Chapter Eight

"Spike."

He groaned, tipping his swollen face to one side in an attempt to orient himself. The blood on his cheek had dried, making his skin feel stiff and itchy. The muscles of his arms burned from being held in one position for so long. All he wanted to do was go back to sleep.

But the voice spoke again, insistently. "Spike."

He forced his one good eye open. The vision was foggy, blurred, no doubt, due to the egg-sized lump on his right temple. Nikolai had gotten a little overenthusiastic with the lead pipe. There was something in front of him. Someone. He could not clearly distinguish it as human or vampire, male or female. It was merely a pinkish blob that moved in and out of his frame of vision, growing larger and smaller in rhythm to the throbbing in his temple.

"I can't see you."

"Shh." The voice was female so Spike could only assume that body must be also. "You can see me."

"No…I really can't." His eye watered with pain as he squinted, trying to bring the splotch of color into focus. "I can't see."

"You aren't looking." The voice was softly admonishing. "Look with your heart, Spike, not your eyes. You see me."

And suddenly he did.

She was kneeling just in front of him, the frail skirt of her dress dragging on the filthy floor as she leaned forward. "Spike…my Spike," she murmured. Her hands were curved over his cheekbones, cupping his face so gently the bruises and abrasions did not protest. "What happened to you?"

"Drusilla…" He leaned his head into the softness of her clothed breast.

"What happened to you, my love? You're all changed."

"Nikolai…."

"Nikolai knows," she whispered. "He sees it as we all do. You look different, smell different, feel different. You aren't one of us anymore."

"No." He gasped with pain as her hands suddenly pressed into his face, hard. The pain from a dozen wounds screamed, drowning out the words he knew she was speaking with anger. Her fingers were miniature vices, clamping down on his pain and not letting go. He felt dizzy.

"Dear heart," she crooned. Releasing his face, she leaned forward to lick the line of blood snaking from his forehead. "Why did you turn on us?"

"I love her."

"So you give up who you are—your very nature—for her?" Dru's eyes and voice hardened. "She isn't like us. She cannot see the colors…it's all black and white to her. Good and evil. Dead and alive. She hasn't the imagination to understand you, not the way we do. How could you love her?"

"She's a part of me. I didn't choose it; I don't want it; it isn't a pleasure for me. But I can't stop myself."

She laughed. "Silly boy. Love is never a pleasure. Love is a pain that you must learn to derive pleasure from. I thought I had taught you how. Instead, I find you crawling on the ground, struggling to find a pleasure that doesn't exist. Not for us. But then…you aren't one of us, are you?"

Her words weren't making any sense to him. Spike shook his head, confused. "What?"

"She will never love you, Spike. Not the way I love you."

"She will," he insisted. "I—I can show her that I'm better now. She'll see."

"But you aren't better, Spike. You may have changed the wrapping, but the present remains the same. You're wicked."

"No…I'm not…"

But even as he said this, he wondered. Once he would gladly have been dusted rather than admit he was not the biggest bad around. Was he that way still, deep down where only she could see? Was he wicked?

Before he could work it out, Drusilla's face changed. The pale, angular features melting into golden softness. The dark hair became shorter, lighter—blonde silk instead of dark velvet.

She was Buffy.

Buffy leaned forward as Dru had, the tip of her nose almost touching his as she hissed, "Yes, you are. You are a wicked, evil, unholy thing. You don't deserve love. You don't even know what love is."

"…I do…" he murmured weakly.

She looked at him scornfully. "You say you can teach me to love you? I could never love you. There's nothing good in you. You're beneath me."

"No…"

"Beneath me."

"No!"

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"STOP SCREAMING!"

Nikolai's foot delivered a well-aimed kick to Spike's left rib cage. The steel toe of his boot drew a dark puddle of blood to the surface of the skin, but Spike didn't stop screaming.

"You never fucking listen! You never give me a God damn chance!"

His body jerked upward as he fought against his restraints, struggling to reach something only he could see. The single eye he fixed on Nikolai was glazed and unseeing. Mad.

"I SAID STOP IT!" Nikolai bellowed, his screams ten times louder than Spike's. He backhanded Spike on his already ravaged cheekbone. "IT IS FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON! I AM TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

"Bitches!" Spike's back arched, his head lolling back until it cracked against the radiator to which he was bound. He didn't even seem to notice. His voice rose until it drowned out even Nikolai's angry roars.

"MY LIFE HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT A SERIES OF STUCK-UP WHORES! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? BENEATH YOU MY BLOODY ASS!"

Nikolai stared at him, momentarily thrown by Spike's impassioned screaming. Then the corners of his mouth began to twitch.

"You stupid bastard…you just don't learn, do you?"

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"Buffy!"

The trio—Buffy, Dawn, and Clem—paused at the outer edge of the cemetery lawn to look in the direction of the shouts. Giles was jogging across the grass, everything in his face and manner telling Buffy he had found out about Spike.

