TITLE:
Darkest Before Dawn #44 "Terrible Lucidity"
AUTHOR:
Nmissi
PART: 44/?
RATING:
R (For Series)
DISCLAIMER: I own Nothing and No one. Especially not Spike. If I did,
what makes you think I'd share him with you?
DISTRIBUTION: Anybody, just credit me and let me know where it's
going.
Feedback: Please. Nmissi@aol.com
SUMMARY: The way the world would work if I wrote the Buffyverse.
"The line's dead, Angel. There's no
signal." Wesley reported, as gently as he possibly could. Beside him, Gunn
fiddled with the equipment knobs futilely, then raised his head to back Wes up.
"Everything checks out, equip-wise.
They just tampered with his reception. I think we gotta assume they knew about
us this whole time, man." His cool calm
was a façade; he had like and respected Spike. Now he feared the worst.
The dark vampire sagged visibly at
the news. Behind him, his new childer moved in close, offering him the comfort
of flesh, as they pressed their hands to him. Lindsay patted his shoulder, and
Lilah took his hand.
"Do you want to go in after him?"
Lindsay's question was honest. He didn't like Spike, didn't share his maker's
affections. But the man was blood, of a sort- Family. And if Angel sent him in
there after the human, Lindsay would go willingly.
He just hoped against hope that
wasn't the way things worked out.
Angel shook his head.
"No. No, we do what we discussed. We
wait."
And they did.
Her muffled laughter helped him to
find her in the darkness. He crawled to it, choking on the blood in his mouth, wheezing
from his lung. The useless gun in his belt dug into the flesh of his belly,
pressed up against the dirt floor.
He'd never even had a chance to draw
down on them.
His hand contacted her shoulder
first; cool hard skin against his palm. Then her hair, as she turned her face
towards him, giggling.
"Spike. My Spike."
The giggling stopped short, and her
voice was brittle.
"No. Not my Spike. Not mine.
Nevermore."
She hissed at him, drawing farther
into the corner.
"Warm now, and dying. Your blood
dripping out your chest like raindrops. Do you eat raindrops, William?"
She laughed again.
"They taste like moonlight."
His hands searched her, and he
realized she was naked. And he realized she was drawn and thin, as he traced
her ribcage, her collarbones, her hipbones.
She was doubtless weaker than she'd been in years…
Weaker than after Prague.
How long since they'd fed her? He
wondered, and the thought made him angry. How dare they do this? She was one of
an ancient and powerful bloodline. She was respected and feared throughout the
world; her name alone provoked terror among fledglings. Drusilla the Mad, child
of Angelus. It was a name used to cow your rebels, a cautionary tale told to
your young ones.
And she was locked starving in a
damp cell underneath a prosperous Los Angeles law firm.
The indignity was not to be borne.
Her silence couldn't disguise the
hitch of her sobs as they shook her.
"Ssh, pet. I'm here now. Spike's
here. I'll get you out of this, I promise."
He just wasn't sure how he'd do that
right now.
He settled for pulling her tight
against him, and holding her, stroking her the silk of her hair. She clung to
him, her hands tracing the wounds on his skin, memorizing them.
She was murmuring again, quietly;
unintelligible words that sounded like music in her singsong lilt. He thought
carefully over their options.
Somehow, she was the thing he'd been
sent for. The irony of the situation was rich; he'd spent hours looking for
something in a book, or on a scroll. But it didn't exist in that form.
"Dru, love. I need to talk to you,
baby. I need to know about the prophecy you gave these people."
She ignored him, twisting her hair
into a ring around her finger.
He kissed the top of her head, and listened to her ramble, mixing nursery
stories and poetry, a weird amalgam of ideas and nonsense.
Her tone changed, becoming
clear.
"Not prophecy, lovely William."
She continued, in all seriousness, " Your fish's tail, which amongst us is considered
so beautiful, is thought on earth to be quite ugly; they do not know any
better, and they think it necessary to have two stout props, which they call
legs, in order to be handsome."
He felt her eyes upon him in the black room.
"But you've lost your fish's tail, Spike. If it cost not
your tongue, it cost your spine… When she loves someone else, and not you, Will
you turn to foam and slip back into the sea?"
She licked her lips softly.
"You'll make such lovely foam."
His jaw tightened, and he tried to avoid her question.
"Drusilla, WHAT DID YOU SAY TO THE LAWYERS?"
She crawled up him, and his heart sped up. The blood. She
could smell his blood, and she was hungry.
He had never feared Dru, and the emotion was unnerving.
But she was sniffing him, and for the first time, he was perceiving her as
predator. He backed up slightly, his pulse thrumming in his ears, his heart
trying to pound its way out of his chest.
She crept forward, on him again, plaintive and whining.
"I don't want an immortal soul."
She threw her head back in an ugly laugh as she added,
"I should live three hundred years and then slip back
into the seafoam."
It was coming together for him, now. He was badly out of
practice with Druspeak. She was babbling bits of "The Little Mermaid". Not
Disney's blighted kiddie version, but
the darker Hans Christian Anderson tale. An ugly little story about a mermaid
who wanted a human soul, and a human husband. She failed miserably, and was
given the option of ending herself, or her beloved, redeeming herself when she
apparently chose Suicide. All very depressing and silly, if you asked him.
It was a story right up Dru's alley, but he failed to see
how it related to himself, or to Angel.
