Chapter Eighteen
He counted those minutes suspended between agony and consciousness with an altered mind. His face too slicked with blood to allow eyes to view the world, he existed inside his head and felt things he’d never known. The first was hatred, so overwhelming that he wanted to roar with it. Wanted to shatter the stone walls of his prison as he made it so known that no one would ever risk his displeasure again. Without a doubt he no longer had any loyalty to his sire. As barmy as Dru was, she was as good as dust if he ever got free.
Just as strong was love. It coursed through his stagnant veins and slammed into his long dead heart with a shattering impact. He’d known so little of it; thought he’d felt so much of it. Really, it had all been playing and the game had come to an end. Until she’d slipped beneath his barriers when he’d had his back turned, slipped and bashed them to splintering nothingness as she took his heart and made it beat.
She was everything beautiful, and all he’d ever hoped for in his life. The one where he’d lived the life of a poet. Not this half life where he’d thought he was thrumming with it, killing and slaughtering merrily along. He’d thought it had been satisfying. His emotions had been splashed upon Dru and not once did he question her lack of intensity in her return of them. Not once had he suspected she hadn’t loved him.
Not until he’d been taught what love really was by a slip of a teenage girl that he would worship until his dust littered the cave floor.
A new sensation battered his already raw senses, filtering weakly through at first and then wakening him with a hunger that had fled him a while back. It was fresh, this sensation of rebirth. Of waking with the instincts already programmed to kill, to rejoice in the death of others that had once filled your living days with joy.
The awareness grew stronger the weaker Spike became. A thudding need within his body for blood—for first blood—made him tremble and at last he knew what he’d done. Xander’s friend Jesse was rising and that meant only one thing: the Slayer had spared her friend the pain of not trying to help the newly turned, and Spike had turned him wrong. Right, two things then. He couldn’t be expected to count and be coherent when he was on the edge of finished every false breath he took.
Dru had disappeared and taken her flunkies with her, luring Luke with promises that the revolting pug probably hadn’t experienced willingly since the day he was turned. It hadn’t ended his torment. They’d left him swinging from the chains against the wall, the resounding blunted thump of many fists going for him at once leaving his mind and body swirling and careening into the meaner side. They’d ceased the active punishment, but this was where the head tricks began.
He couldn’t keep the swell of regret from surging and drowning him in its pool of intent. He’d been snagged before he could attempt to pry open his eyes. All right, ceasing with the dramatics, that wasn’t so swift in the case of them being welded shut with dried blood. Spike barked a laugh and wondered if insanity by sire was catching. It would be nice. Give him something of a certainty to cling to, something to get him out of this mess. If he was as bug shagging crazy as the rest of his loopy family they’d maybe loosen the shackles a bit and perhaps let him free.
A bloke could dream.
Fact was he knew it was over. Even if Dru merely thought she was punishing him back into the fold, Spike knew what Nest really did to those that defected. Truth be told, he was a little confused why the bugger hadn’t hunted down Angelus and given him what for. The arse must serve a purpose, he thought. Something that Spike never had. He’d dealt with it a century ago. Had emerged from raging obscurity even more well known than the rest of the Aurelian flock—cemented his place in the history books so that none of them could laugh at him again. Seemed like now was as good a time as any to acknowledge that that plan had backfired. No matter what kind of rep he fostered for himself, his family couldn’t give a fuck unless there was a way to use it against him.
Spike slumped against the wall, his shoulders burning along with the numerous bloodied lances crossing his body. He only had one chance, and he was buggered if he knew whether it would work. Exhaustion was tempting him back toward blackness and carefree Buffy porn, yet the tantalising newness of his get kept unconsciousness at bay. Jesse. Time would show him just how powerful he was, and whether his mistake had been in turning a teenager into a monster, or creating an opportunity for escape by extending his kin.
