Angel looked up as the lone figure of Spike stepped out of the shadows in the dark alley. Spike’s face was spotted with blood, though he seemed more or less unharmed. The rain pouring down as if the sky itself had opened up, making the blood on Spike’s face run down his skin in places.

Angel asked, “Anyone else?”

“Not so far,” Spike responded tonelessly. Fear for his friends colored his voice. Or if not friends, then friendly acquaintances who had the potential to one day be friends. The dichotomy was something strange for him. Fred had been the only one Spike would have actually called a friend. The carelessly casual rapport between them. The empathy they that could pass wordlessly as they stood silently in a room together. Spike had never felt anything that came so easily. She was like the sister he’d never had. Had Spike the courage to use the words he would have told her. Tried to somehow quantify what she meant to him. Somehow make her see, if it wasn’t as obvious to her as it was to him. But that, like everything else Spike had ever possessed, had been stripped away. He never got the chance. Life had a knack of doing that kind of thing.

Rain poured down over Spike and Angel, standing alone in the alley. The air thick. There was a heaviness slowly building in the air that had nothing to do with the rain. A shiver worked it’s way across Spike’s skin beneath his coat. Spike and Angel shared a look. Spike asked the question, “You feel the heat?”

Angel was tense. “It’s comin’!”

Spike smiled humorlessly. He tilted his neck back and let the rainwater run down across his face. “Finally got ourselves a decent brawl.”

Spike took his cigarettes and his lighter out of his coat. He looked at the soaked cigarette in his hand and tossed it away. “Bloody figures!”

A lone figure in the rain at the other end of the alley. The figure held an axe in one hand. Moving closer with a slightly awkward gait.

“Damn,” said Gunn, jogging the last distance exhaustedly. “How’d I know the fang boys would pull through.” He panted. “You’re lucky we’re on the same side dawgs . . . ‘cause I was on fire tonight. Like it was . . .” Spike and Angel both reached out and steadied Gunn as he nearly collapsed right there on the pavement. “. . . tight.” Spike settled him on a crate beside a dumpster at one side of the alley.

Gunn was holding one hand to his mid-section. The sweatshirt he was wearing was soaked with blood there.

Spike teased the other man humorlessly, “You’re supposed to wear that red stuff on the inside, Charlie boy.”

Gunn looked down at the sticky dampness of his hand. The deep wound in his gut slowly seeping blood. His hand trembling weakly.

Gunn finally looked up at them. “Any word on Wes?”

Spike frowned and shook his head a moment before something hit the pavement behind him. Spike and Angel spun around quickly only to see Illyria standing there. She had dropped down from the roof above them. Her mix of blue and brown hair was heavy and wet, hanging around her face limply. “Wesley’s dead,” Illyria said simply. Her voice had lost that usual overbearing tone. It was colored with sadness.

Spike, Angel and Gunn just looked at her for a few moments and then lowered their heads. Water trickled down their faces.

“I’m feeling grief for him,” Illyria said. “I can’t seem to control it.”

Above the sound of the rain there was noises coming closer. Many noises.

“I wish to do more violence.”

Spike smiled at her grimly, “Well wishes just happen to be horses today.”

“Among other things,” Angel added, stepping past them.

The other end of the alley was clogged with creatures. They were legion. Towering over them in the back was an even larger figure, it’s features hazy in the dark and rain.

Something squealed high above them. Angel and Spike looked up to see a large creature circle overhead, flapping its wings. It’s features were hard to make out in the brief moments that they watched it against the sky, except that it was scaly and ugly.

“Okay,” said Gunn weakly. “You take the thirty thousand on the left . . .”

“You’re fading,” Illyria told the black man as groaning he got to his feet. His hand still clinging to his middle. “You’ll last ten minutes at best.”

Gunn’s expression hardened. “Then let’s make them memorable.”

The four figures stepped to the middle of the alley. Gunn had his axe. Angel and Spike had swords. Illyria was bare handed.

Their opponents were vague shapes in the dark. There were so many it was hard to make out just one. Many of them seemed to be carrying swords. Spike and Gunn each thought of the orcs they remembered from the Lord of the Rings movies. Brutal. Tough. And in overwhelming numbers. They were packed shoulder to shoulder in the alley.

Spike, “In terms of a plan?”

“We fight,” Angel answered tersely.

“Bit more specific,” Spike suggested.

“Personally,” Angel said, “I’d like to slay the dragon.”

Stepping forward, Angel raised his sword.

“Let’s go to work.”



~ * ~

Spike swept his katana sword down smoothly. The creature’s flesh parted beneath the slightly curved blade, opening up and spilling dark blood. The body fell, even as Spike’s katana came around and cleanly cleaved the head off another.

“You know,” said Spike as he delivered a diagonal backhand slash up across one opponent’s chest and throat. “I could be missin’ the bloody point here, but I’m beginnin’ to think the Senior Partners don’t like us very much.”

“Whatever gave you that . . . idea.” Angel grunted out the last word as one of the creatures struck him across the gut. Angel shoved it away. The creature stumbled and Angel quickly stabbed downward into it with his sword. Blood and ooze spurted up over his thighs for the brief moment before he ripped the blade free.

