Several technicians helped Spike from the helicopter to the waiting gurney. He leaned heavily on them, the effect of the animal blood was wearing off and his legs were unsteady.
“Too bright,” he hissed as the fluorescent lighting reached his right eye which was still in night vision mode.
“Shit! They haven’t re-activated his eyelids,” said one tech sharply. He pulled his white lab coat off and laid it over Spike’s face.
Spike sighed in gratitude when the familiar cold liquid was painted on his stomach. Moments later he was unconscious and the surgical team went to work.
“Jeez, what a mess,” muttered the head surgeon as he began to clean out the wound on his abdomen. “Why did they send the best operative we have on a stupid mission like this?”
“Publicity, sir,” replied a nurse. “They wanted to show the country how useful these vamps can be.”
Shaking his head, the surgeon carried on his work. “Well, they’ve put him out of action for a while, even with human blood.”
A couple of hours later, the inert body of Spike was wheeled out and taken to where he’d be kept until recovery was complete.
*
Cameron walked into the house and right into trouble.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Backing up a step as his mom got in his face. He opened his mouth to speak…
“Don’t even think about telling me that you were at school!”
Oh, crap! He tried indignation. “So, what? You’re checking up on me now? You don’t trust me?”
Buffy’s face flushed and Cam knew that he had said exactly the wrong thing.
“Trust? Are you fooling with me?”
He tried penitent. “I’m sorry, Mom. I really am.”
“Sorry!” Buffy went rigid. “I’ve been out of my mind wondering where you were.”
Craig walked into the hallway and Cam’s eyes went wide at the sight of the bruising on his brother’s face, so he tried deflection. “Shit! What happened to you?” His mouth fell open when Craig grinned and nodded his head towards their mom.
“Get in the living room,” snarled Buffy, suppressing a smile as her son scurried away.
“Told you he’d be okay, Mom.” Craig smiled lopsidedly. “He’s too smart to get into trouble. Unlike me.”
Buffy reached up and gently touched his bruise. “I’m so sorry about that, son.”
Closing his hand over hers, he shook his head. “I was out of line. I deserved it.”
“But, still I shouldn’t h—”
“Better go in there and put Cam out of his misery,” said Craig.
“Okay.” Buffy squeezed his hand and then took a deep breath and strode into the living room.
Cam glanced at her briefly then stared at his feet.
“So, where have you been, Cameron?”
“Library,” he mumbled, hands twisting in the straps of his rucksack.
“Why not school, Cam? Do you want to repeat this year again?”
His head flew up. “No! And I won’t. I promise you, Mom, I’m all caught up. My grades are good and—”
Buffy put her hand up and stopped his babble.
“Enough, Cam.” She sat next to him on the couch. “If you needed to be at the library, why didn’t you just tell me? After all that we’ve been through – don’t you think we should be honest with each other?”
Cameron felt a total shit for lying to his mother, especially since he was going to continue to do so.
“I thought you wouldn’t find out. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Thinking I wouldn’t find out is no excuse, Cameron! In fact it’s worse.” She stood up. “Go to your room. You’re grounded until I say otherwise, and Craig will walk you to school each day.”
“But—”
Putting his head round the door, Craig called out, “I’d shut up now and do as you’re told if I were you.”
Deciding that his brother was right, Cameron stood and stepped a touch warily past his mother before bolting up the stairs to the sanctuary of his bedroom.
Buffy looked over at Craig, “I’m doing a great job with you two, aren’t I?” Her eyes filled with tears and this time it was Craig comforting her.
“We’ll be okay, Mom.”
He made a promise to himself then. To stop wallowing in self-pity about his injury and to try to get his life back on track.
*
Cameron cursed the fact he’d been found out – how could he get through class knowing the disks needed working on? With a sigh, he pulled his laptop out of his bag and set it on the desk. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The camera. It took all his will power not to turn to where the plans said it was.
As he’d told Jerry, he was confident the Initiative hadn’t seen him working on the disks, but his hand was still shaking when he slipped the disk into the drive.
A couple of hours later, Craig tapped on his door and when Cam told him to come in, he entered carrying a plate of sandwiches and a glass of soda.
“So why did you go to the library?” asked Craig.
Cam pulled the top of his computer down. “I needed to look something up.”
“And it took all day? Come on, how thick do you think I am?”
Grinning at his brother, Cam raised his eyebrows.
“Okay, don’t answer the last part,” replied Craig, wincing a little as he tried to smile broadly.
“Did Mom really do that?” Cam said quietly.
“Yeah. I got out of line. I knew I was pushing her, but I just couldn’t shut up. Deserved it. She feels bad about it though.” He leaned towards his brother. “I’m really worried about her, Cam. I know we’re all fucked up right now, but she’s just as bad as we are, if not worse.”
“I’m not fucked up.”
“That right?” said Craig. “So how about some Dr. Pepper?”
“Screw you!”
