”


“So he’s got issues. Well, it doesn’t matter; I have to kill them all. Maybe catch them when they’re separated. I’ve been training really hard. I know I can take them one on one.”


“Buffy…”


“No. Don’t ‘Buffy’ me. You don’t think I’m scared? You don’t think I know they’ll probably get the better of me? But this is what I am. I fight. I try to protect as many people as I can. I have to make up for…”


Giles stepped closer and squeezed her shoulder. “It wasn’t in your power to save him. You can’t let it weigh on your conscience.”


“I owe it to him. He’s dead because I was too stupid to figure it out. If only I had burned the contracts earlier. I would have been able to walk through the barrier… He would be alive.”


She turned her face away as the tears started to flow, her voice tight with determination and anger. “I’ll find them and I’ll kill them. They’ll be sorry they ever set foot in my territory.”


TBC