Spark and Burn

by Diana G. Gallagher

Except Angelus was gone.

  “He left?” Spike glanced at the empty white bassinet and the broken window. The lace linens were rife with the sweet smell of an infant. “Didn’t want to share the morsel, did he?”

  “His palate is not nearly so refined these days.” Looking splendid in a green Chinese gown with gold brocade trim, Darla turned from the window. Her eyes flashed with bitter contempt. “Murderers, rapists, thieves, and scoundrels are more to his taste. He won’t starve.”

  “When do you expect him back?” Spike asked, treading cautiously. The last time Angelus and Darla had argued, Angelus disappeared for two years. During that time, although Darla had frequently gone off on her own for food and entertainment, she had traveled and roomed with him and Dru. Now, however, Dru’s occasional condition seemed to be slowly worsening. Without Angelus to keep Darla occupied, he would not be able to hide Dru’s poor health indefinitely.

  Spike could—and would—kill Darla to protect Dru if necessary. He didn’t want to.

  “Come back? Never,” Darla snapped. “I won’t be made a fool.”

  At a loss for words, Spike offered the only consolation he could think of. “Dru had a craving for children tonight. Would you like me to pick one up for you?”

  “I’ve been betrayed, not de-fanged,” Darla spat. “Besides, I can’t stand the sight of you, either. Fawning all over Dru like a fatuous puppy. Get out.”

  Stunned by the disdain in her glowering eyes, Spike stood frozen in place. No one had spoken to him in that tone since Cecily’s party the night he was changed. No one would ever speak to him that way again and live.

  “Get out!” Darla screamed. “Get out now!”

  No one except Darla. Spike couldn’t subject himself to her vicious venom. He left to arrange transportation out of China for him and Dru.

  Sunnydale

  September 1997

  Spike had never known Angelus to flinch at the mention of killing fields. The reaction had been subtle, but disturbing. Very disturbing.

  “I’m not much for company,” Angelus said.

  “No, you never were.” Since the Slayer was alive and well in Sunnydale, Spike asked the obvious question. “So why are you so scared of this Slayer?”

  “Scared?” Angelus looked taken aback.

  “Yeah,” Spike answered matter-of-factly. “Time was, you would have taken her out in a heartbeat. Now look at you. I mean, this . . . tortured thing is an act, right? You’re not”—he wrinkled his nose—“housebroken?”

  “I saw her kill the Master,” Angelus said.

  Uh-huh, Spike thought. That would be the same Master whose underground abode, habits, fealty to the old ones, and prophecy Angelus had insolently insulted shortly after his making. At least that was the story Darla liked to tell. Angelus hadn’t been afraid of the ancient vampire then. Of course, a lot had changed since 1760.

  Spike stared into Angelus’s eyes. They were the yellow eyes of a vampire, but not of a soulless demon.

  “Hey,” Angelus went on, “you think you can take her alone? Be my guest. I’ll just feed and run.” With a snarl, Angelus prepared to tap a vein in the tall boy’s neck.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Spike said, holding up a staying hand. He didn’t want to believe the despicable truth about Angelus, but the glimmer of the spark was unmistakable. It explained a lot that had puzzled him for years. Darla hadn’t chased Spike off with contemptuous insults because she thought he was a soddin’ puppy. She ran him off because he was a cruel, vicious vampire—everything Angelus had been, and was no more.

  “We’re old friends,” Spike continued. “We’ll do it together. Let’s drink to it.”

  Calling the bluff, Spike lowered his mouth toward the boy’s inviting neck. Angelus moved way too slowly for a vampire needing a blood brew. Spike drew his fist back and hit the older vampire hard, sending him stumbling backward.

  “You think you can fool me?” Spike bellowed. He started to walk away, but the offense was too vile. He spun around. “You were my grandsire, man! You were my . . . Yoda!”

  “Things change,” Angelus said calmly, as though they were having a casual disagreement over a pint.

  “Not us,” Spike countered. “Not demons.”

  The sight of the boy cowering behind Angelus for protection fed Spike’s fury. Angelus, the once proud Scourge of Europe, had begun his reign of terror by killing his family and everyone in his village. Now he was one of the Slayer’s groupies.

