Next chapter will be up late Thursday afternoon. I'll be posting chapters every Sunday and Thursday, with additional ones if there is time to write.

Thanks for the reviews. They really speed the writing process.

_______________________________________________________

CHAPTER 5 - DRUSILLA

Saturday Evening

He fought the rising panic. I can do this, he told himself. I've had a century of escaping mobs and vampire hunters. I got Dru out of Prague. I escaped the bloody soldier boys at the Initiative. Hell, I even got away from Glory and she was a god. These people are sodden lawyers. They're used to rules and laws and regulations. I've never played by the rules. I can do this.

His breathing slowed. He ran his hand nervously through his hair and noticed the moisture. Puzzled he felt his face and then remembered. Sweat. Humans broke out into cold sweats when they were afraid. He was human and would be sweating like a pig for the rest of his life, however long it lasted.

He grimaced with distaste. The room had a small adjoining bathroom and he stepped in to wash his face. He started the water, looked up and for the first time in 120 years saw his own reflection.

He saw the same face he had died with, the soft weak face of William the Bloody Awful Poet. Vulnerable eyes, weak mouth, soft sandy hair in waves about his face. If anything, he looked worse than old William, unshaven and dressed in a cheap gray T-shirt and sweatpants. He closed his eyes in disappointment. For 120 years Spike had left this man, this face, behind and shaped himself into something fierce and respected. None of that showed, only the weak face of a bloody fool who had sniveled his way into the arms of the first vampire bitch who would accept him.

Then the anger came. He squared his jaw. He might not look like Spike, but he still had his mind and memories. A surge of grief arose as he remembered the blood and pain he had caused, but he fiercely beat it back. He would use the memories and anger to fight his way out of this captivity, to escape the lawyers and the witch who had destroyed him.

Then his memory slipped again. He was huddled in the corner of an abandoned house. Angelus looming over him. William's face and his shabby suit were covered with blood. He had botched his first kill and now Darla had to break the neck of the man before the neighborhood heard the screams. Angelus battered his face, breaking his teeth, his nose, reducing him to a bloody whimpering pulp. Dru was wailing, begging him to spare her Sweet William.

"We can't afford a stupid vampire in this pack," his sire had stormed. "Do you understand. Most vampires don't last a year because they are stupid." Angel grabbed his hair and yanked his face around, staring deep into his eyes. "We are demons in a human bodies. We have human minds. We can kill people because we use those minds when we hunt. If you just stay demon, if you don't use that mind, you are useless. Think, dammit!"

He had looked at his sire through puffy eyes and tentatively tried to use William's mind. It hurt to use such an alien brain, one that loved and admired beauty and felt pity and kindness. Then Drusilla was hugging him, licking and kissing the blood off of his face. "Your anger is beautiful. It glows like a cup of lightning." Angel shoved her away and she cried in fear.

His anger flared, then he realized how deep it was. It was not just the anger of a demon, but the anger of a man whose shabby genteel poverty had left him stranded on the fringes of society. It was the deep and clever rage of an intelligent man who was mocked and despised by fools.

At that point, William the Bloody had looked up at his sire and smiled through his split and bleeding lips. "I can do that. In fact, I want to do that." He remembered the laughter and mockery at his last party. "My next kill will be much better. But first I need a railway spike."

He was still looking at the mirror, noticing for the first time how cold his eyes were. He had been hunting for Spike's anger, but Spike had been using William's anger. Spike the demon had been shaped by William the human, with all his anger, deep romantic love and hunger for respect. He might have been a good man, as he had once told Cecily, but he had always carried the potential for evil.

And he still had the potential for evil. Having a soul didn't make that any different. He touched the demon anger, his own anger, and shaped it into a weapon. Someday he would have to cope with the consequences of his years as a killer, but not now. Now he had to find a way to escape.

He stormed to the door and threw it open. The two guards were startled and started to get up. He glared at them. "Where's dinner. If you wankers are going to kill me, the least you can do is give me some food. I bloody well haven't eaten all day."

The guards looked at each other. "Get back inside and we'll get you something," Tweedledee rumbled. Spike swore a bit and stepped back inside.

Within a half-hour, Tweedledum entered with a tray. Spike grabbed the tray, took one look and started complaining lacing his complaints with the obscenities that he had acquired in a century of travel. As soon as the guard was out of the room, he hurled the tray across the room.

The bed was next. He tore the sheets off the bed. He ripped the pillow open, and wads of foam flew around the room. It was only when he yanked off the mattress and tipped the bed over that one of the guards finally came in the room.

"Stop it."

Spike closed in on him. "Or what? You'll kill me?"

The guard looked bored and punched him. Spike flew backward across the room and slid down the wall. He looked up, holding his bleeding nose. The guard towered over him. "Do I have to hit you again or will you stop making a mess of things." Spike nodded and the guard left.

Spike muttered under his breath. Damn, his nose hurt. Everything seemed to hurt more in a human body. He stumbled into the bathroom and attempted to staunch the bleeding. He yanked off his T-shirt and shredded it, using it to soak up the blood. It was convenient having the reflection, so he could straighten his nose, but he could tell that he would have a couple of shiners if he lived long enough to see tomorrow. William the Bloody Poet was getting bloodier by the moment.

He glanced out at the chaos of the bedroom and gave a grim smile of satisfaction. With luck the mess might keep his jailers from noticing that he had nicked the utensils. Unfortunately they weren't metal, but with a little luck he might be able to come up with something useful.