"We know, we know," she assured him as he launched into a detailed account. "Clem here told us about it. He saw it. He helped them."

Giles glanced at the demon with disgust but no real surprise. "They wouldn't tell me where they have him."

"It's okay," Buffy replied as Giles fell into step beside her. "Clem knows. He's going to take us there." She shot the timid demon a cold look. "Aren't you?"

Clem nodded vigorously.

"We have to hurry, Buffy." Giles looked worried. "Vampires like torture, but they lack patience. They can't play with a toy long before they want to break it. I fear Spike's time may be running short by now."

Without breaking her stride, Buffy grabbed Clem by the arm. "This warehouse, how far is it?"

"About a quarter of a mile, if we cut through the woods here."

She shoved him away from her so hard that she almost threw him down. "Then you'd better hurry, hadn't you?"

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"Xander?"

Xander almost sobbed with relief as his best friend's eyes fluttered open. "Willow," he choked out, hugging her to his chest. "Will…are you all right?"

"What happened?" she asked. "I was reading…and then I felt this awful pain. I thought I might be dying. Then…everything went black. What happened to me?"

Xander hesitated. Then he began carefully. "Giles believe it is the magic he instilled into you…it…it seems to be giving you the ability to…"

"What?"

"To channel." Xander spit the word out as though it was a particularly unpleasant taste in his mouth. "You were channeling, Will…writhing on the floor and screaming that someone was trying to kill you. I was so worried—"

"What was I channeling?" she asked, clearly impressed by this newly discovered gift.

"Willow, I don't think it matters…"

"No." She struggled to sit up. "Tell me. I feel like hell, Xander. I must have gone through hell. I deserve to know why."

"Giles and Buffy believe it was Spike," Xander admitted reluctantly. "Some of the things you said pointed to him, I guess. Apparently, someone opened a demon can of whoop ass on him and he called on you for help. Buffy, Dawn, and Giles have gone to find him."

"I was channeling Spike?" The question was directed more to herself than to Xander. "Why?"

"I dunno," Xander told her. "But I think this is just another one of Spike's lame attempts to make Buffy come back to him. I only hope this time she will be smart enough not to fall for it."

Willow was barely listening to him. She was still musing about her newfound ability.

"Why did it stop?"

"Why did what stop?" Xander asked.

"I was channeling Spike…he was speaking through me...Why did it stop?"

Xander shrugged, obviously not over concerned. "Maybe they found him."

His careless answer did not fill Willow with much hope. She turned her worried gaze to him. "Or maybe they killed him."

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"He's gone stark, raving mad," one of Nikolai's vampire minions commented, watching from a safe distance as Spike thrashed about on the floor. He was still screaming.

"Both of them have, if you ask me." The second vampire nodded meaningfully in the direction of Nikolai, who was also screaming. He was flailing Spike with a rusted crowbar, trying to beat him into submission. It wasn't working.

"You remember the good old days when the only thing we had to worry about was which townie to eat?" The first vampire sounded wistful.

"I remember." The second vampire pulled out a pack of cigarettes and withdrew one almost angrily. "That fucking slayer ruins everything."

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"So this is the place, huh?"

The tiny group stared up at the immense building that stretched before them. It was four stories high, brick, and very long. The kind of building that, in a different town, would have been converted into stylish loft apartments. In Sunnydale, it had become a nest for vampires.

"That's it," Clem answered Buffy's question. "Now that I've showed it to you, I'm gonna split. They'll kill me if I'm seen with you three."

Buffy stared at him with disbelief. "You aren't going to help us?"

"That wasn't part of the deal," whined Clem. "I can't go in there…they'd tear me to pieces."

Grabbing his arm in a vice-like grip, Buffy slung Clem against the brick wall of the warehouse. "Fine," she said. "Don't help." She backhanded him then, sent him reeling to the pavement.

Giles rushed to restrain her. "Buffy, stop it. You aren't achieving anything by this and you are wasting time."

Buffy nodded obediently, but she kept her eyes coldly riveted to Clem's as she said, "Get the hell out of my sight."

He fled.

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Buffy was dancing before him, dropping ice-cool insults as she kept always just a little out of his reach. Spike strained against the ropes at his back, screaming to make her see the truth. But she wouldn't. No matter how loud he yelled she would not listen.

Something hard and painful hit the back of his skull and Buffy divided in two. Then the second Buffy was Dru, and she smiled and spoke love-words as she killed him. But Buffy…she hurt him worse without laying a hand on him. She spoke words that made him want to die.

Suddenly the pictured flickered, and just for an instant Spike saw Nikolai in front of him. Nikolai had handfuls of Spike's shirt, and he was shaking him so hard the picture changed again and—

Buffy was sobbing. "A girl is dead because of me!"

