Chapter Three – Revulsion

He watched the hypnotic tattoo of her heartbeat flutter in the hollow of her neck.

She was spread out on her bed, naked and in content repose. Her skin was a pallet of pale gold and blushing pink and pure white where the sun hadn’t yet kissed her.

He wanted to paint her red.

Crouching over her slumbering form, Spike raised one hand and lightly brushed blonde silken strands away from her relaxed face. Her eyelids fluttered. Spike steeled himself until she settled back into that peaceful sleep, and then nearly crowed in demonic delight when her sweet, cherub lips parted on a sigh and her head rolled to the side, fully exposing the sinful view of the taut line of her arched neck.

He could practically taste her essence flooding his mouth.

Giving up what little physical restraint he had left, Spike firmly pressed the hard planes of his clothed body into Buffy’s soft, bare skin. His duster cloaked her nude form completely, giving off a picturesque scene of embracing lovers seeking cover.

It was anything but.

Spike trailed his long, chilled fingers down her smooth cheek and cupped her neck.

Buffy jarred fitfully, the light, teasing touch breaking through her lethargic haze.

Spike quickly covered her mouth with the palm of one of his hands and used the other to sweep her arms up and over her head. Her eyes snapped open. The calm of sleep was instantly replaced by a tension of alarm.

Spike inhaled sharply, the sudden adrenaline coursing through Buffy’s veins amplifying the intoxicating tang of her sweet blood as it gushed in torrents just below the surface of her delicate skin. His gaze regained focus when Buffy unexpectedly went pliant in his grasp, her eyes subdued and her face calm, the only sign of her short fright, the staccato of her pounding heart and the rapid rise and fall of her chest.

Spike found himself momentarily side-tracked by the rolling motion of her torso, which crushed her small, firm breasts against his cotton-clad chest and her heated center against his quivering cock through his jeans. He let his heavy lidded eyes shudder close on a primal moan.

And suddenly everything was in reverse. He was the one on his back and Buffy was perched astride him. A small, pixie smile played on her lips.

Stunned by the fact that this petite, human girl could get the upper hand on him, he lay, dazed, and didn’t attempt to stop her when she guided him to sit up so that they were once again face-to-face. She swept one warm hand under his shirt and up along his spine, sending shocks of delicious heat to the areas that she touched, while the other hand slid to the nape of his neck, caressing the smooth skin and fine hair that was there.

Her lax grip tightened just enough to let him know that she was to be the one to direct the motion of his head. She tilted his face up so that her bright, jade eyes were unquestionably the only feature he would be intent on watching at the moment. Her gaze was probing, and he marveled at the ancient wisdom glimmering within such a young, beautiful face.

“Do you want it?”

The area around him grew stagnant and unneeded air rushed out of his long-dead lungs.

Four simple words. Yet the meaning behind them implied so much more than their simplistic design. Away melted the backdrops of Buffy’s innocent room, in which Aggie and he had gone to great lengths to insure her comfort, and in its place was an alley. A dirty, dank, nondescript alley. The place of his rebirth. And in place of warm golden skin, hair the color of sunshine, and big, luminous green eyes, stood his sire. His salvation, his damnation. Cool flesh the color of moon beams, silken, midnight black tresses, and dark, cat-like eyes filled with equal parts reasonable insight and quaking madness.

Soft, whispered words that were meant for him and him alone, spoken from a being that resonated lethal grace.

*Do you want it?*

The sharp tug on the back of his head brought him back to himself and his focus was again on patient green eyes waiting for an answer.

An abrupt chill ran through his body, and his icy veins blazed. When asked the first time, this question had changed his life, morphing and altering his world anew. And when asked the same question again, over a century later—by this tiny slip of a girl—he knew it would now be his unlife that changed.

He just didn’t know how it would change.

Buffy gently started to lower his head toward her bare neck, and he tried to rear back, to resist the steady insistence of her guiding hands. In the end the temptation was too much, and he could only watch, in slow motion, as he descended nearer and nearer to the creamy, fragrant juncture where shoulder met neck.

*Do you want it?*

He was upon her, his cool cheek resting against the hot, thrumming vein of her jugular. He reverently nuzzled into the heat. Soaked it up. Savored the moist, musky velvet of her unbroken flesh.

*Do you want it?*

Deep blue eyes closed, cutting off one sense only to intensify the other four.

