Author's Chapter Notes:
Story and chapter titles borrowed from U2's "A Sort of Homecoming."
"Early one morning just as the sun was rising, I heard a young maid sing in the valley below...

Spike cocked his head, listening to the tune with all the outward appearance of nonchalance. "That's a nice little tune you got there." He reached over and clicked the mouse to stop the recording, turned a lambent gaze on the man sprawled on the floor, back against the wall. Looked, and smelled, like a damn banquet. Steady on... "Thanks, doc. You cured me after all. I got my own free will, now. Not under the First's or anyone else's influences now. I just wanted you to know that - " Lunge, grab, lift, change " - before I kill you."

Strike.

Fuck...bloody brilliant, it was, the mouthful of warm human flesh, yielding and breaking under his fangs, the tiny music of capillaries bursting as bruises rose on the skin.

How, how had he denied himself this for so long?

Shuddering he took the first eager gulp without even tasting it, cognizant only of the hot thick slide down his throat, exploding like a dirty bomb in his stomach, shockwaves of heat to all his extremities. Makes you warm...makes you hard... He groaned and took the next mouthful more slowly, rolling it on his tongue, savoring the rich scents flooding his palate, tingling his sinuses, while his demon howled triumph over his helpless foe, tasting the man's defeat in colors of anger and fear and grief and sadness and - and -

What was that -

((resignation))

Time only for a sarcastic demon snort - Inherited that Slayer deathwish, did he? - before the rest of it struck like lightning. His fangs retracted and he dropped his gasping prey to the floor, staring, aghast.

Smells like her...his mum. Not Nikki the Slayer but Nikki the woman, sensuous, Black is Beautiful incarnate, aromatic of rage and frustration but also sad acceptance and relief because her battles were ended. A warrior of light, grateful for death, for release.

Not again. I will not do this again.

He spun away, blindly reaching for his duster, the familiar swing and settle of leather around him somehow calming. But not enough...not enough. Something between a cackle and a sob wrenched his throat, fighting for release. The fugue, relic of the high school basement, beckoned him to return, to his own personal Hellmouth, separation from everyone, everything. NO. He shook it off. Gotta get out of here.

He pulled open the door.

"Spike! What happened?"

Bugger. Out of the frying pan... And, damn her, Buffy turned up the heat, moving toward him with a concerned expression, solicitous little hand reaching toward his bruised, burned face. He quelled her with a look and the iciest voice he could summon:

"I gave him a pass. Let him live. On account of the fact that I killed his mother. But that's all he gets." Her green eyes, searching his, were wide, a little frightened. Yeah. Me too, pet. He took a step, then halted. "He even so much as looks at me funny though, I'll kill 'im." And he was gone.

She didn't follow.

Thank God, she didn't follow.

*





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