CHAPTER 2: DARKNESS AWAITS
PART 9
For all his years of living, or rather unliving, Spike had encountered truckloads of demons whose attitude he couldn't quite take, but Herder here was definitely one of the high-rankers on the blond vampire's "can't stand that git" -list. It was almost impossible to get any bit of useful information out of him between the mad giggling, rambling and out of tune singing, and Spike felt as if he was trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle of a million pieces with the clock set on five seconds before doom. He considered leaving the information as it was and turn to the slayer to warn her that there was trouble brewing at the Bronze. But then he remembered how things got out of hand the last time she faced Dru's moronic minions, and he didn't want to put her in unnecessary danger. He didn't know how many vamps were waiting for her at the Bronze and what Dru was up to yet, although he wasn't expecting it to be much to be totally frank. It would be all right if she and the Scoobies allowed him to tag along and lend them a hand, he could waste a couple of vamps and try to keep her safe from harm, even if it would cost him his own bony hide. But she probably wouldn't accept his help. Probably didn't even want to see him around anywhere near her.
And she is absolutely right, Spike. You've violated the lady's trust. You've hurt her and made her feel small, vulnerable and disgusted. None of the demons she had faced up against had ever accomplished that, except perhaps for your monstrous grand Sire Angelus. You've broken your promise, and you should keep yourself away from the lady.
It would be the best thing to do for both of them.
Spike shook his head to get rid of inner his voice of reason, of guilt. William's voice. The traumatized poet in him surface from time to time, just like the demon did, although it wasn't strong enough to take over control completely. William August Byron had always been a bit of a wuss.
But the poofter had a point; leading Buffy right into the bloodstained hands of his revengeful ex and watch the two of them bitch-fight each other to death, was not gonna work for him.
He had to sort this problem out himself. Perhaps he could convince Dru to let her hostages go, to leave before the Slayer showed up and one of them end up dead or dusted. Dru wasn't clever, last time she came back he tricked her and had tied up to a pole in no time. And he could do it again, only this time it would be for her own good.
He eventually tried to strike a deal with the youngster, and promised Herder that he will let him go if he helped him to sneak into the Bronze without tripping over the warning system.
"And what if I refuse?" Herder asked, rather nonchalantly. "I don't want to betray my dark queen. Some of us still have a sense of chivalry in our cold, non beating hearts." He raised his brows meaningfully and gave Spike an accusing look.
"If you refuse." The blond vampire answered, blinking his eyes in irritation. "I'm gonna stake you good and proper. And you'll die, again. Bearing the bloody notion that your queen is gonna end up in the same dusty way as you did." He licked his lips and tried another approach. Perhaps the demented wanker cared enough for Dru to fall for this one. "And guess what?" He scoffed. "It will be all your fault for not warning her to get out of the Slayer's way."
"Liar! My Sire is gonna turn the Slayer and her naïve friends into shreds of meat hanging from a butcher's hook. She knows what she's doing, and she has many loyal followers like myself to aid her in her battle."
"Agreed, Dru can be quite the charmer with her fancy visions and twirly dance and all that. I bet she told the lot of you she's gonna take over the Hellmouth, right?"
"She had mentioned our eminent victory occasionally." Herder said, in a matter of fact voice.
"It's all bullocks you know."
"What do you mean?" The youngster asked. "She is gifted with the sight, and she saw it happen! It has to be true!"
"Well, the trouble with interpreting Dru's special gigs is that she also happens to be as mad as a revolving door. I won't deny that she's able to know stuff before they happen. She got it right from time to time, like that bit she said about the man in a white mechanical suit landing on a revolving lump of clay in the sky, and about people wearing sweatbands on their daft heads in the eighties. Bloody hell, I sure didn't expect that to catch on."
Herder struggled to free his arms from Spike's loosened grip, invoking some very rough handling by the blond vampire as he grabbed Herder's right hand and bended it backwards till it snapped with a dry sound. The fledgling screamed in pain and frustrated anger.
