Part 8
Spike turned to go.
He had no reason to hang around here.
Buffy had stated her decision quite clearly, and he had even been the
one who'd told her that she needed to stick to the decision she made. She wasn't going to be running back out here
to change her mind now. As he stood
there with his back to the house, the one thing that delayed his departure was
the knowledge that Dawn had been trying to tell him something. What?
Well, whatever it was, she was unlikely to tell him now. Buffy had obviously convinced Dawn that he
was to be feared and avoided. He turned
to take one last look at the Summers house, into which he had been so recently
reinvited, then he sadly turned away again and headed back to his crypt.
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He leaned up against the wall, all of the events of the
evening running through his head. The
silence of the crypt felt oppressive.
He usually enjoyed the quiet solitude here, at least when no one was
crashing in uninvited. Only now, it
didn't feel like solitude; it felt like isolation. He had gone from trusted ally, to hero, to pariah, all apparently
in the blink of an eye. The hurt and
frustration turned to anger just as rapidly.
He swung around and slammed his fist into the wall. His hand was bleeding, but he didn't even
feel it. He walked over to his chair
and kicked it all the way across the room, then proceeded to smash several
empty whisky bottles that were lying around.
His outburst failed to calm his riled emotions.
He saw a few wooden stakes on the floor. He'd used those when he'd been helping
Buffy. *A convenience. That's all I ever was. It was so bleedin' obvious, but this
pathetic freak was so. friggin'. desperate. to fit in. somewhere…* With every word, he was stomping his foot
down on those hated stakes, smashing them into splinters. He looked down at the crushed wood by his
feet. *Well, that's all changed now,
hasn't it?* Even thinking he was still
chipped, Buffy and Giles and Xander had made it understood that he'd never be
one of them, would never be accepted by them.
And that they didn't need him.
They had of course failed to realize that he no longer needed them
either. He was not a pathetic freak
in desperate need of acceptance! He was
a vampire! Humans were his to take from
whatever he needed or wanted.
It was still well over an hour until sunrise. Spike headed to an area of town that he knew
was rarely patrolled. He strolled past
a bar, already locked up for the night.
A couple were arguing, none too quietly, in the doorway. Spike saw the man shove the woman angrily
and he wandered over to the couple.
"Problem mate?" Spike asked the man.
"This is between us. Mind your
own business." "This is my
business", growled Spike as he grabbed the other man and threw him hard against
the wall. He slumped to the ground
unconscious. Spike turned back to the
woman who was staring at him horrified.
Before she could speak, or run, or do anything, Spike grabbed her by the
shoulders, and releasing his demon, his bit into her neck and drank until she
slid limp and lifeless from his hands.
It was the first fresh blood he had tasted in a long
time. Amazingly sweet it was, but there
was something missing. He'd not gotten
quite the rush that he'd remembered so fondly.
He looked down at the petite blonde he'd fed from and quickly realized
the problem. It was too easy. She hadn't even screamed, let alone tried to
fight him. He still had time for
another kill before daylight. He needed
someone strong, someone who'd fight to live.
Spike wanted to feed on someone who wasn't used to feeling fear. He walked several blocks and stood in the
shadows of a biker bar that was still open.
He watched a few patrons leave, but he chose not to follow. Finally he selected his victim. That man certainly didn't look like the
fearful type. Soon he would know fear
like he'd never experienced. Spike
followed the chosen victim off down the street, until they were well away from
the bar and the other people leaving.
He approached the man and stepped in front of him. "Get out of my way." Spike didn't move. "I seem to be out of smokes", he told the man, "thought I'd take
some off your hands". The man shoved Spike.
"Yeah right. You're gonna take from
me? I don't think so". Spike shoved the man back hard against the
wall, surprising the man with his strength.
"Well, I do." Spike's vampire
features surfaced and the man looked at him with a mixture of confusion and the
first stirrings of fear. "Hey, look,
just take the damn cigs, 'kay." The man
tossed a pack to Spike. He caught them
and put them in his pocket, but didn't move away. The man stared at him.
"What? What else do you want?" "I want you to whimper, then I want you to
die." The man struggled to push away
from Spike but involuntarily filled the first request and whimpered as Spike grabbed him and
shoved him to his knees so that Spike could easily reach the taller man's
neck. Spike bit and then drank the warm
fresh blood. The adrenaline from the
man's fear was like a drug. At the
familiar but almost forgotten sensation, Spike pulled the man off the ground
and held him up as if he weighed no more than a child. Spike completely drained his victim, then
tossed the body roughly aside. As the
man's blood and adrenaline spread through Spike's entire body, he leaned his head
back and just enjoyed the rush. By the
time he was halfway back to his crypt, the peak of the exhilaration had faded,
but the blissful aftereffects of the feeding lingered.
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Back at his crypt, he surveyed the damage he had caused
earlier and laughed. He flung a still
unbroken bottle against the wall, but this time is was with destructive glee,
not frustration. He hopped up onto the
stone coffin and lay back, resting his head in his hands. *I'd been going to give this up
voluntarily? Why? For a bunch of happy meals that think I'm
beneath them!* He looked up at the
ceiling and laughed again.
As daylight arrived, Spike started to drift off to sleep. He suddenly jerked awake again, as awareness
nudged at the back of his mind. He
heard his words, spoken just hours earlier, "You STILL don't understand that
I've really changed? That it's not just the chip?!" He had truly believed that at the time. Yet, when it came right down to it, he had fed so easily, so
naturally. He was disturbed by the
thoughts and feelings, still so clear in his mind, from the last couple of
years, particularly the last few weeks.
He had really believed that he'd been in control of everything except
being able to hurt humans. He'd
believed that his thoughts and feelings had still been his own. Had he truly been so controlled by that
small bit of circuitry that everything he'd thought and felt in all that time
was a lie? It bothered him even more
than his physical inability to kill had, that the chip had controlled his mind
as well as his body.
Most of those thoughts and feelings were still there. He'd pushed them to the back of his mind, but he knew they were
there, felt them trying to push to the surface. He reminded himself that he'd only been free of the chip for one
evening. Surely the lingering mindset
that had been forced on him for two years would fade now that the chip was
inactive. He had control again. He was a normal vampire again. He would not dwell on the fact that two years
of his unlife hadn't even been his own.
The future lie ahead, and he reveled in the possibilities.