She petted him gently, her hands sliding over his hair,
stroking the planes of his face. She climbed astride him, as his lung whistled and sucked.
"I've missed you, Spike."
She brought her lips to his ear, and he shivered, but not
in anticipation.
"Mummy's missed her beautiful boy. All my babies are
gone."
Her voice was mournful in this disclosure. She licked his
chin, where the blood had pooled and crusted.
"The Order of Aurelius is cursed, my lovely. We are
blighted before our kine. Humanity creeps in the blood. Immortal souls infect
immortal flesh, and we are hated by our own, and hunted by our gods."
Shoving futilely at her, he struggled to make sense of
her words. The Order is cursed. Was this the prophecy? How was it cursed?
"It creeps, my knight," she whispered, " It draws near to
Daddy, and his newborn. It took you from me, but I shall have you back."
He pushed frantically at her shoulders, as her head came
down to tear at his throat. He understood her all too well now, and the
prospect horrified him.
She was offering him everything he'd lost. In a matter of
hours, he could be himself again. He could stalk the night, fearless and proud.
He could be William the Bloody, he could be Spike the Vampire, once more.
It astonished him how wholly unappealing the offer was.
"Dru, No. Don't do this, I beg you. Please, I can't."
Her fangs entered him, and the sensation was exquisite.
She was killing him again, draining that powerful demonic blood that still
moved inside his veins.
He was losing himself, slipping under. Soon she would
give him the blood, and he would be too weak to stop her.
Everything he had gained, he would lose. He understood
Angel now. He finally appreciated the gift of his mortality, now that he was
about to lose it.
"Dru, No. I won't- I can't- do this."
With his last reserves of strength, he pulled her hair,
hard, and somehow disengaged her head from his neck. He could smell his blood,
dripping off her fangs onto his forehead.
"Raindrops, my Spike. They're like warm raindrops."
He scrambled to escape her, but she came after him.
"You're dying, pretty. That mortal heart is beating too
quickly, now, and you search for breath like a flopping fish on the sand. Your
wicked blood is running out of you like seawater… All gone…You'll be foam and
slip away."
She had her singsong "I know a secret" voice going, now.
"Let mummy kiss it better."
It was the same this time, yet it was different. She was
soft and willing, offering deliverance from his pain and his suffering.
But
a hundred years ago he had nothing left to live for.
Things were decidedly different now.
She was leaning over him, close enough that her fetid,
bloody breath overwhelmed.
"No, Dru. I don't want it. I don't want You."
"But you will,"
she promised. Her hair brushed his face, as she leaned in close over him.
He reached into his belt.
She cried out in anguish, pulling away as the pistol
exploded. He'd hit her, somewhere in the chest, or maybe the midsection.
Wherever, he'd got his shot in, and she was wounded now.
"I don't want to hurt you again, baby. But I won't let
you do it to me. Not again, not this time. You get near me once more, and I
will blow your damn head off."
She laughed quietly.
" So lost, now. Slipping away….taking your immortal soul
and turning to foam…"
He felt around for the door, and after several minutes he
found it. He could still hear his Black Beauty across the room, going on about
souls and darkness, about mermaids and legs. He tuned it out, as he fumbled for
his lockpick, and scrabbled at the lock. Luck was with him, and it swung open
with a soft whine.
He peered out, still crouched low. It was terribly bright
outside, in the hallway, after the blackness of Drusilla's cell.
"She doesn't love you, Spike. And you shall be hunted, to
the ends of the earth. You and all our ilk. We are accursed. We are accursed."
He didn't look back, only crawled out on his hands and
knees, gun clutched in his fist. Whosoever should be unlucky enough to cross
his path was going to be shot, he'd had enough of this place, these evil
people. He considered the Drusilla problem and left the cell door open.
Let them deal with her. Hopefully she'd feast on them.
He dragged himself along the wall back to the stairwell,
and began inching upwards. He was lightheaded from the blood loss, and just
staying awake was an arduous task.
Spying the security guard before the security guard
noticed him could be chalked up to divine providence. He screwed the silencer
in his jacket pocket onto the end of the pistol, and one careful shot took him
out of the picture.
But how to get out of here?
At the top of the steps, he saw another guard. This one
was reading a magazine as he stood blocking the exit. Spike took careful aim,
and cut a neat hole through the fellow's forehead.
He pitched forward, falling down the stairs. Spike
grabbed the body as it fell, and hauled it to one side. He hurriedly stripped
his clothes off, and the guards. Then he dressed in the uniform, taking care to
switch his weapons.
He heard Drusilla down the hall, singing, and knew his
time was running short. She would surely draw their attention, now that she was
loose. He had no time to lose.
He moved out of the stairwell and into the library
archives. He took note of the window over the computer desk, and considered his
options.
Could he get back through the building unmolested?
His choice made, he picked up the computer monitor and
tossed it through the window, breaking out leaded glass. Then he peered out
into an alleyway some three stories below.
He could see the car. Hot damn. He could see the car.
Behind him, he heard alarms going off, and the door
opened. More guards in uniforms like the one he was wearing, began coming into
the room.
"She's out of her cell," he said.
When several of them moved into the stairwell he thought
his cover might have worked. But others moved in to flank him, cutting off the
door.
There were too many; he didn't have that many shots left.
He took a deep breath, and threw himself out the open
window.