"Where was I?" Spike smirked. "Oh yeah, bla bla bla Dru can see into the future, bla bla bla mad as a fat man on a hunger-strike, bla bla bla pink collored sweatbands are moronic fashion statements, and then I accidentally broke your wrist for not sticking to the lesson here. Right. Just needed a bit of a recap. So as I tried to tell you before I was so very rudely interrupted, Drusilla is more often wrong then right because she can't keep her hallucinations out of her visions. She tells about them both and thinks that they are both the same thing. So her prophecy of killing the Slayer to rule over Hellmouth Sunny D could have been nothing more then an invention of her sweaty delusions. And since I kinda know the Chosen One who had lurked around this place, staking the town clean of demons, hellgods, and vampires and all, I can assure you that it pretty much sounds more like a wet dream to me then a real blink into the future."
Herder gazed up at him, his brows furrowed in confusion.
"She can't be in real danger. Not with all of us around to protect her. Can she?"
It was hard to notice in the shadows, but Spike's lips just curled into something that was the equivalent of a victorious grin, a hidden one that was, since he didn't want to let the little git know that he had got him exactly where he wanted.
"Believe what you want." He shrugged. "But hey, is the Pope a Roman Catholic?"
It didn't take long anymore for Spike to convince Herder, and both vamps left the cemetery, heading east. They walked down Main Street, the younger vampire limping up front, while Spike tailed him in silence, watching his movements cautiously. Just before they reached the turn into Kings Road where the colorful façade of the Bronze with the bright neon letters lured, Herder guided him into an alleyway where he claimed to know a backstage door. It was used for the performing bands to pack and unpack their gear, and it led indirectly to the bar and dance area via the dressing rooms. It was not exactly the sneakiest way to get in, but still, it was a lot more devious then to wander in through the main entrance.
"Here it is. It shouldn't be guarded. Our Darkness told us to keep the humans from running out of the building, not to keep an eye on anyone trying to get in." Herder gazed over his shoulder to look at Spike. "Au contrary, she was rather expecting it."
Herder pulled down the handle and swung the door open easily, then stepped away to let Spike through.
"You first." The blond grabbed the youngster by his shirt and flung him inside the darkened place. "I kinda have a thing against being knocked unconscious by nasties lurking in obscure passageways."
Herder snorted, but kept his mouth shut, wisely. Spike sucked in a breath of cold air to calm his senses, and then went in as well.
They walked through a narrow hall, reeking of beer, sweat and the gent's after a busy Saturday evening. It was filthy and tattered, with layers of aging pamphlets stuck on the walls, announcing the groups performing at the Bronze over a timeframe stretching from the crazy eighties till up to today. Spike blinked his eyes a couple of times in amazement as he recognized one of the artists in the faded pictures. Say, wasn't that Red's precious wolf-boy up there? Spike didn't know the pocket midget was in any band.
Herder opened a door at the end of the corridor and went through, followed by a wary Spike.
The small, crammed up space looked like it was used as a dressing annex storage room, with piles of wrinkled clothes tossed in the corners, and carton boxes stacked up under a long, narrow table. Its worn tabletop was partly buried under an armful of tiny knickknacks; lipsticks and hairbrushes and the occasional can of hairspray. Above the table hung a wall-sized mirror, complete with a frame made out of tiny light bulbs, giving that trace of sophisticated Hollywood glamour to the whole scene.
At the other side of the room, almost completely obscured by a metal rack heavily loaded with Halloween costumes, was another door. From behind it came the scrambled noise of loud conversations and the monotonous humming of music. The normal sounds that were expected to come from any booze serving facility where people were trying to have a good time really, and for a moment the blond vampire had a speck of hope that perhaps Drusilla hadn't quite got to the mass murdering bit yet and was still waltzing around, nipping from the occasional unlucky teenager that happened to catch her fancy. However, the high-pitched shrieks that suddenly cut through the door, told him that he needed to get back to reality. Spike cursed. Why had everything to be so bloody difficult?
Herder's hand rested on the doorknob, his blue eyes darted from Spike to the door and back again while he grinned dementedly.
"Witness what's behind door number three, oh Bleached One, and behold." Herder said with a mocking theatrical voice. The younger vampire swung the door wide open before Spike had a chance to protest or launch at him to snap his remaining good hand. Herder bowed dramatically, and waved his hand in an inviting gesture. "For our kind, it's a brave new world."