*Hear* the fast-beating drum of her heart, the shift of unbound flesh against cloth, the short breaths of excitement and submission.

*Smell* the honeyed musk of her skin, the innocent lust hidden in her secret places, the temptingly sweet elixir pumping through her veins.

*Touch* the trembling muscles, the slim thighs locked around his waist, the bare skin of her back.

Taste. Oh, how he wanted to *taste her.*

*Do you want it?*

Split the vein, enter the stream, and drown in the rushes of her red, red wine.

*Do you want it?*

Lap at the rivulets, don’t waste a drop, for nothing else would ever compare.

*Do you want it?*

Drink deep from her offering. Make her his chalice. Make her blood his life.

It was- It was his right to have it.

Spike’s eyes snapped open, dark pupils fully dilated around amber suffused irises.

*Do you want it?*

Coveted words whispered on a breath.

“God, yes.”

And he descended to take what was his.

..::~*~::..

Spike jolted awake, his dream already forgotten.

He let out a tremulous breath and distractedly ran his fingers through his mussed hair. What had he been dreaming of?

Looking down to his lap he noticed the impressive erection he sported. He raised his scarred eyebrow. Whatever it had been about, it didn’t seem to have been too unpleasant.

He slumped against his headboard, scowling in deep thought. He felt like he should remember what he had just woken up from; that whatever had happened in his dream must have been very important.

He let out a despairing groan when, instead of remembering the phantom dream, he remembered what had happened earlier that day.

Buffy’s arrival.

“Bloody chit,” Spike mumbled. He gave a laugh devoid of humor when he realized how right that statement was. He wanted her bloody, alright.

His stomach cramped horribly with hunger and revulsion at the perverse thought.

Spike fisted his hands into his sheets, willing the throbbing ache in his abdomen and groin to go away. He’d already downed three cups of pigs’ blood and gotten himself off twice since he’d raced back to his room with his tail tucked between his legs.

It didn’t seem to have taken any of the edge off.

Letting out a frustrated growl, Spike threw his covers off and rose from his bed. After having tossed off his second go around, he had managed to fall into a fitful sleep for the rest of the day, but his internal clock wouldn’t allow him any more rest. He was up with the rising moon. Always.

Deciding his energies were better spent pacing; he proceeded to do so, after pulling on a pair of loose fitting sweat pants that wouldn’t chafe the delicates.

“What the bloody hell is happenin’ to me?” He looked up to the ceiling, as if the big guy upstairs might answer him, then scoffed and shook his head when he realized what he was doing. “Right. Barkin’ up the wrong tree.” He looked to the ground. “Don’t s’pose you’d know, Lucifer ol’ boy?” When he didn’t receive a reply he continued with, “You’re overrated anyways.”

The pull of intensity that he had felt towards Buffy’s blood, as soon as he had met her, had not abated in the least. In fact, if he was completely honest with himself, it felt as if it had increased tenfold. He could hear her heartbeat echo off the walls of the mansion as if it were it’s own living, breathing entity, calling to him.

It didn’t make any sense.

It had been so long since he had this overwhelming thirst. Too long.

He’d made a place for himself in this world. Living somewhere in between his vampire nature and Aggie’s—and, yeah, poncy William’s as well—human morals.

What did it mean when some scrawny bird came into town and all of the sudden his fangs felt a might peckish for something a little—or a lot—richer than pig’s blood from the butcher shop?

Was he cured?

Spike stopped pacing to sit back down on his bed.

Did he want to be cured?

He looked over to his desk, where pieces of stationery—that certainly did not have frilly little poems on them—and a few photo frames stood. He traced a picture of Aggie with his eyes. It had been taken two years back at dusk. He’d managed to get into the backyard without dusting himself and stood under the shade of a willow tree to snap a picture of her gardening. It had been candid, not planned out on her part at all, and he’d managed to capture her looking out into the distance with a small content smile curving her lips.

The pinched lines around Spikes mouth and brows softened.

Was it worth it?

If he was cured… Did he want to give up all that he had made for himself, to luxuriate once again in the taste of human blood?

With a weary sigh, he lay back down upon his mattress, and remembered when everything had changed for him.

The night that a demon sought to teach him a lesson, and gave him the ‘gift’ of revulsion to human blood.

...::~*~::..

