It went completely silent in the room, and for once Spike didn't have a snide remark or a revealing observation pop into his head to fill the silence with. His mind raced back to those fateful last moments of Charlie's life, and he would have sworn on a stack of Iggy Pop records that she had requested vampirism. Or maybe it was just that he hadn't wanted her to die a permanent death, instead hearing only what he wanted to hear her say.
"I'm a vampire?" Charlie asked again, the question coming out more like an ice-cold statement than a query. She put a hand to her chest, waiting to feel the comforting beat of her heart for over a minute before her face hardened.
Spike couldn't meet her eyes, and was happy enough to let the Watcher answer the question. "I'm afraid it's not quite that simple," Giles said, "There were some complications arising from the tattoos, though it was beneficial in nature. You are, as far as we know, the first vampire to ever be turned with a soul still present in your body."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better? About being dead?"
Giles at least had the decency to look contrite. "Well, no, not exactly. I can imagine you have some tumultuous emotions on the subject. But suffice to say, we will help you in any way we can."
Charlie's gaze locked solidly onto the floor, and she frowned in concentration at a crack in the concrete that ran the entire length of the crypt.
"Perhaps some space is what you need at the moment," said Giles, giving his female witch companions a nod towards the entrance to the crypt. "You can always come by the shop, Charlie. Though this is all rather unprecedented, we have a number of texts at our disposal, and I have connections with several people that would be interested in this situation. They might be able to shed some light on the subject, so I'll make some phone calls tonight."
Spike narrowed his eyes at the watcher. Though he hid it under layers of tact and polish, the man was downright giddy with anticipation over the idea that he'd be heading the foray into a shiny, new vampire discovery. Obviously being fired from the Watcher's Council had dealt a few blows to his self-confidence, but it was annoying that he was planning on voting himself head of the research party. If Rupes made any effort that didn't entirely benefit Charlie, Spike had every intention of prying the man's sticky librarian fingers off of her.
As if he could sense Spike's hostile thoughts, Giles glanced back at him while holding the crypt door open for Willow and Tara. "Spike, might I have a word?"
"Pompous."
"What?"
"Means a musty, puffed-up, self-important git," Spike explained. "Want another word?"
If looks could stake, Spike would be billowing dust.
"What I meant was, could I speak with you outside for a moment?" Giles clarified, irritatedly over-pronouncing his words, as though it would stop any more sarcastic verbal attacks.
"Whatever you want, Watcher," Spike said drolly, following him outside. He leaned against the crypt and lit up a cigarette to ease the sick feeling in his stomach as the watcher shut the door behind him. The witches sat nearby on a headstone, quietly talking and pretending not to eavesdrop.
Giles crossed his arms and gave Spike an almost fatherly look of disapproval. "It should go without saying that this is a most profound occurrence. And while I'd love nothing more than to whisk Charlie away to somewhere," he looked around the cemetery, "habitable, I admit that I'm out of my element. We need her right now, she's our only link to Bleakgrave, and I don't want her disappearing or running into trouble if she heads off by herself."
"I'll bloody well take care of her, Rupert."
"Yes, and that's just gone swimmingly so far, hasn't it?" Giles scoffed.
"Whatd'ya think I'd do, hand her a compass and a canteen of blood and wish her luck in her future endeavors?" Spike asked, outraged at the idea that Giles would need to tell him to keep an eye on the girl he'd taken such pains to save from everlasting death.
"Spike," Giles sighed, rubbing a hand over his mouth, "I don't know what to think. You're deceptive and unpredictable but I do think you harbor protective feelings over her, which is why I want her staying here. If we need her, we need to be able to find her."
"So that's how it's gonna be, yeah? You ring the bell and we come a runnin'?"
"Yes, that's how it's going to be. And you're getting a good deal out of it. If this situation had turned out any differently, I think you'd like the outcome even less."
"Well, isn't just peachy to know where we stand?" Spike said, crushing his cigarette against the side of the crypt and going back inside before the man had a chance to say anything else to make his night worse. It wasn't the idea of Charlie staying with him that was the problem, since it had obviously already occurred to him. The idea that it was also what Giles wanted though? That chafed.
By the time he'd reentered, Charlie had moved out of the chalk outlines and was sitting in his armchair, running her fingers back and forth over the two small scars on her neck. She looked at him, distracted and shaken, but he couldn't read her thoughts.
"Carol?" she finally asked, a touch hopeful, but with enough of an edge that Spike could tell she was bracing for the answer that she already knew.
"Couldn't save her, couldn't turn her. Sorry, luv, she was too fargone."
