Spark and Burn

by Diana G. Gallagher

  Looking into college for a school project, huh? Spike doubted that Joyce had envisioned a fraternity party when Buffy made her excuses on the phone.

  The Slayer’s rebellious streak was an intriguing trait Spike would take into account when he moved against her, but that wouldn’t be tonight. He wasn’t about to challenge the Slayer with the henchmen running about in a feeding frenzy, Dru craving a special treat, a hundred mortal witnesses, and the party hosts preparing for their annual sacrifice to a gigantic snake. He was good, but he wasn’t a fool. Killing the Slayer required his total attention.

  “Why do they park so darn close to you?” Cordelia checked her hair in the rearview mirror, either oblivious or unconcerned about the damage she had done to a stranger’s car. “Are you ready for this?”

  “I don’t know.” Buffy looked as enthusiastic as a fire sprite walking a pirate’s plank. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Me too,” Cordelia said. “Let’s go.”

  Oblivious, Spike thought as Cordelia unbuckled and got out of the car. The self-centered, bossy shrew he had observed at The Bronze masquerade was the real Cordelia Chase. Her only redeeming quality was that she treated Buffy the same as she did everyone else—like an idiot. That entitled her to a temporary, but not indefinite, stay of execution. He despised stuck-up socialites. If he hadn’t promised to bring Dru the girls designated for Machida’s feast, this would be Cordelia’s farewell fling.

  Buffy seemed so uncertain and uncomfortable, Spike was sure she had come to party and not to slay. The short black dress supported that conclusion. Her social life usually included Willow the Winsome, Xander the Clueless, and Angel, the brooding dead man, so she was out of her element among the rich and demented. She would have been rock-hard sure of herself going into a fight. By the look of it, she didn’t know the fraternity had a demon mascot in the basement.

  You’d better be here to have a good time, Slayer. This is my turf tonight, Spike thought as he shadowed the girls.

  Spike stayed outside when Buffy and Cordelia entered the crowded house. In places such as The Bronze he could fade into the background like a chameleon. He would stand out like blood on snow at Delta Zeta Kappa. The frat brothers knew everyone in their ranks and on their guest list. Instead, he moved from window to window, tracking Buffy and eavesdropping. There was no such thing as too much information when prepping for a death match with a slayer.

  “You know what’s so cool about college?” Cordelia asked Buffy. They stood alone in a doorway, trying to look as though they belonged. “The diversity. You’ve got all the rich people, and all the other people. Richard!”

  “Welcome, ladies.” A young man in a sports coat walked up and handed each girl a drink.

  “Thank you,” Cordelia said, smiling brightly.

  “Oh, is there alcohol in this?” Buffy asked.

  “Just a smidge,” Richard assured her.

  Oh, come on! Spike groaned inwardly. He could understand why Cordelia would be smitten into mental numbness by handsome money, but the Slayer should be too smart to fall for the smooth older-man routine. No, wait, he reminded himself. Buffy was smitten with the ultimate older man—Angel, a vampire who had scared her off with grim happily-never-afters. She was partying to forget him.

  “Come on, Buffy,” Cordelia said. “It’s just a smidge.”

  “I’ll just—” Buffy put the glass down.

  “I understand.” Richard smiled. “When I was your age, I wasn’t into grown-up things either.”

  Spike’s eyes narrowed. The snide remark pegged Richard as a condescending creep. He and Cordelia deserved each other.

  A thrashing in the bushes drew Spike away. He assumed one of the minions had gone off course and was hunting too close to the house. He hurried toward the sound and turned the corner just as Buffy’s lanky friend, Xander, fell through the open window he had used to get into the house.

  “He’s hopeless,” Spike mumbled, finding a place to watch the continuing saga of the Slayer’s hapless sidekick. The boy had stuck his neck out for Angel, fallen for a mummy, and now he was crashing a frat party in a demon’s lair. He should kill Xander just to put him out of his bumbling misery.