Africa, 1976

In Zulu, one of the many dialects of the Afrikaans languages, a young man dared to shout out, “You mustn’t go in there! The Isifiso Ubasi is sacred! No one can enter his hallowed grounds without explicit permi-“

Before the Afrikaner could finish his warning, a pale hand with black polished fingernails gripped his neck and twisted until a sickening crack silenced him forever.

Spike carelessly tossed the ebony carcass aside. “Sorry, mate, but I don’t much care about whatever it was you were natterin’ on about.” He shook his head and let his gameface come forth, the anticipation of an all out brawl giving him a slight buzz. “I’ve got myself a fight to win.”

Spike stalked on, his stride in no way hampered by the sand, while villagers peered at him from various safe vantage points. His bleached white hair was gelled into spikes and he wore acid washed jeans with a ratty black vest that was littered with safety pins. He was the likes of which they had never seen.

In the doorway of a one room lean-to, a small, dark skinned child looked up to her Umama with wide caramel colored eyes. She asked why the white man had hurt Sibeko. Her Umama had looked down to the fallen corpse of her son, then over to the retreating pale blur in the distance, and had replied to her only remaining child that it was not a man that had hurt Sibeko, but a white devil.

Spike walked on through the village, killing those who got in his way without a second glance. He didn’t have to be careful about concealing his true nature from these people. They knew exactly what he was.

At the entrance to the rock cave, he stopped. A tall, muscled Afrikaner who looked to weigh about 230 lbs. stood guard. His strong, bulging arms were crossed in a watchful manner in front of his chest, and he looked down on Spike with unmasked disdain.

“You do not have permission to cross this threshold, vampire.”

Spike didn’t even leave room for a proper pause to acknowledge the fact that he was grateful that the Afrikaner spoke English. “You think a little thing like permission is goin’ to stop me from gettin’ in there?”

“No, I do not. I simply felt that I should give you fair warning to walk away from dying what will be a most painful death.”

Spike’s lips twitched up into a malicious grin. “That right?” The guard gave him a curt nod. “Then I guess I’ll just have to take my chances.” The guard moved away when it seemed that Spike would not be relenting, and Spike continued to talk to him while slowly walking in through the cave entrance backwards. “I’ve always been a risk takin’ type, anyways. In point of fact…you might’ve even heard of me. Offed a chosen bird once, I did.”

The guard did not blink or gasp or do anything else to indicate that this information affected him in any way.

Spike stopped his backwards stride and scowled. “Come on. It was the turn of the century? Slayer from China killed by William the Bloody?...”

The guard remained resolute.

Spike sneered, “Oh, come off it. I bloody well know that you run with the demon circles. You’re a soddin’ guard for this namby-pamby Wish Master demon, aren’t you?”

The guards’ countenance darkened at this. “You will not disrespect Isifiso Ubasi by denouncing his name.”

Spike raised his scarred eyebrow and took a menacing step forward. “Yeh? And what are you gonna do ‘bout it?” He gave the onyx-colored man an appraising glance. “You know that I could kill you where you stand.”

The guard looked at Spike with clear dislike and turned back to his post, while saying dismissively over his shoulder, “Your arrogance will be your downfall.”

Spike narrowed his eyes at the silhouette of the guard and contemplated whether to eat him now or later. He straightened and turned away from the man. I’ll need blood to subside my hunger after this, he thought. I’ll start with him.

As he swaggered down the path leading to the heart of the cave, the walls on either side of him narrowed until only one man could possibly be comfortable navigating the passage way. There was no light. No fancy wall sconces or torches to set the ambiance. Just darkness. And then, after taking a curved turn, there was a sudden abundance of dazzling light and an abrupt wide rift of open space.

The Wish Master’s domain, Spike silently assessed, then added in defiance, Still think it’s a poncy name.

He walked into the center of the large, circular room, made out of dark stone, and did a few turn-abouts. Everywhere he looked he was met with nothing but cold stone. The only exceptions being the reed torches and glittering diamond fragments encrusted in the walls.

“I could do without the dramatics, Wish Master. I know you’re here.”

Silence met his reply.

Spike would not be deterred. “Look. Bugger your ‘permission’ policy. I heard from dark, seedy sources that your tasks of strength and endurance, and fuck knows a lot of other things that all sorts of nasties praise you for, are the toughest to face.” Spike popped his neck and shook out his limbs, readying for a fight--boxer-style. “So I’ve come here, and I’m gonna get my dance.” As if an afterthought, he added, “Oh, and eternal glory. Heard that comes hand in hand with winnin’ this thing.”