Gunn kicked one of the enemy horde away awkwardly, giving him just time enough to sweep his axe across another.

Gunn, breathlessly, “They were kind enough to send these intermediaries out to clarify their positions for us. The least we can do is deliver a strong, well crafted counterpoint.” With a hard overhead swing Gunn buried his axe in the skull of the other. Flesh and bone crunched beneath the blade. The corpse fell heavy at his feet just as another orc came in close and hacked at him with its sword. Gunn prized the axe free just in time to bring it up and catch the other blade against the handle. Off balance and weak, Gunn stumbled beneath the blow. Gunn looked up at the merciless twisted face of the creature standing over him, as the orc raised its blade for the killing blow.

Spike was for a moment too far away to help and could only watch as he dispatched his own foes one after another with his katana. He was like a killing machine, but he could do nothing.

Walking by, Illyria casually pulled the orc away from Gunn and snapped its neck thoughtlessly. She tossed the body in the path of a group of others. In the chaos that caused she was suddenly among them. In the brief glimpse Spike had he wasn’t sure precisely what she did, only that bodies were falling to the ground and piling up around her like so much refuse.

A lightning quick kick by Illyria sent one creature flying backwards across the alley into a wall. Brick and mortar crumbled. The creature wasn’t seen again.

Angel carved up orcs and then found himself facing off against an ogre.

Fifteen feet tall.

Pinched face. Thick, leathery skin.

The ogre simply reached out and plucked Angel from the ground by his head with one massive hand. Angel struggled, kicking his legs and trying to pull at the ogre’s thick fingers where they held him.

The ogre tightened its fingers and crushed Angel’s skull.

Angel’s body had just started to fall from the ogre’s hand as if it were in slow motion when it turned to a rain of ash across the pavement. The ogre looked down at the ash in the palm of its hand dumbly.

Gunn fought for his life. He was growing weaker. He could hardly even hold his feet.

One of the orcs finally got through his defenses, slicing across Gunn’s mid-section with it’s sword even as Gunn cleaved it with his axe. In the flailing of that moment the axe was knocked away.

Gunn’s guts spilled down his lap. Gunn stood there for a moment, looking down at the thick viscous liquid on both of his hands. A moment later he was gone, buried beneath the creatures.

The creatures swarmed over where Gunn fell. They fought and growled at each-other scrambling to get in close. A feeding frenzy. Spike fought his way through them to where Gunn had fallen. Hair and tiny bits of flesh clung to his blood soaked blade. Spike kicked, shoved, punched, and struck with his katana again and again. Finally he approached where he believed he had last seen Gunn there was a thick group of creatures there, all bent down over something on the ground.

The creatures were fighting over the body, ripping Gunn’s dark, blood smeared flesh away with their teeth. Spike could hear the sound of the flesh tearing away.

Spike growled, clenching his teeth thoughtlessly. The creatures barely knew what hit them. The blade of Spike’s katana was like a blur as he carved through them. He saw one look up at him, growling, lips pulling back from blood soaked teeth right before he hacked its head off.

“We must go,” Illyria called out to Spike as she approached. She grabbed one orc and tossed it through the air carelessly, never breaking stride.

Spike just looked down at Gunn’s mangled body. His mind couldn’t comprehend the horror that he saw.

“Go where?” Spike asked lifelessly.

Illyria grabbed another orc and snapped its body over her knee. “Up,” she said, gesturing against one wall of the ally. A rusted fire escape clung to the brick wall like a prehistoric scaffold.

Spike nodded silently. His katana was silent death to the next three orcs that came on him in that moment. Expressionless, Spike slaughtered them.

Spike grabbed Gunn’s axe off the concrete where it had fallen as he went by.

He and Illyria fought their way through side by side.

The ogre that had killed Angel stood almost beneath the fire escape. Illyria grabbed one of the orcs by the back of the neck and threw the flailing creature at the ogre a moment later as she attacked. The ogre batted her away with the back of its massive hand. She flew backward into a wall. Brick cracked where she hit. Spike had been right behind her. He buried Gunn’s axe in one of the ogre’s thick knees. The ogre roared its pain. Spike’s sword swept through the leathery flesh at the back of the knee. The ogre kicked at him feebly and stumbled. It fell to the ground as Spike scrambled out of the way.

Spike dispatched another orc as it came at him and looked back in time to see a bloodied Illyria standing by the ogre’s head. She raised both hands and hammered them down together on its skull. The thick bone cracked like an egg.

Spike switched his katana to his other hand, so he was holding both the axe and the ninja sword awkwardly in one hand, and took a running jump off the wall and grabbed the fire escape overhead. The rusted mechanism creaked as he pulled himself up. His bloodied knuckles straining. The fragile metal creation seemed to tremble beneath him as he scrambled across it. He saw Illyria scrambling up behind him as he went up the next flight. Another flight later he was on the roof.

“I parked my Mustang about a block or so over,” said Spike. “If we’re quick we might be able to reach it.”