“Yeah, you’re fine, aren’t you? So come on, why did you cut class today?”
Scowling, Cam said, “It’s just so freaking boring. I’ve done it all before and I’m fed up listening to it. I missed a couple of months and I’ve had to re-do the whole year – it’s not fair.”
“I know. Everything sucks.” Craig ran his left hand through his hair. “But, you can’t worry Mom like that. She’s barely holding it together.”
“Should we call Aunt Willow?” asked Cam.
“Would it do any good? They haven’t spoken since…”
“Since Spike came to live with us,” finished Cam. “She just didn’t get why Mom’d want a vampire in the house. All of them were the same.”
Craig cringed when he thought of his earlier words. No wonder she’d hit him. “Well, I think she needs help. And it’s not something that we can give her, Cam, so yeah, I think we should. Will you call her? You always were her favourite.”
“Was not! You call.”
“Was too,” retorted Craig. “You used to want to help her with research all the time.”
“All right. I’ll call her, but if Mom goes crazy I’m telling her it was your idea, okay?”
“Okay.”
*
Spike regained consciousness in a world devoid of light, smells or movement. He was in one of the pods again. He retched weakly as he swallowed around the feeding tube inserted down his throat. How long had he been in here? How long would he stay? He hated the darkness. For some reason it made him feel really sad, but he couldn’t think why. He’d liked being a tracker and he’d been blind then. Sure he liked to be able to see, but the feeling he had was so intense he could hardly bear it.
The feeding tube vibrated as blood began to pump into his stomach. By the time it had stopped, he was pleasantly full and feeling sleepy. He’d been fed several more times before the pod of the lid opened and Mark’s familiar aroma reached Spike’s nose.
Once free of the pod, Mark led Spike to the room where the technicians were waiting. “They’re just going to sort out your vision, okay? Nothing to worry about,” he said as he felt the vampire begin to tremble.
He’d seen the tapes of Spike’s fight with the big cat and couldn’t help to be impressed by the fact that he managed to kill it and not get dusted trying. The footage was going to be shown on a documentary program that was currently being filmed to try to promote the work done by the Initiative’s London branch.
Spike nodded and meekly let himself be strapped in. He gritted his teeth as pain seared in his head, but he kept quiet, desperate to escape the dark and the unsettling feelings it evoked.
Once his sight had been restored, though confusingly the heat sensor vision was now in his right eye and his ordinary vision in his left, Spike was taken to his regular quarters. Lying back on his narrow bed, Spike examined the scars on his body. The big cat had torn him to shreds but the wounds had healed and soon even the scars would be gone. He traced the line of the abdominal wound and thought that maybe that one might stay. Like some of the ones inflicted during training had. His left hand travelled lower and rubbed over his cock. It twitched a little at the memory of the taste of the cat’s blood, but as usual it didn’t respond to his touch. Growling softly, he let his hand fall away. He needed comfort but knew it wasn’t going to be forthcoming. In the end, he fell asleep wondering how long it would be before he was allowed to hunt again.
*
The telephone was answered just as Cam was about to give up and hang up.
“Hello?”
“Um…Hi, Aunt Willow, it’s me – I mean it’s Cameron.”
“Hello, Cam,” she said, evenly.
“Er…look, I know that you and Mom haven’t talked in ages,” blurted Cameron. “But I know you were close, back in the days when she was the only slayer and—”
“Cameron! Get to the point. Is Buffy all right?”
“No. No she’s not.” Cam sighed with relief when he heard the concern in Willow’s voice. “Um…you know that Spike was…er…that he’s dead?”
“No,” replied Willow. “I didn’t. What happened?”
“His eye sight failed and he wouldn’t let Mom take him back to get it fixed, and we thought he was doing okay, you know? But then I found… and there was a note…”
“Oh, sweet Goddess,” murmured Willow. A vampire committing suicide – how bizarre was that?
“And since then, everything’s gone wrong. I had to repeat my senior year.” He held the telephone away from his ear as Willow’s shriek threatened to burst his eardrums.
“You did what! How on earth did you manage not to graduate? You’re a smart boy.”
“I missed him, Aunt Willow.” Cam said simply. “I loved him. We all did.”
There was a pause as Willow digested that fact. To his surprise, instead of a tirade about vampires being unlovable creatures, he heard Willow sigh and say softly, “She always did have a thing about vamps.”
“What do you mean?”
Willow chuckled. “That’s not a story for your ears if you don’t already know it. So, how is your mother?”
“She’s not great. None of us are, really. Craig got attacked a few weeks later and they broke his right elbow so he can’t play baseball anymore. He doesn’t know what to do. But we’re really worried about, Mom. She needs you.”
After the things that had been said the last time they had spoken, Willow wasn’t so sure, but they had been friends for a long time before that and she felt guilty at being so rigid about it all. So she hung up after promising to call Buffy up the next day.
*
Spike was standing legs spread at shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind his back as a camera crew filmed him.
