Ingénue
by Nyohah
Airports were the sluggard's hunting ground. Especially at night, when he came out with all the rest of the dark things, and all the people were weary from overnight flights, jet lag, or general layover boredom. The only action to be found was in the thrashing of the gangs of other vampires who tried to invade his territory. He'd found a good spot, with not too much traffic in the middle of the night, but enough to make it worth defending, and he could understand how they'd want it if they had any intelligence. Not likely with the newly turned and minions of the world, but he supposed even the most phenomenally stupid of them could recognize that the older vampire they sensed would have some—sense, that is.
If it had only been him, he wouldn't have had any trouble; he wouldn't have been there, to be frank. But he had two girls to protect, neither truly helpless, but not to be left alone. They were the perceived weak and, like all weak, drew bullies like lodestone—crowds of the strong and stupid epitomized the bully concept, whether human or undead or whatever else The Powers That Be decided to toss upon the earth. The idiots never realized that perception wasn't truth and that this particular group of 'weak' would leave them as dust in the ventilation system. They were a strange and vulnerable-looking trio, he couldn't deny—sickly, thin woman in an antique dress, stick of a girl not even adolescent, and the one perceived threat clearly not tall or wide enough to be much of one. And the multi-colored neon lights reflecting on his bleached-to-nearly-white hair and equally pale skin, while making Dru purr in fascination, he was sure did nothing to improve his tough-guy image.
It was the near-ritualistic biweekly brawls that had kept his lust for violence in check for the nine months they had lurked nightly in the underground passage from one section of terminals to the other. He'd have preferred to be someplace where he would have to hunt his prey before the slaughter began, somewhere they couldn't just pull yawning people from the automatic walkways. Oh, sure, they'd had fun with the easy kills, Dru's imagination—or her obedience to the pixies and spirits of the dark—being what it was, but they'd had more fun when the people had had time to look around in fear, in panic, knowing that no matter how they ran, they'd never escape. He could have survived on the shattering of a person's will he could see when they accepted their fate and his superiority. Nothing could compare to seeing that look in the eyes of a Slayer, but even poor reflections of it called up triumphant memories—a subway in New York, a burning village in China.
But Dru was weak, weaker than she had been since just after the mob in Prague. She couldn't even twirl under the lines of fluorescent color and pretend they were the stars of some other world without feeding first, and even then her strength scarcely lasted the night. She wouldn't eat twice; half the time she refused to eat at all. She had to ride the walkway to get across the tunnel, and he had to carry her back to his car when morning approached, and they had to abandon their hunting ground until night fell again.
Could a vampire die of weakness? Would she just turn to dust on him someday? She'd be spinning under the stars, and poof! No more Drusilla. Or would he wake up one evening to find a coating of ash where his love had been? Or would she just become weaker and weaker with eternity until she might as well have been an every-day corpse?
He couldn't decide which would be worse, but he knew he couldn't take Dru anyplace where they had to work for food or anyplace where they were threatened by more than little gangs of vampiric incompetence. The Bit, however, he could have taken somewhere. She could fight. She was by no means big and not at all strong in comparison to the normal vampire, but she could fight, could kill with a ferocity that would have been the pride of her Slayer sister.
He hadn't turned her. The only reason they'd been in Cleveland, just a year before, was to find the Slayer, hoping to score himself another prime kill, but mostly hoping to save Dru with the blood of a Slayer. This one was named Buffy, and at the time she was known throughout the underworld society more for her ridiculous name than her prowess, but that had changed with the onslaught the local vamp kings launched on her a few days before Spike arrived in Cleveland. The Slayer survived, even triumphed eventually; her family did not. He and Dru hadn't been in town three hours, trying to find her in a foreign city with only the written address of her house when they found the girl.
They turned the corner into an alley on the way, somewhere on the line that separated the rich part of town from the dangerous part, where the demons of the human variety never quite managed to wander, and the rich looked at everyone that passed like they were escaped convicts. The Slayer's house was somewhere just on the 'right' side of this line; he led Dru on a short detour on the 'bad' to find an easy kill to sustain her.
Drusilla gasped in delight and clenched her hand around his, cracking the bones of his hand and ripping her fingernails through his flesh. "Pretty," she cooed, leaning into his ear as though imparting the most crucial secret and still grasping his hand; he had to smile at her to keep from grimacing. "Sparkly and swirling, swirling." Then more quietly, barely a whisper: "Brighter than the moon and all her baby stars." She turned her head down the alley, the side of her head pressing against his cheek.
