Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.
For the last bloody time, he was going to mow down the useless sign that welcomed people to the pits of Hell. Spike snarled as tin bounced off the hood of the Desoto and he planted his foot harder on the accelerator, crushing it under squealing tires. This was the absolute last time he’d ever enter this hellhole and he was going to make a lasting impression if it dusted him. He had a mission and he was going to make sure there were a whole lot of interfering do-gooders lying dead at his scuffed Docs by the time he left. And if the squinty-eyed, fake-blonde tart of a slayer wasn’t at the top of the pile, he’d howl himself insane.
Spinning the Desoto around a street corner, Spike spied the street sign that he’d travelled twenty-eight hours to reach and felt his fury rise to almost boiling point. He slammed the brakes on and roared as the car swerved to avoid a clapped-out Citroën parked two feet out from the curb, cursing the idiot who’d be stupid enough to even own a piece of junk like that. Surely it didn’t even have the oomph to get to the end of the street anymore.
Spike parked in the middle of the road, slamming his door shut as he made his way through the courtyard and to the entrance, relying on the dormant scent memory of the tweedy bastard he’d helped save the previous year rather than the flat number written on the slip of paper in his pocket. Finding the door, he thumped on it repeatedly until a tired voice offered up resistance to being woken at such an hour and the door was finally tugged open.
“You,” Spike growled at the unsuspecting watcher that stood open-mouthed behind the safety of his threshold. “I’ve got a bleeding bone to pick with you.” Spike stabbed at him with a vicious finger, snarling and flashing fangs when he poked hard into the barrier and nearly broke the tip of his digit.
“I-I’m quite certain I have no idea what you are talking about,” Giles spluttered, taking a tiny step back to ensure his safety. “And how did you get my address? I’m not listed.”
Spike struggled to return his human countenance but the twist to his lips was enough to enlighten the watcher to the danger he was one barrier away from.
“Got it from the last watcher I ate. You bastards should lay off the tweed. Sodding well taints the blood.” He smirked wickedly as the watcher favoured him with wide, shocked eyes. Truth be told, he’d not taken as much pleasure out of the meal as he might have once. Still, he’d had precious few options and there was only so much a bloke could take before he snapped.
“Y-you went all the way to London to find out where I live? Are you insane?”
Spike growled and nearly lost his temper so badly that he took a flying leap head first into the barrier that kept this wanker out of his grasp. There was nothing Spike wanted to do more right now than squeeze his neck until his head popped off, and then hunt down the bitch who’d destroyed his unlife.
“You take me for a nutter, Watcher? That’s ballsy of you,” he smirked with a small measure of admiration. His eyes turned flinty in a blink, however, and his explosion was abrupt. “No, you bleeding ponce, I went to the Mother Country to squeeze a prophecy out of some tight-lipped pricks. That led me to you. Aren’t you just the luckiest?” His smile was cold and lethal and Giles visibly shuddered.
“I-I’m quite sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the librarian bluffed. He had an inkling, it was true, but the idea of it was so preposterous that he was having trouble not bursting into hysterical laughter.
Spike’s eyes narrowed, sensing the exact second the waft of fear dissipated into humour. He cursed whatever superstitious rot had made it possible for vamps not to attack the living within their homes and thought hard on how to get the wanker to become so self-confident that he took just one tiny fatal step beyond the invisible protection across his open door.
“Oh you know all right. Even if you don’t believe it,” Spike surmised aloud, swaggering dangerously closer, stopping only when his nose was pressed against the barrier.
“But it’s absurd!” Giles blustered, thinking fast on his feet for a middle-aged man constantly pushed to the very edge by his charge and who’d been shockingly jolted from an all-consuming sleep. Life had been slow of late, the perfect harbinger for some apocalyptic type event and Giles was quickly beginning to wonder if the return of Spike could herald the beginning of it. He wouldn’t give the vampire sole credit for an attempt to end the world—not after the surprising lengths he’d gone to at Buffy’s side to save it. Then again, such actions were extremely atypical of the most evil of demons and Giles pursed his lips and wondered.
The day he’d become watcher to Buffy Summers, a startling array of prophetic information had mysteriously found its way to his new librarian’s desk. Much of it had been nothing but waffle and he scoffed at Quentin Travers allowing it enough significance to even cross the ocean. But one prediction had stood out. It had described the beginning of the end for a notorious vampire with one seemingly small event—in the grand scheme of things. A vampire who’d apparently changed his world for the love of a slayer. It was a cliché, true enough. He was sure he’d heard the plotline in some trashy supernatural romance novel, but it wasn’t the first time that a prophecy had applied to Buffy and she’d circumvented the words in her favour—despite his own lack of belief that it was possible. But even so, if this one had been about Buffy at all, he’d never had a problem slotting Angel into the vacant vampire position. That it could be about any other specimen of the dark quite frankly had him reeling.
“Too bloody right, it’s absurd,” Spike agreed, his voice tipping into embarrassingly high territory. They both ignored the crack as the vampire stood back, his temper getting the better of him for a moment.
“You aren’t here to discuss the situation calmly, are you?” Giles asked, suddenly seeing exactly how such a vampire would see this development.
“Not on your life. Not about to do anything calmly, Watcher. Planning on a whole lot of bloodshed though.” His eyes held the glint of a vampire on the edge and Giles could think of nothing more to do but slam his door. Danger was most definitely on his doorstep and Buffy needed to be warned—as did all her friends.