"IT ISN'T YOUR FAULT!" he screamed. "Why can't you see that?"

"SHUT UP!"

Nikolai was back. He grabbed a fistful of Spike's hair, dragging his head back to expose his neck. There was a familiar, searing pain—

"There is nothing good in you!" she screamed, her small fists punctuating the words with painful finality.

Then she was beneath him, struggling and small and warm. He was out of control but neither of them knew to what extent—yet.

"Spike, please—"

 

"I know you felt it, when I was inside you—"

 

"No—"

 

"Let me inside—"

 

"Please, stop—"

 

"Gonna make you feel it—"

Spike opened his good eye wide. Somewhere just outside his range of comprehension Nikolai was feeding with short, tearing jerks. Something warm and wet trickled down Spike's neck and dripped off his shoulder. There was a hot, sharp, familiar scent all around them. Then there was Buffy. Another Buffy. But this one was gentle and unafraid, more solid than the others. She was approaching slowly, a wooden stake clutched in her upraised hand.

"You always hurt the ones you love," Spike said.

Then he fainted.

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Buffy had left the lesser vampires to Giles and Dawn. She dusted any that got in her way, but otherwise she ignored them. She was looking for Spike. At the moment, knowing he was alive was all she cared about.

She found him alive, but just barely, tied to a radiator, beaten and bloodied. There was a vampire leaning over him, his ugly yellow fangs sunk deep into Spike's throat.

Buffy approached slowly, hoping to surprise the vampire and dust him without some big, time-consuming battle. Unfortunately, that heightened sense of smell, which all vampires possess, seemed especially strong in this one. He scented her through the thick odor of blood that hung in the air and, leaving his dinner half-finished, he approached her.

"Slayer," he said. His bloodstained lips curved into a grisly smile. "I was wondering if you would show up. It was one of the reasons I let him live as long as I did. I wanted to see if the rumors were true."

"Rumors?" she asked. They were circling each other slowly. Her stake was held ready and his fangs were bared, but neither of them made a move to attack.

"The rumors," Nikolai repeated. "You think just because we sleep during the day we don't hear about what goes on when the sun is out? Everyone knows Spike here because a traitor to his own kind. He turned his back on us, killed us, united with the slayer herself…and all of that was bad enough. Then we learned he had begun to protect your friends and family as well. He would allow nothing to touch that girl you call your sister. Ultimately, that was to be his downfall."

"What do you mean?"

"He was protecting her the night I discovered his secret." Nikolai wrinkled his nose. "A human. It was then that knew we had nothing to fear from him, that we could no longer allow ourselves to be cowed by him."

"Yeah, you got all brave," Buffy said sarcastically. "You got yourself an army of demons together to attack a single human man. Bravo. You want a medal for your valor?"

Nikolai snickered. "The vampire slayer," he said softly, "such a noble title, so steeped in history and tradition. A pity you aren't able to uphold your calling."

"Oh no?" she asked him. "Why don't you go ask your buddies at the door if I don't kill your kind? Both of them would fit nicely in ashtrays thanks to me."

Nikolai continued talking as though he hadn't heard her. "I don't think—I really don't think—that the title suits you. Perhaps 'the vampire layer' would be more suitable. Wouldn't you say so?"

Buffy spun in a blazing roundhouse kick, but fast as she was, Nikolai still managed to duck out of the way just in time. "You want a go?" she demanded, advancing upon him, her stake raised high.

"Sorry," Nikolai answered. "You aren't my type."

He dodged the punch she threw.

"I don't have to be," Buffy told him.

Before she could attack again, Nikolai lunged for her. Buffy kneeled slightly, pushing her hands against his midsection and throwing him neatly over her head. He rolled over once but was back on his feet in a flash.

"You think I'm afraid of you?" he asked, spitting out dust and blood as he spoke. "You're nothing but a little girl with a big mouth and a pointy stick—and legs you don't mind spreading for our kind."

Her leg kicked up, the toe of her shoe connecting with Nikolai's chin with such force his head snapped back.

"Bitch!" he screamed. "I was talking!"

"I'm done talking," she said. "I want action. I want to kill you so I can get around to the rest of the trash in here."

With an angry snarl, he launched himself at her. Buffy was not accustomed to vampires throwing themselves at her this way. Most of them would strike and then dart quickly away. They were like animals in their fear of being close, of being hemmed in and trapped. Nikolai was obviously lacking this fear. He grabbed Buffy by the throat, pressing his body right up against hers as he pushed her to the floor. She landed on her back and he straddled her, knocking the stake out of

her grasp before leaning closer.

"You were saying something about killing me?" he whispered.

Buffy arched her back, trying to throw him off. But the weight of his body was on her legs, holding them down. His hands were wrapped around her wrists, pinning her arms to the floor. Try as she might she could not move him.

