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Chapter Fourteen

Spike had never felt such seething hatred toward his family ever before—not when they’d chastised him, or made fun, and not even when they’d beaten him bloody to remind him of his place in the group. Always he’d held an underlying perception of awe that he’d been chosen by someone to exist—to be meaningful within the world, even if it was one he’d never even known about. Now the disgust oozed throughout his body and he felt no fear at all that the Slayer would go hell bound on each of their asses—if Harris didn’t get there first.

He stood back and watched as the scene unfolded—observed his supposedly souled grandsire as he slowly reigned in his lust for the kill that had so obviously been taking place when he’d burst onto the scene. Spike wasn’t fighting any kind of struggle within himself; he barely even noticed the scent of freshly spilled blood as he lit up a cigarette and leaned up against the doorframe. The show was just too entertaining to make him want a snack break—not that he’d ever be stupid enough to get the munchies for one of the Slayer’s friends.

Xander had been on the end of a vicious shove that had sent him careening to the bed his drained friend lay upon and there he gratefully stayed—his face a picture of grief and horror—as Buffy whaled on the cause of all this heartache. Darla.

It was the first time Spike had ever seen the blonde bitch scared. She’d obviously just managed to grab an oriental satin robe before the Grand Imposer barged into her boudoir, possessive growl at the ready though he told all and sundry he was souled up. What a load of absolute bollocks! Not having one himself didn’t make Spike stupid. He had enough of William left in him to know what a conscience and a will to do right by others meant—how wanting something good altered a body’s perceptions and actions. Peaches had done little by way of proving his new status—other than the lack of corpses piling up in the area with his own especially artistic bite. If Angelus had a soul, then Spike couldn’t work out what exactly it was doing for him. His complexion might have suggested a less than stellar diet, but the way he’d surrendered up a life in order to jockey positions ahead of him in the Slayer’s favour…well, it was a bit much for Spike to believe this soul he professed to have was that meaningful, nor much in the way of guidance. It was barely even a leash for the more disturbing of Angelus’s personality traits.

Spike grinned at the magnificent sight of Buffy and Darla going at it, fists both making impact too accurately to leave nothing but mere bruises behind. Both girls bled and again Spike marvelled at the extraordinary control his demon had over his normally lustful urges. A twitch in other parts told him that the lust wasn’t altogether absent but it was the lithe grace of his girl that turned him on, not the delicious sweetness of her life’s blood.

While not exactly in control, Buffy seemed to be holding her own, hurling emphatically crude observations at Angel’s decidedly soulless behaviour over her shoulder. The useless git was cowering in the corner, the confrontation and the inability to justify his actions apparently making the guilt finally surge forward and overwhelm him. That, or he’d taken some acting lessons since he’d left.

All of a sudden, Buffy was propelled with blinding speed into the far wall, her petite form leaving a matching imprint in the cheap plaster. Her furious thrust to her feet did it in and her arm disappeared into the dusty remains of a once solid wall, Spike chuckling at how his girl just didn’t know her own strength.

She glared at him—initially, and then she winked, a gentle smile teasing her lips until she felt her gaze falter back to the bed and her deathly pale friend and his lack of movement. Spike almost gasped as the veil of the Slayer visibly inched into place and the furious warrioress stomped her way back into the fight. She stood back a little way, her eyes never leaving the threat in front of her as she challenged Angel about his duty.

“If you don’t stake her, I will,” she hissed, tolerance and understanding long absent from her voice. Tears made her voice crack, the girl in her struggling with the burden of seeing a friend dead as a supposed ally stood useless and conflicted.

Spike could see the shock reflected boldly in Angelus’s midnight dark pools of menace and wondered how he could suck anyone in with his puppy dog act. The great lumping forehead shook as the wanker met the eyes of his sire, her furious gaze almost striking him down where he stood. The lines had been drawn, Spike could see it as clearly as he had seen the moment Dru had betrayed him with this tosser. Buffy didn’t see it and he doubted she was quick enough to catch onto Darla and Angelus’s age old tricks to protect each other.

The stupid bitch rocked and parried, slowly manipulating Buffy into a position on her own on one side of the room and Darla with two of her familial vampires at her back. Spike could see, from his angle, the gloat that was already spreading across her face, her sickly sweet grin taunting Buffy with a knowledge she only thought she had. While she consolidated that line, renewed her power over the biggest git on the planet, Spike stubbed his cigarette into the carpet, smirking with evil pleasure at the fizzle and melt of the cheap blend. He took a stake out of his inside pocket, marvelling at the feel of his own instrument of death in his hands—something he’d never thought he’d need to possess. He spun it in the air, a supernaturally fast rotation before he caught it and almost playfully plunged it into Darla’s back. Her scream of mixed outrage and terror amused him as she just managed to turn around and stare at him in shock before she crumbled into dust. She settled on the floor in front of him and Spike didn’t even bother to step over her filth as he made his way to the bed, knowing without any doubts that Buffy could handle Peaches in a castigating minute. He ignored the snarls of fury, and Buffy’s surprised yet amused ‘eep’ at the resolution of her fight as he stared down at the forlorn figure of Xander.