Illyria raised her icy eyes. Suddenly she grabbed Spike and pulled him down to the roof alongside of her. Spike felt something pass just over him. He looked up in the direction of a loud noise to see the dragon tumble across the rooftop before trying to roll awkwardly to its feet. Thick wings moving uselessly.

Illyria advanced as the dragon finally found its feet. It raised its slitted bloodshot eyes and drew back it’s head slightly. Spike opened his mouth to cry out a warning that proved useless a moment later as flames leapt from the dragon’s mouth. Orange and red flames lashing across the air as if they were alive. The flames faded, leaving an ethereal orange haze hanging in the air where they had been.

Illyria had just managed to avoid them. She was standing off to one side. Her icy eyes were on the creature and she seemed much more cautious about approaching again. The dragon turned its head to follow her.

Spike’s arm flashed forward. Something flashed across the air and the dragon roared. The thick blade of Gunn’s ax was buried deep in the scales of it’s neck. Illyria moved. A moment later the dragon collapsed to the roof. Illyria looked down at the piece of its spine she had gripped in one small bloodied hand.



~ * ~

Spike dropped down from the roof next to the blue Mustang and stumbled to the pavement. “Ow!”

Illyria landed catlike beside him.

“We must be quick,” said Illyria evenly, as bloodied, Spike climbed awkwardly to his unsteady feet. “They will be upon us again in moments.”

Spike could hear them coming.

Illyria opened the passenger door to the car and got inside. The light inside the car flicked on and off. Even that worked in these strange moments.

Spike stumbled down his own side of the car. Almost leaning against it to keep his feet. He fumbled for the handle before finally getting the door open. He almost fell into the driver’s seat.

Shifting awkwardly in the seat he reached deep into the pocket of his jeans and fumbled for the keys. He finally found them. Put them in the slot twisted and started the car. The radio came on. The wipers moved silently back and forth.

Spike slammed the Mustang into reverse. Arm over the back of the seat, looking through the back window . There was something suddenly there. He had a brief glimpse of an orc before the Mustang hit it. A meaty thud. The sound of rendered flesh and steal.

The Mustang bumped over it.

He jerked the shifter into drive and slammed his foot down on the pedal. The engine roared and the tires squealed

Something slammed down on top of the car and tumbled away.



~ * ~

The blue Mustang flew down the empty street through the rain. One of the bright red taillights was lifeless and broken. Colorless and dark. A few moments later the car had disappeared.



~ * ~

“They’ll chase us,” Spike said , looking over at Illyria across the front seat of the Mustang. “No matter how long it takes. No matter how far. They’ll run us into the bloody ground.”

“Yes,” Illyria nodded. “But one by one and dozen by dozen we can defeat them. The Wolf, Ram and Hart have grown too powerful for even me in this small stifling form. But taken piecemeal their agents in this realm can be thwarted.”

Illyria looked at him across the Mustang. Icy, inhuman eyes. Blood and gore clumped her blue and brown hair.

“Trust in me,” she said coldly. “We will have our revenge.”

---

Author's note: The Buffyverse is over for the moment. It sucks. Any questions?
Hopefully we’ll have a Spike series soon, but until then we’re stuck with our hopes.

Five months later . . .

Westingford, Alabama
October 13, 2004

A pale hand, a splatter of blood between the knuckles of the first and second fingers and across the back of the hand. The pale fingertips gripping a cigarette.

Laying across the hood of the blue Mustang, with the windshield behind his neck, Spike brought the cigarette to his mouth and took a long pull. The embers at the tip of the cigarette brightened. He held onto the breath for long moments, his eyes closed, a brief sense of momentary euphoria passing across his pale, sculpted face. His hair was longer than it had once been, wavy brown but still frosted platinum at its furthest length. He was wearing a gray tee-shirt and blue jeans. He let slip the breath.

“I sometimes grow weary of this,” said Illyria. She was sitting in the sun in the long, yellowed grass beside the car, brushing her hands across the top of the grass. “I’m curious how I withstand it. I have not the chance to become accustomed to anything. To take it into myself and let it become mine. Our life is little but miles of crushed stone and concrete. Most of the landscape passes too quickly to comprehend, and when we do find a place to settle ourselves it is too briefly.”

She took a brief look at the car, parked in the tall grass nearby, with Spike laying down the hood. The Mustang’s convertible top was open. The fenders were dented in places. The blue paint wore scratches here and there on its surface like battle scars.

Illyria cocked her head slightly. “I feel somehow nostalgic for the empty corridors of Wolfram & Hart. The empty offices after the sun had deserted us and I was left to my own devices. The expectation of seeing familiar things each day. The comfortable familiarity of the lab.” She looked around uncomfortably. The open field that they had parked in and the trees in the distance. The distant shape of birds could be seen in the wide blue sky above the trees. “This isn’t the world I left behind.” A hint of a frown crossed her face. “This world is too large for us. We are but two small figures in an endless stretch of barren landscape. I feel . . . lost. I have little idea what to do with myself. It’s . . . disconcerting.”

“That seems to be our lot in life, Blue,” Spike responded spiritlessly. “We don’t belong anywhere,” he said in a quiet voice that simply accepted that this was simply the way the world was. “We drive from place to place, trying to find a bloody place in the world. But there is no place for us. No home. You and I . . . we’ll never fit in anywhere.”