  “Man, I can’t believe this. You Uncle Tom!” Enough talking, Spike thought as he picked up the table strut he had dropped. “Come on, people. This isn’t a spectator sport!”

  The boy pushed open the cafeteria doors and ducked through with Angelus close behind.

  Spike gripped the metal bar, intent on destroying the Angelus abomination. A vampire with a soul was more than a personal affront. It upset the balance of good and evil, and things had to be put right. However, as his snarling minions ran past to give chase, he caught an enticing scent.

  Slayer. Spike paused. Much more important than a sniveling ex-evil thing with delusions of redemption.

  “Fee, fi, fo, fum. I smell the blood of a nice, ripe”—Spike turned slowly—“girl.”

  The Slayer stood across the corridor, watching him. She had shed her blue sweater and carried the fire axe he had given Jack. It wasn’t likely Spike would be seeing the dull boy in blue plaid again.

  “Do we really need weapons for this?” Buffy asked. The touch of impertinence in her voice was sugar on the treat.

  “I just like them.” Smiling, Spike ran his hand across his chest. “They make me feel all manly.”

  Suddenly serious, he threw the metal bar down and walked toward her. The girl dropped the axe and stood her ground, but her confidence would be easily undermined when the proper psychological pressure was applied.

  “The last slayer I killed,” Spike said, “she begged for her life.” That wasn’t exactly true. Nikki had never begged anyone for anything. She had willingly passed the Slayer torch so her son wouldn’t be a target in the good-versus-evil crossfire, but Buffy didn’t know that.

  With her hands clasped behind her back, the Slayer moved toward him with a sassy sashay. She wasn’t all aquiver with fear, but he could tell she respected him—one adversary to another. That was smart, and his assessment of her went up another notch. Still, it couldn’t hurt to massage her ego. Too much confidence could be just as fatal as too little.

  Spike matched her sashay with a brash strut. “You don’t strike me as the begging kind.”

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” Buffy said softly.

  “No, I messed up your doilies and stuff, but I just got so bored.” When she didn’t react, Spike added a bold helping of bravado. “I’ll tell you what. As a personal favor from me to you, I’ll make it quick. It won’t hurt a bit.”

  “No, Spike, it’s going to hurt a lot.”

  You’ve got that right, Spike thought as he threw the first punch.

  The Slayer ducked under his arm, countered a second swing, missed with a kick, and landed one on Spike’s jaw. Employing a mix of martial arts and basic street brawling, Spike gave as good as he got, biding his time until he caught her in the stomach and heaved her into the wall. The Slayer scrambled to her feet, but not quickly enough to avoid another blow.

  She was good, Spike realized. Less disciplined than China Doll and not as reliant on brute force as Nikki, but Buffy had something else—a secret Slayer ingredient. Whatever it was, it was giving him a fight worth showing up for.

  Invigorated by a volley of slayer punches to the torso, Spike grabbed on and flung her into another wall. He drew his arm back to flatten her pretty face, but she stepped clear and his fist smashed through the wall. Stuck for a moment, he couldn’t evade a kick in the back.

  “Now, that hurt.” Enraged, Spike grabbed a two-by-four stud in the wall and pulled a section free. He slammed the Slayer with the board as he turned, knocking her down. “B
ut not as much as this will.”

  Spike knew the fight was over except for the actual death part. The girl was down with the wind knocked out of her. She wouldn’t stay down long, but he only needed a second to finish her off. He raised the two-by-four to strike the killing blow—and hesitated when he looked into Buffy’s eyes.

  She wasn’t sad or reconciled to defeat or tired of it all or ready to quit. This Slayer had a mega-dose of defiance and a determined will to live—and win. She might lose, but she wouldn’t give up.

  Good for you, Spike thought as he tightened his grip, but it won’t save you. He was so focused on the girl that he didn’t sense someone else coming up behind him. He fell when something hard and sharp hit him in the head. Stunned, he rolled onto his back and stared up into the furious face of the woman Buffy had rushed out of the cafeteria. She had clobbered him with the infernal axe!

  “You get the hell away from my daughter.”