Nikolai allowed her to struggle for a moment, seemingly enjoying her efforts to escape. When he grew bored of this he pulled the neck of her sweater down, exposing her throat and most of her shoulder.

"I always did wonder what the blood of a slayer would taste like," he confided. "I betcha it has a real kick."

Just as he leaned to sink his teeth into her, Buffy strained her neck, stretching her head up enough so that she could reach his face.

"Ow! Motherfucker!"

Nikolai stumbled backwards away from her, bloody streaming from his cheek. "You bitch! You bit me!"

Buffy spit, blood and even a little flesh issuing from her mouth. She retrieved her stake.

"Well, you were going to bite me," she told him. "The way I figure it turnabout is fair play."

Having recovered from his shock, Nikolai tried the same trick again. He lunged for her. But this time Buffy was on to him. The moment he launched himself forward she threw her arm forward, plunging her stake into his chest. He exploded into a cloud of dust.

From somewhere close behind her, Buffy head Giles' voice. "Well, I came to see if you needed any help with that one, but you seem to be quite all right."

"Oh, yeah," she murmured, staring at the pile of ash where her vampire had just been. "I'm just peachy."

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"Damn it!" Buffy swore, her fingers fumbling with the knots that bound Spike's hands. "I can't undo them. The ropes are pulled too tight."

"Do you have anything we can use to cut them?"

"I don't. Do you?"

Giles shook his head.

"Dawn?" Buffy turned to her sister in desperation.

Dawn rummaged through her backpack for a moment. "I have a nail file."

Buffy took the instrument from her sister. The file was not nearly sharp enough to cut the ropes, but she managed to slip the pointed tip into the knotted rope, loosening the ties. It was tedious and time consuming, but at last, she managed to get the knots completely undone.

Spike was still unconscious and Buffy was glad of this. Had he been awake he would have been experiencing hideous pain. Aside from the laceration on his throat, he had many cuts and bruises. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the flesh around it red, black, and puffy. His shirt had been torn open and there were dozens of little cigarette burns dotting his bare chest, as well as a hematoma the size of a tennis ball. The flesh of his wrists was like raw meat where the ropes had chafed them.

He was so battered, and he lay so still, that Dawn cried out in fright. "Is he dead?"

Giles knelt beside Buffy, his hands and eyes examining Spike's wounds with the air of someone who knew what he was doing. "No. He isn't dead. He is very badly hurt, though."

Buffy looked at her watcher, panic clearly written across her features. "We—we have to get him to a hospital then."

Giles looked up from the handkerchief he was pressing against the wound at Spike's throat. "What?"

"He's hurt. We have to get him to a doctor."

Impatient to get started, Buffy took one of Spike's limp arms and draped it over her shoulder. She was strong enough to lift him easily, but being taller than her made him extremely cumbersome. She almost lost her grip on him.

Giles quickly grabbed Spike's other arm, preventing him from falling to the floor again. "Buffy, we can't take him to a hospital. You know that."

"I know no such thing," she answered stubbornly. "He's hurt and we are taking him to a hospital to see a doctor. I don't want to hear any more argument about it."

"Buffy, please get a hold of yourself and think!" Giles voice was firm but kind. "A hospital is going to want to know his name and his age…they'll want an address, a medical history. We cannot provide any of that. I doubt they would even allow us to register him."

She looked at him, stricken. "What will we do?"

"We will have to care for him ourselves, as best we can." He hefted Spike's weight a little more comfortably then looked over at Dawn. "If you would be so kind as to open the door then Buffy and I will see if we can't carry Spike out of here."

Dawn hurried to obey. She stood by the doorway and watched as Giles and Buffy slowly moved forward, bearing the weight of the unconscious man between them. "Is she going to be okay?"

Buffy met Giles' eyes. Neither of them knew how to answer that question.

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Willow took the glass of water from Xander gratefully. She popped two aspirin in her mouth, chasing them with a gulp of water.

Xander watched her with concern. "How do you feel?"

"Better. My head still hurts, but I feel a lot better."

"Good." He bit his lip. "I hope they're all right."

"Don't worry," she assured him. "Buffy can handle herself. She almost kicked my ass, didn't she?"

That brought a faint smile to his face. "Almost but not quite."

He took the empty glass from her. "You want me to turn off the light so you can rest?"

"Yes, please. But wake me up then they get back."

"Will do."

Xander leaned over to shut off the lamp on the nightstand and when he did, his foot brushed something hard. He looked down.

"Hey, you dropped a book."

Willow's eyes flew open. She sat up in panic. "Xander—no—"

It was too late. He had picked up the book. He started to place it on the nightstand, but something about the rich leather volume caught his eye so that he had to turn it over and read the title: Transfiguration and Transmogrification: An Advanced Guide to the Dark Arts.

Xander had found the book that had been stolen from the Magic Box days ago.

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End of Chapter Eight