TITLE: "Normal again" (9/9) part II (Because of length, cut in three parts.)

AUTHOR: Richard Bachman

EMAIL: bachman_rchard@hotmail.com

SITE: nope

FEEDBACK: Give it to me luv, you know you want more of this.

DISTRIBUTION: Do whatever you like poodle. As long as Richard is mentioned I'm fine.

SUMMARY: Based on the episode Normal Again. Instead of Buffy, Spike was poisoned by the demon and his consciousness was transported into an alternative reality where he found himself incarcerated in an asylum.

THANK YOU: For your patience, your support and your comments on the story.



ACT 9; And so it ends (part II).

SCENE 3

He led me into a nosy white room with lots of weirdoes, pushed me into a chair and told me to sit there quietly while he was going to get someone in authority to see me. I figured he was talking about my ol' Sire so I just nodded and let him go get the wanker. While Mike was away, I hummed a childish little tune that Luce sang into my head and was sort of feeling all right. At least I was at ease, not too anxious or anything. The railroad spike was still missing. I had no other weapon left on me but my own fists and fangs, and even about that I couldn't be entirely sure since I didn't know if I was able to shift into my game face in this creepy place. But like I said, I wasn't afraid. Luce was there with me, and she would tell what I had to do.

She was taking care of everything.

I didn't need to worry.

I was no longer wussy little William, pushed around, spit on, walked over like a muddy second hand rug. Forced to service the grand pillock under threat of unbearable torture. I was no longer the scared, runaway fledgling trying to survive in the London gutter. I was my own man now. Thanks to Luce. I've killed about everyone who had wronged me in the past. But that past no longer mattered, what mattered was that I was strong.

In control.

Invulnerable.

Angelus was going to pay for all the crap I was forced to swallow, all the humiliation I had to take.

I'm Spike, AKA William the Bloody. And I was going to take my bloody revenge on my bloody Sire.

"Hey buddy! You're back again!"

I blinked my eyes, that voice that wasn't exactly Luce's was kind of distracting me from my Big Evil Moment.

"You made it! Here, hold this. I've got my arms and folds completely packed."

Someone dropped shiny crispy bags on my lap, handed me two bottles of icy liquid, and plopped into the chair next to me. I turned my head and stared right into a wrinkled mount of sheer goofiness.

"I thought you were going to miss this. Dr Summers told me only this morning that you still needed to rest and was in no shape to watch the "Passions" marathon with us, but here you are, right on time! It's going to start a little earlier, at four o'clock sharp. They're going to show the two all time favourite episodes."

"Clem?" I watched in horror how my demon mate dropped the large family bags of crisps and popcorn on the floor in front of him and then picked the tiny packages of assorted nibbley things out of the folds of his forearms. "Clem, what are you doing here?"

"Em, Will? Buddy? Still a little wonky from the pills huh? Oh, never mind. It's not like you've never confused me for body else before. Remember that time you've put your chamber-pot over your head and told me I looked like a really ugly version of Winston Churchill?"

The smile he gave me made new lines on his skin, and he looked like a wrinkled prune with floppy rabbit ears. He pulled something metal and shiny out of his folds and took over the bottles from me.

"Here, let me open this for you."

I recognized the fizzy sound as the gas escaped and he handed me back my Coke. I stared at it with what should be an incredibly moronic expression on my face, for he looked at me for a moment, and then made a drinking gesture with his hand. I brought the bottle to my lips and took a sip, while keeping a cautious eye on my demon pale.

Clem kept grinning his pointy teeth bare.

"Better?"

I nodded, didn't even notice before how thirsty I was. I took another swig and licked the sweet taste of it from my crusted lips.

" Dr Summers, she was really worried about you."

"Dr Summers?" The name rang a distant bell, but Luce was still chanting and I had trouble tuning in on the frequency of my scrambled mush of a brain. Why did everybody I met in this crackers place either want to show me to her or inform me about her?

"Will, buddy, do you really need to answer me with a question every time I try to get a normal sentence out of you? Anyway. She was all concerned that you wouldn't be able to pull through. I saw her rushing up and down the ward this morning, keeping an eye on you all the time. I thought you would like to know. You're always complaining that she doesn't see you for what you are. For what you are worth."

