Chapter 10

Fine Dining

It's about 9pm and my motorcycle was on the fritz again. The tanks is still half full of overpriced gas that half emptied my (second) wallet, so I know it isn't just running out of gas like in Bunkerville.

But if I read my (third) map right, it isn't too long to go before I hit Santaquin, and that means the finest no star motel I can find and the ability to check the bike over first light.

I am pretty sure by this stage that if I can see it, I can fix it.

I have met too many creatures of the night to want to stop on a pitch black highway with no torch. So I press my luck and lean in to the gas. With a bit of luck I can get there before whatever is dying dies.

I am, of course, known for my luck. Usually my luck boils down to panicking at the right moment.

So when I lowside into a turn, and panic kicks in, I do the thing one should not do at high speed. Well, one of the many, many things one should not do at high speed. I squeeze the front break.

It's too dark to see the world tumble over and over and over. I see the headlight above me somewhere, just for a moment before it smashes out, and leaves me to myself collecting injuries in the darkness.

But I am not dead. I am pain itself. But I am not dead. I am all the winces and hops and hisses as I peel myself off the tarmac with skinless palm heels. I get my bearings first. This is up. This is down. My arms are still my arms and my legs probably are too, as much as they wish they were anyone else's right now. My tongue is swollen with blood and I can feel a small flap where I bit it through.

When I see my bike, I am amazed I got up at all, let alone have all my original teeth.

In the comedy movie of my life, this would be the bit where a truck ran over the machine's remains as a final insult to injury. Instead the road was silent and empty as far as I could see. Still, the image stuck with me and I began to chuckle. Then laugh until tears sting the cuts on my face.

I drag the remains to the ditch and dump them there. A few words spoken over the grave (all of them expletives) and I bid my friend of the road goodbye and start limping in the direction I think Santaquin may be.

And, naturally, I was wrong.

I snap awake with the taste of blood in my mouth and the feeling a truck just blasted past me on the road with it's horn blaring.

I am seated upright in a chair, my head lolling as I come to my senses. Yes, I am seated, well, more strapped to, a metal chair by thin sharp cables wound around and around my wrists, under my breasts and my ankles and knees. I try to pull at one, but the coils tighten, cruelly biting into my flesh.

"All your strength won't help you, pet. In fact, it will harm you." Spike said. "But my all means, tug away if you like. I had the boys put some plastic down so we don't waste a drop."

I look up to see him sitting at the opposite end of an ornate dining table. His chair is a baroque wooden throne which he lounges back in like a rock star, his heavy boots rudely sit among the fine china. The candle light isn't bright enough to illuminate the room, but maybe I don't want to; There is the faint funk of rotten meat in the air and that only adds to my nausea.

"You… uhg… you… forgot… your blooming onion." I say.

Spike shakes his head and starts to snicker. He slaps his legs and shifting back in his seat like something good finally came on the 'telly'.

"I mean… it's probably cold by now." I say. I need to spit the blood out of my mouth but that would be like a rag to a bull. I swallow and it's awful. "But if you let me go I will get you a fresh one."

"I see you are just as mouthy as the other one." He says, standing. He slowly strolls along the dining table, one hand trailing along, knocking the knives and plates to the floor. "I would say it's a Slayer thing, but I've met just as many miserable ones as the comedians." He scoops up the carving knife. "Killed those ones. Maybe it just skips a generation."

He gets up in my face again, and I feel my insides turn ice. I pull back but the bindings bite.

"It's got me wondering, it has, does the funny ones taste as good as the sour ones?"

"There must be some kind of mistake. Slayer? What's a Slayer? I'm not a… what makes you think I'm... " he seizes me by my hair so I face him.

"Because I have been watching you, pet." He says with a tight little grin. His tongue tip darts to wet his lip. "And oh, what did my little curious eyes see? Hmmm?" He leans in and whispers into my ear. "Everything."

He releases me, and then with a swipe sends the place setting before me loudly crashing to the floor. He leaps up and sits cross legged before me in the space he has made.

"Spike I…"

Shit.

"Oh? Now, that is interesting. She's told you about me, has she? Warned you all about the big bad? I am so curious to hear what interesting little facts you have learned about me, Miss Alexandra Joyce Hart. I know a few about you."

"You're wrong about me." I say.

"Am I now? Let's see. Young attractive woman, shows up out of nowhere, bit of a night owl, keeps to herself and never speaks about her past."

"So? People suck." Shit. Poor choice of words.

"She works at a bar where a lot of my men go into and yet, for some reason, rarely seem to come out of. Lives alone. No decorations. No family photos in her possessions, which do, however include crosses, holy water and stakes and well used medical supplies. And you will never guess who paid for her motel rooms."

"He's my… my boyfriend. I mean uncle. Uh… he's both. Our family? I am sure all the inbreeding makes us taste bad."

"You visit Rupert Giles every day in gym gear, and leave all sweaty?"

"I know this looks bad."

"It really does, doesn't it?" he smiles. "For you, at least. For me it's more of a 'brown paper packages', and 'snowflakes on eyelashes' kind of a deal".

He leans back and looks me up and down in that way I pretend men haven't started to look at me.

"You're a pretty one, I'll give you that, pet. All dark and broody. Far more interesting than Suzy Sunshine and her technicolor Scoobies.

"A bird who looks like you could have it all. Couldn't you? But instead you skulk around in the dark. With us."

He sits forward and places an icy cold finger on my exposed sternum. I can feel his nail catching as he drags it down between my breasts. My breath hitches as he lingers there, his eyes crawling over my flesh.

"You would be quite the immortal, you know, Alexandra... Hart." His claw hovers on my ribcage over the beating organ. My body is responding and I hate it for it. I feel... I feel...

"The things I could teach you about freedom, Alexandra. Things you secretly desire. The most equisite pleasures and wanton depravities for you to enjoy, for all eternity."

"You do love to hear yourself talk, don't you?" I say. "Honestly, what good is eternity if I have to listen to you prattle on and on."

"Oh I am gonna enjoy drinking you."

"Yeah, well, I was already having the shittiest goddamn night of my joke of a life before you showed up, so please, if you are gonna kill me can you just get on to it, because honestly I am so, so sick of looking at that smug little face whilst you bore me to death with how clever you think you are, you narcissistic, limey, pastey, watered down Billy Idol wannabe that I…"

He is amused by all this. I don't want him amused. I want him to hurt.

I want him to hurt like I hurt.

"No wonder Drusilla left you."

I cry out as he flies towards me, an inhuman roar from his too wide jaws. And for a second I taste my own blood as his fangs tear into my throat.