Oooh, count yourselves lucky, you get this before my LJ does! Okay, so it HAS been edited [probably too mildly, I really have no frame of reference here] for eff eff dot net, so if you'd like to read the uncensored version you will have to wait for this afternoon when I post it at Raynejelly-dot-livejournal-dot-com.
General Notes: It's funny… I really like Dracula in the comic series. Season 8, Tales of the Vampires, even Spike vs. Dracula, I like him quite a lot, he's the sort of gentleman's vampire and he seems so above these things, like the patient and long-suffering Master of the Manor, looking after his wayward servants but… boy oh boy do I demonize him here. I suppose it's all that power, and that much monster… I wanted to make him really monstrous. And I did. At least in my head, hopefully on paper as well. So there's that. And a split infinitive.
Spike was acting strange. Xander knew that he was hardly an arbiter of sanity, but he had his expectations, and Spike was acting strange. The bean and bacon soup Spike had fed him for dinner was sitting heavily in his stomach; the vampire had very carefully spooned each rich mouthful into Xander until he had to protest. It hurt. Food hurt, it weighed too much, it made him heavy and slow, and it was so hard, after eating, to keep his eyes from drifting shut, so Xander watched Spike.
The vampire's layers shifted tirelessly under his skin, like television, constantly alive with movement. He saw new things now, and he wasn't sure why. He didn't know how he saw under Spike's skin, or the Master's, or any of his many toys. The pictures lived and breathed and melted together and made Xander's head ache with the seeing; it was too much at once. The dark helped. The quiet helped. He was paying attention to Spike's layers, trying to separate them, make them neat where there was no neatness to be had. Xander didn't remember the last time his thoughts had come in clear lines; he suspected it was the food – he couldn't remember the last time he had suspicions either – and the warmth taking the edges away from the upset. A step closer to sanity, a step closer to the day it all fell down. Xander watched Spike for signs of recidivism.
The vampire was acting strangely; he could not be still. Spike tried to talk to him while he ate; he said, "Harris, what do you know about Dracula?"
"Master," Xander corrected, and watched the vampire turn to stone. He was green and angry and bristling, and their conversation was over. Xander watched a gentle face potter around, making noise, clumsily rinsing dishes beneath the cold cleaning water, but the green was still there, still rumbling in its confines. He wanted to help; he wanted to make Spike better, calmer, the man he was before he said Master's name. Spike hadn't liked it when he tried earlier to touch and thank him; Xander was too afraid to try again.
Spike wasn't Master, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. Master did not like it when he spoke, but Spike was not Master. Logic in lines – it had to be the food. Xander made the decision – food again – to try. "Spike?"
"Yeah, pet." Xander was fascinated to watch Spike cringe and hurriedly correct himself, "Xander. Sorry, Xander. What is it?"
"What's wrong?"
"Just waiting on sundown." Spike said tensely, the line of his shoulders was stiff and hunched, his demon poised as if to spring. Xander watched him try to affect nonchalance, "Just a bit bored, is all."
"Can I help?" Xander knew better than to move. The overture itself was subtle enough, but then Xander followed it with the bald truth, "Master likes me to suck him when he is bored."
"No!" Spike recoiled as if struck, then approached at speed. Xander could feel himself flinch, but Spike merely took him by the shoulders, "No, Xander." The gentleness was surprising; he could almost see fury boiling in the layers, but the touch on his arms was feather light. "I told you, I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. And when I get my hands on that wanker, he's going to beg me to die, but I will. Not. Hurt you."
"Master?" Panic began to eat at him, slow at first, until the implications of what Spike claimed sank in; his heart began to pound. "You can't kill Master!"
"Xander, I know you probably want to protect him right now," Xander didn't. He didn't know what he felt towards his master, but it wasn't the thought of Master's death that caused him pain. Spike didn't understand, couldn't. "But when it's over, you'll see. I promise."
Xander didn't hear him, couldn't listen over the roar of blood in his ears, the noise of his lungs sucking in hard breath, "No. No, Spike. Please. You can't. Who will you send me back to?"
"I'm not sending you back to anyone!"
Xander wanted to cry. He wanted to take back the words, for Spike not to have said them. He was Spike's now, he supposed, as much as he had been Master's. He would rather go back, to have hope be a place to remember; he wanted Spike to be able to keep his promises. "Oh."