  The Slayer’s mum wasn’t kidding around. Spike could move ten times as fast, and he was a hundred times stronger, but he never underestimated the power of a mother to protect her young. Besides, the Slayer was back on her feet again, shaken but ready to go at it. He wanted to fight the girl, but not when she was worried about keeping her mother alive. It had to be a fair fight to count for anything.

  “Women!” Furious, Spike pushed the broken stud off, jumped up and back out the window, and ran.

  Sunnydale

  September 2002

  “Still running too, aren’t you, Spike?” Angelus said. “From all your lies.”

  Angelus knew too much, and Spike didn’t want to talk to him. He watched the Slayer try to slam the storeroom door closed, but zombie-man was still in the way.

  “ ‘Once he starts something, he doesn’t stop until everything in his path is dead.’ Yeah, right.” Angelus rolled his eyes. “I actually told the Slayer that when you first came to Sunnydale, Spike. I probably should have qualified it, though. Everything in your path dead—except the Slayer.”

  Don’t listen. Door’s closing. Spike stared as the metal door cleared the cranky spirit and clunked closed. Buffy quickly threw the latch over and locked the dead bolt.

  “You could have killed her on Parent-Teacher Night, ended it all right there,” Angelus went on, “but you didn’t. Why not?”

  “They’ll probably show up in a sec.” Buffy backed away from the door.

  “Nobody comes in here,” Spike said. It was okay to talk to Buffy. She thought she knew things, but she didn’t know everything. “It’s just the three of us.”

  “Spike, have you seen Dawn?” Buffy asked. “She came down here with some kids—”

  “You just don’t get it, Spike.” Angelus cast a lecherous glance at Buffy.

  But It wasn’t Angelus. It was something else, a powerful, primal evil that knew everything. The Other knew he had gotten his soul restored—deliberately. That’s why It sent the dead people, to punish him, to make sure he knew that a quest for salvation was futile. Evil hated to lose.

  “You’re a coward, Spike.” Angelus snorted with derision. “You won’t even face the truth of your own miserable existence.”

  “Don’t you think I’m trying?” Spike blurted out, squeezing his eyes shut.

  The girl watched him closely. Not like that time in the cafeteria when she wanted to put a stake in his heart. More like she was worried—no, she wouldn’t worry about him. It was like she was scared. And she should be, locked in a storeroom with a crazy man. Not to mention three manifest spirits that wanted to hurt her and a very Big Bad under the ground that wanted to hurt everyone.

  “Once evil, always evil,” Angelus said. “There’s nothing you can do to atone for the horrors of your past and no way you can escape history’s hold.”

  “I’m not fast. Not a quick study.” Spike opened his eyes and looked past Buffy at Angelus. He had tried so hard to rise above the ridicule, to forget the torments of childhood that had driven his agenda as a vampire. But they festered down deep and couldn’t be ripped out.

  “I dropped my board in the water and the chalk all ran.” Spike’s voice was choked with tears. The schoolmaster had had no patience with clumsy children. “Sure to be caned.” He laughed. “Should have seen that coming.”

  “You should have killed the Slayer,” Angelus persisted. “Think of all the trouble you could have saved yourself.”

  Too late now. When Spike saw Buffy coming closer, her gaze riveted on his chest, he pulled the edges of his shirt closed. He looked away and moved into the corner, but the girl kept coming. She always kept coming. To kill him or scold him, ask a favor—always there, but not there.

  Buffy’s eyes filled with pity when she saw the red slashes. “What did you do?”

  “I tried to—I tried to cut it out.” He looked away. He wanted to be free of everything that hurt—the chip, the spark, his heart . . .

  “Wouldn’t do any good to cut out a dead heart,” Dru said. “But it’s worse than dead, isn’t it, Spike? It’s nothing but ashes now.”

  Buffy’s cell phone rang, and she turned away to answer.

  Dru circled the Slayer like a jungle cat, waiting for the right moment to pounce. She smiled as she sang, “Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down. . . .”

  Sunnydale

  September 1997

  Spike walked the streets of Sunnydale after he left the high school, grabbing a quick meal behind a minimart, learning his way about town, and trying to wrap his mind around being outmaneuvered by a middle-aged mother with an axe. The only thing good about the whole sorry episode was that nobody had seen it, except the Slayer.