  Xander grabbed a drink off a tray carried by a Delta Zeta Kappa pledge wearing a bib and a diaper. He sauntered through the party trying to look cool, but his slicked-back hair, khaki pants, and red polo shirt betrayed him, as if shouting, “This guy doesn’t belong here!”

  Cordelia was gone, but Buffy was still standing in the same spot, alone with her untouched drink, the winner of the night’s most pathetic wallflower award.

  Good show on not falling for the pickup line, Slayer, but dull. Spike went to follow Xander for some comic relief to help pass the time while he waited for the main event.

  Xander was now in the company of two women, a blonde and a brunette. They were alive, but too embarrassed or disbelieving to speak when he suddenly used hors d’oeuvres to mimic a Japanese movie monster.

  “Godzilla attacking downtown Tokyo!” Xander roared. “Argh! Argh!”

  As Xander and his women wandered off, a frat boy in a blue shirt and tie joined Richard in a nearby doorway. “Who’s this dork?”

  “Never seen him before in my life,” Richard said.

  “We’ve got us a crasher.” A third man with short hair peered over Richard’s shoulder.

  Spike frowned as the three frat brats walked over to Xander and his lady friends. The college men were predators on the prowl, and Xander was their unwary prey.

  “So, have either of you seen a pair of girls here?” Xander asked the women. “One’s about . . . so high?” Then he noticed the men behind him. “Hey, guys.”

  “New pledge!” The man in the blue shirt yelled.

  “New pledge!” The man with short hair repeated.

  Other men in the room took up the call as Richard’s two friends dragged Xander away. A crowd gathered around as they pulled Xander’s shirt and trousers off and forced him to don a woman’s skirt and bra.

  Spike turned away. He didn’t want to witness the boy’s humiliation. He couldn’t kill him now either. Xander shouldn’t die the same night the snobs and elitists demeaned him, flaunting their folderol and slinging abusive remarks as though he didn’t have feelings. Xander had friends, and wasn’t in need of saving as Dru had saved Spike.

  London

  1880

  The poems did not come easily. William stared at the papers in his lap, barely hearing the soft strains of music and chatter around him. He had tried ever so hard to come up with a word that rhymed with “gleaming” and had failed utterly.

  “. . . luminous. No, no, no.” He scratched it out. “You’re radiant . . . better.”

  “Care for an hors d’oeuvre, sir?” a waiter asked, holding out a tray.

  William took his pen out of his mouth to speak. “Oh, ah—quickly. I’m the very spirit of vexation. What’s another word for gleaming?”

  The waiter lifted his chin, perplexed.

  “It’s a perfectly perfect word as words go,” William explained. “But the bother is nothing rhymes, you see.”

  The man smiled and moved on.

  William stopped fretting when Cecily walked down the stairs. In her white gown with lavender collar and matching flounces, and her hair gathered in curls atop her head, she was as beautiful as he remembered in his dreams and strove to capture with his words.

  “Cecily . . .” Just saying her name inspired him. The elusive word William had been searching for jumped into his head, and he hastened to write it down. When he was done, he rose to join Cecily’s group of friends.

  “I merely point out that it’s something of a mystery, and the police should keep an open mind,” Cecily’s lady friend said. William could never remember the woman’s name.

  “Ah, William,” a gentleman in a green jacket said. “Favor us with your opinion. What do you make of this rash of disappearances sweeping through our town? Animals or thieves?”


  “I prefer not to think of such dark, ugly business at all,” William said, rather pompously. “That’s what the police are for.” He chanced a glance at Cecily and noted how it flustered her. She lowered her eyes, and he took the opportunity to assure her that he was not a brute but had the gentle sensibilities of an artist. “I prefer to place my energies into creating things of beauty.”

  “I see. Well, don’t withhold, William.” The gentleman in green snatched Cecily’s poem from his hand.

  The lady in red urged the man on. “Rescue us from a dreary topic.”

  “Careful.” William reached for the paper. The man warned him off with a hard look, but he persisted. The words had been penned for Cecily, no one else. “The inks are still wet. Please, it’s not finished.”

