Chapter 3
The room was dark, all dark, beyond the one faint shaft of light, and Dawn, cloaked as she was by the heavy leather curtain hanging over her, felt a prickle of danger as she fumbled in the shadows. Down the hallway echoed the scarcest thud, the quiet footfall of someone or something advancing in the gloom. The door rocked open and Dawn froze, engulfed in the harsh white glare that flooded the room.
"Dawn. And my shoes. In the same sentence? Please, no." The outline Buffy cut in the doorway was not a sympathetic one. Dawn clung in desperation to the mantra of a shoe stealer: the best form of defence is attack.
"You still have Spike's coat."
Buffy didn't flinch.
"You still have thirty seconds to put my shoes back before I remove them by Slayer force "
"Are you allowed to do that?"
"I don't know. It's not often that I meet a vampire wearing my shoes"
Fortunately for Dawn, the shoe thief code embraces a many-pronged survival strategy. Lesson the second: if in doubt, change the subject.
"Look what I found."
"Not looking. Looking at shoes. Waiting for shoes to not be on Dawn's feet."
"Do you think this was Mom's?" Dawn held up the figurine and watched with curiosity as for a brief moment Buffy seemed almost caught off her guard.
"I…em…no. That's…em…mine. I…I bought it at the wedding shop. Long story. Long and oh – not that memorable. There, already forgotten."
Dawn was not so easily side-tracked. "So tell."
Buffy smiled and shook her head as she took the blond-haired pair and settled them firmly down on the dresser. "Dawnie, there are some tales better left untold."
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Spike read deep into the night, absorbed by the dark, tangled history spelt out before him. He felt himself almost overwhelmed by the extraordinary, impending knowledge that he had read it somewhere, somewhen before, this tale of Angelus, the sadistic monster, of Drusilla, the grateful victim he had tortured to sweet madness, and of… but the page had been torn across, leaving only the odd fragment of a half-sentence remaining. But if the meaning of the text was lost to him, the meaning of the ugly brown stain that branded the tattered edge of the missing page was all too apparent. He knew what it was. He knew it like he knew that he was sitting there, living and breathing. Blood.
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"You want me and Dawn to come back to England with you? What did you say you did with the real Giles again? " Buffy teased.
Giles smiled. "Really, Buffy, I know how hard you've been working. One might say too hard. You need a break. You and Dawn." He paused. "Besides, it looks like my friend might need your help."
"Oh, that kind of a break. You know, I liked the new Giles better after all. Go get him back."
"Buffy, I'm serious," Giles persisted. "Xander and Willow are quite capable of holding the fort here. And I'm sure Anya can be persuaded…not to mention your friend Clem."
Xander bristled, as if stung to petulance by something Giles had said. "Since when has Clem been on board?"
"Buffy went to visit him yesterday, " Giles explained.
Xander turned to Buffy accusingly. "What is it with you and the demonkind?"
Buffy rounded on Xander in a tone that was suddenly acid. "Two words, Xander. Pot, kettle."
There was an angry silence for a moment, before Buffy continued in a more conciliatory tone, "Look, I'm sorry, but Giles, this is my destiny. I can't run away from it. I'm needed here. Hey, who died and made me Watcher?"
Giles smiled. "Buffy, Xander and Willow did manage without you when you were…em…"
"Let me guess. Four-letter word. Starts with a 'd'? Maybe an 'e' and an 'a' in there somewhere? Rhymes with…yeah right they did. And that's why Sunnydale was overrun with demon bikers when I came back."
"Deah-right-they-did-and-that's-why-sunnydale-was-overrun-with-demon-bikers-when-I-came-back? I may be but a carpenter but that is so more than four letters." Xander supplied helpfully.
"We had Spike before," Willow said, flatly, and then, in the ghost of a whisper, "and Tara."
Buffy motioned Giles to the door of the magic shop. "A word with my watcher. Outside."
Buffy sighed. "Giles, Willow is in no fit state to be left alone. You can see that. We both can."
Giles spoke firmly. "You're the Slayer, not the local social worker."
"Exactly. I'm the Slayer. I'm supposed to be the one that does the slaying."
"And just now Sunnydale is not the place that most needs the Slayer," Giles asserted.
"And how do you know this isn't some kind of trap and your friend Ms Newport isn't part of a conspiracy to get the Slayer out of Sunnydale in time for Apocalypse Now?" Buffy demanded.
"Buffy, give me some credit. Anyone would think I was utterly naïve when it comes to choosing friends."
"Giles, two words. Ethan. Rayne."
"Do I get two words too?" Willow had appeared, un-noticed to either of them, in the doorway.
Buffy smiled and wrapped her arms tightly around her friend. "Will. Love you."