Deep down the connection to this boy made him feel ill. And even deeper still he felt a rage that the connection wasn’t with someone else entirely. He’d done well to block out the impulses that had formed him for the past hundred years, but now that his body was devoid of many volumes of blood, he felt the elemental pull of his primitive urges tenfold. And he wanted Buffy. He wanted part of him inside her—his blood, his cock. He wanted her to know where she belonged, that his side was the last place she would walk before she saw the end of the world. His face her salvation before they crumbled to the ground.
As his minds eye saw her naked and with fangs, his body jerked and he cried out in horror. He was hallucinating, allowing the demon side of him too much control. This was not the kind of Buffy he wanted—even if it meant being alone for the rest of his existence. He wanted to know her as she was, feel her heart beat as they made love.
Dreamlike images flitted behind his lids, of a Buffy he’d had a crack at until he’d blown it so spectacularly. His body reacted with contradictory moans and a rigid erection as she alternated between blushing virgin and demonic temptress, a fight between the elemental sides of himself, and as the stirrings of his newest creation stirred to life somewhere under the slayer’s watchful eye, Spike lost the battle of controlling his desires. Preferences bled into an indistinct Buffy and he was lost to know which was which. As the parts that made up the total of Spike lost control, his need for blood and sex did so too.
Fury, hate, need and desperation had him surging wildly against the chains, growling with feral intensity into the silence as every muscle strained against captivity. He had things to do: a vampire to train, a woman to fuck, a town to paint red. Ideas and actions snapped like whips in his head and Spike was lost to sensation, losing clear thought and his mental stability with each ear-shattering crack.
It was time to rage.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Xander had gone to pick-up Willow, and Giles had left to do some research. It had taken awhile to convince them all that she could cope with Jesse on her own. They conveniently forgot that she faced fledglings on a nightly basis and rid the world of them efficiently if not a trifle quickly.
On second thought, maybe that’s what they were worried about.
It had taken two hours of standing and watching before Buffy realised she should have brought down a chair. Another hour to actually go up and do it. It was obviously taking some time for Xander to break the news, and the longer they took to come back, the more relieved Buffy felt. She knew she was a coward in the way she took comfort in knowing she wouldn’t be the one seeing Willow’s face crumble with grief that her friend from childhood was no longer of the living, and depending on the very near future, possibly not of the unliving either.
It was amazingly quiet down in the basement. There was only one being drawing on breath, only one heart beating in the room, and yet they were things Buffy was so used to while being human that it felt like a betrayal beside the one who no longer could claim that affinity. Buffy looked at Jesse, already so pale before he’d gone to the lioness’s den that fatal night and submitted to a monster’s fangs.
He was an idiot.
Feeling suddenly agitated, Buffy bounced to her feet and paced away from the bed—away from the boy who was supposed to be her low-pressure friend. Like Xander, although she’d definitely picked up vibes from the newly turned demon implying a not so easygoing future with him in the group had ever been on the cards. The way he’d checked her out had been kind of slimy—not that she’d been worried about taking him on if he overstepped the very distinct friends boundary. It would have been the ensuing awkwardness that would have killed the friendship. In a way, Buffy was relieved it had happened this way as the fault fell far from her shoulders.
Twenty minutes into the fourth hour, Buffy began to feel the irritating itch creep up her spine and settle at the back of her neck. It had started so quietly, so subtly that she really hadn’t noticed until she began to feel angry at Jesse for putting them in this position. The sensation was new, unfamiliar despite Giles warning her she should have been feeling it for weeks. Been sensing vampires all along. It awoke a reaction that took her breath away with its swiftness and she felt her feet divert her pacing in search of a stake.
She was the Slayer and she was absent a weapon. It was wrong. It was foolish and a primitive urge inside her told her she needed it in her hand NOW. Looking around, Buffy discovered a distinct lack of wood. Even the chair was metal and useless in providing a makeshift weapon in this sudden urgency. She didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to go only to come back and find she’d been caught and lured into a web of a monster’s making.