Illyria looked at him and tilted her head. “You are an aberration.”

Spike chuckled, laying on the hood of the car in the bright sunlight. His eyes were half-lidded against the light. “Thanks ever so.”

“You have been different since we fled Los Angeles,” said Illyria as she gave him a slightly curious look. “You no longer shy from sunlight like other half-breeds of your kind. You retain the strength of your infection, and yet I can hear your heart beat. And yet this does not seem to please you. In many ways you seem to be as out of place in this world as I am.”

Spike closed his eyes and sighed. Took a moment to take a drag off his cigarette. He exhaled the smoke and chuckled humorlessly, “Old Spike’s got himself a shiny lil’ gift.” He quietly looked at his pale, bloodied fingers gripping the half finished cigarette just if front of his face in the sunlight. “It’s nice I s’pose, but . . . I can’t help but think that this particular gift came at too high a price.”

Illyria looked at him thoughtfully. “I understand,” she responded. “I wish I did not but I understand.”

When she finally spoke again it was with a soft, thoughtful voice. The barest hint of a smile played about her face. “I like the quiet.” The small shapes of birds played over the tops of trees in the distance. A gentle wind was blowing across the open field inciting a slight motion of the tall grass. It was a clear day, with only faint wisps of clouds in the sky, the sunlight leaving everything in a bright, beautiful clarity. “But it will not last. They shall overtake us again soon.” She looked both at Spike and at a dark shape laying in the grass nearby. Some of the yellowed grass around the shape was spotted and bloodstained. Spike’s bloodied katana sword stuck out of the top of the dead demon like the mythical sword in the stone. “This piece of meat was only the first.”

Spike sat up and slipped off the hood of the car. He walked over and looked down at the dead demon in the grass. Gray skin. A face that was horrid and unspeakable. Something harsh and bitter pinched Spike’s face. He reached out and wrenched the sword from the corpse.

“Let them come.”

---

US Route 31 Northbound
11 miles outside of Little Creek, Arkansas
October 19, 2004

It was drizzling. The water left a sheen on the pavement that the Mustang’s headlights picked up as they cut a swath out of the darkness. All that was visible was the sheen of the concrete as it rolled by beneath the Mustang’s tires.

Spike sat blearily behind the wheel, watching the empty blackened landscape go by.

Illyria sat in the shadows, with her back to the passenger side door, her legs scrunched up carelessly in the Mustang’s bench seat. There was a half empty bag of cheetos tucked up between her legs. The car radio was a static noise in the background of their lives. Song after song. So many that they began to blend together.

Illyria was playing with a lock of her hair, twirling it around her finger, and singing along with the radio softly, almost as if she didn’t even know she was doing it.

I couldn’t sleep last night
My ears were ringing in my head
best friend with the boogie man
I may be better off here dead

She held one of the cheetos in her fingers. Holding it up and studying it. Orange stuff stained the tips of her fingers. Finally she slipped the cheeto into her mouth and reached noisily into the bag for another.

The blackened landscape rolled past outside the window behind her.

Running on empty once again
Too tired for tears I dread
Sink deep to those magic dreams
While I blast off in my bed

The brake lights of a trailer-truck appeared ahead out of the rain soaked dark. Spike silently, checked the mirrors, glanced over his shoulder, and slid the car over into the next column of staggered white lines coming out of the dark. The dark blue Mustang slipped past the large anonymous truck like a wraith.

And you know I played it all in here
Where everyone hides their darkest shades of fears
And I threw my whole night down the drain
And you know ‘cause everyone says I’m not the same
Since I changed my name

Her voice drifted off with the song.

Illyria seemed to be silently studying the hint of orange coloring from the cheetos that remained on her fingertips. One finger at a time she sucked the color away daintily.

She lay still with her face near to the car window. She was quiet as the radio turned over to another song, watching the darkness roll by. What little she could see was blurred by the raindrops against the glass.

---

Canyon Springs, Kansas
October 26, 2004

It was a small diner. A comfortable place. One of those small, long buildings you remembered nostalgically if you were old enough. A long counter running most of the length of the place with stools up against it and tables and booths against the windows on the opposite wall facing the street.

Spike, wearing blue jeans and a tee shirt, sat in one of the booths. He was sitting across from a slender brunette with a large plate of pancakes in front of her. A smaller plate sat in front of him.

Spike brought a fork full of eggs to his mouth and took the first bite. He closed his eyes in bliss, making a contented noise. “Jesus, there were times I forgot what an omelet tasted like.”

The woman looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “How did you live with it?”

The vampire chuckled. “That sounds right strange coming from you, Blue.”

She gifted him with a sly look. “I am versatile.”

“Trust me, I noticed.”

She tilted her head slightly and smiled at him. The barest hint of a blush colored her cheeks. Her eyes drifted away, coy, giving him several halting glances before she finally went back her pancakes.

A few minutes later Spike put his fork down and slipped out from behind the table.

Fred looked up at him with big brown eyes. A large bite of pancake on her suddenly still fork dripping syrup. “Are we leaving?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. Finish your breakfast, luv,” Spike told her. “I’ll just be a moment.”