He saw only a child, her back huddled defensively against a large trash bin. Snarling in full demon feed-me desperation, but just a child. After a moment he realized that the dark reddish-brown side of her shirt was dried blood coloring over half of the Candyland Princess logo imprinted on it.
As they approached her, the snarling intensified, the girl's yellow eyes reflecting the sparse light leaking into the alley. He saw the unhealed wound on her neck and the lightly defined fledgling ridges on her forehead and shook his head slightly. She'd been bitten, turned, and left to bleed to death, abandoned by those responsible for her.
Dru pulled on his ear. "She needs us, Spike. See how she trembles."
"Hasn't had a meal," he answered.
"Little fawn needs to eat, needs us to feed her."
"Yeah, Dru." He pulled his wounded hand out of hers and stepped forward, reaching to grab the girl's arm.
She attacked him. She lunged away from the bin, and then her teeth were further ripping the flesh of his injured hand and viciously sucking his last meal from his veins. He almost considered resisting. But with humans in such plentiful supply—overrunning the earth with ugly, squalling, pink spawn and truckloads of stupidity (he had no noteworthy respect for sentience in general)—no harm was done, so he relaxed and let her feed, and she calmed substantially with every second. He was beginning to feel a bit weak when she finished and raised her head, looking up at him from under a cascade of straight, light brown hair with her human visage.
She did look like a fawn. It struck him, in that moment, that perhaps he was finally starting to slip into Drusilla's mad little world that, surreal as it may have been, tended to show the truth more clearly than the 'real' world. He supposed that there was a significant difference in seeing Bambi in a raging demon and in a preteen girl, and thus hope for him yet. But there had been something in her look besides her large, wide-set eyes and the line of her cheekbones that had forced upon him the realization, something innocuous that even her demon hadn't managed to taint.
She dropped his hand, and Dru rushed forward to grab the girl's, rocking on her tiptoes.
"Come along now, dearie. We're going to a party."
"Food first, I think," he said, trying to blink away his slight vertigo.
"A party?" asked the girl.
"Yes," Dru giggled, "the Slayer's going-away party. We mustn't miss it. It's quite rude for the hosts to miss their own party."
The girl gave them a strange look.
"Forgive us," said Spike. "We're Victorian."
"You're looking for Buffy," the girl said.
"Yes. The Vampire Slayer."
"You're going the wrong way. Buffy doesn't live over here anymore."
"Look, I've got the address right here from a reliable source—reliable as demons come, anyway—"
"She doesn't live at the house. There's nothing at the house, nothing there at all. Mom's dead, too."
"Well, she hasn't left Cle—did you say mom? Your mother? At the Slayer's house? You and the Slayer's mum?"
She gave him a well-practiced look of juvenile derision. "She's dead," she repeated slowly with a tone that matched her look.
He cursed and kicked an old can. "Well, it can't be helped. 'Always look on the bright side of life,' you know. But I have no great urge to go wandering all over Cleveland, so if you'll just show us where the Slayer is—"
"No! N-no." She backed away suddenly, pulling against Dru's grasp. "Let me go!" she fairly shrieked. "I thought you were nicer than the others, different. Let me go!"
He moved forward to help restrain her. "Hey, what's the matter—Dru, be gentle." She stopped struggling almost as quickly as she'd begun, sinking to the ground.
"Hey," he repeated, leaning over her and holding her shoulders, "tell us what's wrong."
"Hay is for horses," she sort of sniffled.
"You don't want to kill the Slayer?" he asked, crouching beside her as Dru awwed and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
"They tried to make me," the girl whispered. "They were there when I woke up—not the one that bit me—and they tried to-to—" She choked. "And-and they wanted me to help them kill Buffy—my sister."
"The Slayer kills our kind, you know. It's a matter of survival."
"You kill her kind," the girl countered. "Isn't that a matter of survival?"
"More of protection on her part, I'd say. Nobler, if you're into that sort of thing, but less desperate."
"What does that matter? It's all just death."
"Why do you care?"
"She's my sister," the girl insisted.
"She only pretends," Dru said. "She only could pretend. Nothing as earthly as Slayer could be kin to such holy light."
The girl turned her face, contorted with confusion and pain, back to Spike.