Tears threatened to spill from her eyes and her nostrils flared as she pressed her fists into the padding of the armchair. "I'm going to kill Bleakgrave. I'm going to take everything from him and make him hurt in ways that nobody's ever hurt before."
Vengeance. He could work with that. "Lucky for you then that you're still kickin'."
"Lucky?" Charlie asked, seething with fury. "Yeah, I'm really lucky. Everyone I've ever loved is dead, and I'm what now? Immortal? Awesome, always wanted to spend forever alone and unhappy, drinking body fluids from microwave-safe coffee mugs and pretending that fluorescent overheads are a nice alternative to sunshine. You know, I really wanted a dog too, just to ease some of the loneliness, but that can't happen now either. Might get hungry, have myself a Fido snack, and then feel really torn up about it because I still have a soul, right?"
"Charlie-"
"No! You don't get to explain. You don't get to apologize. You don't get to pretend that this is all for the best or that it'll be okay. You get to leave me alone to make my peace with this, because my decisions are the only thing that I have left."
He knew it was a fight he wasn't about to win by talking it out. At least not immediately. He also knew that the moody, miserable, solo vampire path only lead to more misery. Or a half-baked detective agency in LA, both of which were a bunch of bollocks. Letting her wallow wasn't going to help her situation.
"Fine, pet. You wanna have a pity party for one up here, suit yourself. I'll be downstairs if you feel like havin' a chat, but in the here-n-now, drink up," he said, placing the last cup of blood on the floor beside the chair. "Been too long since you woke to not have something in your system."
With that, he retreated downstairs, collapsing onto his bed with a poetry book and flipping through it for a few hours. Eventually he gave up when he realized he was reading the same two pages over and over, too busy straining to hear any noises coming from above. He tried to force himself to stop listening. She'd come down when she was ready.
Replacing his volume of sonnets with the new journal he'd started the other day, he then wrote several pages of lines regarding the fickle nature of immortality and the pig-headedness of every woman he'd ever known. Sighing, he scribbled out everything he wrote, drew a well rendered and expressive picture of Angelus being staked, then tore the pages out, crumpling them into a giant ball of paper and tossing it to the floor.
As he leaned back into his wooden headboard and shut his eyes, he heard the sound of what could faithfully be described as a fight between a trash compactor and concrete wall. He ached to get up and find out what was occurring, but he pushed himself to remain steadfast.
After a few more minutes had passed, Charlie's feet appeared on the topmost rung of the ladder, descending one at a time until she was standing before him.
She stared at him for what felt like a week before she actually spoke. "I might have smashed your mug and there might be blood all over your wall."
"Was wonderin' what all the racket was," he said, resting his hands on his stomach and giving her his full attention. She looked equal parts irritated and troubled, a capricious angel in a cheap lace-covered nightie.
"And your chair is broken."
He raised an eyebrow at her, "Par for the course, luv. Think I still have a lamp or two left if you just wanna finish off my entire crypt."
She looked around, finally noticing the disaster area that was his living quarters. "What the hell happened down here? Are you redecorating or something?"
"This," he said, indicating to the mess all around him, "was apparently the warm up for what you did upstairs."
"I did this?"
"Yeah. Gonna be findin' feathers down here for the rest of my unlife, thanks be to you."
"Huh," Charlie said, inspecting the damage with far more interest than before. "Good for me."
"I bloody liked that chair," he said grouchily.
"I didn't mean to break it," she said defensively, scratching her wrist. "Well, maybe I did, but I didn't think that it actually would break."
He hadn't forgotten how he felt after being turned, the first time he experienced the true power of vampire strength. For him it was freeing, no longer caring about the pointless decorum a gentleman was supposed to uphold in society and having all the raw power to go with his brand new attitude. Of course, he'd sucked two humans dry before he felt well enough to break anything in half, but that was besides the point. Actually, on second thought, that was the point.
"Would be even stronger had you tucked into the blood, rather than paint my walls with it. Not that gore on the walls is outta place for vamp crypt, but the not-eatin' seems to be a reoccurrin' theme with you."
"It smelled disgusting," she said, grimacing in the same manner as when she was covered in glowing soul-runes. "I'm not touching it, let alone putting it in my mouth."
"You need it, pet. It's what'll keep you goin', and without it you'll be runnin' on empty in no time. If you want somethin' better, I'll swing by the hospital." There was a long pause. "Forgiven, am I? Since we seem to be on talkin' terms now?"
"No," she said, sitting at the edge of the bed, the nightdress riding up dangerously over her thighs. She didn't seem to notice, and Spike made every effort to look anywhere but her legs.