"Summers." I whispered. "Know that name." I shut my eyes and tried hard to remember, to fill in the blank voids. Summers. Summers. It was not only familiar, but oddly, the name carried something, a sense of comfort, and misery. Still, it didn't bring back a face to my mind. Only a truckload of messy feelings. They hurt, and I bloody well started to doubt if I was sure that I wanted to know who it was that had cause me such heartache.

"She does care about you, you know. I saw it on her. The way she looked when I came into your room the other day, when you were still lying on your bed with that vacant stare in your eyes. She just looked like my cousin Betty when her mom died."

Suddenly, I realized who she was, and I saw her right before me; a radiant figure, surrounded by a bright and blinding light, dressed in a long white lab-coat, her long hair brushed back in a ponytail.

- Don't be afraid, William. Sunlight won't hurt you. You're not a vampire. You're not a monster. -

-You're a good man. -

"Buffy -"

"Thank God! You still remember her. I would really start to worry if you don't."

"Buffy, she doesn't belong here." I said, hesitatingly. "She can't be here. She will be in danger if she was."

Clem listened to me and winced as if stung by a bee. "Wooh buddy! Don't start rambling again! At least don't let Mike hear you like this when he's back if you wanne stay here with us to catch the show."

"This isn't Angelus' lair." I shook my head in frustration. "Luce lied to me! That double crossing bitch lied to me!!"

"You really should try to keep your cool here. You know how Dr Summers feels about you using the B - word."

"She's going to let me hurt her. Kill her. I'm back! I'm back in the institution, ain't I? I'm bloody insane again!"

Somewhere far back in the dark stinking sewers of my mind, Luce burst into a shrill sardonic laughter.

"Now calm down Will. Nobody is crazy here! Nobody needs to be."

I still saw her before me but her image had changed. She stood there now, bathing in silver moonlight, her skin smooth and slick, with drops of water gliding over her naked form, glittering like stars. The red scarf was draped around her slender neck and slivered all the way down to her collarbone. A trail of crimson not unlike blood.

- Come on Spike. Let's take a walk on the beach. The moon is beautiful tonight. -

- I've a riddle for you. Guess what I am. -

- Guess what you've made me become. -

"What's the matter with him? William? Look at me pale!"

A large hand on my shoulder, shaking me. I hardly noticed. Luce's chanting grew louder now, a monotonous chain of words, wrapping around my wrists, my throat, my ankles. Robbing me from my free will. Dragging me into a black void of apathy. I slipped under an icy surface of a frosted lake, and the room turned dark and cold.

- Murder - Mayhem - Rape - Death - Dread - Suffering - Make them suffer, my sweet. - Make them pay. -

"I didn't do anything, I swear!" From the corners of my eyes, I saw Clem rise up his hands into the air, backing away from me as if I was suffering from the bloody bubonic plague.

"William? William?! Can you hear me?"

"This has nothing to do with the fizzy sugary drink I gave him, right?"

"Will, listen to me. Listen. I have to bring you back to your room for a while. Buffy has no time to see you right now. She's talking to your brother Liam." Mike stared me right into the eyes, and repeated his shaking. "Stay awake buddy. Don't drift away again."

"She - She is with Liam?" I asked. My voice sounded scrambled. A string of noisy bubbled in deep blue waters. From beneath the ice, I saw the distorted image of the orderly behind a frosty wall of shades of white, watching me with alarm.

"Yes. She's going to help you. Both of you. Everything will be all right again, William. You don't need to go back there to hide from your brother anymore."

"Liam?" I whispered. My breath was short of air. The cold stabbed in my lungs and in my ugly dead heart. Buffy was with Liam? Now why does that bleeding notion scare the crap out of me?

You fool! She's with Angelus! - Luce yelled in my ears. Anger made her voice tremble. - He's going to kill her. Don't you see that, you idiot? He's going to kill her to make you suffer! -

"Oh no!" I shouted to Luce, who wouldn't stop and kept yelling at me, pouring poison into my head. "Not Buffy! You promised! You promised to keep her out of this! Angelus - I have to stop him. I have to stop him from hurting her!!"