  “Don’t be shy.” The man began to recite. “ ‘My heart expands, ‘tis grown a bulge in it, inspired by your beauty, effulgent.’ ”

  William watched Cecily, his heart swelling when she seemed overwhelmed by his words.

  “Effulgent?” The man chuckled, as did the lady in the red gown. When everyone nearby started laughing, Cecily fled.

  William grabbed the poem and went after her.

  “And that’s actually one of his better compositions,” another man observed.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Cecily’s lady friend asked. “They call him William the Bloody because of his bloody awful poetry.”

  “It suits him,” the man in green agreed. “I’d rather have a railroad spike through my head than listen to that awful stuff.”

  William ignored the taunts. Most of the people at the soiree were too insulated by their wealth and prestige to appreciate independent effort and artistry. Cecily was from a family of means and position too, but she was different. He approached her quietly, touched by her concern for him.

  “Cecily?”

  She turned suddenly, startled to see him. “Oh, leave me alone.”

  “Oh, they’re vulgarians.” William sat on the sofa beside her. “They’re not like you and I.”

  “You and I?” Cecily dropped her fan in her lap, as though the thought of them together had just occurred to her. “I’m going to ask you a very personal question. And I demand an honest answer. Do you understand?”

  William’s throat constricted. He had hardly dared hope Cecily might have feelings for him. His love for her buoyed his flagging spirits and carried him through days consumed with worry for his sick mother. How much easier everything would be with the woman he loved at his side, sharing the joys and sorrows of life.

  He barely managed to murmur, “Yes.”

  “Your poems—” Cecily hesitated. “They’re not written about me, are they?”

  “They’re about how I feel,” William answered.

  “Yes, but are they about me?” Cecily pressed.

  She had asked him to be honest. He couldn’t deny her that trust. “Every syllable.”

  “Oh, God!” Cecily looked away, overcome, and she dropped her head in her hand and began whimpering.

  “Oh, I know—it’s sudden.” William had lulled himself to sleep many nights rehearsing the right words to say, but now that the moment had come, they were lost to him. “And, and, please—if they’re no good, they’re only words, but—”

  She looked distraught, and he wanted to comfort her.

  “—the feeling behind them. I love you, Cecily.”

  “Please, stop.” Cecily turned away.

  “I—I know I’m a bad poet,” William confessed, “but I’m a good man. All I ask is that . . . is that you try to see me—”

  “I do see you,” Cecily said. “That’s the problem. You’re nothing to me, William.” She stood up. “You’re beneath me.”

  Sunnydale

  September 2002

  “That’s all right, though,” Glory said.

  Actually, no, it isn’t all right. Spike frowned at the storeroom floor. Why isn’t it? He tried to fight the force that didn’t want him to think or question everything he had blindly accepted as truth.

  Perceptions changed with time and experience. A sentient existence was influenced and shaped by events. Understanding expanded as knowledge was gained.

  What he thought he knew wasn’t necessarily what was so.

  A revelation darted back and forth under the surface of Spike’s conscious mind, looking for a way through the barrier that shielded his awareness. His memories had been fixed for so long, frozen and resistant to new interpretations.

  He had been devastated because Cecily had thought him unworthy of even the most casual concern. She couldn’t see him for the man he had been because she couldn’t be bothered to look.

  The barrier cracked, and a glimmer of realization shone through the vengeful voices and fog.

  Why hadn’t he seen Cecily for who she really was before she had crushed his fragile heart?

  It had never occurred to Spike to ask, perhaps because he wouldn’t have known the answer. He did now, and he could no longer hide from a truth that was a balm and a thorn.

  He had believed winning Cecily’s affections would end the ridicule and win the respect of his peers. That had been folly, but not the worst of it. On another, deeper level, he had thought Cecily’s love would validate his sense of self and dispel his uncertainties about his manliness. How dreadfully wrong he had been. Cecily had preferred the company of shallow bores to the love of a poet.

  Glory transformed into Adam. “I can be patient. Everything is well within parameters. She’s exactly where I want her to be.”