Slowly, his breathing evened out. The vampire sat beside him and ran his hand rhythmically across the blanket on Xander's back while Xander absorbed this information. His heartbeat steadied and slowed, becoming quieter, softer with acceptance. "I want to help you, Xander," Spike was saying, calm soothing words in a calm soothing voice that Xander did not trust. He wondered if Spike even knew he was lying. "I want you to be better, okay?"
Xander lied back, "Okay."
Spike held on to him for a long time. The gentle caress stopped, and the vampire's hand rested against his elbow, reassuring and solid but without intent. It was comfortable, tucked up against Spike's shoulder, wrapped in warmth and stillness; he found he liked it. Xander didn't know what to do with this new thing; he didn't know how to feel about the stillness that had come into his life the past two days, and he didn't know how to give thanks, so he did nothing. Absorbed. Memory was a slippery thing. The pictures in his head seemed to fade and dance away, but he hoped he would remember this, at least for a little while. Eventually, Spike sighed and shifted to face him again. "What do you say we take a look at fixing your hands?"
Xander's hands were tucked inside his blanket. He didn't like looking at them or thinking about them. Sometimes they were useful; sometimes he used them to stay awake. He wished that didn't matter. "Can you?"
"I can try," Spike said carefully, making no promises. He was learning. "I can at least try to get them cleaned up for you."
Slowly, trying not to jar them too badly, Xander pulled his hands out of his blanket at revealed them to Spike. Even the air hurt. Any pressure, any movement was a sharp lurch of pain and clenching in the pit of his stomach; the thought of letting someone, even someone as gentle and deliberate as this Spike had been, filled him with apprehensive nausea. Rationally thought he knew that this needed to happen. Rationally. Rational had flown out of the window when he woke up in a casket, and now his instinct was to protect and shield himself. Holding his hands out to Spike was like giving him a secret.
One of the muscles in Spike's jaw twitched.
For the first time in what felt like years, Xander contemplated the state of his fists. They were swollen and bruised looking, a grapefruit of sausages tangled on the ends of his wrists, and nearly immobile. They hadn't always been, he recalled. At first it was splinters and a broken knuckle and skin that tore away in strips. The master had liked them; he liked Xander to be helpless for him. It was Master who squeezed his thumb into breaking; a short sharp snap and Xander recalled screaming, though he wasn't sure why because Master knew what he needed. It was Master who took Xander's hands in his own and pressed so tightly on the middle joints they popped – broken or dislocated, Xander didn't know and couldn't fix it either way. It was Master who buried him. Xander thought he remembered waking to the thud of dirt on the lid of his house; breaking out a second time had been much harder. Something deep in his left hand had crumpled, and there was a flash of bone on his ring-finger where a chunk of pine board had ripped away his flesh. It still wept blood and puss, wet, sticky, and cold, when he moved. There was still dirt caught in his palms.
Spike favored him with a solemn look. "Xander, I'm going to drug you," he said hollowly, and Xander knew better than to protest. "It's non-negotiable." Spike was learning.
"No, no. Please. I can be quiet."
"I don't give a shit if you're quiet, pet." They both flinched, Spike sighed. Routines. "I don't care if you scream the roof down. But this is going to hurt, and it's going to be the kind of hurt that you can't keep a lid on. If you aren't drugged, I can't help you."
"Choices," He said aloud, staring at his hands.
"Not much," Spike replied, Xander was interested to see a frown of consternation on his face. "You can take them willingly, or I can hold you down and shove them down your throat. Your hands need fixing, I won't do it unless you're drugged out of your mind, and you're not in much of a position to fight me."
When Xander smiled at him, Spike looked startled, then disgusted, then ashamed. It was an odd blend of expressions to see on a damned creature, but Xander didn't question it, just watched curiously until the vampire's face resumed something approaching neutrality. Even in neutral, Spike always looked angry; Xander liked it. "Thank you."
"I wasn't going to say anything," Spike said suddenly, backing away, but not before Xander thought he caught a glimpse of the man he thought he used to remember: mischievous and sardonic, "but you're kindof twisted."
Xander laughed grimly, and the vampire took the opportunity to pop a handful of pills into his mouth with a quirk of his eyebrow that suggested if Xander didn't swallow them, Spike would shove them up his ass. Xander swallowed and didn't bother to ask what he'd just imbibed.
For a long moment, Spike did nothing. It may have been days, or hours slipping by like molasses ice-flows while the vampire just watched him intently, resuming his crouch on the floor beside Xander's knees. He seemed to be listening to something, like music Xander couldn't hear, which was only fair. Eventually, slowly and patiently as he'd done everything else, Spike reached for Xander's wrists. It took everything he had not to jerk his hand away.