He walked toward the far end of the diner, weaving his way between a few of the patrons. He’d made it most of the way across the diner when suddenly a large man unexpectedly stood up from his chair and the two of them bumped into each-other.

The man was a little taller than Spike. Tall and broad shouldered. He wore time faded blue jeans and a flannel shirt.

Spike looked up into the man’s face briefly. That glimpse was enough to see that there was a kindness there. This man didn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders. This man didn’t appear crushed beneath an untenable burden. This man was content, with what he was, with his place in the world, however small it may have been.

“Excuse me,” Spike said.

The large man looked at Spike apologetically. “Yeah, sorry I was . . .”

“Yeah,” Spike responded awkwardly, “. . . I was just tryin’ ta get by.” He gestured vaguely at the door to the bathroom in the near back corner of the diner.

The other man stepped out of his way. “Yeah, sorry.”


~ * ~

Spike closed the door to the diner’s small cramped bathroom as if he were shutting out the world. Leaning against it he closed his eyes and took a quiet breath.

He eventually straightened and looked down sadly at the brown leather wallet he had palmed in his hand. He unfolded it and looked at the stack of bills inside. The face on the drivers license stared out at him. Smiling photos of a young woman and a small child. A little girl, blond and beautiful. Innocent. He removed the money and dropped the wallet in the small trash barrel in the corner beside the sink. The cash he slipped into the back pocket of his jeans.

Standing there in front of the sink, Spike looked at his reflection. The man in the mirror looked back at him with tired, washed out eyes. He turned the faucet on, put his hands beneath the water and quickly washed his hands.

---

Seminole, Nebraska
November 3, 2004

Spike and Illyria stood side by side, looking at the barn. The blue Mustang was parked in the gravel driveway behind them. Tall yellowed grass stretched into the distance.

The barn was old. It wasn’t a barn in the classic sense. It was more of a long building of sheet steel over a frame of girders. It was the kind of place where tractors, plows, and the many odds and ends necessary for a farm could have been kept. The steel was old and rust stained.

“I know, it’s not much,” Spike told Illyria. “Just a barn really. There’s a lot of empty farms out this way. Even if they’re lookin’ out this way it’ll take ‘em a while to run us down.”

Spike put and arm around Illyria’s shoulder comfortingly and she unconsciously leaned against him.

An old rusted harrow, rows of sharp teeth, like a giant rake, that once would have been dragged behind a tractor to prepare the soil, had been left off to one side of the building to rust and rot. Weeds and tall grass grew in tangles around it as if trying to grasp at the harrow and drag it back down into the earth.

The girl slipped out from under his arm and glanced around briefly.

Behind the barn, tall yellowed grass stretched toward the small roll of hill that made up the near horizon.

The land off to the right sloped down toward a small river not quite a hundred yards distant. The area around the river was wooded. The closest portion of the river was clearly visible, the water barely moving, flat and still, with the faint brown color of silt.

“We’ve got enough supplies to last us for a bit without having to go into town or anything. I think we can hold out here for a while.”

Illyria looked at him and finally gave him a faint smile. “It should be sufficient.”

Spike managed a brief hesitant smile. “Then that’s good then.”

---

November 4, 2004

The large propane tank sat against the back wall of the sheet metal barn between the rusted skeletons of farm equipment. Thick patches of rust clung to the tank and the snake of pipes coming out of it like a second skin.

Spike and Illyria stood beside it.

The rust was rough sand beneath Illyria’s fingers. The wrench in her other hand slipped and clanged clumsily against one of the pipes.

“Are you sure you can do this,” Spike asked, standing just behind her shoulder and leaning forward to see. “If we’re going to live here for awhile it’d be nice ta’ have some . . .”

“I told you I could do it, did I not.”

“Yes, goddess,” Spike responded, kindly unrepentant as a smile was hinted at on his face. “Yes you did.”

---

November 7, 2004

The small stone Spike had thrown carelessly splashed into the water with a plop. Faint ripples spreading out in ever expanding circles before washing against the shore and finally being wiped away by the nearly invisible current.

Moments later the water was nearly still once again.

“Brief ripples in the water,” Illyria said cryptically. She was sitting beside Spike on the riverbank.

Spike gave her a curious look. A few moments later he looked back out at the water. For long endless moments they just sat there silently.

“When I was a kid,” Spike said, “I used to swim in the river. Bigger river than this but . . . The water was clean enough, at least in London. Not so much down river, but London was nice. Sometimes I’d spend all day along the shore, swimming, watching the boats go by, before finally going home and falling exhausted into my bed. There was a tree that I was . . . fond of . . . that hung out over the water. I used to sit on the moss under that tree, looking out at the water, and write poems.” He looked over at Illyria, expecting her to say something, but she just sat there, watching the water. “Those are some of my fonder memories, in those brief summers before I began to realize how cruel people could be and certain innocent charms began to lose their luster.”

Illyria opened her mouth to speak and hesitated. Spike was surprised to see her nervous swallow than then watch her bite nervously at her bottom lip. “Winifred . . . this shell . . .” She stared out at the water thoughtfully. “I learned to swim in a pond. My father taught me. It was frightening in a way. All alone in the deep water. But my father sat there watching me, always close, and I knew, I knew I wouldn’t get hurt. Daddy would never let anything hurt me.

