Chapter 2: The Slayer

Spike doesn’t seem to care that I don’t want to talk about it, and he follows me all the way back to my apartment. “What happened?” he asks me, over and over. “How’d you beat the bloody poof?”

I hate it when he calls Angel that. Angel had two sides to himself, but neither one of them was a “bloody poof.” The guy I loved was sweet and sensitive, but also brave and strong and a warrior who fought beside me in the battle against evil. The guy I killed was sadistic, ruthless, a monster who thrived on blood and pain and fear.

Neither one of them was a poof.

I fumble with my keys, which gives Spike the chance to size up my living arrangements. “Nice place, Slayer,” he drawls, with just the faintest edge of sarcasm. “Decided you wanted to see how the other half lived, did you?”

I backhand him across the face, keys still clenched in my fist, but he just laughs. “Shut up, Spike,” I say, even though I know it’s useless. You can’t make Spike shut up. I should kill him before he decides to end this weird impromptu truce we’ve got going on, but he did kinda just save my life.

It usually takes at least three tries to get my door open on a regular day, let alone when I’ve got a vampire watching over my shoulder, but finally I get the damned thing unlocked and I hurry inside.

Spike waits in the doorway. “Don’t I get an invite?”

“No.”

I try to close the door but he’s lightning fast and there’s a stake jammed in between the door and the frame, and he manages to pry it back open again without ever crossing the threshold.

“Be seeing you around,” he says, and I’m not quite sure if his tone is menacing or not. “…Anne.”

My eyes widen, and my hand flies to the nametag still pinned to my work uniform. Spike’s lips curl into a grin, and he tosses the stake at me. He backs away a few steps, then spins, black coat awhirl, and he’s out of sight in an instant. The thought briefly occurs to me that I should get a long coat like that. The swirly thing is kinda cool looking, like a superhero’s cape or something.

Then I remember that I don’t want to be a superhero anymore.

I sink down on my bed – just a dingy mattress on the floor – and try to steady my rapidly beating heart. It makes me feel vulnerable, that someone from Sunnydale, someone from my past, has found me. I wanted to forget it all, pretend it happened to some other girl, but I can’t because now he knows and it’s all wrong. He’s intruding on my new world, my carefully constructed me, the girl who doesn’t fight vampires and just wants to be left alone.

I remember a line from something I read once: “Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.” That’s me. I don’t know how to deal with all the bad, so I put it away, lock it up.

I didn’t tell anyone about Angel. No one could possibly understand, and so I shut them all out, left them all behind. And I was doing okay, not great, but I mean, considering… until he, of all people, has to show up and bring it all back again.

Well, I won’t let him. He doesn’t have control over me. I never have to see him again, and if I do, I can kill him, and then he’ll never bother me again.

*****

The next day, I push away all thoughts of Spike and the past and go about my normal routine. I go into work at noon. Twelve hour shift again today, and I’ll be dead tired at the end of it, but money’s money and I need it. I manage to lose myself in the mindless work until the dinner rush starts winding down, and that’s when Ellie comes into the kitchen to find me. She’s been having a good day – beating Don 9-5 and widening the gap.

“There’s a fella, asked to sit in your section,” she tells me, with a wink and a knowing nod that says I have an admirer.

“What?” I say, momentarily flustered, because who would come to see me? Then I see him, and I stop, my chest tightening with anger and fear and a few other emotions I don’t bother to sort out.

“What do you want?” I demand, my arms crossed over my chest.

Spike reclines in the booth, one arm draped along the back, and looks thoughtful for a moment. “Hmmm. I don’t know.” I glare at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “The specials look good, but I think I’ll have to see the menu,” he says, that trademark smirk smeared across his face.

“We don’t serve anything that suits your tastes,” I spit back at him. Gross blood-sucking monster.

He raises his eyebrows, the picture of innocence. “You talk to all your customers like this? No wonder you live in that shithole, you must get fuck-all in tips.”

I slam a menu down on the table in front of him. He doesn’t flinch, though a few other customers pause to stare. “What,” I repeat, this time through gritted teeth, “do you want?”

“New York Strip steak,” he replies, handing the menu back to me without even glancing at it. “Rare as they can make it.” He flashes me a grin, and it’s all I can do not to stake him right on the spot. But there are too many witnesses, so I turn on my heel and march back to the kitchen.