"Dru gets some strange ideas, sometimes," he soothed. "Well, most of the time, really. But firstly, you're decidedly more substantial than light. Secondly, you're decidedly unholy now—whatever you were in life really doesn't matter anymore. Trust us, we know."
"It almost burns my eyes to look at her. Is it pain or beauty that makes such tears?" Dru tracked her fingers down from her own eyes, now almost as glossy as the girl's.
He ignored her, focusing on the girl. "Look here, sprog, you're sitting in an alley blubbering over a girl whose job it is to kill you now."
"She'd never hurt me."
"Things have changed. Mostly you."
"She's so bright. Blindingly beautiful, Spike." Dru's voice became even dreamier, if that was possible. "Spike, she bounces all off you, and it's like angels."
"I don't feel different." Her voice was small and scared, lying. "She's the one who went all different."
"I saw the angels once. But they weren't real. Is she even real? Can I touch her?"
"Dru, you already have," he snapped. Then, more calmly: "And I'm sure your earlier display was a typical tantrum for a girl your age."
The girl's expression darkened, as did her voice. "Don't make fun of me. I'm being serious."
"Really, now." He raised an eyebrow.
"We're the brightest little corner in the world." Dru sighed.
"But she did go all different," she insisted, her voice rising in pitch again, "ever since she went all schizo at school. She dropped out, just stopped going, and mom almost killed her."
"All dark and spinning all around us, violent. It's coming to get us." Dru put her hands on her head and collapsed onto the ground. "Oh, Spike, we've broken into something awful, and it's coming to get us, and it's going to swallow us all up." She moaned.
"And she went all nocturnal like them, and just all weird. I don't think she even had makeup on last time I saw her—"
He pulled Dru to him and interrupted the girl. "I had a sister. And I didn't want to kill her." He stood up and helped Dru up with him. "So I didn't." He held a hand down to the girl. "Are you coming?"
"No!" She tried to push herself further backward; the dumpster was in the way, and her sneakers, a strange blend of baby blue and mahogany, slid uselessly on the pavement.
"We're not going to kill the Slayer," he said with admirable patience, he thought, considering the situation.
She looked up suddenly. "But I thought that was why you're here."
"It was. Past tense, little bit. Now I'm thinking we should just leave. Cleveland's a bit too volatile for wrecks like us." He smiled at her, a smile that he hoped was reassuring—well, it worked on Dru, but that wasn't quite the universal indicator. He did not tell her that he was fairly certain she was the main reason Cleveland had become a danger. "Now, are you coming?"
She put her hand in his, and he pulled her up. "What happened to your sister?"
"She became the Duchess of Devonshire. Come on."
Her eyebrows shot down in a scowl. "You're not being serious." Momentary pause. "Are you?"
He turned and started to walk to the end of the alley. "Come on."
"Are you?" she demanded, and he could imagine her hands on her skinny hips.
"Come on," he repeated. "I'm not waiting any longer."
"No, you have to!"
He was struck by the sudden urgency in her voice and turned back around.
"You don't even know my name."
He managed not to sigh crossly. "It doesn't matter. Most of us get new names, anyway. Come along, now."
"But, but, I have a name," she pleaded. "My mother gave it to me."
"Mothers tend to do that," he said. Then, recognizing the true distress on her face, he sighed. "I'm Spike. And this is Drusilla."
"I'm Dawn."
"Of course," he said. She would be.
She slept on the back seat of his DeSoto the entire trip to Cincinnati, curled up, one hand hanging down so her fingers, like her hair, just barely brushed the floor. In the Cincinnati mall after-hours, she acquired a new outfit to replace the one in which she had died. Dru had held her by the arm, whispering to the girl little secrets that no twelve-year-old should ever hear while Spike wandered five steps behind until they found what she wanted. The first outfit was mild, not unlike the innocent clothes she'd died in. Over time they grew less so, immodest if not tarted up a bit.
And he admitted that there was something fundamentally wrong in the sheer number of leering vamps he had to keep off her—he preferred violent means involving long heavy things aimed in well-planned trajectories for the bones that were most painful to have crushed, and sometimes, well, all of them, just for kicks. Whatever there was in her juvenile body—however devilishly clad in not an excess of black leather—that was so appealing he could not see. She had developed only a minimum of curvature at the hips and bust before she died—hardly to be noticed, really.