“When I was older we used to go skinny-dipping in that pond. We’d have parties on the beach. Always a bonfire . . . a big one. And at the end of the night, as the fire started to burn low, some of the kids would strip off all of their clothes and wade out into the water. Not many, but a few.

“I never really had the nerve. Not me. Not ‘til those last few weeks. The last summer after graduation when it seemed like the whole world was coming to an end. The days right before I packed up and moved to Los Angeles.” The corners of her lips curved up into a soft smile. “It was the end of the world. The water was so dark at night. So still. Like black glass. And the kids on the beach seemed like they were a world away.

“That was one of my fondest memories,” she said in a softly distant voice, “that one quiet moment . . . naked out there in the water at the end of the world.”

Spike was rolling another small stone around in his palm absently. Carelessly, Spike raised a hand and tossed the stone. It arced through the air and dropped into water with a plop.

Moments later he looked up and suddenly realized that the girl beside had gotten to her feet. She had shed her clothes somehow. She was standing shamelessly nude beside him. Her blue tinged skin was somehow pale in the sunlight, turning to a slightly darker shade up the sides of her arms and the visible curves of her breasts. The bluer portions of her skin weren’t pure blue. Her skin seemed to be covered with tiny blue spots and stipes in those places, like a tiger or leopard, patches so tightly and elegantly woven that they seemed a soft even blue under anything but the closest examination.

Her body was lithe, slender and delicate. A graceful motion as she walked past him out into the water. The soft skin at the small of her back was darker as well, following a gentle line up along the curve of her spine. When the water reached the base of her spine she bent over and submerged herself. She swam beneath the surface for a short distance before she reappeared, a blissful expression on her face as water poured down across her raised face and through her dark hair.

The fresh air was moving with the faintest hint of a breeze. The vague shapes of birds were visible above distant shape of the trees. The sun was shining from a clear sky above.

Spike sighed and began removing his own clothes. He toed off his boots, lifted his tee-shirt up and off himself, and slipped out of his blue jeans, before walking out into the water. He settled gracefully into the cool water and swam out to her.

Spike and Illyria swam together silently. Not a single word was shared. The coolness of the water was the only thing between them.

For one long moment it seemed the world slipped away. It was just the two of them. Their feet kicking silently beneath the surface in thoughtless rhythm, treading water just to stand still.

For one silent moment their eyes met. Neither spoke a single word. Whatever it was was beyond words. It simply was.

And then the moment was broken as Spike’s hand glided in a short elegant arc across the surface of the water, splashing water up and over Illyria. A scandalized expression suddenly fell across her face, as if she couldn’t comprehend that someone would have possibly even considered doing something like that to her. Rivulets of water ran down through her dark, course hair and across her befuddled face. A thick lock of her hair hung down near her ice blue eyes drizzling water.

Suddenly her expression hardened, moments before she sent a similar arc or water back in Spike’s direction. Suddenly they were in an all out splash war.

Laughter floated out over the water.

---

November 12, 2004

A small pan sat atop a small two burner camping stove, the recent remnants of a meal inside. Two bowls, each with a spoon inside, sat beside it on the floor.

Spike and Illyria lay nearby on top of a sleeping bag. She was curled up comfortably against him in the shadows against the wall. Her head rested against his chest and his fingers absently brushed through her course dark hair.

Illyria blinked at the darkness wearily.

“You need to get some sleep,” Spike told her softly.

“I don’t . . .”

The former vampire shook his head slightly. “But you’re not you anymore, are you?! Not completely.”

Illyria looked up at the vampire holding her in his arms. “You’ll be here when I awake?”

Spike brushed some hair back away from Illyria’s face tenderly. He gave her a caring look, a slight smile lifting at the corners of his mouth, and comforted her in a soft voice, “I’ll be here.”

Illyria let her eyes slip closed, as Spike brushed at her hair softly with his fingers.


~ * ~

She reached out and touched her face as it was reflected in the mirror, her fingers gently brushing across the glass.

“Illyria.”

Illyria turned. Wesley was standing behind her uncomfortably close. “My name,” she said. “You would presume to speak my name. Because I was returned in the body of a human you would presume to speak my name. It’s disgusting.”

Wes looked at her pitifully, “Who is Winifred Burkle?”

She spoke carelessly. “I thought the humans would have long died out by now. Instead you've grown bold.”

“So you don't know who Fred is?”

“Nor care!” She turned away from him. “Bleat at me no longer. We're done.” She suddenly stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. “Oh . . . now I remember. Winifred Burkle is this shell I'm in.”

“She's the woman you killed.”

“This is grief.” The words were like a realization. “I'm watching human grief. It's like offal in my mouth.”