The vampire's touch was cool and calm, just cradling his wrist, inspecting the damage without touching. Xander felt his stomach twist, and fought to swallow the bile that was rising in his throat, waiting for Spike's strong hands to break him into something new. He tried to breathe slowly because pain was inevitable, shock and vomit didn't have to be. He felt his heart beat. Slow. Huge and slow and the universe was moving. Spike watched him – eyes gray like a storm, but he couldn't look for long because the storm churned and tried to swallow him up. The air turned to water, washing him back and forth. Xander rocked as he chased bubbles and the gray seeped under his skin and drank him alive. His skin started to hum. "Just relax, Xander. You'll be all right" the voice boomed and crashed over his head, and he fell further away into the thrumming dark. "Finally."
Spike Strapped on his armor. He scrubbed the blood off his hands, shimmied into his clothes, stomped into his boots, slicked back his hair, and contemplatively scraped some of the polish off a thumb with his tooth. It was the uniform, and it was good. It settled against his skin like magic, made him taller, stronger, lengthened his stride and steadied his hands; Spike became the man he was before the world turned upside down, and right now he needed that. He knew where he stood with the uniform. Once he slung his duster across his shoulders he would be, for the first time all week, William the Bloody. Spike made no move to do so. Not yet.
He watched Harris sleep, drugged out of his mind on some of Spike's best stuff, but still wearing a crease of pain or frustration between his eyebrows. Spike had painstakingly put his hands back together. It had been a job and a half of re-breaking, pulling, setting, cleaning, stitching, and splinting where necessary; he'd drawn long splinters from the soft flesh of his palms, and squeezed puss out of infected gashes. The boy couldn't have made worse hash if he'd pushed them both into a whirling blender. The job was less than perfect – a practiced surgeon with real tools and decent lighting would have been better suited to the task – but Spike had enough experience straightening his own busted fingers that he was satisfied. The boy may never be able to tackle buttons again, but he would probably be able to handle a knife and fork. Through it all Xander moaned and twitched, not completely insensate to the pain but not likely to remember it either. It took hours, and all the while Spike was worried about poisoned blood and dead flesh and terrible infection, but nothing smelled terribly off, so he pressed on; Spike didn't want to resort to amputation, and if the boy died… well, he was the only one who'd know. The vampire had never enjoyed hurting someone less.
Spike would have to leave soon. He doubted he would ever have a better opportunity. With the boy drugged out of his gourd and not likely to wake up for hours, Spike had a score to settle. He wanted to be back before Harris woke, but couldn't bring himself to leave. Instead, he gently tucked the boy in, trying to make him as comfortable as possible in spite of the cracked ribs, lacerations, and his mangled hands. He checked the sutures, running his hands over what felt like acres of warm, soft skin, made smooth and elastic by the water the boy had taken on board. When he came to the bite mark above Xander's heart, Spike had the insane urge to sink his teeth in, to obscure that mark and everything else that suggested the boy was anyone's but his. For a moment, just a moment, Spike entertained the thought, wondered what he would feel like, taste like, healthy and happy and absolutely his, but he didn't let his mind stay there long. It wasn't possible, and he wasn't about to fall prey to proximity and that too-appealing, god-awful stubborn vulnerability. Instead he brought sheets and blankets up to warm the boy, to keep him safe and comfortable. Spike wanted to keep him.
He didn't bother to analyze where the feeling came from. Spike had been subject to his whims for long enough to know that when he started to think about them, it all started to go wrong. He didn't want to analyze it because he was afraid of what he might find if he did. Spike carefully pushed his fingers through Xander's thick hair, smoothing the boy's frown away with a thumb, before dropping a quick kiss on Xander's forehead the way he kissed Dawn, and standing. It was just gone midnight; Spike slung his duster around his shoulders and tried to think like Dracula. He had hunting to do.
When he stepped outside the crypt, he opened his senses to the night. If he were a pretentious, fame-seeking wanker, he would live in a pretentious fame-seeking castle. It would be gaudy and opulent and unnecessarily large, and probably, because Dracula was a vampire of certain, very recognizable, habits, it wouldn't fit at all with the surrounding architecture. He started with the boy's grave. That made a twisted sort of sense because Xander was the kind of victim who was convenient, not sought out.