"I don't know, Maybe," she continued. "I'm really upset with you. I'm upset in general, but if I don't think about it, I won't cry all over your mattress. I know that you thought you were doing the right thing, what I wanted, and that counts for something. And besides, there's nothing we can do about it now, right?" She looked down at her attire. "Except you're going to go get me some clothes from my apartment because this is legitimately the ugliest shit I've ever worn."
A corner of his mouth tugged upwards at her snippy remark, proof that the girl he'd chased through the portal, though somewhat altered, was still very much present. "Didn't have time for a shop-till-you-drop, seein' as how you were already dropped," he remarked.
She pulled at the itchy lace trimming, "I can't believe Willow and Tara were even willing to put this on me."
He quickly nixed the idea of telling her that the witches had no hand in dressing her or selecting the garment. "Didn't have many options," he said offhandedly. "Anyways, think you could do with some air, luv. We'll go pack up your things and bring them here. Owe me some sheets, at the very least. Can even wear my coat if you wanna hide the lady-of-the-night attire."
"Whoa, hold up! I'm not moving in with you! What is this, oh you're a vampire now, guess you need to live in the most predictable building you can think of? My apartment's fine."
"Yeah, it's right perfect. Nice big windows in the hallways, southern exposure," he drawled sarcastically, splaying out his hands as though he were displaying the framework, "It'll be great on those days that you want to disintegrate into a neat little pile atop your welcome mat." He leaned forward, "What happens if you need to scamper off in hurry? You're trapped. No sewer tunnel access, no awnings, just sayonara Charlie."
"Can't imagine why I overlooked those things on the amenities list when I moved in," she muttered.
"Look," he said, sighing, "we'll find some other place for you, but until then, this is the only place equipped for the likes of us, 'less you fancy yourself in Xander's basement. Not to spoil the plotline, but the git's place smells like mothballs, and him and his girl have at it daily. Hard to sleep with all the gruntin' and shoutin'..."
"Alright, I get it!" she said, clapping a hand over her eyes as if to shut out the mental picture. "But this is going to be so temporary. I'm taking the first anti-sunshine apartment I find."
He tossed her his duster. "Your call, but when you change your mind 'cause you like my humble dwelling," he shot her a wolfish smile, "don't say I didn't tell you so."
"So what happened?" she asked, as they meandered through the Sunnydale Cemetery on the way to her apartment. "Between you doing the biting thing and me waking up on the floor in the middle of a Harry Potter novel, that is."
"You don't remember anythin' about wakin' up the first time? Chatted on about posies and theater, you did, all the while glowin' like a bunch of fairy lights."
"Sounds… weirdly entertaining. I don't remember."
He shook his head. "Wasn't entertainin', scared the shit out of me. Thought I'd made a bungle out of turnin' you, and had to get Red and the rest to fix you."
"So what was wrong with me? Did you forget to put coins on my eyes?" She tapped her chin in thought, "Oooh… I might have had garlic bread for lunch Friday afternoon."
"Wasn't either of us, really. Turns out, hubby's knack for decoratin' you with runes was a protection against havin' your soul plucked out."
She stopped walking, a sad smile playing on her face. "He was the best, you know, always looking out for me. Never should have married him. Look where it got him."
"Can't predict the future, can you? And even if he'd known, be willin' to bet all the tea in England he would've done it all over with you again."
"Right. Maybe," she said softly. "So I was all banana sandwiches and throwing your stuff off your shelves, and then what? How did you even…" she trailed off as a large figure clomped it's way across grass and astroturf, stopping a few yards in front of the pair.
A familiar and most unwelcome face lit up with a murderous smile. "Well look who we have here. It's Spike, and he brought a snack from the bar."
Bloody hell, of ALL the nights, Bartrax could've picked…
"What's the problem now, wanker? Got the keys to the cemetery now too, do you?" Spike snapped. He really didn't have the time or patience for another altercation with the dense brute.
Bartrax shuffled closer. "Heard you brought the Slayer to Willy's, Spike. You've broken the demon code one too many times, and we're all in agreement. It's time to put you down."
"All? Have you gone daft? There's only one of you, you big stupid-" Spike trailed off as two more demons stepped out of the shadows, razor sharp fingernails glinting in the moonlight and towering over Bartrax.
"Is there a convention in town I didn't know about? For ugly, mean looking demons that pass nine feet and have arm muscles the circumference of car tires?" Charlie grumbled under her breath.
"Not gonna get hurt this time, pet, my playground tussle, not yours. Go to Buffy's, Revello Drive, second house on the left," Spike murmured back, dropping his fangs and cracking his knuckles as the trio of demons advanced.