Pedophiles, the lot of them. Broken, bleeding pedophiles when he was done.
Because really, what little she had wouldn't have been noticeable at all had she worn a normal shirt. But then, they were evil. And if the girl wanted to dress the part, who was to stop her?
She didn't really act it. Throughout her year of death she had preserved a child's taste in conversation and diversion. Nothing she had done could kill the feeling that he should shield her from the cruelty and vulgarity of the world. Not the image of her and the hunting knife she always fought and killed with, both equally coated in her victim's blood. Not the look of perverted glee at the slaughter twisting her face, the expression a thousand times more disturbing on a girl's face still tinged with baby fat than it could ever have been on a demon's. She remained a paragon of innocence.
But she wouldn't be twelve forever. He knew that age was as much mental as physical. The girl would be something amazing when she was mature mentally. To be truthful, she was something amazing already, but she still bounced around devotedly every chance she got to any and every boy band—there seemed to be more of them every day, all hailing from somewhere in Florida—and he certainly wouldn't mourn the end of that stage.
She wouldn't be twelve forever, certainly. But how could it be tolerable for her to be any older when stuck in a perpetually preteen body?
Even now she ran down the automated walkway in the tunnel under Chicago O'Hare, ignoring the recorded voice warning her that the end was nearing—which had, unfortunately, been fixed just a day after their violent but structured disabling of it—and propelled herself off the end with her increased inertia so she landed with a stumble hard on her knees, a hand, and a shoulder, skidding. She flipped onto her back with a laugh, her hair twisted and spread erratically behind her like the tail of the comet Dru still insisted she was.
It was Tuesday, and they'd had to kill the security guard. He hadn't tasted as good as the couple from 'South Dakohhta' whose vacation they'd already ruined, so the Bit had shoved her knife into the v of his collarbone for safe-keeping while she found more interesting ways to amuse herself, and Spike had decided to save him for the second meal Dru would invariably need.
Dru had strewn herself across a bench on her stomach was swinging her crossed ankles back and forth through the air in time with the song she was humming. The ankle-length, black, lacy skirt of her dress was puddled on the bench at her knees, and her head was propped up with one hand. She looked like she was on holiday at the seaside, brushing her fingers through the water as she lay on the dock, except that the liquid she was running her long, perfectly ebony-painted nails through was the security guard's blood—he, unfortunately, was not doing a proper job of keeping himself fresh.
Drusilla sighed and looked upward at the dirty ceiling and fluorescent lights like she was letting the sun warm her face. "Do you suppose we'd be happy if Grandmummy came back for us?"
"You make it sound as though she accidentally left us in the park, love." He sat on the bench at the end near her head.
She brought her left hand up to her cheek to hold it like the other hand, rubbing a bit of blood into her hairline near her ear. "Don't you think Grandmummy would like our little one?"
"I don't think 'Grandmummy' likes anyone but herself. Have you forgotten she didn't even try to defend us when they were extraditing us?" He tapped her lightly on the nose. "Maybe you ought to start blaming your 'grandmummy' for not being able to go to the Hellmouth and get better. It's her master kicked us out of her precious little order that she dragged us into in the first place."
She bit his finger. "You be nice to your great-grandmummy, naughty boy."
He gently pulled it away. "Am I a naughty boy?"
"You're a very naughty boy."
"Am I as naughty as Miss Edith?" The blindfolded doll was lying facedown amidst the shreds that were all that remained of the rag doll she'd adopted the week before.
Dru's face darkened. "No one's as naughty as Miss Edith," she said, removing her hands from her face as she turned her head to stare at the doll as though her gaze had the power to scorch it. He hoped that the day would never come that she got around to the witch burning that seemed imminent at times—not because he had any attachment to the doll. He just dreaded the hysteria that would come the night afterward when a slightly more—or less?—lucid Drusilla discovered what she had done.
"But don't you worry," Dru whispered next, pulling herself into his lap, "Mummy loves you anyway."
It was several moments before he realized that the strange tapping sound he heard was that of Dawn's foot on the cold ground.
He looked up at her, and she said, "Yes, thank you! Please keep your PDA to yourself." And she shoved her finger down her throat and retched loudly for good measure.
Very much still a child.
"If we keep it to ourselves, it's not really PDA anymore, now is it?" he replied, pushing Dru off. She pouted.