Wesley walked up behind her and spoke to her softly. “If you stay here you'll taste it every day, every second. Humans rule the earth, for the last few millennia, like roaches crawling everywhere. Crying and sweaty and puking their feelings all over you. Go and sleep until you’re gone from this world, ‘til fragile, silky demon wings carry you to the one beneath. Leaving this world is the only option that will save you from that. You’re bound to the carcass of what she once was. What she still is. You couldn’t change that no matter how much you might wish to try. Your kingdom and the armies that served you long ago disappeared from this world. Their ash is the soil from which it grows.”

Illyria stared down at the floor wide-eyed. “It’s gone. My world is gone.”

“Now you know how I feel.” She looked up at him and into eyes that held no life. Eyes that were somehow both sad and emotionless, as hers could be.

She looked down at the corpse on the floor near her feet. “You even killed my Qua’ha Xahn.”

“He was a threat to the world some of us once loved. And which some still do.”

“You seek to save what’s rotted through,” she told him. “You, your leader, and the white haired one. You cling to memories of what it was that once burned like life in you and has now burned out. The one who leads you fights for the favor of memories that are now nothing but vitriol in his mouth. And the white haired one fights for something as ephemeral as a moment. That what you love withers and dies . . .”

Illyria suddenly looked at him wide-eyed.

With one bloodied hand held just beneath his ribs, Wesley stumbled. His feet couldn’t hold him. He nearly fell to the floor but Illyria caught him in her arms and kneeled down beside him.

“Wesley.” She looked at where the blood soaked through his shirt. Torn fabric and violently sundered flesh. “This wound is mortal.”

Wesley swallowed. “Aren’t we all.” Wesley smiled up at her weakly, “It was good . . . that you came.”

“I killed all mine,” the girl responded awkwardly, “and I was . . .”

“Concerned?”

“I think so,” Illyria admitted cautiously. “But I can’t help. You’ll be dead within moments.”

Wesley accepted this fact quietly, “I know.”

Illyria hesitated. She was visibly uncertain of what to do or say. What were the words for a time like this? She finally managed to meet his eye. “Would you like me to lie to you now?”

“Yes.” His eyes slipped briefly closed. “Thank you. Yes.”

When he opened his eyes again it was Fred looking back at him. Looking down at him kindly. Her slender fingers brushed at his cheek tenderly.

“Oh Wesley. My Wesley.”

“Fred.” Wes opened his mouth and then swallowed as if her were choking on the words. All he could manage was a soft whisper, “I missed you.”

Fred leaned down and gently kissed his lips. Sniffling, she kissed his forehead softly. “It’s gonna be okay. It won’t hurt much longer. And then you’ll be where I am.” She was crying openly. Tears coursed readily down her cheeks. She gave him a final watery smile. “We’ll be together.”

Wes opened his mouth, his eyes never straying from her face, “I . . . I love you.”

“I love you.” Fred smiled at him through her tears. “My love. Oh, my love.”

Wesley stared up at her, motionless. He was lifeless in her arms. Fred gently lowered him to the floor, being careful of his head. She simply sat there for a few moments. Grief wracked her frame. She looked as if she was going to curl up on the floor and die. Trembling, she got to her feet.

Vail, the creature that had killed Wesley, was standing behind her.

He stood there and watched her. “How very touching, his meaningless death was, but this fight was never for mortals. Mortals live only to die. What proof is a mere leaf against the ravages of wind and time?”

Fred turned and looked at him. Her face was expressionless. A latent storm of fury boiled behind her eyes.

“Oh,” the creature smiled at her, unconcerned. He chuckled. “Take your best shot little girl.”

Fred brought her fist back and threw a single powerful punch at him. Mid-way through the punch the form of Fred melted from around her. Silky brown hair was now course and laced with blue. The punch went straight through the creature’s skull, shattering flesh and bone. The body fell dead to the floor. Illyria looked at the pieces of flesh clinging to her hand, sticky between her fingers. She looked down at the body at her feet disgustedly. She took a quick step forward. Her sudden kick sent the body flying across the room into the wall.

The wall exploded beneath the impact . . .


~ * ~

Illyria awoke to a loud noise. The loud screeching noise of metal stressed to the breaking point, as if the aluminum sides of the barn were being ripped open. A moment later a loud bang of metal crashing against metal echoed through the barn.

Spike and Illyria shared a brief wide eyed look in the dark.

“They’re here.”

Spike took a few steps away from her picked up his katana from the floor. He drew the blade from its sheath. The razor edge glittered in the darkness as he twirled it in a quick circle in his hand.

Neither of them knew precisely what was coming, but they were ready.

Beneath the tearing screech of the metal they could hear something else. Something vaguely reptilian.

“What is that noise?” asked Illyria.

Spike took a few steps back, eyes scanning back and forth over the dark. The odd twisted shapes of rusted farm equipment which were menacing angles of shadow in the dark corners of the room. “I ‘ave no bloody clue.”

His hands shifted slightly in their tight grip on the handle of his katana.

And in that brief moment they saw the first of them. A small five foot long dragonet undulating across the floor. Pale leathery skin. It had legs that it walked on, but it seemed to move in an almost snakelike motion. It’s eyes glittered. Cruel and malicious. It hissed, a sharp harsh sounding noise from deep in its throat, and came straight for Spike.