Spike peered into the darkened innards of the Bronze, and saw that the place was packed with vamps and humans, although the latter were not particularly enjoying their stay as much the demons did. Humans were strung up by their feet, and dangled upside down from the high ceiling beams supporting the upper deck. Some of them were still twitching as a steady gush of blood running out of a butcher's cut at the side of their neck leaked dark pools of scarlet on the floor. The vamps were putting beer mugs underneath, tapping their next feed fresh from the source. At the side near the bar, a young girl was strapped to the pool table,stripped naked as the day she was born. Her hands and feet were pierced with long pieces of broken cues, while a vampire in full game-face carved a doodle on her breasts using a pocketknife, and then licked the blood from her torn flesh while his victim screamed hoarsely.
The rest of the human patrons, who weren't killed, stabbed or tortured yet, had been driven into a corner by the vamps, and squatted down on the floor, some of them covering their faces in misery, others gazed at the horrific scenes, their glassy eyes wide and paralyzed by shock. There was still a band playing on stage and the greasy haired members seemed to be, to Spike own amazement, quite unharmed, but there were vampires on both side of the performance area, gawking at the humans with hungry eyes and growling at them, sending constant fear into their bones.
The vamps must have left the band alive to supply some bloody awful background music for their murder-fest, Spike thought, feeling uneasy, guess the special ambiance of torn guts and split skulls wasn't quite enough. Some demons were just difficult to please.
On the shelves above the bar where usually the more fancy liquor was stored, were now rows of decapitated heads on display. Men and Woman with savage cuts at the corner of their mouth that reached up their ears. They had been there for a while, and the hot spotlights that illuminated this gruesome exhibit, had dried the skin, making it pull up the upper lips, expoing the teeth underneath so that the heads appeared to be smiling like freaky jack-o-lanterns.
So this, Spike reasoned, was how bloody hell looked like if Dru happens to be in charge.
Herder took a confident step into the facility, his devilish grin never leaving his face.
" Come on, what are you waiting for? You've come so far, and put so much effort in convincing me. Don't you want to save your precious humans?"
The conscientious vampire regarded the fledgling with a mixture of rage, fear, contempt and self-hatred. Contempt because the bloody wanker had set him up, this wasn't the quiet entry he asked for. Several heads of the ruling species in this inferno had already turned to regard them both and if the feeling in his guts were true that every vamp in Sunny D had showed up tonight, it wouldn't take long before he was recognized. Although souled and chipped, Spike had no trouble whatsoever with putting up a fight against his fellow demons to defend himself, but here he was outnumbered by, well let's say seventy bloodthirsty vamps to one. That wasn't very good.
He should have been more careful, that was the bloody problem! Spike mentally cursed and kicked himself, loathing in self-hatred. He should have known that Dru's lapdog was not to be trusted, should have dusted him when he still got the chance and go to the Bronze on his own. Now the wanker was here in his own territory and the only thing he had to do was to give a yell to get him into troubles of the life threatening kind.
That, and he had been arrogant enough to underestimate Dru's organization capacities. He had expected a handful of minions, fledglings for whom he wouldn't break a sweat to dust. But this whole crowd was far too much for him alone to handle, there were just too many, and stepping inside right now to try to rescue the remaining humans would be suicide, plain and simple.
If he was smart and had any sense of preservation, he should just leg it and leave the vamps to their jolly happy hour, perhaps wait for the Slayer and the Slayeretts to come and then do the semi heroic stuff. Be the yellow egocentric git that had saved his bony hide from more then multiple disasters in the past and turn around, walk out of this nightmare place and slam the door shut behind him.
He wasn't any good to anybody if he was turned into a bloody pulp, right?
His mind was racing while his emotions fought each other; fear and guilt whacking each other on the head while none of them appeared out of the battle as an obvious winner, when he caught sight of the girl strapped on the pool table. Her screaming had stopped and he had figured that she had passed out, but instead, her eyes were open and were staring at him, standing there emotionless in the doorway. Lips were moving underneath a piece of thin cloth used to gag her and she uttered a muffled, desperate sound. She blinked with her hazel eyes and they pleaded with him to help her. She needed his help now, or she would die under her torment. She wouldn't live long enough for the professional vamp busters to arrive to set things right.