Still, no one answered.

Spike let out a warning growl. “’m stayin’ right here until someone services my needs. So it’s your call, Isifiso Ubasi.” He gave the room a perfunctory sweeping glance when the room remained silent. “You know…you’ve got a real nice pad, here.” He nodded his head as if coming to a decision. “Yeh. I wouldn’t mind stayin’ on what’s considered holy grounds. And then there’s also the abundant supply of tasty villagers… So, hey, looks like you might be findin’ yourself with a new roomie. That is unless you’d jus-“

“You talk too much.”

Spike smirked and slowly turned to greet the newcomer. “’s a part of my charm. But if you’re not lookin’ for a good conversationalist we could always-“

Hot, blinding pain exploded in his jaw and the back of his head when he hit the stone wall from the impact of the blow. Spike licked the blood off his lip where he had accidentally bit through it and quickly rose to his feet. He gave a whoop of manic glee. “Fightin’ dirty, huh?” His amber eyes shone with a thrill for the violence to come. “Good.”

Spike crouched into a fighting stance and assessed his opponent.

First thing Spike noticed was that the demon was three feet taller than him. Second thing he noticed was the demon was all muscle. Third thing he noticed was that all of this muscle was protected by black plate-like armor. And everything after that was unimportant.

“You ready to dance, twinkle-toes?”

The demon looked at Spike with confusion. Well, at least Spike thought it was confusion, because the black plates where eyebrows should be, shifted into what resembled a furrow.

Good. Big and dumb, Spike mentally deduced.

The armored demon charged at Spike without further preamble, and Spike stood still until the last second, quickly moving out of the way just in time so that the demon crashed into the wall. Chunks of rock crumbled off where the demon made impact; and Spike could almost swear the ground shook a little.

He pursed his lips and gave a long, low whistle. “That wasn’t too bright, now, was it?”

The massive demon instantly sprang back up to its feet with a snarl of outrage. “Won’t happen again.”

“You’re right, Rocky, it won’t happen again. Cos from here on out, I’ll be the one rainin’ down the blows.” Spike gave a derogatory smirk. “Not some motionless wall.”

And the intense mood of battle to the death instantly ripped through the air, bringing both demons to their inner-most feral state.

Spike let out a bestial snarl and smoothly dropped down to kick the demons’ thick legs out from under it, quickly assessing its’ form to see if there was any flesh left unprotected by the seemingly impenetrable armor. He wasn’t having any luck. Every inch of the demons skin was protected with the hard, oil black coating.

Spike shoved his foot into its’ stomach so hard, it would have gone clear through a lesser being. “Well, mate, looks like you’ve got a bit of an-” He kicked the demon back down when it tried to get up, and kept on aiming blows at it’s plated stomach and face. “Advantage, here. How ‘m I s’pose to kill your arse when your hides too thick for me to get to it?”

The demon swiftly gripped one of Spike’s ankles with a crushing force and pulled. “You’re not.” Spike went down with a strained ‘oomph’ and fell on his back. His eyes widened and he rolled just enough for the demon’s deadly blow to strike his right shoulder instead of his face. He held back an agonized cry when bone crushed and splintered.

Right. Tucker the bugger out; and *do not* let it get into striking distance. Spike thought for his plan of action.

The fight went on, and nothing Spike did seemed to keep the demon down for long. His punches were useless against the demon’s armor, and knocking it down repeatedly only aggravated it further. What seemed like hours of this passed, and Spike was finding himself slowing down. One side of his face was smashed into a bloodied pulp, and at least half of his ribs were broken. The demon had just thrown him against the opposite side of the room, and he unsteadily reached up to pull himself up. Through his good eye, Spike noticed a torch just above his head. He painfully reached up for it, rattled breaths hissing through his teeth when it put further strain on his immense injuries, and turned around with his new, feeble defense in his hands.

The demon’s step faltered. Spike looked down to the fiery object and back to the now hesitantly approaching demon.

And then it clicked.

*Oil* black armor, huh? Spike brandished the torch in front of him, and with a renewed burst of energy, advanced.

The demon had stopped coming forth at this point and instead was slowly inching backwards.

“Hey, there, Slick, where the hell do you think you’re goin’?”

The demon was swiftly backtracking now; it’s black, beady eyes flicking to the entrance that Spike assumed it came out from.