"Public, private. Both start with p."
"How stupid of me to try to argue with you."
"Exactly. So come on. We're going to the movies, and we're going to kill the ushers so we can get in again tonight, remember?"
"I thought we'd decided against that."
"You had. But since you've decided not to argue with me ever again—"
"I did not say that and—"
"Oh, come on!" The last part was a full-fledged whine.
"No, Bit."
Dru still pouted, hmphing pointedly in his direction.
"Well, if that's just not exciting enough for you, I've always wanted to go to Florida."
He couldn't imagine why; he was sure it had nothing to do with hormones, her choice of music, and its geographic location.
"I suppose you want to get tanned by that special Florida sun," he said.
She lowered her eyebrows, narrowed her eyes, and pursed her lips—the very spirit of vexation, and that made three of them. "Disneyworld. It's supposed to be so much better than Disneyland—"
"I really doubt it's open all night."
"They're open at night. They have fireworks. I haven't seen fireworks since—since—since before I died."
"That was only a year ago."
"But I still haven't forgiven you for being all British and unpatriotic and not letting me go to a show on the Fourth of July."
"I hadn't noticed."
"Spiiiiike!" Whine again—that's how he knew he was winning. "We have to go. They even have the Cirque du Soleil."
Dru stopped pouting. "Is that the circus?" she asked.
"No! We're not going to Florida!"
Dawn stamped her feet and sighed melodramatically. "Then can we at least hop up to Starbucks? This is boring."
"You shouldn't drink coffee. It'll stunt your growth."
She crossed her arms and glared at him.
"I don't want to," he enunciated, slightly separating each word.
"You're boring. At least let me go."
"Fine." He waved a hand.
She hissed out a "yes!" and ran toward the escalator.
She was back twenty seconds later, biting her lip. "There's people coming. I heard them. Maybe we should've hid him." She kicked the security guard.
Spike saw them then, coming down in a huge clump that would have been unusual for that time of night even if all of them had made the effort to show their human faces "Yeah," he drawled, letting a smirk twist his face, "but only 'cause they'll want a taste."
Dawn smiled and pulled her knife out of the dead guard's neck, then licked the blood off.
"You're going to cut off your tongue one of these days," he said.
"Aww," she replied, still smiling fiendishly. "You never let me do anything."
"Never. It's against my principles. Dru, stay there." She had her hands holding the back edge of the bench and was gazing up at the ceiling, rolling her ankles to rub the toes of her shoes in circles through the puddle of blood. She didn't seem to be aware of the other vampires; he wasn't sure if she had even heard him.
"You don't have any principles," said Dawn. "I'll go left."
"Yes, I do." He started forward, then looking at the mob, thought he recognized a tall one near the front—a dolt of a minion who surely hadn't lasted this long. He caught Dawn by the arm. "No, you won't."
"What?" she protested, trying to shake her arm away. "Come on, you know I could take half of them out, no sweat—"
"Be quiet, Bit, and watch your back." He stopped, and seeing the blonde who had made her entrance from behind the taller vampires who had hidden her, glanced back at Drusilla. She was still looking at the ceiling. "Hullo, Darla."
Reaching the space between her group of minions and Spike and Dawn, she stopped her patented strut, and gave him a coquettish smile. "Why, little William, I haven't seen you in ages. What a pleasant surprise."
"I must say I'm flattered if you came all the way from your Hellmouth to kill me."
"Don't be so arrogant. We came for the Slayer."
"She's in Cleveland. Oh, I see, you're all going to take a flight. Well, I hope you have a right adventure—well, actually, it should be rather fun. Just make sure you open your windows. I've heard the view is spectacular, especially when it's sunny." He smiled broadly.
But Darla wasn't watching him anymore, and he muttered a curse at her, then turning around to see what she was watching, he growled one at the floor.
Dru was gliding toward the group, her hands held slightly in front of her, wrists cocked back and fingers curled, as though frozen in mid-motion.
"Drusilla, come here, dove," Spike said as calmly as he could manage.
She ignored him. "Grandmummy, I knew you were coming for us." The two vampires held each other by the arms affectionately.
"Don't call me that," Darla said in a sugar-saturated tone with a smile to match.
"Dru," Spike said more firmly, "she has come to kill us. So come here to me."
"Who is that?" asked Dawn, resting the flat of her knife against her cheek.