Spike tightened his jaw and breathed in deep through his nose, his eyes blazing with determination.
Guess the lady had to do with an amateur.
He stepped into the open, his hands clenched into white knuckled fists, his glare deadly and hostile, the demon slamming and roaring just underneath his human will. Somewhere at the back of his head, William's voice told him in his perfect nancyboy accent that he was absolutely doing the right thing. That this sacrifice would lift some of his agonizing guilt gouging his heart and mind. That it would be worth the pain and the agony. Horrible death and bludgeoning be damned.
Spike smirked sourly, always knew the right words to say to lift up his mood, that William did.
The door at his back slammed shut with a loud bang. Spike didn't react to it, he didn't have to turn around to know that there were now vampires standing in front of the exit, blocking his way out. After all, he had already figured out that this was a trap. A clack when it snapped when the mouse got caught was to be expected.
Herder's form which had been curved in pain because of his injuries, straightened and he cleared his throat with a gleeful gleam in his eyes.
"Ladies and gentlemen." He announced, his voice loud and shrill of sudden overexcitement. "Our guest of honor has arrived. I trust you to know what to do to welcome him."
They bloody well did know what to do. The cheery atmosphere among the demons reverted into a threatening silence. Event the relentless music stopped. A couple of tall, heavy and mean looking vamps in biker shirts and leather trousers came from behind their tables and cracked their knuckles in anticipation. Other party participants, their guts hanging over their belts from excessive feeding and their chin smudged with crusted blood, left their bloody drinks for what they were and reached for their weapons if they had any; pocketknives, baseball bats, and broken chair legs. Someone in the biker crowd had a rattling set of chains in his hand, to which a heavy looking hook was attached. They formed a circle around the blond vampire, their hostile faces changing into game-face rapidly. Spike looked around, biting on his lower lip. The circle of bloodthirsty vampires was closing in on him, becoming smaller and smaller.
PART 9
For all his years of living, or rather unliving, Spike had encountered truckloads of demons whose attitude he couldn't quite take, but Herder here was definitely one of the high-rankers on the blond vampire's "can't stand that git" -list. It was almost impossible to get any bit of useful information out of him between the mad giggling, rambling and out of tune singing, and Spike felt as if he was trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle of a million pieces with the clock set on five seconds before doom. He considered leaving the information as it was and turn to the slayer to warn her that there was trouble brewing at the Bronze. But then he remembered how things got out of hand the last time she faced Dru's moronic minions, and he didn't want to put her in unnecessary danger. He didn't know how many vamps were waiting for her at the Bronze and what Dru was up to yet, although he wasn't expecting it to be much to be totally frank. It would be all right if she and the Scoobies allowed him to tag along and lend them a hand, he could waste a couple of vamps and try to keep her safe from harm, even if it would cost him his own bony hide. But she probably wouldn't accept his help. Probably didn't even want to see him around anywhere near her.
And she is absolutely right, Spike. You've violated the lady's trust. You've hurt her and made her feel small, vulnerable and disgusted. None of the demons she had faced up against had ever accomplished that, except perhaps for your monstrous grand Sire Angelus. You've broken your promise, and you should keep yourself away from the lady.
It would be the best thing to do for both of them.
Spike shook his head to get rid of inner his voice of reason, of guilt. William's voice. The traumatized poet in him surface from time to time, just like the demon did, although it wasn't strong enough to take over control completely. William August Byron had always been a bit of a wuss.
But the poofter had a point; leading Buffy right into the bloodstained hands of his revengeful ex and watch the two of them bitch-fight each other to death, was not gonna work for him.
He had to sort this problem out himself. Perhaps he could convince Dru to let her hostages go, to leave before the Slayer showed up and one of them end up dead or dusted. Dru wasn't clever, last time she came back he tricked her and had tied up to a pole in no time. And he could do it again, only this time it would be for her own good.