  That’s what Spike had thought once.

  Sunnydale

  October 1997

  The hazing of Xander by the men of Delta Zeta Kappa was a mean and meaningless exercise of power. They tormented him because they could, knowing no one would dare try to stop them. And no one did.

  That’s the way of the world, Spike thought as he walked away from the spectacle. Survival of the fittest, the strongest prevail—except when the weak had a champion, like he was for Dru and the Slayer was for Xander. Except that she was not rushing to his rescue.

  Spike spotted Buffy on the veranda, apparently deaf and blind to her friend’s predicament. She was alone, holding her arms as though chilled. Her forlorn expression was more suited to the tragic figures of great literature than a supergirl who could wipe the floor with the Delta Zeta Kappas.

  Hugging the stucco wall, Spike edged closer as Buffy stooped to pick up a shard of broken glass, and then looked up at the second-floor window. She frowned, her suspicious gaze sweeping the expansive lawn as she stood up. If she didn’t already know, how long would it take her to figure out that the fraternity had a resident demon?

  “You okay?” Tom Warner walked toward her.

  Machida’s top gun meets the Slayer, Spike thought, annoyed. Irony was working overtime.

  Startled, Buffy dropped the piece of glass. It was a guilty reaction, but Tom didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah. I was just thinking.”

  Richard strolled out to join them, carrying three drinks. “To my Argentinean junk bonds that just matured into double digits.” He handed Buffy and his friend each a glass.

  “To maturity,” Tom said.

  “What the hell. I’m tired of being mature.” Buffy chugged the drink.

  Richard and Tom exchanged a glance that could only be read as a victory gloat.

  Was Tom putting serious moves on his slayer? Spike bristled. The intensity of the jealous surge surprised him, but he was the alpha hunter and Buffy was the championship trophy prey. He didn’t like the idea of anyone tarnishing the grand prize. Still, it was petty to begrudge the Slayer a little romance in the short time she had left. Angel wouldn’t even take her out for coffee.

  Bored with the frat scene, Spike slipped into the woods to warn the minions that the dinner hour was almost over. People were starting to leave, and he wanted to attack the instant the monk-boys started Machida’s ceremony.

  * * *

  Spike sat in the c
rook made by a large tree trunk and a heavy branch, watching the driveway and house. Most of the guests had gone, and the bad boys of Delta Zeta Kappa were booting the stragglers. He hadn’t seen Buffy or Cordelia leave, but the lecherous Richard and Tom were probably enjoying a lingering good-night kiss. They were still boys despite their gruesome hobby. He looked toward the veranda and the sound of laughter.

  Xander stumbled out the door, shoved by the rude man in the tie. He still wore the skirt and a stuffed bra with the addition of smudged lipstick and a long blond wig.

  “Party’s over, jerkwater.” The man with the short hair threw Xander his bundled clothes.

  “Wait!” Xander said. “A friend of mine was here.”

  That made Spike sit up and take notice. The only friend of Xander’s at the party was Buffy. Despite his obvious embarrassment, he was asking about her instead of running as fast and far away as possible.

  “You know, in that light,”—the man in the tie hitched up his pants—“with that wig on and all . . . you’re still butt ugly!”

  Both men laughed and slammed the door in Xander’s face.

  Xander pulled the wig off and removed the gigantic bra. He dropped them on the porch and left.

  “Spike!” Lucius stood at the base of the tree, whispering. Spike had sent him and Gator to watch the window by the basement door. If one of Machida’s dinner dates made a break for it, they had orders to grab her.

  “Where’s Gator?” Spike hissed back.

  “He’s still watching the window,” Lucius said. “The monk-boys just dragged two girls into the basement.”

  “Just now?” Spike arched an eyebrow. That was cutting it close. Otto wouldn’t have put off a kidnapping until the last minute, but then the big barbarian hadn’t been able to throw a party to lure his victims. “What did they look like?”

  “A blonde in black and a brunette in green,” Lucius explained. “Drugged, I think. They weren’t very steady on their feet.”