“New York Strip, well done,” I tell Don. Ellie gives me an excited “well?” expression. I just glare at her in response.

“Sides?” Don asks.

“Huh?”

“With the steak. Your boy gets two sides.”

I couldn’t care less what sides Spike wants. “Lima beans,” I say, after a moment’s thought. What? I’m seventeen. Lima beans are the ultimate form of gastronomic revenge. If only we served brussels sprouts. “Whatever you want for the other.”

“He’s a cute one,” says Ellie. “Little too Billy Idol, but you kids are into that nowadays, aren’t you?”

“He’s bad, Ellie,” I retort. “Someone I never wanted to see again.”

Realization dawns on her face, and I can see her drawing the conclusion: ex-boyfriend. Not quite true, but “mortal enemy I once teamed up with to kill my ex-boyfriend” just doesn’t have the right ring to it, so I let her think what she wants.

Ellie gives Don a look. “You want us to get rid of him?” she asks me. “Escort him off the premises?” She looks moderately excited by the idea, and I’m amused by the mental image of Ellie dragging Spike out by his ear and tossing him on the pavement outside, all the while giving him a stern scolding as if he were one of her little brats.

Nevertheless, I shake my head. I’m the only one who can deal with Spike. As soon as Ellie or Don got him outside, he’d probably bite them. “I wouldn’t be opposed to arsenic in his dinner, though.”

Don gives me a sympathetic smile. “You got it, Annie.”

When his food is ready, I drop Spike’s plate in front of him and slide into the booth across from him. He looks somewhat surprised at me sitting there, but he doesn’t comment, just picks up his silverware and digs in.

I sit in silence, watching him. He makes a face at the lima beans and slices open his baked potato, jerking his hand away when steam rises from it. It seems to take him forever to fix that damned potato, but finally, he looks at me. “Did you want something, pet?”

“How did you find me?”

He’s startled by the question. “I didn’t,” he says. “I wasn’t looking for you. Never wanted to see your bloody face again, to tell the truth. Just happened to see you in that alley there.”

“So, it was just one big coincidence that you happened to be in the same city as me, and you happened to be walking down the same alley where I happened to be getting attacked by vampires.”

Spike shrugs. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world…”

I roll my eyes. I’m so not in the mood. “And showing up at my diner? I guess that’s a coincidence, too?”

He looks at me like I’m stupid. “No, that I did on purpose.”

“Why?”

“What are you doing here?”

He says it in a tone of voice that almost answers my question, but that only leaves me more confused. Why would Spike be concerned about me? If he’s not here to kill me, what’s he doing at all?

“Fine,” he says, and I realize I’ve been staring at him without answering for a while now. “No questions.”

“What?”

“About the past, about what either one of us is doing in L.A., about anything else we don’t want to talk about.”

I scramble out of the booth and stand up abruptly. “We’re not talking about anything. We don’t – we’re not friends.”

“Fine, have it your own bloody way, then.” Spike turns back to his dinner. I have the fleeting thought that vampires don’t usually eat people food, but my curiosity is swallowed by my desire to get the hell away from him. I tear off his check from the pad and slap it down on the table. “Pay at the counter,” I mutter, right before I flee to the kitchen.

The next time I come out he’s gone, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m actually surprised he’s left a decent tip, but as I slip the money into my pocket I finger the stake I still keep there, mostly out of habit. Next time, I promise myself. William the Bloody’s going down.

I don’t get out of work until almost twelve-thirty. Some drunk couple wandered in and wanted pie, and since I left early last night, I figured I ought to stay and take their table, even though I knew I’d get a crappy tip. When I finally go home, all I want to do is sleep, but there’s a commotion in the alley that attracts my attention. Someone’s knocked over a metal trash can, and it clatters to the ground and rolls until it hits a wall. Then I hear a woman’s voice, whimpering. I sprint around the corner, but it’s too late.

It’s Spike, of course, and when he sees me, he drops the dead girl and flashes me a toothy, bloody grin. “I was waiting for you,” he says, still wearing his game face, “but I just got so bored.”

“I told you I didn’t want to talk.” My hand is in my pocket now, fingers curled around the stake.

Spike glances down at the girl at his feet and licks his lips. “You think I came here to talk?” He laughs, and a shiver goes up my spine. “I came to finish this.”

“Fine,” I say, pulling the stake out and raising my arm to striking position. “Let’s finish it.”