He eventually tried to strike a deal with the youngster, and promised Herder that he will let him go if he helped him to sneak into the Bronze without tripping over the warning system.
"And what if I refuse?" Herder asked, rather nonchalantly. "I don't want to betray my dark queen. Some of us still have a sense of chivalry in our cold, non beating hearts." He raised his brows meaningfully and gave Spike an accusing look.
"If you refuse." The blond vampire answered, blinking his eyes in irritation. "I'm gonna stake you good and proper. And you'll die, again. Bearing the bloody notion that your queen is gonna end up in the same dusty way as you did." He licked his lips and tried another approach. Perhaps the demented wanker cared enough for Dru to fall for this one. "And guess what?" He scoffed. "It will be all your fault for not warning her to get out of the Slayer's way."
"Liar! My Sire is gonna turn the Slayer and her naïve friends into shreds of meat hanging from a butcher's hook. She knows what she's doing, and she has many loyal followers like myself to aid her in her battle."
"Agreed, Dru can be quite the charmer with her fancy visions and twirly dance and all that. I bet she told the lot of you she's gonna take over the Hellmouth, right?"
"She had mentioned our eminent victory occasionally." Herder said, in a matter of fact voice.
"It's all bullocks you know."
"What do you mean?" The youngster asked. "She is gifted with the sight, and she saw it happen! It has to be true!"
"Well, the trouble with interpreting Dru's special gigs is that she also happens to be as mad as a revolving door. I won't deny that she's able to know stuff before they happen. She got it right from time to time, like that bit she said about the man in a white mechanical suit landing on a revolving lump of clay in the sky, and about people wearing sweatbands on their daft heads in the eighties. Bloody hell, I sure didn't expect that to catch on."
Herder struggled to free his arms from Spike's loosened grip, invoking some very rough handling by the blond vampire as he grabbed Herder's right hand and bended it backwards till it snapped with a dry sound. The fledgling screamed in pain and frustrated anger.
"Where was I?" Spike smirked. "Oh yeah, bla bla bla Dru can see into the future, bla bla bla mad as a fat man on a hunger-strike, bla bla bla pink collored sweatbands are moronic fashion statements, and then I accidentally broke your wrist for not sticking to the lesson here. Right. Just needed a bit of a recap. So as I tried to tell you before I was so very rudely interrupted, Drusilla is more often wrong then right because she can't keep her hallucinations out of her visions. She tells about them both and thinks that they are both the same thing. So her prophecy of killing the Slayer to rule over Hellmouth Sunny D could have been nothing more then an invention of her sweaty delusions. And since I kinda know the Chosen One who had lurked around this place, staking the town clean of demons, hellgods, and vampires and all, I can assure you that it pretty much sounds more like a wet dream to me then a real blink into the future."
Herder gazed up at him, his brows furrowed in confusion.
"She can't be in real danger. Not with all of us around to protect her. Can she?"
It was hard to notice in the shadows, but Spike's lips just curled into something that was the equivalent of a victorious grin, a hidden one that was, since he didn't want to let the little git know that he had got him exactly where he wanted.
"Believe what you want." He shrugged. "But hey, is the Pope a Roman Catholic?"
It didn't take long anymore for Spike to convince Herder, and both vamps left the cemetery, heading east. They walked down Main Street, the younger vampire limping up front, while Spike tailed him in silence, watching his movements cautiously. Just before they reached the turn into Kings Road where the colorful façade of the Bronze with the bright neon letters lured, Herder guided him into an alleyway where he claimed to know a backstage door. It was used for the performing bands to pack and unpack their gear, and it led indirectly to the bar and dance area via the dressing rooms. It was not exactly the sneakiest way to get in, but still, it was a lot more devious then to wander in through the main entrance.
"Here it is. It shouldn't be guarded. Our Darkness told us to keep the humans from running out of the building, not to keep an eye on anyone trying to get in." Herder gazed over his shoulder to look at Spike. "Au contrary, she was rather expecting it."
Herder pulled down the handle and swung the door open easily, then stepped away to let Spike through.
"You first." The blond grabbed the youngster by his shirt and flung him inside the darkened place. "I kinda have a thing against being knocked unconscious by nasties lurking in obscure passageways."