When he finished, he had contemplated his work. They were pathetic really. How in the bloody hell was he supposed to defeat a vampire with these puny weapons. He really didn't stand a chance, but at least he'd try to go down fighting.

* * *

Waiting was the hard part. He waited in the bedroom and then, when the guards took him to another room and strapped him to a chair, he found himself waiting again. One wall had a darkened window, no doubt where the doctor and others could watch their lab rat get killed and turned by a vampire. He threw them the double-fingered salute. Behind him was a door, where his killer would enter.

And she came. . . Slender and beautiful, fragile and deadly, Drusilla, his dark princess entered the room.

Drusilla had pulled back her hair and wore it in ringlets. Her long dress was dark and Victorian. His heart ached as he realized that she had dressed up for this evening. She was trying to look like she did back when she first turned him. For her, killing him would constitute a romantic evening. Her eyes glittered with passion and mad joy.

Part of him wanted desperately to give in. It had been so much easier when they had floated through Europe, laughing and killing with no cares. William the Bloody, killer of two slayers and his mad beautiful bride. The guilt and the pain of mortal life would be forgotten.

"Drusilla, my love," he breathed.

She leaned over him, gazing at his bare chest, his tangled hair. "Spike," she breathed in a husky whisper. She reached down softly, then with a flick of her nail, slashed open his chest. She had killed a slayer with those nails.

He winced slightly but continued to look deep into her eyes. "Have you come to take me back, pet?"

She smiled and leaned over him, her fingers crawling across his head like a spider. "No plastic to lie to you with its nasty blue shocks. No electricity to tell you that you are not a bad dog." Her face was close to his now and he felt like he was drowning in her eyes.

He looked downward at the straps that bound him. "They trapped me in this body, Dru. How can I be a killer in a human body?"

Her fingers wove themselves in his hair and she yanked his head up, exposing his throat, tearing the hair by the roots. His eyes teared involuntarily with the pain.

She licked the tear and sighed. " And I wonder... what possible catastrophe came crashing down from heaven and brought this dashing stranger to tears?"

He blinked, then remembered. Back in the alley, the night he had first met her, those had been her first words. He had been huddled on a bale of hay, tearing up his poetry, sobbing like a fool over that bint, Cecily. Then he had lifted his eyes and seen Drusilla in all her dark beauty.

He remembered his line, "Nothing. I wish to be alone." God, he had been such a prig.

Her eyes widened with pleasure. She let go of his hair with one hand and stroked his face. "Oh, I see you. A man surrounded by fools who cannot see his strength, his vision, his glory." She carefully drew her nail slicing down along his jawline. She laughed with joy and licked the blood off her fingers. "That and burning baby fish swimming all around your head."

Her eyes were heavy lidded and a touch of blood was still at the corner of her mouth. She still aroused him. He groaned slightly, then nodded down to his hands. "They have me tied up, luv. If you turn me now, they will drive you away and keep me. Help me get loose."

She shifted to vamp face. He held his breath. Then she looked down at his hands and smiled. "You are my puppy. We don't need their nasty leashes." She reached down and casually snapped the leather straps. One, two, three and he was free. Then her cold hand wrapped around his throat and casually lifted him up. She kissed him, her fangs lacerating his lips and her tongue dancing in the blood. He moaned and his knees almost buckled.

"Do you want it?" Her voice was low and husky.

Over a hundred years ago, he had whispered "Oh, yes! God, yes! And signed his own death warrant. Looking deep into her mad eyes, he longed to do it again. He ached to yield his mind, his soul and his life to her. "Yes," he whispered and she could read the truth in his eyes.

She tilted her head and buried her fangs in his neck. Spike cried out in pain as his body bucked against hers in twisted ecstasy. He felt his life flowing into her and his hand clutched her hair, helplessly drawing her closer.

The small thread of sanity left in his mind guided him and he reached into his sweatpants. Drusilla detected the movement and chuckled deep in her throat. His hand moved past his groin to the small plastic weapon he had bound to his thigh with a torn strip of his T-shirt. He pulled it out.

Drusilla's eyes were closed as she sucked and ran her tongue through his flowing blood. He held the weapon up for a minute, despairing in its ridiculous shape. A small cross made of plastic utensils bound together with a strip of cloth from the T-shirt. His lips silently moved in prayer.

He knew her body from one hundred years of love. He knew where every feature was. His head was swimming and he was dizzy from blood loss, but he knew where to guide the cross made from the sharpened plastic knife. He slammed it into one of her bliss-closed eyes.

She screamed in pain and bewildered betrayal and dropped him. He fell heavily, then scrambled to his feet. He stumbled out of the doorway.

He was in a dark alley. Looking far to the right he saw a street. There were lights, traffic and people. He staggered towards it, adrenaline fighting with blood loss.

He heard shouts behind him now. The people on the other side of the observation window must have seen what happened and now they were coming after him. As he held his hand to his throat, he could feel the blood running through his fingers. He prayed he would reach the street before they caught him or that he could die now and remain human.

They were getting closer. The street was in front of him. He took a final exhausted dash into it. Then he was in the street, surrounded by cars, people that could see him.

"Stop!" He tried to flag a car down. "Help me! Stop." No one was stopping. He could see the dark figures of the bodyguards, getting closer. He reeled dizzily and one of the cars brushed him, sending him sprawling. His head slammed against the pavement and the last thing he saw was a bus coming towards him.

TBC