  But that’s the only good thing, Spike thought as he walked across the factory parking lot with the first rays of dawn nipping at his heels. The surviving underlings had probably hightailed it straight back to the brick building to tell wonder boy all about Spike’s spectacular failure. He looked up at the grime-covered windows, wondering how bad things were for him inside. It was a lousy way to end the night.

  Dru was waiting to comfort him when he arrived. “Spike, did she hurt you?”

  “It was close, baby, but—”

  “Aw, come here.” Drusilla pulled his head onto her shoulder and stroked his neck.

  “A slayer with family and friends,” Spike said, disgusted. “That sure as hell wasn’t in the brochure.”

  “You’ll kill her,” Dru said with absolute conviction. “And then we’ll have a nice celebration.”

  “Yeah, a party.” Spike looked toward the stairs. The Anointed One sat on his metal tub conferring with Goatee. That treacherous goon hadn’t lost any time staking his claim as the little creep’s favorite.

  “Yeah,” Dru murmured wistfully, “with streamers and songs.”

  Black streamers and dirges and gagged baby dolls all in a row, Spike thought. Dru loved macabre parties, and he hated to disappoint her.

  “How’s the Annoying One?” Spike asked.

  “He doesn’t want to play.” Dru seemed put out.

  “It figures.” Spike was not looking forward to the obligatory debasement. “Well, I guess I’d better go make nice.”

  Smiling through gritted teeth, Spike walked over and knelt on one knee before the boy.

  “You failed,” the Anointed One stated flatly.

  No kidding, Spike thought.

  “I, um . . . offer penance.” Spike cringed inwardly. He hadn’t really said that, had he?

  “Penance?” Goatee sputtered with indignation. “You should lay down your life. Our numbers are depleted . . .”

  No loss there.

  Goatee ended his outburst with a flourish. “The Feast of St. Vigeous has been ruined by your impatience!”

  “I was rash,” Spike said stiffly. “And if I had it to do all over again—”

  There was only one thing Spike hated more than losing a fight, which almost never happened, and that was groveling—which had never happened until now. He couldn
’t change the fact that he had indulged his curiosity and waited a few seconds too long to take out the Slayer, but he sure as hell didn’t have to kowtow to a brat with an inflated sense of his own importance and power.

  “Who am I kidding?” Spike laughed as he rose to his feet. Bearing the brunt of unjustified disgrace brought out the worst in his usually charming nature. “I would do it exactly the same—only I’d do this first!”

  “No!” The boy cried out as Spike hoisted him onto his shoulder.

  With a firm grip on the Master’s insufferable choice, Spike strode to the center of the room, repelling Goatee with a boot to the chest. He pulled open the door of the barred cage and dumped the squirming boy inside. There was only one reason for the cage to be there in the first place. The little guy liked to fry vampires.

  Showtime! Spike locked the door, turned to the pulley assembly on a nearby post, and hauled on the chains to hoist the cage to the roof.

  “From now on,” Spike announced loudly, “we’re going to have a little less ritual and a little more fun around here.” He pulled on another chain, opening the skylight.

  The boy shrieked in agony as the morning sun turned him into cinders. Spike paused for a split second’s reflection. The Anointed One had had a short, thoroughly unremarkable reign, barely worth the ink to pen a mention in the histories being written.

  Except that I toasted the little bugger, Spike thought with a satisfied grin at Dru. She looked thrilled, which more than made up for his brief brush with humility. He took her hand. “Let’s see what’s on TV.”

  Dru lagged a bit on the way to their corner of the factory. Spike didn’t rush her, knowing that the journey from New Orleans, the stress of settling into a new place, and the anxious anticipation of dealing with a slayer had taken a toll.

  “You’ll have to eat something tonight, kitten.” Spike switched the TV on to a morning news show. The incidents of murder and mayhem committed by humans on a daily basis were always entertaining.

  “I would have tea and scones with the lit’le people, but I’m feeling a bit out of sorts.” Dru lifted a large doll in a green gown, dropped it, and stamped it repeatedly with her foot. “That will teach Miss Martha to laugh at her elders.”