The witch was there with a bundle full of hothouse flowers and tears in her eyes. She was kneeling on the earth and just barely trailing her fingers in the grass when Spike came around the hill. She looked expectant, and he kept his distance. It had occurred to him that she might be responsible for this mess, that Xander's presence in his crypt might be her doing; she certainly had the power. That treacle-thick magic under her skin was enough to break the world; her girl had it too. One day he would ask, one day it would be important enough to worry about, but the fact of it was, what was done was done, and it wouldn't matter until it started to stink. He gave her a wide berth, not at all afraid for her safety out here in the dark; the slayer had made it abundantly clear in the last few months that nothing was allowed to touch her toys.
He crept around the wooded edge of Hillside, listening intently for trouble, but not terribly concerned with the scuffling or scraping noises he could hear several yards into the woods, even when it was punctuated by broken moaning. Spike felt nothing more than a twinge of jealously; something was getting lucky, feeding, fucking, maybe both, and it wasn't him. He was hunting, though, and after days cooped up and walking on eggshells it felt good to let his teeth down, to sniff the air like a predator and let the scents of grass and sweat and prey swirl over his tongue. Normally at this time of night, Spike would be outside a club or a frat party, scaring drunken little wastrels out of their cash and booze. On the whole, he decided, this was better. Much better.
Overlooking "scenic" Breaker's Woods were a string of mansions separated by sprawling gardens, decorative walls, and the occasional bit of statuary but never anything so gauche as a fence. He had inhabited one of these with Angelus for a time; Dru had loved to dance with the jasmine, and if Dracula were anywhere, it would be here. Predictably epicurean and ostentatious, quite like his sire. Spike ducked and wove in the shadows and through backyards, dismissing out of hand the nouveau riche and the art-deco constructions that seemed so popular in this part of California. Framed against the bluffs which dropped onto the beach was the place Spike was looking for. It gave him a headache to look at. Not-quite-there, and not-quite-real, it's foundations wriggled at the edges from granite to sandstone and back, fighting for solidity. He gave up on stealth and marched up the long, gravel drive.
Spike didn't knock, and he had seen no one, but the door creaked open when he was less than three feet away. An invisible butler spell, Spike had seen it before and was not impressed. If he'd had any doubts about this being a vampire's residence, they would have vanished the moment he stepped over the threshold and into a large and indecorously appointed antechamber; the barometric pressure fell through the floor, and Spike knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was somewhere else entirely. It would be like Dracula to travel the world without ever leaving the comforts of his castle, the ponce.
The room was lined with mirrors, reflecting each other in an endless arc of empty gilt. It was a room designed to impress and to intimidate, and it immediately put Spike in a foul mood. The room was empty, but he could feel presences in the corners and behind carefully concealed doorways; he was being watched, which wasn't a problem because Spike had always been something of a showman. He marched to the back of the room, having to skirt the long-table, a symbol of times long gone. He imagined it was for parties now, orgiastic feasts where bodies lay stretched across its surface for any pagan uses the master of the house cared to name; Spike tried not to picture Xander chained there like a buffet.
His fingertips trailed across the polished cherry wood inlays, and he very briefly considered the duster, hardly daring to pause. In a brawl it was an asset, distracting for his opponents; it made him hard to keep track of. But one on one the beloved thing could be as much a hindrance as a help, something easy to grab at or pin him with. Spike was going to need every advantage for this, so off it came, and he slung the duster over a chair-back as he seated himself at the table's head. In Dracula's throne. He slapped his boots on the tabletop, and regretted that they weren't muddy. "Is this any way to treat a guest?"
"You are quite right, I've been remiss." Dracula had to emerge from the large double-doors behind him, a small victory for Spike, who wasn't interested in playing at court manners. He could smell Harris here, blood and spice on the tapestries, and by the time Dracula made it around his own sodding chair, Spike was in game face.
"Nice place." He said conversationally, pretending to take in the decorative tables and their little baubles, "Bit of a step up from the ancestral heap, wouldn't you agree, Vlad?"
Dracula's eyes narrowed, but he didn't rise to the bait. Instead, he leaned casually against the long-table, delicately crossing his ankles and giving Spike the warmest smile he could muster, which wasn't saying much. Disappointing but Spike had other means of attack. "To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from William the Bloody? And tell me, is your charming paramour with you this evening?"
