"Spike Maneggi"

Disclaimer: You know the drill – all this Buffy stuff is the creation of Joss Whedon &c., not myself, and I'm just borrowing it.

A/N: You guys should all know, this is my first Buffyfic. Bit traumatic – I don't know whether or not I can actually write Buffy yet. TV's such a perfect medium for it that I'm quite simply not sure it'll translate well, and if there's one thing I don't want to do, it's make a bad fic from a great show. Ergo, any reviews are welcomed, and advice is even more thoroughly sort after than usual. So please tell me what you think, and be honest.

Oh, and thing is un-beta-ed. Due to lack of beta. So apologies for the many and varied mistakes I'm sure I've missed.

No Smoke Without Fire

Of all the places he'd thought he'd have ended up, sloshing around, ankle-deep in swamp mucus and trampling through the muggy heat of Amazonian rainforests was not something Spike had pictured. And it was bloody awful – dismal weather, horrendous living conditions, and as for the food… the odd monkey, larger-than-strictly-necessary insects, and, if he was lucky, the odd expeditionary team. Not what he called a balanced diet. Unless you counted rucksacks and liberal bastings of insect repellent as part of a nutritionally florid meal, that is. On top of that, things tried to eat him on a regular basis… which, needless to say, was a turn-up for the books. Add to that the unpleasant truth that he hadn't been dry properly for weeks, and you'd have thought that Spike would've been marginally more brassed-off than he in fact was.

Luckily the thought of catching up with Drusilla was keeping him going. Each time he veered close to a tribe site, he thought that perhaps, this time, he might finally find her. No such luck of course. Following a path of death and blood loss though he was, Dru was consistently lacking in every village that showed signs of her having been there. You'd have thought that finding a blood-thirsty Georgian chick in a place so sparsely populated would have been a breeze.

No matter. He'd find her eventually. And he was vastly looking forward to that moment. He'd gone over and over it in his mind, whilst wading waist-deep through swamp muck and vines, moving with noisy determination by nightfall, all the better to scare off anything that was likely to attack him before he reached it.

One particular morning he fell asleep too carelessly, not noticing that he was at the edge of a clearing. Not until the sun had moved forwards across the sky and began to set twelve hours later, and some of its bastard rays snuck between the rubbery branches and struck him in the face, did he realise the implications.

He yelped, jumped, and fell rather gloriously from his perch, half way up a tree. He often slept off the ground, to avoid being eaten. He crashed through the undergrowth and landed on the cool, dark ground, inhaling a large amount of forest on his way down. During the day, the layers of leaves and trucks and canopy protected the ground from the sun, which was why it was safe for him to sleep. Now, though, the sun was coming through the clearing at an angle, scuffing the bases of the trees and piecing the ferns and stuff around it. Spike threw his coat around his head and scrambled back into the jungle, ignoring the blistering on the back of his hand and the rawness he could feel in his face. He ran a good thirty feet back into the forest before slowing, vines strapped to his ankles and mud caking his boots, and eventually sinking to the ground underneath a massive mangrove tree.

"Bollocks…" he murmured, to no-one but himself, clutching his wrist. "Not sure if you're worth this, Dru…"

He shook his head furiously, blinking back the searing pain in his hand and head.

"Yeah, I am. 'Course you are. Doesn't mean I have to enjoy this, though. And I was havin' a pretty good day, too…"

He peered up through the ferns, feeling the dank in the ground seeping into his clothing, and watched as a shaft of golden light burning into the trunk of the tree higher up rose as the sun sunk further beyond the mangroves on the opposite edge of the clearing. He felt a crawling, nipping sensation on his calf, and peered down to see a ten-inch millipede sink its pinchers into his flesh through a tear in his jeans. He couldn't help but smirk as it gorged itself, before falling with a dull thud on to the spongy ground, its legs twitching torturously.

"Teach you to bite the undead, little git. Rest in bloody peace."

After an hour or so, he looked up again, to see the golden patch of light slip away. He stood up, crushing the dead millipede beneath his heel, and stalked off towards the clearing.

Now that he had a chance to have a decent look at it, he wondered why he hadn't noticed before that it contained a massive block of sandy stone. Moss-ridden and crumbled, but a block of stone all the same. Twelve, fifteen foot tall, and carved with intricate patterns of suns and moons and dragonflies and more of the same crap. He circled it once, but history or the occult had never, ironically, been a particular interest – give him a good disembowelling anytime – and soon enough he made to move on, dragging his coat along behind him. Before he could vault a fallen tree trunk and continue, however, he heard a voice. Which was a bit unsettling, in a deserted clearing.

"You, my friend, are looking decidedly unwashed."

Spike froze, his ears straining to pick up any hint of noise or movement behind him.

"I'm not surprised, I've been out here more than a month," he replied brusquely. "Promise I'll 'ave a shower soon as I get back to civilisation, all right?"

The voice chuckled. "Good humour in times of trouble is always a strength."

"Yeah?" he said, cocking his head back. "Well sorry mate, but my good humour's just about run out. Now I'm going to turn around, and you've got five seconds to live."

He was greeted only with a second, deeper laugh.

"If you're just going to laugh then I'll just kill you slower," Spike said smoothly. His confidence was eroded by the continuation of the laughing, so much so that he thought it mite be time to see who exactly was laughing at him. And exactly who he was laughing at.