Spike narrowed his eyes when the demon fully turned around and went into an all out run. Spike fiercely whispered, “I don’t think so,” and threw the torch with his less injured left arm. He watched as it revolved, the flame streaking into circles, and then arcing to hit its target. The flame touched the demon’s back for all of a moment, but it was enough to ignite.

“Some-one’s high-ly flam-ma-ble,” Spike sing-songed as he watched the small lick of flame streak up and out to engulf the demon’s precious oiled armor. The demon gave a ear-splitting shriek of torture and heavily fell to it’s knees. Spike looked on in wonder as spectacular blue-black flames enveloped the fallen demon, and gave a coo of delight like a child witnessing a fireworks show, when the oddly colored flames burst up to the tall, stone ceiling and just as suddenly died down with nothing left of his opponent except smoking ash.

Spike gave a liberated breath of laughter. “I win,” He stopped when he sniffed the odor in the now smoke-filled air. “And you smell fuckin’ rancid.”

With the fight now over, Spike let out a sigh when the infectious adrenaline started to quickly fade to let all of the pain come forth. It hadn’t been too bad, he’d been through worse things—most on account of his dark princess getting barmy ideas that left them nearly on the brink of the more permanent sort of death—but this fight had worked him hard.

He straightened and looked to the entrance when he heard foot steps approaching. A loud, rumbling noise was emanating from whoever was coming nearer. And suddenly he realized that this fight wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. The demon he had just killed was one of many to come.

A creature, about the same height as he, stepped out. It had long, needle-thin nails that looked like the perfect thing to use for impaling. As it stepped further into the room it’s rumbling noise turned into a serpentine hiss. On opening it’s mouth, Spike was given a very purposeful view of the long black tube-like tongue that had a pointed tip that it most likely used to slice through flesh with.

A very morbid image of that tongue cracking through his skull and sucking out his brains came to Spike’s mind. He gave a slight grimace that quickly gave way to determination to see this fight through.

“Guess it’s time for round two then.”

~*~

There was an earth-shattering roar accompanied by the crunching and squelching noises of one being dealt a fatal stab wound. Spike pulled the razor sharp horn out of where he had rammed it into the red, scaly demon’s chest cavity. It’s carcass unceremoniously fell to the floor. Spike weaved, his vision swimming, and let the horn, that he ripped off some demon that he couldn’t even remember fighting anymore, clatter to the ground. He ordered the shot muscles in his legs to get him a few feet further, so he wouldn’t land on the pile of carcasses he had built and be mistaken as one of them. Once he found a space free of corpses and entrails, he toppled to the ground.

Pain. Throbbing, bleeding, dying pain.

Everything hurt, his insides as well as outsides bled, and he could take no more.

He’d stopped breathing hours, or was it days, ago, because it hurt too much. It made him wonder what others would think of the picture he made. An unmoving body covered in congealed demon blood, a lot of it his own—yet still the victor.

He tried to smile at the notion, but instead gave a dry heaving gasp.

He needed blood.

His lips were cracked and blue and his pale body bone white because so much of his life-sustaining essence had gushed and sluiced and splattered out of him.

He needed blood now.

“You have done better than I thought you would.”

Spike started. He hadn’t heard whoever it was coming. It went to show how many of his senses failed him right now. He slowly lifted his trembling form from the ground, determined that if this was the being that was going to deliver him his death, he was going to go down with bloodied fists and fangs.

When he was facing the direction of the voice, he had to concentrate on what he was seeing; had to make the speckled blurs, lines, colors and planes make sense. He stared until he knew what he was seeing.

It was the guard…and he was lovingly holding a small child within his arms.

Spike’s terrible thirst intensified. But not because he could smell the palpable rush of their blood. No, he couldn’t smell anything, he was so broken. Just knowing they were there was enough.

The guard walked up to him calmly and without sidestepping corpses. Spike blearily looked to the floor in confusion and saw that all of the bodies were gone. And the next second the guard was in front of him. He reached forth and put his dark, warm palm to the non-beating pulse point on Spike’s neck, over his sire’s mark. There was a light, soothing sensation, the likes of which Spike had never felt; and now never wanted to give up. But it was gone as fast as it appeared. And all the pain had vanished as well.

The hunger had not.

Spike stamped down on the cloying thought and looked to the guard and child with newly rejuvenated eyes.

“You’re the Wish Master.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.

The guard looked at him with solemn eyes filled with worldly knowledge. “Yes.”