And now.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Well, that had gone nothing like to plan. His plans had always been deliciously successful until he’d set foot in this sorry excuse of a town. Until he’d set eyes on the slayer and made her his extra special target. There was something so excruciatingly irritating about the uptight bint that had put him completely off his game the very moment he’d clapped eyes on her. He’d been in too much of a rush to take her out right from the start. The others, he’d sat back and mapped out their routine, watched them fight, taunted them bit by bit by snacking on their nearest and dearest. He’d had time and was very conscious of the risks and he’d met each challenge head on, knowing that if he were not the victor that he at least went out in a worthy manner.
Until he encountered Buffy.
Just the thought of her—just saying her stupendously ridiculous name made his stomach roil and Spike wondered, not for the first time, if it was possible for vamps to get ulcers. She gave him one. More than one. She was the bloody thorn in his bloody side and he wished he could just once do something to knock her off her high perch—like hurl on her most expensive rip-off fancy shoes. He grinned, incredibly pleased with that childish visual, just knowing it would be perfect to push her blood pressure to new heights. The snark would flow from that ugly pinched mouth and Spike could finally get down to business.
The business that suddenly flashed through his mind was of her being mauled until her clothes were torn fragments of the fake designer pieces she pretended she wore and his cock was buried so deep in her quim that her eyes were crossed and her body flushed from enthusiastic writhing. He was bloody certifiable. The constant dreams of shagging her rotten were enough to underline that point over and again, just in case he was too ignorant to get it.
He’d woken from one of those dreams with a horrified start to find Dru sitting on their bed and staring at him speculatively. There had been a terrifying absence of both anger and jealousy in her eyes and Spike had been inconsolably furious. He’d strode from the bed and dressed, rushing out into the barely new night to snare him some vacuous little blonde and recreate his most ardent wish of sucking the slayer bitch dry.
That was the first day he’d been prevented sleep by his belly rumbling and telling him in no uncertain terms that it was objecting to his choice of a petite, blonde diet. It was like having indigestion on a regular basis, because he flat out refused to stop punishing himself for dreaming about her in any way other than living red colour.
Dru’s countenance had never changed. Sometimes she did look solemn, as if she’d failed him in some way. But most of the time she accommodated his strange fixation with clever repartee and the usual confused vision-talk.
Her words—when he could make sense of them—made his borrowed blood run colder than usual. He didn’t understand enough of it to be righteous, but what he heard terrified him beyond anything he’d ever faced before. Prophecy, the Slayer and him, all shacked up together and making merry with the continual saving of the world. It was daft, but it was beautiful too, and it appealed to the wankerish, yet romantic William side of him that he wished he could beat around the proverbial head with the elder Summers’ axe until he could gleefully announce he’d smashed it into non-existence.
It humiliated him when his nightly excursions to dreamy Sunnydale and watching the slayer dust a multitude of his kind took over his life so much that he missed the initial signs that Dru was spreading her legs for any demon in town but him. Not that his cock missed her, but his heart was shattered. He felt like popping her head off when she threw at him his obsession. As if he didn’t already know the Slayer was laughing at him, that she was in his head and that no matter how hard he tried, she wouldn’t get out of it. Too bloody right she was always around him. And in his dreams he was adequately ‘in’ her too. Didn’t make a difference when he had to watch his sire waltz off with a slime-oozing fucker and he was left with nothing but a century of memories and the slayer’s voice a siren song stuck on repeat in his head.
He was past trusting himself. He was filled with rage every time he jerked awake and found his bed empty. Filled with such an anger that couldn’t be dulled without several bottles of cheap booze. Well, when he had to pay for it, and as he spent the majority of his time travelling around pissed out of his head, it was the best course of action. Only an idiot would try to flash their fangs and pinch the good liquor when they were too plastered to fight properly. As drunk as Spike was getting—and staying—a determined toddler could have wiped him out in a blink.
He sobered up the instant he found himself inside a British pub. With no memory of how he’d crossed the pond, and no money in his pockets, it was either get wise or get prematurely dusty. He was in watcher central and he wasn’t as much of a berk as he’d resembled these past…well, he had no clue of the actual calendar time, being in a place that would make blotto look giggly but functional.
So, before anyone was the wiser, he’d spun on his heel and barrelled into the night, outrunning the cry of the barman for the money Spike owed. For one second he felt guilty, and then the being evil part of his lifestyle kicked back in and Spike growled furiously at himself. If you’re going to act like a prize wanker, home turf is the perfect place for you, Spike thought churlishly to himself as he tried to force his brain to work quickly enough to offer up suggestions of what exactly he should be doing.
It all seemed to hit him at once: a head-splitting ache that he was aimless and quite possibly suicidal, the reminder of a petite little blonde that was the cause of it all, and Dru’s manic waffling about prophecies and being in the land of wankers. It was time to put up or shut up. He either found out what the go was with his abnormal hang up about the girl, or he walked out into the sun. Fortunately, watchers were very snackable, though picking the tweed out from between his teeth was an utter bitch.
And that’s how he now found himself back in the land of demons plenty, idling in his car and trying to make a rational decision. Impulse was pushing him to plough his car nose first through the librarian’s prissy little flat, though the certain damage to his precious beauty that negotiating stairs and narrow gateways would result hardly made it worth it.
First things first, the sky was beginning to surrender its tenuous hold on the dark and Spike needed somewhere quiet to think.
And plan.
Jesus, he needed to plan, and then enact the bloodiest vengeance of his career.
Right after he got a bit of shut eye.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
This is a gift fic for Rae (uncaged_muse) Merry Christmas, Rae, and I hope you enjoy this! Hugs and kisses go to my wonderful betas and cheering squad: Holly, Tami, Slackerace and Schehrezade. Each of you are more valuable than you know. Extra big snuggles to Holly and Tami again for showing me the true value of the outline!