A tiny part of her brain screamed at Spike for doing this to her—for creating something she’d have to kill. And she knew she would, could feel the increase in adrenaline that informed her a demon was in her presence and needed to be slayed. It was so much stronger than anything she’d felt before—much stronger than the non-existent urge she’d had to stake Spike. The difference was staggering and Buffy paused to wonder why. He was a master vampire, so much stronger and more powerful than a nerd like Jesse could have ever aspired to be, and yet he’d not sparked one single impulse to kill. This was her friend—a new and not very well known friend for sure, but still not an enemy. Not yet. Not like Spike had been when she first met him.
Desperately trying to put it in perspective, to get control of her feelings and her desire to slay, Buffy sat back on the chair and used her hands to grip the seat tightly. If she hung on fast, maybe, just maybe, it would be okay. The panic might go away and leave her to be just Buffy again.
And then a tear-soaked Willow clomped down the stairs and their world changed again.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
So loud. Ripe. Sensations overwhelming yet delicious. Crave death; crave violence. Hungry—so very hungry it hurts.
The pain of waking raced through him until he felt agony in every limb, yet desperation to keep still and not allow anyone to know he was back. He felt so different, like a thousand parties had launched in his head and the party drugs had all been sunk into his veins. He buzzed, and everything was vibrant, even behind his closed lids.
Three rhythms echoed around him, his mouth salivating until he felt bursting teeth cut the inside of his lip. A snarl was so close to the edge of his tongue and Jesse struggled to keep it in, feeling so eager to experience himself with that kind of power behind him.
He awoke with a knowledge spurring him on to impetuous activity, yet automatic caution now that he recognised the appearance of power even greater than his own. It was Buffy—he knew in a second that she was a threat, yet so far he had been left alone. There were two others—two he knew and couldn’t wait to get to know even better. He could sense Willow’s tears and felt like hitting her violently for grieving his change. He wasn’t. He gloried in it.
Until he realised he couldn’t sense HER.
Jesse could hardly believe it. She’d been draining him and he’d known it was the end. She’d refused to save him, wanting to savour the taste of his fear as she sucked it into her mouth. Wanting him to be truly dead. Meaning so little to her after all he’d given so freely hurt. Not belonging to her was a hard blow against the face. Not sensing her at all made him feel weak and cheated.
His sire’s blood coursed through his veins at a phenomenal rate, and with it was dictated a respect that he would have refused given the situation. It wasn’t possible. He could feel it, the awe that surged through his blood despite his desire to hate and destroy.
And then other things imprinted his first moments as a demon—the certainty that his sire was in trouble, that he was needed for help and that importance puffed him up more than all of Darla’s kinky rounds of sex had done.
Remnants were there; the boy who was loyal though foolish was still on the outskirts of existence, but the demon banished them as irritations well gotten rid of. Jesse couldn’t continue what he was—and he felt it possible that he liked who he was becoming a whole lot better. It was like an alien at first, invading his body and changing his thoughts and memories until it was anger and violence he was consumed with, not failed flirting and hit-and-miss study.
He was new, improved, and deadly intent on showing it to those that thought themselves friends. He could tell them apart now, and he didn’t even have to open his eyes. Sweet sweet Willow, fresh yet cloaked in grief. She was a delicate one, but she’d sing as he drank her down. Xander, tired and resigned, and yet his blood would be so good teasing the back of his throat. He’d take long gulps of him, feeling how strong he was against a boy who’d always been his equal, in all things dorky. Not anymore. Jesse could feel himself drowning in the possibilities of his sudden cool factor, even if he did get to eat everyone who thought it.
They talked around him, and then Willow sobbed. It was like he’d planned it—the perfect moment. The muscles in his face groaned and cracked and then amber eyes rested on his new world, wide and bright. A smile tilted the end of his lips and then an attempt to smoothly sit up was foiled by the chains. Despite this blow to his plan, Jesse laid back and stared.
He’d watch them scurry around him like mice.
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