Spike flicked his eyes over the small girl in the Wish Master’s arms. Her big, brown owl eyes looked for all the world as if there was nothing left in this world to covet.

He decided it was best to ignore the child for now and he looked back to the Wish Master. “So… Does this mean I win? Do I get my most fervent wish?” He added somewhat mockingly.

“Yes.” A slow, relishing smile was building on Spike’s lips until the Wish Master added, “And no.”

Spike gritted his teeth, deciding for some unknown reason to patiently wait for the fall out instead of running off his mouth as was his normal modus operandi.

The Wish Master continued. “What you have accomplished here cannot go without recognition… But what you have so carelessly done to my people will not go unseen either.”

The intense hunger in Spike’s stomach was overshadowed by a shocking drop of icy trepidation. The echo of fierce love that had been in the Wish Master’s voice as he said ‘my people’ rang in Spike’s ears. He decided to clarify, “Your people?”

The Wish Master shifted the small, clinging child in his grasp so that her brown, soulful eyes, filled with tears of sorrow, were facing Spike fully.

Spike didn’t have a soul to blame for the way he was nearly crippled by the accusation she held in her eyes for him.

“This is Ithemba. You killed her brother Sibeko. He was a huntsman for the village and the provider for Ithemba’s family.”

The little girl looked away from Spike, her little heart pounding in over-time, and her tiny form shaking in loss. She pressed her face against the Wish Master’s neck as trembling sobs wracked her body.

Spike’s eyes glazed and unfocussed. He felt like he had entered some alternate reality. This couldn’t be in his normal realm, because if it was…then he shouldn’t care about the crimes that he committed. He shouldn’t feel shame at the judgment from her innocent eyes. He shouldn’t feel remorse for what he had done.

But he did. And that pissed him off.

“Tha’s all well an’ good, but you see…I don’ care.” Lie. “‘s in my nature to kill, to feed, to destroy. Jus’ as it was in his nature to hunt animals to feed him an’ his family. ‘s all the same. ‘m jus’ higher on the food chain.”

“You did not kill him for food. Nor any of the other dead bodies you left in your trail on coming here. You wasted the lives of husbands, sons, daughters, and wives. Children are orphaned because of you, and lovers were ripped apart. The blood can never be washed from your hands, but your need for it will stop.”

Spike, on the verge of retorting, stopped, the Wish Master’s last unwavering statement making the hair raise on the back of his neck and a tremble go down his spine. “My need to what will stop?” The defiance in his voice was weak. “Wash my hands?”

“Your need for human blood.”

Spike stood frozen to the spot. He was familiar with the words that were just spoken, but he was having difficulty processing them in his brain.

“You will see this as something that you do not want for now, vampire, but in time you will find that it will bring you to your most precious gift. Seeing humans without hungering for their blood will change you. It shall redirect your passion and strength where it is better suited. It will help you find where you belong.”

Spike shook his head in denial. “No. No, it won’t. I…I already know where I belong. My- my place is with Drusilla.” His glassy eyes held the Wish Master’s, and a mad, desperate tenor took over his voice. “She won’t- If you do this then she won’t accept me anymore.”

She won’t love me anymore.

“Then perhaps it was never meant to be.”

It was as if the world had stopped on its axis. Because that is how much Drusilla meant to him. The world. She had saved him from a world that did not see his strength, his importance. But she somehow had. How could she not be meant for him?

Spike stared at the Wish Master with fury welling in his being. “Fuck this, and fuck you! I came here because I was told that if I won, I would get whatever it was that I desired! I didn’t come here so that some Gandhi wannabe could try to show me the error of my ways and put me on a new restricted diet! *I’m* supposed to choose my wish! Not *you!* I won’t let you do that to-“

“It’s already been done. You bear the mark of victory on your throat and my gift to you thrums through your veins.” He gave Spike a last, parting smile. “I wish you well.”

Before Spike’s eyes the Wish Master and Ithemba, as well as the cave, vanished and he was left with nothing but the moon over his head and a sea of sand beneath his feet.

~*~

Spike fell to his knees as a villager pressed her hand to her bleeding neck and stumbled before getting back up and dashing out of sight.

The taste was repugnant.

Her blood and the blood of the person before her and the blood of the person before that. They tasted of nothing but sickness, bile and death.

He spat out the remnants of the toxic crimson liquid in his mouth; and wept.

..::~*~::..