“You alright, mate?” He was hesitant in his approach, feeling confused and out of place for the first time since he’d entered this balls-up of a confrontation. The sight of the boy’s tears did something to Spike that he’d not felt in almost a hundred years—not since he’d failed the dying wishes of a Chinese slayer by not knowing her language. Once he’d learned the meaning of her words, he’d felt a sadness that he was never meant to feel as a vampire. He was never meant to know compassion for the pulsers, not even for his own kind really.

As he looked at the lifeless form of Xander’s friend, he felt that chilling sense of not being enough or never being on time to make a difference. The slowing thud of the nearly dead teen’s heart suddenly meant something other than the glee over a good healthy feed. This one would have consequences, and he only hoped it wasn’t against him that they materialised.

“How could he let this happen?” Xander turned wet shimmering chocolate eyes toward Spike and almost begged him to answer in a way that made sense. Though looking at it from an entirely different angle was enough for Spike to see that none of it could make sense. Death was death. It was selfish; it was inevitable. But the timing of this one—so soon—it had been preventable. The boy had had a death wish. Spike wished that for the sake of his new friends it wasn’t so, but he wasn’t God. He couldn’t have done anything different. They chose to keep Jesse in the dark, and as much as he hurt for them, all Spike could do was step aside and be haunted by their pain.

“You should give him a nudge, mate. Get to say goodbye.”

“W-what?” Xander turned from Spike, checked over Jesse and saw an infinitesimal shudder where his heart should be strongly beating. Xander jolted to his feet in surprise, a wobbling finger pointing at what he thought was already a corpse. “H-he’s still alive? Oh my God, can’t you do something? We should get him back to the hospital.”

Spike held his gaze as he shook his head slowly, deliberately. “He’s just barely alive. Not even if I was Superman and I gave him my powers could I save him now. Best to just accept it and try an’ say goodbye.”

“No. I can’t just accept that. He can’t be dead.” Eyes that refused to let go stared down on his friend and Xander gulped to hold back the flood of tears as they choked his throat. Cold hard calculation suddenly entered the moment though, and Xander turned back to Spike with steady intent. “So, if you were really Superman, you’d give Jesse your powers to save him?”

As bizarre as the question was, Spike felt it was some kind of test—felt his own paranoia at the outcome of an ‘I don’t really have a soul’ discussion would be explosive in a really bad way, and he needed to show his sincerity from the start. And the truth was, maybe not for the whelp—not yet—but definitely for Buffy he’d do whatever it took to minimise her pain.

His nod of affirmation was strong and steady, and Xander returned it with decision.

“Turn him.” The words were shot at him, only a thin sliver of tolerance dividing the hate from need.

Spike slowly shook his head, his eyes narrowed in disbelief. “You really don’t want me doing that.”

Xander glared with the look of a boy seizing the last of his options—despite that option being both scary and repulsive.

“I really do,” he confirmed, his lips tight and his hands splayed on his hips.

It was one of those moments that Spike knew he was bound to face from time to time—if not even more frequently than that. A situation where he’d be confused between the ambiguity of right and wrong. Would granting the boys wish be doing the right thing, or creating a bad even more than if they’d left Jesse to die of his own ignorance? He was tempted to turn to Buffy and demand she take this responsibility off him by making the decision, by consoling her friend into commonsense before things spiralled out of control. But having her cuss Angel out was both entertaining and essential, and Spike had never surrendered his free will to anyone in the past. He couldn’t ask it of her. He couldn’t make her be responsible for the death or unlife of her friend.

The responsibility of either agreeing or torpedoing the plea was agonising. Spike felt caught, despite being totally off Buffy’s radar as she chewed Angel out for being the gutless wonder Spike had always known him to be. The desperation in every jerk of Xander’s body made him feel nervous and he couldn’t help but dart worried glances at all the players in the room. The boy that was minutes away from a full organ shutdown, the Slayer that would stake him for turning her friend, her other friend that would surely dust him if he didn’t, and Angelus that would sit on his high and mighty stool the second Spike was revealed for the demon he never refuted being.

The only thing that felt right to Spike was his urge to fight it, to make Xander see sense before they did something they couldn’t come back from. Before Spike had added to the terror of the night with the shape of someone this boy and the redhead had cared about for years.

“Look, Harris, he won’t be coming back as your friend. You’re not doing him any favours by making him a demon.” Spike blanched at the fight that surged in the powerful puff up on the school boy.

“We can help him come back right. Help him not give into it and be a monster. Look at you. You did it.” There was an age old wisdom in the chestnut eyes that shocked Spike. He had been worried about encountering this moment and finding out what it meant for his security amongst this crowd. “Maybe it was something Buffy said, or maybe it was how you don’t act all cut up about the past like him.” He jerked a thumb at Angel and Spike could see the curl of his lips and the repressed desire to spit on him. “I don’t know how I know, and I don’t know how it makes me trust you over him—other than the fact that he did nothing to save my friend—but I know that even without a soul, you’re twice the vampire he is. If Jesse can be like you, where’s the bad?”

Fuck, he wanted to argue so badly, catalogue each and every time a rabid beast had replaced the unassuming human possessed by evil. But all he could remember was himself, his shyness and his need to impress his new family. To be the best vampire he could be to make them proud of him—just like he’d strived at his crap poetry to have his mother’s good favour.

So, despite the warning bells, and despite the sense of wrong that almost screamed through his blood, Spike bent and lowered his lips to the mark on Jesse’s neck, and made a man a monster.





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