It moved more quickly than Spike expected. Spike scrambled back as it lurched up from the floor at him. Spike slashed at it feebly with his blade. His second swipe carved a narrow gash just behind its left eye. The creature flinched back from it slightly. The final slash was more successful as two meaty pieces of the creature fell to the floor.

Three more of the creatures lurched out of the dark. Two of them were even larger than the first. One of them sprung straight at Illyria, another coming at her across the floor. Illyria’s hands came up and caught the first, her fingers hooked into a grip of the rough, loose leathery skin at the scruff of its neck. Dark beady eyes, thick skin like hide, and rough lines of long, sharp, gray teeth snapping at her with unthinking ferocity. Illyria’s arm came around, throwing the creature into the far side of the room, past the menacing shadows of the farm equipment. It hit the wall with a loud, hollow Boom! that shook the entire barn like an earthquake. A brief moment later girders came falling down like large clumsy matchsticks.

Spike skewered his opponent into the floor with his katana. It hissed and died and the tip of his sword.

And yet more of the creatures came, swarming up out of the dark like angry insects. The shriek of steal from somewhere in the dark as the creatures ripped at it, tearing at the walls, ripping them open to get inside.

Spike found himself in a frantic, unthinking battle. He looked up as Illyria twisted one of the creatures in her hands, anger twisting at her face. The creature’s spine snapped like a branch. She cast the body aside carelessly. She was the very definition of ruthless brutality.

Something larger came out of the dark. It was much bigger than the others. Ten to twelve feet long. Rough, thick layers of skin like leather that has turned sickly and gray. The darkness and shadows seemed to embrace it, as if it were from them and had simply pulled itself up out of the dark. It hissed as it came face to face with Illyria, showing long, serrated ranks of teeth a shade darker gray than it’s skin.

Spike looked up from his fight with three or four of the smaller ones to glimpse the creature and a visibly emotionless Illyria facing each-other across the dark.

Spike’s motions were like poetry as his hands and the razor sharp blade of his katana flashed out at the dark. He spun, his shape forming a brief iconic silhouette in the shadows as he posed briefly on the downstroke of his sword, another dead dragonet falling at his feet, before he shifted to deal with the next.

The girl and the massive creature rolled around on the floor, brutal and savage in their entanglement with each-other. A few of the dragonets lay crippled on the floor, their backs broken, their bones crushed, as they made the mistake of getting in the way of the fight between the blue goddess and their larger brethren. Their camping stove was ripped from its improvised mooring. Neither their few supplies nor the junk that litter parts of the barn proved proof against the brutality of Illyria and the massive hell beast.

Illyria’s fingers scrambled briefly against the floor, and then suddenly stabbed upward into the creature’s armpit, the slender shard of rusty metal wrapped in her fingers burying itself deep into flesh. The creature roared at the sudden, unexpected pain. She rolled them over so she was suddenly the one on top. One hard fist slammed into flesh at the back of its neck with a single sharp stroke. The monster’s whole body quivered.

Illyria made a sound like a sob as her hands came down on the monster again and again. Spike heard bones crunch. The creature splattered beneath the ferocity of her assault. Gore covered her hands all the way up to her elbows.

“Blue,” Spike yelled at her. “We have to leave. Now!”

She looked up at the sound of his voice, and even in the dark Spike could see the shine of tears across her face. She took his hand in the brief moment when he offered it, and hand in hand, Spike and Illyria ran out of the barn as still more of the creatures swarmed up out of the darkness behind them.

Spike dropped something small as the two of them went out the door. Something that flickered with a brief light in the darkness.

The creatures swarmed over each-other to follow Spike and Illyria out into the dark. They swarmed over the junk and the refuse that marked Illyria’s battle with the largest of them. Their angry cacophony of hisses hid the faint noise coming from the snapped copper pipe near the remains of the old camping stove.

After a few moments the escaping gas reached the flickering flame that burned from Spike’s discarded zippo lighter.


~ * ~

The barn exploded right behind them, knocking both Spike and Illyria off their feet. A fireball turning the darkness briefly alight with bright merciless color. They landed sprawled side by side in the dirt.

Illyria lifted herself from the ground onto her hands and knees. For a brief moment she was simply looking at her bloodied hands in front of her in the dirt. Her fingers covered with a muddy mixture of blood and earth. A sob suddenly worked its way through her, wringing it’s way up her back.

Spike, now on his knees, reached out to her. A gentle hand brushing it’s way along her back. The diminished goddess looked up at him with dark empty eyes. His face was lit in the firelight of the barn burning behind them. She turned to him. Her arms went around him. She clung to him desperately as she sobbed.

---

“I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death . . . I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

- Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

“Thunder Traveling to Loftier Mountain Heights”

October 5, 1877




author's note: It’s been a long, long time since I updated any of my fics. Nearly a year if my guess is right. For that I’m sorry. I just lost my grip on it. Hopefully the next update will come much, much sooner. And to those who have hounded me with complaints, let me just say, let he who is without sin cast the first . . . Oww!!!! Who threw that? Owwww!!! Ow, stop it! Okay, okay . . . I’ll update again soon. I can more or less almost promise a chapter update for “Corrupted by Degree” within the next few days, and a really good sized one at that. Later!