New York, 1977

Spike slipped on the black leather duster; his trophy for killing his second slayer.

“See, Drusilla. Nothin’s changed. ‘m still- still your dark knight.”

Drusilla looked down to the fallen warrior. “She weeps because no drop was spilled. Hasn’t she been a good dolly?”

Spike sighed and cast his eyes down. It had been months since his ordeal in Africa, and he had devised this plan to show Drusilla that he was still the brutal demon that she had created. It wasn’t going as well as he thought it would.

“Drusilla, you know- baby, you know that I can’t…”

“But for Mummy you must.” She walked over to the dead slayer, her transfixed eyes never leaving the body. Spike knew what was happening. The strong elixir of the chosen one’s life’s blood was a siren’s call to her. He felt nothing for it.

The raven haired vampiress stooped down and sliced through the fallen slayer’s neck with a sharp tipped fingernail. She coated a finger in the gushing liquid then stood back up and walked over to Spike. Waving the bloodied finger in front of his face, she waited until he got the idea and followed it with his eyes. She gave him an alluring smile then coated her parted lips in the red. “Now, give Mummy a kiss.”

Spike looked at her pouting mouth and tried not to feel disgusted. He clamped down on his revulsion and leaned in to accept his love’s affections.

He turned his head to the side to cut off contact at the very last moment.

He couldn’t do it. The stench of rotting flesh and refuse rolled off of her ruby mouth in waves. It was too much for him to stand.

“Dru, ‘m sorry bu-“

Drusilla looked at Spike with cutting eyes flecked with amber. “My dark knight has gone. The spirits have taken away his favorite treat and now he is-” She looked deeply into Spike’s eyes, something other worldly misting within the depths of hers. “Pale… My knight has paled. And he belongs to me no more. You want to bask in light.”

Spike shook his head. “No, Dru, no light for me. The dark is what I want. *You’re* what I want.”

Drusilla gave out a moaning wail and grabbed Spike by the collar of his vest and slammed him against the side of the subway car. She clawed at the side of his neck and yanked his head to the side.

There, on his throat, was a symbol overlaying the marks of his rebirth. There were undistinguishable African characters surrounding what was unerringly a inked tattoo of the sun. His sign of eternal glory.

“The light *burns* you with it’s goodness. Do not speak of lies.”

She let go of Spike, an air of defeat and final partings coloring her voice. “ I can see it. All over you. Whispering what’s good and bright. Casting all which is wicked from your heart. The light will capture you and only for it shall you shine.”

Spike reached out for her. “Drusilla?”

She backed away and pulled the emergency break to the subway car, bringing it to a screeching halt.

“Goodbye, My Spike.”

It was the last time Spike ever saw her.

..::~*~::..

Present Time

Spike let out another weary sigh. He hated remembering all that had happened to him in those two years—not to mention the couple of years that he had spent drunk in depression afterwards.

He still couldn’t make any sense of why he craved Buffy’s blood. No one—not even Drusilla—had managed to stir his demon’s hunger in decades. And he realized that it was just Buffy, because he had no notion to drain Aggie or the neighbors.

It was just her. Just Buffy.

He was brought out of his confused thoughts by a tiny noise; nothing more than the whisper of a sound.

It was soft crying. The silent, anguished type of crying that couldn’t be held back.

It was Buffy.

He stood up from his bed and walked over to the wall that separated his bedroom from hers' and molded as much of his body as he could against it. He pressed one of his ears to the smooth surface…and just listened. After a time he heard footsteps—ones he knew for certain were Aggie’s. She quietly slipped into Buffy’s room and, without asking, took the girl into her arms and started gently rocking her. Soothing, nonsensical words of comfort past through Aggie’s lips and he could imagine that his old friend was stroking Buffy’s hair as she shed a river of grief.

Spike pressed a palm to the barrier that separated him from them.

He knew that he should just leave. That he was putting this sad girl into unnecessary danger by just being around her. But he couldn’t. He was too selfish.

He wanted to stay here, where he was welcomed. He wanted to stay here, where he had a friend.

And he wanted to stay here…because it was where he belonged.

TBC

Author’s Note: Next chappie we’ll find out why Buffy has the sniffles :(

Isifiso = desire, wish

Umama = Mother

Ubasi = Master

Ithemba = hope

Sibeko = a name I got out of the book 'Cry, The Beloved Country.' It's a beautiful piece of literature. If you haven't already read it; I highly recommend it.