Spike ignored both questions, "Where are we, exactly? It's not California…"
"Ah, yes. It's quite good, isn't it?" Spike hated him. "Just a little spell. The building itself is in Hungary, of course, but the homeland can grow so tiresome. The hellmouth is… a recent acquisition."
"An acquisition?" Spike allowed his eyebrow to kink speculatively.
"Yes, ah…" there was an awkward moment where Dracula appeared to war with his veneer of gentility while Spike stared him down contemptuously. "I see, this is why you've come to speak with me, yes? Yvonne, my darling, let's bring our friend a drink. Cognac?"
Spike was approached by a brunette in a slinky sequined evening gown; it hugged her curves and swayed seductively around her ankles; she looked like Jessica Rabbit. Spike wondered if some vampires ever got tired of living the cliché as she pressed admittedly magnificent breasts against his shoulder under the pretense of handing him a glass. "Mmm, Master" she said, breathing a lusty sigh against him and delicately running her claws around the shell of Spike's ear. He didn't so much as spare her a glance, keeping his eyes locked on the his hated rival. "He smells like our boy. He smells like rue and clover… can I keep him?"
Spike ripped her heart out.
The muscle fluttered against his fingertips when they punched through her ribs. She barely had time for a stunned whimper before she was dissolving in a cloud around him, spilling ashes in his drink. He drank it anyway.
Dracula blinked a few times, trying to conceal the pain of losing his trollop, and Spike couldn't keep the satisfied smirk off his face. "Was that really necessary?" he managed at last, apparently resigned to the fact that he would have to pick up another buxom brunette. "I doubt Drusilla would have minded that much."
"You're out of touch, mate." Spike didn't give him the benefit of an explanation for this, he wasn't planning on letting Dracula live long enough for the news to reach him. "That boy she mentioned…"
"Ah, yes. He was such a pleasant surprise. If he's still alive, I'd quite like him back; he was… entertaining." The bastard smiled, pale teeth gleaming with fond remembrance.
Spike wanted to gut him, but he also wanted to hear what the man had to say. Wanted to know everything about his time here that Xander was afraid to tell him. "How's that?"
"He saw the most… interesting things, knew the most unusual things. I had to thrall him, of course, but even as a bug eater he was quite charming," Dracula said after a moment of consideration. Spike was giving him the opportunity to brag, he took it. "And so noble, so desperate not to let any of the stock die, he would do anything to keep them alive. Our Anna, you won't have the opportunity to dust her, I'm afraid, particularly enjoyed that game."
Spike kept his face carefully blank, trying not to let this revolt him. And, horribly, it didn't. If it were anyone but Xander, anyone but Dracula, if he and Dru had played that game with a faceless boy with thick hair and a clever mouth, it would simply have been fun. But it had been Xander, noble, stubborn, vulnerable Xander, and Spike had no doubts that Dracula had done worse. He forced himself to ask, "Why'd you toss such a treat away, then?"
"He was a toy," said Dracula with a shrug that made Spike want to melt his eyes with cigarettes, "toys break. I wanted something a little sturdier, so I turned him. It's hardly my fault the foolish boy rose early and crawled away."
This was news to Spike, who'd been beating in time with Xander's heart for the past three days. He actually laughed, "Fucked that up, didn't 'ya?" In a flash, he was out of Dracula's throne, still learning possessively, still undermining the pillock's command, but prepared now, no longer vulnerable to an attack. He ground his boots in the ashes of the late Yvonne: the time for pleasantries was over. "I always knew you were an idiot, but incapable of making a fledge, mate? That's just pathetic."
"Pardon me?" beneath the cool exterior raged a beast that was getting angry. Spike had struck a nerve.
"He's not dead, tosser. Not in any sense of the word. And you're fucking lucky for that because I'm not willing to leave him for a week to take it out of your hide." Spike swung high and fast, forcing the other vampire to duck and stumble on his own crossed legs.
"Come now, William, be reasonable! This is about a boy? A human boy?"
Dracula danced out of the way of Spike's unarmed fists, having recovered his balance. He was taller, older, and probably better fed than Spike, convinced he was going to come away from this laughing until Spike caught him in the nose with his boot. "He is mine."
"How was I to know? You hadn't marked him!" Petulant whinging, Spike had expected so much more from a man who used to be a dragon.