Mike's eyes grew wide when I suddenly launched at him, my hands folding around his neck as I fought my way out of the paralysing waters, out of the frosted lake that creaked and fragmented, letting in shimmering patches of reality. I was a monster. A drowned ghost of a man who was desperate to crawl back on land. Clinging on to the living, not so much to harm them but badly needing them for my own survival.

"Where is she?!" I spat, spittle flying from my lips, my fingers tightening around his throat. He struggled, his hands clawing over mine. His respiration grew louder as he was seized by panic.

"Will! I can't! I can't breathe!"

"Where is she?!!!" I shook him hard, and his head bobbed, a floppy dandelion in the wind. He gurgled somewhat, a wet noise coming from deep down his throat. His face started to turn red.

"Office - In her office."

"Why did you let him go to her?" I yelled, my voice quivered and my eyes leaked tears. "He's gonna kill her! You murderer! You insensible, unfeeling wanker!!"

I tossed him aside. The room was clear again with all the white overkill and garbage furniture, and as I turned around I saw Clem looking at me, horror in his eyes. I grab hold of my chair and smashed it on an empty seat. The cheap plastic broke into half. I kicked down the neat row of chairs in front of me, didn't gave a bloody shag if they were occupied or not. Rage burned and coloured my world. Crazy bats rolled out of their seats and scurried away from my mindless fury like frightened little rodents. Their faces were hideous, eyes sunken in pale masks of fear as they howled and cried like bloody animals. I had to laugh through my tears. It suited them, the bloody idiots. That thin venire of sanity that made them appear normal had been so rightfully stripped away, and all that now remained were their repulsive and pathetic true forms.

Clem was sitting on his bum on the floor, gob-smacked. His mouth full of pointy teeth kept open in a razor sharp O.

"Oh man!" He then muttered. "This is going to get you in so much trouble! Really, no more sugar for you, mister!"

I snorted and whipped my head around when I heard a loud noise coming at my left. The recreation room was like a huge pet cage, the door leading into the corridor and away from this soddin place was not so much a door but a fenced metal gate. The kind you found in prisons, zoos, soddin chicken- runs. Only this one was much much bigger and the chickens in here were all heavily defective in their noggins. Orderlies came running down the corridor, coming to see what the racket was all about. They took one look at the miniature disaster area I had created and one glance at Mike, still clawing onto his throat and choking on fresh air, and they took one hard look at me standing there in the midst of the crawling, weeping and drooling lunatics, and draw so their own conclusions on what had happened in here.

Call me crazy, but I was pretty convinced that whatever it was, it wasn't going to lead into me seeing Buffy very soon.

"Mike? Are you all right?" One of them asked. A young nervous looking bloke, pressing his nose on the wire like a brat in the zoo watching the bloody monkeys bash each other brains in. Mike gurgled and groaned a little, sounding much like a car wreck. The orderly shot a real nasty look at me and said. "You! Don't move! We're getting in there!"

Loud rattling of keys. Someone was nervous and dropped it out of his hands. Another was losing his patience and searched his pockets for his own. I sighed and stumbled toward Mike, not so much to hurt him but to make sure that the wanker was still breathing. There was a short, sharp sting of pain cutting through my right foot, and I stopped and looked down, turning my sole upwards. A piece of broken Coca Cola bottle was sticking right out of it, making me bleed nicely. I bit down on my lower lip and yanked it out. It was still a little warm of my blood when I held it in my hand.

That little bit of glass seemed to get the guards real nervous. "Hey! DON'T! DROP THAT! Raise your hands above your head!"

I had bugger intentions to follow his orders. This was the part in about every movie I've seen in which the criminal was taken in, cuffed, dragged away in the pig-mobile. Forced to pay up his dept to bleeding society. The part where the lousy brain-dead writer decided that this was about enough excitement for the kiddies for today and either let the good guys get the bad guy arrested or gun him down or hack him into soddin dog-chow. It's one of the reasons why it was hard for me to like the ending of any movie. Scarface was an exception.