“This is Seventeen. He’s been in service since 1999 and as such is one of the longest surviving without being formally retired.”
Spike shuddered minutely as he recalled the retirement sheds.
“As you can see, both eyes have been replaced with cameras to enable the handlers to see exactly what he sees whilst on a hunt. During his time as a tracker he couldn’t actually see the images beamed back to the control. Trackers were routinely kept blind back then to heighten their sense of smell, now as you know, they retain the sight of one eye.”
The camera shifted downwards carefully skirting his exposed genitals and focussing on Spike’s prosthetic knee. “An injury in the field left Seventeen crippled and he was destined for retirement before the founder of the Initiative, took the decision to try the artificial knee joint. It worked well and the vampire was then retrained as a hunter.”
As the female presenter droned on and one, Spike’s attention wandered but it snapped back sharply when she mentioned a hunt.
“We are now going to be privileged to see him in action in the training enclosure here at HQ.”
Mark, who had been standing to the side, snorted as the woman squeaked as Spike’s cock got half hard at the mention of the hunt.
Spike was given the plimsolls to put on his feet but left naked. The director was anxious that the vampires be seen as lower beings and clothing would make them look more human, despite their ugly ridged faces.
Just before he entered the enclosure, as was procedure, his barcode was scanned by a tech, provoking more embarrassment from the presenter, which meant they had to re-take the scene three times, by which time Spike was growling with impatience. This was his first hunt since being injured and he was desperate for the reward.
He made short work of tracking down the couple of Neehs demons that they’d released earlier and once the camera stopped rolling, he was given his reward. Sinking to his knees, he held his throbbing cock in his right hand as he came. Hearing the woman’s noise of revulsion, Spike got to his feet, turned to face her and watched her closely as he licked the semen from his hand.
“Oh, my God! That is simply disgusting,” she exclaimed backing off.
A shock from the chip, made Spike grunt and he turned to stare at Mark. “Behave yourself,” he cautioned.
Spike dipped his head and stared at his feet instead.
“They’re not human,” explained Roger Futter, the manager of the London branch. “They don’t work the same as we do. They are ruled purely by their senses. Rewarding them as we do keeps them relaxed, easy to handle and eager to work. They want to do as they are told purely to get the reward – nothing else. You can’t appeal to the better nature of a vampire because it hasn’t got one. They can’t love. They only seek release. In the wild, the sexual act is often a fatal one for their partner.
Cocking his head to one side, Spike frowned. Love? I’ve known love, haven’t I? An image of Drusilla flashed through his mind. The deep sadness returned. He’d been unloved for years.
*
Craig walked his younger brother to school and enjoyed the looks the senior girls gave him as he walked to the door. It had been a while since he’d been able to notice anything but his own misery. He winked at the prettiest one, causing her to blush and her friends to giggle. He’d just turned away when he heard his voice called out from behind him.
“Craig Evans? It is you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He was surprised to see the principal looking at him.
“Can you spare me a minute of your time, please?”
He made a show of looking at his watch, then shrugged. “Okay, but I can’t be too long – I need to be someplace else.”
The principal smiled. “I won’t keep you long.”
Together they walked to the office and Craig sat in the chair indicated and glanced round the room. He smiled as he remembered the last time he’d been in there. He and Bobby Dawson had been in trouble for spying on the girls changing rooms.
Once seated, Mr. Munnings smiled at Craig. “Remembering when you were in here last, are you?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“You weren’t a bad student – didn’t focus on your studies as hard as you should have done, but that was understandable I guess. You really were an extremely talented pitcher.” Craig shifted awkwardly in his seat. “I know of your injury, of course. A terrible shame. How is your arm?”
“As good as it’ll ever be.” He swallowed hard and for the first time said out loud, “I’ll never be able play professionally.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Um…thanks…but you didn’t bring me in here to say that. Is Cam in trouble?”
“No. He’s doing fine.” Mr. Munnings leaned forwards. “I have a proposition for you. I wondered if you’d be interested in helping coach our baseball team?”
“Did my mom tell you to say that?” said Craig, his eyes narrowing.
“She may have let me know that you were at a bit of a loose end right now, but I assure you, not even your rather formidable mother could have made me offer you a position if I didn’t think that the school would benefit from it.”
Slightly mollified, Craig asked, “Does it pay?”
The principal laughed. “Enough maybe to keep you in candy.”
Craig was already grinning. He was kidding himself if he thought he wouldn’t take the job because of the money. And he suspected that Mr. Munnings also knew that he’d do it for free.
“Okay. So when do I start?”
“How about I show you round now? Remind you where everything is?”
In the locker room, Craig picked up a bat and caressed its smooth surface. Fuck. It hurt so much, knowing that he’d never play. He put it back down and took a deep breath. Maybe I can help someone else achieve their dream instead?
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banner by dawnofmeAuthor's Chapter Notes:
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