Herder snorted, but kept his mouth shut, wisely. Spike sucked in a breath of cold air to calm his senses, and then went in as well.
They walked through a narrow hall, reeking of beer, sweat and the gent's after a busy Saturday evening. It was filthy and tattered, with layers of aging pamphlets stuck on the walls, announcing the groups performing at the Bronze over a timeframe stretching from the crazy eighties till up to today. Spike blinked his eyes a couple of times in amazement as he recognized one of the artists in the faded pictures. Say, wasn't that Red's precious wolf-boy up there? Spike didn't know the pocket midget was in any band.
Herder opened a door at the end of the corridor and went through, followed by a wary Spike.
The small, crammed up space looked like it was used as a dressing annex storage room, with piles of wrinkled clothes tossed in the corners, and carton boxes stacked up under a long, narrow table. Its worn tabletop was partly buried under an armful of tiny knickknacks; lipsticks and hairbrushes and the occasional can of hairspray. Above the table hung a wall-sized mirror, complete with a frame made out of tiny light bulbs, giving that trace of sophisticated Hollywood glamour to the whole scene.
At the other side of the room, almost completely obscured by a metal rack heavily loaded with Halloween costumes, was another door. From behind it came the scrambled noise of loud conversations and the monotonous humming of music. The normal sounds that were expected to come from any booze serving facility where people were trying to have a good time really, and for a moment the blond vampire had a speck of hope that perhaps Drusilla hadn't quite got to the mass murdering bit yet and was still waltzing around, nipping from the occasional unlucky teenager that happened to catch her fancy. However, the high-pitched shrieks that suddenly cut through the door, told him that he needed to get back to reality. Spike cursed. Why had everything to be so bloody difficult?
Herder's hand rested on the doorknob, his blue eyes darted from Spike to the door and back again while he grinned dementedly.
"Witness what's behind door number three, oh Bleached One, and behold." Herder said with a mocking theatrical voice. The younger vampire swung the door wide open before Spike had a chance to protest or launch at him to snap his remaining good hand. Herder bowed dramatically, and waved his hand in an inviting gesture. "For our kind, it's a brave new world."
Spike peered into the darkened innards of the Bronze, and saw that the place was packed with vamps and humans, although the latter were not particularly enjoying their stay as much the demons did. Humans were strung up by their feet, and dangled upside down from the high ceiling beams supporting the upper deck. Some of them were still twitching as a steady gush of blood running out of a butcher's cut at the side of their neck leaked dark pools of scarlet on the floor. The vamps were putting beer mugs underneath, tapping their next feed fresh from the source. At the side near the bar, a young girl was strapped to the pool table,stripped naked as the day she was born. Her hands and feet were pierced with long pieces of broken cues, while a vampire in full game-face carved a doodle on her breasts using a pocketknife, and then licked the blood from her torn flesh while his victim screamed hoarsely.
The rest of the human patrons, who weren't killed, stabbed or tortured yet, had been driven into a corner by the vamps, and squatted down on the floor, some of them covering their faces in misery, others gazed at the horrific scenes, their glassy eyes wide and paralyzed by shock. There was still a band playing on stage and the greasy haired members seemed to be, to Spike own amazement, quite unharmed, but there were vampires on both side of the performance area, gawking at the humans with hungry eyes and growling at them, sending constant fear into their bones.
The vamps must have left the band alive to supply some bloody awful background music for their murder-fest, Spike thought, feeling uneasy, guess the special ambiance of torn guts and split skulls wasn't quite enough. Some demons were just difficult to please.
On the shelves above the bar where usually the more fancy liquor was stored, were now rows of decapitated heads on display. Men and Woman with savage cuts at the corner of their mouth that reached up their ears. They had been there for a while, and the hot spotlights that illuminated this gruesome exhibit, had dried the skin, making it pull up the upper lips, expoing the teeth underneath so that the heads appeared to be smiling like freaky jack-o-lanterns.
So this, Spike reasoned, was how bloody hell looked like if Dru happens to be in charge.
Herder took a confident step into the facility, his devilish grin never leaving his face.