"A very old friend. Dru, doll. Please."
"She's quite the skank, isn't she? Like a Catholic schoolgirl wannabe. Cardigan, Mary Janes, the whole deal. Well, actually, I think they wear those awful skirts to their knee. I mean, I know you should have some excuse since you can't look in the mirror, but—" Dawn snorted.
"Oh, who's more the skank?" Darla answered. "I can't even imagine where you managed to find a corset little enough for you. And leather." She tsked and shook her head. "Drusilla, I don't think your Spike even needs you anymore."
Spike spoke slowly and softly: "She's twelve—"
"Thirteen!"
"—not to be touched by anyone."
"Do you really believe him, Dru?"
Dawn grimaced. "You're twisted, skank."
"She's charming, Spike. And you know we're going to kill you." She batted her eyes at him and turned back to Dru. "But we don't have to kill you. The Order has nothing against you, Drusilla. You can come back to the Hellmouth with me, and get strong again. And then you won't need him, anyway. Or the brat."
"Dru." The word was almost pleading.
She finally turned to Spike and tilted her head, then said, as though the universe was collapsing, "Grandmummy doesn't like our moonbeam."
"Moonbeam?" Darla laughed.
"So pretty and bright. But you just don't see it."
Darla raised her thin eyebrows and looked at Spike.
"Effulgent," he confirmed, nodding once and not caring that he sounded like a swot.
"It think you're as mad as she is."
"Maybe. But we're happy, so if you'll scamper along and kill your Slayer—"
"Slayer!" one of Darla's thugs exclaimed suddenly.
Spike rolled his eyes as he turned toward the minion, saying, "Yeah, you know, she kills our kind."
Which is exactly what she did.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said as the dust from the two doomed vampires dissipated. "That's no way to thank my welcoming committee."
Her smirk was marred by a long, thin scar, her eyes darkened by too much eye shadow, her hair dirty blonde and secured in a practical but plain braid. With her loose, boyish khakis and tight but hardly feminine tank top, it seemed that the popular, fashionable young woman Dawn remembered was gone for good, killed in Cleveland as the price of survival.
Darla twisted Dru around and wrapped her arm around the younger vampire's throat; Drusilla squealed and whimpered and struggled weakly, uselessly.
The minions had spread, and the Slayer looked at the four vampires still keeping their human countenances.
"And I guess you're the prime targets, not just the unlucky prey. Not that anyone would ever think you were human, what with your ridiculous get-ups. I mean, look at this one—" She had turned her attention to Dawn and for a moment her eyes were locked on her in recognition. But nothing in her manner shifted. She didn't flinch, didn't gasp; the strong, steady beat of her heart didn't even quicken. She simply looked back at the three older vampires and said steadily, "Now you're really dead."
"I'm not, honey," said Darla, and she pushed. Dru stumbled. The Slayer attacked.
The world stopped.
A part of Spike was clutching wildly at her ashes; another was just standing there dumbly, too dead to move, and he wasn't sure which was the truer half until Dawn touched his arm and said, "Let's kill them all."
The Slayer had the same thought, and her stake found the hearts of several more vampires before Dawn and Spike joined the fight. Spike, needing something with which to kill his vampire opponents, immediately went for a mammoth who had a stake, probably brought for the sole purpose of killing him. The Order of Aurelius had its share of faults—crazy leader, idiot minions, reliance on mystical prophecies to direct them, Darla—but uninformed they were not. He hadn't been high-profile for the past year or so, and how they'd found him he really couldn't guess, but he also really didn't care.
The big vampire thrust in the direction of Spike's heart as soon as he was close enough without bothering with other attacks first—novice mistake, that. Spike met the stake with his right hand, grabbing it and pulling hard. On his right foot, he spun his body out of the path of the stake and the back of his left elbow into the vampire's jaw. His opponent's own fall wrenched the stake out of his grasp and left it in Spike's. He put the heel of his left boot on the temporarily downed vampire's chin and wrenched his head over and up until it cracked, leaving him paralyzed and helpless. The stake found its target easily.
The next vampire he fought was leaking its stolen blood through a clean slice through its neck given by the Bit's knife. He had a momentary panic as he blocked and then aimed a well-practiced left cross-right hook combination, wondering why she had not finished off this vampire she had wounded and fearing the worst. But as the ashes dissipated, he saw her to be merely preoccupied with decapitating another with the bench.