Charlie didn't budge.
"Now!" he yelled, as a fist descended into his face.
Of course it was the largest of the three that attacked him first, he should have expected as much. Spike shook off the pain radiating from his left cheekbone and threw an experimental punch at the colossal monstrosity. His fist connected solidly with the blighter's stomach, but the thing didn't even flinch. Spike's aching hand would have flinched if it could.
"You work out?" he asked, fairly impressed. The demon growled, picked him up, and threw him against a nearby tree. Spike maneuvered himself so that his shoulder absorbed most of the damage, and he landed on his feet with only minor injury to the rest of him.
"Wasn't a nice way to accept a compliment, now was it?" he scolded, deciding that if he couldn't win the physical fight, he'd at least out-humiliate his enemies. "Mum must have rolled your egg right down the sewer drain when she laid you, never taught you any sort of manners!"
The demon roared furiously, and charged at him. Spike narrowly avoided its headbutt, hissing as the demon's nails sliced into his arm as it rushed by. The forward momentum kept the demon propelling forward, and he took the opportunity to gain the advantage from behind.
He managed to land a blow to the demon's lower back, striking a row of spiny plates aligned with its vertebrae. It bellowed in agony, swung around, and slashed out with its claws at Spike, who easily dodged each wild, imprecise swipe.
"Got your callin' card now, don't I, you twit?" Spike laughed as he ducked another punch, and slipped behind the demon again to damage the rest of his plates.
"Next time," he said, breaking one in half, "don't work," he cleaved one off, "for a moron," he cracked the last one right down the middle, "with dog breath."
The demon dropped to the ground and stopped moving. "'Cept there isn't gonna be a next time, is there? Wanker. Who's next?" Spike asked, eyes alighting on Bartrax's stunned face. "Fancy a go, mate?"
Bartrax turned and ran. My, how quickly the tides were changing.
"That's right you bloody coward! Run as fast out of this town as your scaly legs can carry you!" Spike yelled after him, turning and readying himself for the body-shattering punches of the second enormous demon twin.
He stopped in his tracks, witnessing the most horrifying sight he had ever seen, except for that one time a church organ had toppled onto him. His newly sired vampire protege had leapt onto the back of the remaining demon, bitten into its neck, and was drinking from it as though it was an open bar at a wedding reception. Spike gaped at the sight, open mouthed and completely unable to look away. It didn't take long before Charlie finished off her prey, and the behemoth collapsed onto the ground, groaning in misery.
Green-gold eyes glowing in the darkness, she wiped a hand over her mouth, taking a step towards Spike. He took two steps backwards.
"What?" Charlie asked, "You kept telling me to drink up, so I did."
"Not from a bloody demon!" he screeched.
"He smelled… good. Kind of like tacos or something, he was about to go after you, and I was hungry. Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Kill? Drink?"
"Not from a bloody demon!" he screeched again.
"Is there some demon code of honor that I'm supposed to follow now?" she asked calmly, "Because you killed the other one, so killing's obviously on the table. But thou shalt not eat? Is that etched into some stone tablets somewhere?"
"Isn't a commandment, 'cause instinct's what it is," he said, still unable to process what he'd seen, "You thought he smelled like a meal?"
"He doesn't smell that way to you?" she asked.
The scent of the fallen demon hung heavily in the air around him. "Smells like the undercarriage of an overweight leprous mule."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Agree to disagree, I guess. I feel better now."
It still wasn't registering. "And when you take a sniff at me, pet, are you thinkin' sexy man vamp or a three course at Le Spike Au Vin?"
She blushed pink, and Spike was torn between feeling glad since the flushing meant that she'd eaten enough, and being potentially worried by whatever her answer was. "You smell okay," she responded carefully.
"Okay?" he repeated, insulted. What kind of evasive, offensive answer was that? He'd rather smell like a cheeseburger than smell okay.
"Alright, you smell good, but it's not exactly foody, it's layers. It's how you smelled before, plus something else I can't quite describe," she admitted. "But that's not the point because I'm not going to bite you. I didn't bite you before, right? And I was really hungry then."
"Did go after my neck a few times before the witches put the whammy on you."
She made an exasperated sound. "How about from now on, anything I did before I got all souled up again, doesn't count? Actually, how about we both start off on a clean slate? Fresh start, no grudges, no more secrets."
Of course, his mind immediately flew to the thought of his past dealings with the Kalderash clan, but if it was written in a few history texts somewhere, it wasn't exactly a secret, was it? And if the books happened to become misplaced or destroyed, happy coincidence. "Yeah. Clean slate," he murmured as he watched her walk on ahead.