" Come on, what are you waiting for? You've come so far, and put so much effort in convincing me. Don't you want to save your precious humans?"
The conscientious vampire regarded the fledgling with a mixture of rage, fear, contempt and self-hatred. Contempt because the bloody wanker had set him up, this wasn't the quiet entry he asked for. Several heads of the ruling species in this inferno had already turned to regard them both and if the feeling in his guts were true that every vamp in Sunny D had showed up tonight, it wouldn't take long before he was recognized. Although souled and chipped, Spike had no trouble whatsoever with putting up a fight against his fellow demons to defend himself, but here he was outnumbered by, well let's say seventy bloodthirsty vamps to one. That wasn't very good.
He should have been more careful, that was the bloody problem! Spike mentally cursed and kicked himself, loathing in self-hatred. He should have known that Dru's lapdog was not to be trusted, should have dusted him when he still got the chance and go to the Bronze on his own. Now the wanker was here in his own territory and the only thing he had to do was to give a yell to get him into troubles of the life threatening kind.
That, and he had been arrogant enough to underestimate Dru's organization capacities. He had expected a handful of minions, fledglings for whom he wouldn't break a sweat to dust. But this whole crowd was far too much for him alone to handle, there were just too many, and stepping inside right now to try to rescue the remaining humans would be suicide, plain and simple.
If he was smart and had any sense of preservation, he should just leg it and leave the vamps to their jolly happy hour, perhaps wait for the Slayer and the Slayeretts to come and then do the semi heroic stuff. Be the yellow egocentric git that had saved his bony hide from more then multiple disasters in the past and turn around, walk out of this nightmare place and slam the door shut behind him.
He wasn't any good to anybody if he was turned into a bloody pulp, right?
His mind was racing while his emotions fought each other; fear and guilt whacking each other on the head while none of them appeared out of the battle as an obvious winner, when he caught sight of the girl strapped on the pool table. Her screaming had stopped and he had figured that she had passed out, but instead, her eyes were open and were staring at him, standing there emotionless in the doorway. Lips were moving underneath a piece of thin cloth used to gag her and she uttered a muffled, desperate sound. She blinked with her hazel eyes and they pleaded with him to help her. She needed his help now, or she would die under her torment. She wouldn't live long enough for the professional vamp busters to arrive to set things right.
Spike tightened his jaw and breathed in deep through his nose, his eyes blazing with determination.
Guess the lady had to do with an amateur.
He stepped into the open, his hands clenched into white knuckled fists, his glare deadly and hostile, the demon slamming and roaring just underneath his human will. Somewhere at the back of his head, William's voice told him in his perfect nancyboy accent that he was absolutely doing the right thing. That this sacrifice would lift some of his agonizing guilt gouging his heart and mind. That it would be worth the pain and the agony. Horrible death and bludgeoning be damned.
Spike smirked sourly, always knew the right words to say to lift up his mood, that William did.
The door at his back slammed shut with a loud bang. Spike didn't react to it, he didn't have to turn around to know that there were now vampires standing in front of the exit, blocking his way out. After all, he had already figured out that this was a trap. A clack when it snapped when the mouse got caught was to be expected.
Herder's form which had been curved in pain because of his injuries, straightened and he cleared his throat with a gleeful gleam in his eyes.
"Ladies and gentlemen." He announced, his voice loud and shrill of sudden overexcitement. "Our guest of honor has arrived. I trust you to know what to do to welcome him."
They bloody well did know what to do. The cheery atmosphere among the demons reverted into a threatening silence. Event the relentless music stopped. A couple of tall, heavy and mean looking vamps in biker shirts and leather trousers came from behind their tables and cracked their knuckles in anticipation. Other party participants, their guts hanging over their belts from excessive feeding and their chin smudged with crusted blood, left their bloody drinks for what they were and reached for their weapons if they had any; pocketknives, baseball bats, and broken chair legs. Someone in the biker crowd had a rattling set of chains in his hand, to which a heavy looking hook was attached. They formed a circle around the blond vampire, their hostile faces changing into game-face rapidly. Spike looked around, biting on his lower lip. The circle of bloodthirsty vampires was closing in on him, becoming smaller and smaller.