"Wait, I see what you're doing. You think if you keep me all loved up I'm not going to do the whole ending the world thing."
"Oh, sneaky Will. It's working, right?"
Willow grinned and raised two clawed hands in a mock witch snarl as she turned to leave. But her dark eyes were clouded with unspoken pain and Buffy's heart was heavy as she turned back to her watcher.
"I can't leave her, Giles."
"Willow is in good hands, Buffy. Good-hearted hands, anyway."
"I know. But if anything was to happen…"
Giles removed his glasses and started polishing them vigorously with his handkerchief. "It won't. I…em…took the liberty of asking Angel to come down here and keep an eye on things while we're gone."
Buffy's eyes widened in disbelief.
"You – did – what?"
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Spike felt uncomfortable, sitting there at the breakfast table, wearing Martin's clothes and watching Elizabeth walk the cornflakes packet monster along the back of her chair.
"The book belonged to my father. I've no idea where it came from." Karen explained, "Do you think it might be important?"
Important? I have one month, one bloody month, and I don't know whether that makes everything important or nothing important, Spike wanted to shout, but he only nodded, and Karen continued.
"We moved to England when I was ten years old. My father was a journalist. He…he was a risk-taker, Spike. He would do anything for a good story."
"Hence the moving to England," Spike remarked drily.
"He was killed shortly before my nineteenth birthday."
"I'm sorry." Spike didn't know what else to say.
"Like I said, he would do anything for a good story."
An uncomfortable silence fell, marked by the occasional roar from the cornflake packet monster.
"Listen," Karen said eventually, "I have an idea. I know where we could find a complete copy of the book. It's worth a try."
Myriad beams of sunlight poured through the glass ceiling of the British Museum, and Spike felt almost relieved to withdraw to the more subdued tones of the library. He waited as Karen went over to the desk and returned, eventually, with a dust-laden copy of 'The Vampire in London – a comprehensive history' by Daniel Knight. Spike turned to the missing page, his heart thrashing a drum roll of anticipation. And the name he read seemed so familiar to him it could have been his own.
"Any luck?" Karen asked as they returned the book at the desk.
Spike shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. Does William the Bloody mean anything to you?"
Karen shook her head.
Spike turned to the man at the desk. "Do you know anything about this Daniel Knight? Bloke who wrote the book?" He hardly knew why he asked the question.
The curator turned to the computer in front of him. "I can…here…ah…yes. Daniel Knight was a pen name, it seems. The author's real name was John Gardener."
Karen gripped Spike's arm so hard his hand turned white. "John Gardener was my father."
"Your father wrote this book?" Spike was puzzled.
"Spike, I should have known. Why didn't I see this?"
"Known what?"
"Spike, I told you my father was killed," Karen breathed, "What I didn't tell you was that I have always believed my father was killed by a vampire."
Sleep was not something Spike entertained much hope of that night. He lay awake, his head throbbing with a melee of thoughts: of vampires, and William the Bloody, of Karen's murdered father, and the girl, this girl he had to find before it was all too late. Suddenly he noticed something that stilled the frenzy in his head like a blanket of ice. There, in the doorway of his room, something glowed, green and eerie; something slight, and solid; something that seemed to pierce his very soul; something he knew he had seen before.
"Elizabeth?" he whispered, getting up and walking towards her. But she turned round and headed purposefully down the hall. He followed, and watched in disbelief as she opened the front door of the flat and walked, steadily, down the stairs towards the outside door.
"Wait," he called softly, but she continued onwards, resolute, into the starlit street. Spike ran after her, grabbing her wrist to try and stop her, but she seemed driven by some force that he could not vanquish, and it was all he could do to keep his grip on her as she walked on. They turned into a dark alley-way, and he sensed that they were not alone.
"Kid's got company." The voice grated against the night air.
"Well, look who it is." One of the creatures lurking in the shadows stepped forward and wrapped his gaunt fingers around Elizabeth's wrist. "Come along for the ride?"
Spike replied in a voice that was dangerously quiet. "No-one's going anywhere. Not me, not the Little Bit."
The vampire's mouth curved around his savage teeth in a sinister smile. "Think you can take us all? That's – " but he tailed off suddenly, releasing his grip on Elizabeth as he turned and bolted into the night. Spike spun round in the darkness to see what it was that had so disturbed the vampire. He caught a glint of golden hair, and for a moment he thought of Laura. But this was a stranger.
"Give me the girl."
Her voice was hard, and he thrilled to the challenge.
"Nice try, pet."
She stood, riveted to the spot, as if paralysed for one moment by his words, and as he moved out from the shadows she choked out the question in a stab of contempt.
"Spike?"
To be continued…