And then there was none but the Slayer—this one was good.
She approached him without a word or shift in her stance to acknowledge that she was fighting a superior opponent, but her fighting itself indicated that she knew what he was. Unlike her kill-first, kill-quickly attitude with the minions, she took the time to engage him in an actual fight. It had been a long time since he had faced anyone of her skill level, but he didn't think he did so poorly. Sure, she did nail him in the ear and then the chest with a masterful roundhouse-side kick combination. And she did assail him with a volley of punches of which far too many connected. And she did kick him with the steel toe of her boot on his hip with such concentrated force that ten minutes before he'd have at least grunted in pain.
But he kept his silence because sound seemed unforgivably vulgar, and he felt the effort needed to create sound would only shatter him anyway—he supposed this was what they called shock.
He jumped back from her next kick, intended to sweep him off his feet. She was left off-balance from the miss, and he stepped forward and slammed the heel of his hand into her cheekbone, sending her reeling. She almost went down, but kept herself on her feet through force of will more than anything. He kicked at her ankles to make her go down, and she did, but her hand was wrapped in the collar of his coat, and her foot shoved into his stomach. Next thing he knew he was landing on his head, and she was on her feet because her backward roll had had a purpose besides throwing him. He didn't think he had time to get to his feet, but he couldn't really see anyway because the ground had not been kind to his head, and this was the end for Spike.
Or it would have been if Dawn hadn't thrown herself onto her sister's back. They both landed on their right shoulder, and Dawn stumbled up and away from the Slayer.
Spike pushed his torso off the ground with his arms and squinted in their direction. Several quite fuzzy Dawns were waving their left arms rather frantically at an equal number of stone-still Slayers. He lowered his head, shaking it and blinking, trying to focus his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw another figure in the corner of his eye, in the opposite direction from the Slayer.
Darla blew him a kiss and curtsied.
When he looked back, Dawn was gone.
The young vampire waved her left hand, palm forward. "Buffy? Buffy, you're not gonna kill me, are you?"
The Slayer just stared at the girl, slicked with blood from her right shoulder all the way down to where it dripped off the end of the knife, held down and pointing away, purposely unthreatening.
Buffy said nothing.
"Buffy," the vampire pleaded again, her voice rising in pitch, "I'm your sister."
"Drop the knife," she ordered.
It clattered onto the cheap linoleum tile.
"My sister's dead."
Spike climbed to his feet and stumbled after Darla. By the time he reached the entrance through which she'd disappeared, he could run without banging into the walls.
It wasn't easy to determine which way she'd gone, but he finally caught her on the ground level of the parking garage and slammed her into a pillar on the outside edge, pinning her there with his body.
"A little hard to run in your Mary Janes, is it?"
"Let me go," she said, her words a little muffled given that her cheek was pressed against the concrete. "I have to kill the Slayer."
"You seem to be going in the wrong direction." He took a step backward.
She whirled around. "Well, I can't do it by myself, now can I? I'm not that much of a fighter."
"No," he said, "you're not. Which is why you're not going to get another chance to kill the Slayer—or anyone, really." He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her around to the opposite side of the pillar.
She regained her footing, and with it her condescending persona, and snorted. "You're not armed."
He looked over his shoulder and up at the sky. "I think the sun's going to dawn bright and early here, don't you?"
"You can't keep me here without staying here yourself." When he said nothing, her silken smile faltered. "Are you mad?"
"You killed Drusilla."
"The Slayer killed Drusilla." Her voice wavered. "Go kill the Slayer."
"How long do you think until the sun comes up? Eight hours? Nine?"
She sank slowly to the ground, her normally perfect blonde hair mussed by its slide down the pillar. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her cheekbones on her knees, looking out over the lights of Chicago.
He had never seen her so forlorn, had never seen her without some inflection of superior breeding and manner—false but ever-present. It was almost enough to make him want to smile.
He said, "Do you think it'll tickle?"
Buffy Summers slipped the stake into the side pocket of her khakis. The blond one with the coat was gone. She hoped he wasn't waiting around to attack her again. Not because she didn't want to kill him. He was a vampire. She had a plane to catch, which she normally wouldn't have cared about and hunted him down anyway, except that she'd paid for the ticket herself. California.
She passed a dead security guard and a doll on the way to the escalators upstairs and kicked them both.
The porcelain shattered.