When he turned, however, ready to pull his demon out and rip the face off the little sod, he found himself facing only the sugar cube-shaped stone structure, but this time, it wasn't alone in the clearing. Sitting upon its nearest corner was a short, plump man with a purple pin-striped suit and a white trilby.

"You must be Spike," he said, cigar resting between stubby fingers. Spike detected a rather pronounced accent. Something very Mafia-ish.

"I suppose I must be," he said, frowning, not only at the utter inexplicability of finding anyone – let alone someone as out of place as this bloke – in the middle of a forest in South America, but also at the even more unlikely event that he knew his name. "And you're supposed to be who, exactly?"

"Whom," he replied.

Spike laughed. "Oh, I am sorry. My grammar's jus' not what it used to be. Then again," he added, as he felt his irritation surge forward and melt his face into one hell of a frown, teeth sliding down and grazing the inner corners of his mouth, "it's been a long time since I've been I used to be."

The man, though, merely chuckled. Which was a bit rude, when you're showing him your best game face. Then, before Spike really knew what was happening, he dropped off the big old stone block and landed on the ground, without bending his legs. From that height, any normal person would have broken their legs. Any normal person, on the other hand, would have run off as soon as he put on his vamp-face.

"Spike, do you really think, that having known your name, I wouldn't know exactly who you are?" the man said smoothly, gesturing with the cigar. "Oh no, I'm quite sure of what you can do. I'm quite certain that I can worse than that."

"Yeah? Well, you'll have to catch me first, mate."

He bolted. Sprinted flat out across the clearing and leapt over a fallen tree, disappearing into the undergrowth with duster whipping along behind him. He hadn't got twenty yards, though, before he stumbled to a halt, coming face-to-podgy-face with Mr. Pinstripe.

As stupid as running was evidently going to be, Spike turned tail and dashed past him, thrusting past branches and trampling over sludgy, mired mud heaps and fern thickets. His boots weren't exactly made for marathons though, and running like the bloody wind wasn't an option. And even if it was, it probably wouldn't have helped: as he tore past a thick green trunk he felt his shoulders yanked back as something grabbed hold of his leather coat, stopping him in his tracks. He lost his footing and landed wetly on the ground, but leapt to his feet, wheeling around and tugging his coat back onto his shoulders.

"Hey! I'm trying to make a bloody get away here!"

Mr. Pinstripe smiled. "I can see that. It's pointless though. You're not going anywhere."

Spike felt any certainty about his ability to escape fade, and he pulled his face smooth.

"Fine," he muttered, patting his jacket pockets. "Fine. You got a smoke?"

"My name is Don Genis," the bloke replied, as he pulled another cigar from his inside pocket and handed it over. Spike bit the end off and spat it at his counterpart's forehead, where it rebounded and fell to the ground.

"Genis?" he repeated. "Like the Maneggi demon?"

"The very same. Here," he added, clicking his fingers. Fire burst from their tips, and Spike leant forward, poking the end of the cigar into the flame.

"So you're here to what? Manipulate the hell out of me?" he snorted. "There's not much happening here, mate. Best you could do would be to find someone a little more accompanied. Changing stuff ain't any fun without people to react to it. And as you can see," he gestured around. "I'm all on me lonesome."

"That needn't be the case, my friend," Don Genis said succinctly. Spike's eyes narrowed, and he raised to cigar back to his lips, thoughtfully.

"Genis?" he said again. "You know, if you switched the 'G' for a 'P', I'd be so very tempted to call you a dick."

Don Genis laughed. "I like you. This is going to be highly amusing."

Spike's shoulders drooped. "Oh come on, do we have to? Can't you find someone less pissed off to stage-manage?"

"No, Spike, I'm afraid not. I'm the best Maneggi demon there is – I've changed the lives of three Popes, a few dozen holy monarchs, and I don't need to tell you how many politicians. What's left after that? You, my friend, are the answer. You, my friend, know the Slayer."

Spike's eyes closed involuntarily.

"That bloody Slayer!" he yelled, anger ripping his stomach in two. "All the time, it's Slayer-this and Slayer-that! Just because I've tried to do her in a few times, doesn't mean I know her. All I know about her it that I hate her and I want her bloody dead!"

"Look, I'm sure you've got your own very special reasons for not liking her—"

"My 'own special reasons'? I'm a vamp, she's the Vampire Slayer! I don't call that special, I call that very un-special. In fact, I call it really rather understandable!"

"Well, I'm afraid that that really isn't your decision." Don Genis took his cigar from his mouth and held it before him.

"No! Wait!" Spike shouted. "Isn't there anything I can say to get you to leave—"

Don Genis snapped the cigar in half with a plume of purple smoke and matching sparks, like an electrical wire being pulled from a wall. Everything around Spike dissolved, including the ground, and he found himself falling, quickly and silently, until he smacked straight onto a large amount of hard, oil-smeared concrete.

He groaned. He felt like he'd been staked. Not that he really knew what that felt like, having never actually been staked. He achingly scrambled to his feet, and peered around. He was in an alley way. One he recognised. One with a sign above a darkened doorway that read, 'The Bronze' in large, illuminated letters.

He was suddenly seized with a very strong desire for coffee and music.

&

So? What do you think? Should I go on? R & R PLEASE!!