Of course Spike hadn't marked Xander; he couldn't and hadn't thought he needed to as the boy was stone dead, but it was the arrogance that galled him. Swooping into Spike's territory and stealing what was his without so much as a "by your leave," Dracula had this coming. He honestly wished he could be angrier about that because it was, as a vampire, truly what deserved vengeance, but it was Xander he was fighting for, Xander who suffered, and who was hurting, frightened, and mad. Xander, who was his. "Should've asked!"
Dracula stopped cowering on the defensive, his hand came whistling from Spike's right and caught his shoulder, ripping a gash in him from shoulder blade to elbow, but after a year of systematically pummeling whatever the hellmouth threw at him, this was merely an inconvenience. Spike pulled him closer by his own damned claws and butted their faces together until he felt something crunch beneath his forehead and saw that it was one of Dracula's irritatingly perfect teeth. His head was pounding.
The older vampire tried to diffuse into mist, summoning up whatever gypsy illusory trick he could command with Spike there, pounding his guts to sauce. For a moment, Dracula slipped sideways and nearly away, slick with magic and blood, but Spike twisted his wrist up fiercely and bit off his thumb. "That shit doesn't work on me!" He roared, spitting out the digit. "I see what's there!"
"Then see this!" Dracula hit him with a chair.
Spike was knocked ass over tea-kettle. It was a heavy chair, but he managed to make the roll absorb most of the impact and came back grinning. His head was spinning; Dracula tried the wolf – denser magic, a true transformation – while Spike was still caught in a crouch, but that only made him smaller, more manageable when he sprang forward. Dracula clawed at his back, ripping lines of fire across his kidneys, and Spike twisted, rolled, and brought his knee up, exposing his belly, but risking it to neatly dislocate Dracula's elbow. Spike had his teeth in now, ripping, tearing, and clawing for the bastard's eyes until the wolf whimpered and fled, leaving just the man, dazed and struggling to stand.
Exhaustion was starting to creep into the corners of his eyes. Too long on a diet of pig and violence had taken its toll on Spike's stamina, and the blood dripping down his back was making his jeans chafe. He had to end this quickly.
He tried not to give the other vampire time to recover. Magic was stupid in a battle where speed was everything, it left its users drained and disoriented, Spike took whatever advantage he could. Spike pried himself off the floor, boots slipping in the blood and marble, and planted a foot squarely on Dracula's back, pinning him face-down, and then he pressed. It took some time, while the man squirmed and wriggled under the pressure, his thumb-less hand desperately grappling and failing to find friction. Spike felt two of his ribs crumple inward, giving way against the polished floor, and he pushed down harder, thigh straining. With a final undignified hop, Spike managed the desired effect and heard Dracula's spine crack under his foot.
"Fucker…" He said contemptuously, rolling the injured vampire over with an indelicate kick and stretching a kink out of his injured shoulder. Dracula was lucky, Spike considered, moaning piteously and trying to pull himself away by his elbows, at least he wasn't buried under a burning pipe organ. "Playing with gypsy tricks when you should've been using your teeth."
Two hours later, he let the bastard dust.
The house began to fade, images of craggy Hungarian mountain peaks briefly flickering in the mirrors. Spike could feel the spell pulling up roots around him, and knew he had to get out or plan an unexpected trip to Transylvania, but he took the time to pocket a few knickknacks on his way out, whistling cheerfully and licking Dracula's blood from his fingertips. He'd begged, in the end. Asked if this was revenge for Dru, and… Spike would be lying if he said he hadn't enjoyed it immensely for a number of reasons. He'd wanted to take his time, wanted to get truly creative, but he couldn't stomach the idea of Xander awake and waiting, wondering where he'd gone, so he stuck with what worked. It worked well, and so ended the legend.
An exquisite Faberge egg made its way into the duster's pocket, one of the ones lost during the revolution; Spike and Dru had had their fair share of fun there, taking advantage of the violence, chaos, and impoverished new proletariat, but they had better things to do with their time than collect baubles. Dru had wanted to taste the little princess. A few more trinkets dropped into his pockets, little pieces of jade, a necklace that had to be worth a small fortune, marched down the gravel drive with some swagger in his step. His back sang with pain where new skin had yet to grow, and his head ached – Dracula had come to deeply regret the chair – but he felt better than he had in a long time. Powerful. Alive.
The illusory mansion vanished behind him in a quiet susurrus as he stepped into the Sunnydale air. It was one of those sunless, dove gray November mornings that wouldn't burn away until noon, and Spike smiled. It was going to be a good day.
I hope no one is terribly bothered by the fact that I'm not much of a fight writer.