They finally managed to sort the right key. Some fat, potbellied orderly with a red bloated face cramped it into the lock and turned, his pigeon eyes staring at me while bits of spit clung onto his lower lip.

"Don't use that you sick piece of shit! DON'T FUCKING MOVE!!"

I clung onto the shard, my fingers digging in the razor sharp edges till I could feel it cut into my skin. My heart leapt like a horny bunny and I could feel the blood racing through my veins in crazy roller coaster speed.

The gate opened and four white clad, burly men rushed over to me, yelling to everyone else to stay down. I caught a glimpse of a small metal poke that one of them held in his hand, and as he approached, I saw tiny blue sparks coming off the device. Another carried leather straps, ready to use them on my hands and feet. Surely they were going to take me out again. Beat me up, force this stupid git of a sad human waste product into submission. Lock this dangerous madman up in a cage. Throw away the key. Let this offensive useless son of a poxed whore starve of deprivation of human contact.

Surely this was all I ever deserved.

But this was not what SHE deserved.

I could let them overpower me, and then try to explain to them why Liam was not my brother Liam but Angelus the Horny Evil Vampire-Lord from Slayer- land and that Buffy was in real danger right now, that I was the only one who could save her from this evil that was Angelus.

Because I was the one who was really to blame for all this.

Because I listened to Luce instead of William the bloody righteous soul.

Because I loved my phoney Slayer so much that I just had to pick the easy way out and decide to stay here in this moronic dimension rather than to go home. Because I was a weak, egocentric little addict who didn't give a bloody shag for the grand plans of God as long as I could sedate myself, distract myself with a world of easy made believes and crazy silly dreams.

Really, I'm poor little William. Lost in the bordello of Spike's subconscious.

But I bet there wouldn't be enough time for me to explain all this.

In most movies, crazy murderous people don't get a lot of time to explain themselves.

So I did what I had to do to buy a little more time.

I yanked Mike from the floor and grabbed his arms, forced them behind his back and held him in front of me, using him as a shield.

"Don't get any closer." I said, trying to sound real nasty now. The typical British felon. All stiff-upper lip accent and sheer malice, that was what I was looking for. Think Jeremy Irons or Ian McKellen when he was not playing that old fart of a wizard Gandalf. I pushed the shard in Mike's sweaty flesh, just right above the hollow of his collarbone, there where the bleeding would be almost impossible to stop once it had started. The four men stopped dead in their track, eying at me. Their faces reddened and you could tell that they were really pissed off.

"Will, don't do this." Mike muttered. He didn't exactly sound like he was wetting his knickers here, and it was messing big time with the whole Big Bad persona that I was trying to put down. He sounded like a bloody friend who tried to calm me, stop me from doing something completely brainless. As if I didn't know already.

"Drop the shard. No-one needs to get hurt."

I breathed in deep, nostrils flaring, and pushed the jagged rim further into his flesh. A gash of red appeared. The loony Troops saw that and it made them throat-ripping edgy. They didn't know that it was still my blood that was currently staining their colleague's neck.

"You don't know anything." I said. "So why don't you bloody well shut up."

"You're delusional. You're afraid. You're scared out of your wits."

"Oh no, no, no." I shook my head and laughed giddily. "I'm fully awake. I'm finally in control here. I'm not afraid of anything anymore. Just wanne get out. You see, my grand pillock of a Sire, I gotta kill him while I'm still temporarily insane." I sniggered and smiled broadly, baring a lot of teeth and nodded toward the four gorilla-men who were still gawking at me like a pack of hungry hyenas. "Let the Stooges hand me over their keys."

"Will -"

The shard went deeper, and this time, the blood that dripped down his throat and into his collar was really his.

"I want those damn keys. NOW!"

Mike made a frightened sound, not unlike that of a squalling piglet just before it got slaughtered, and the Idiot Team was finally convinced. They reached for they key-bundles in clumsy movements, held them in their shaking hands while their wide eyed gaze was locked on the shard and the blood on Mike's thick sweating bull's neck.

Toss them over the floor in my direction."

They did it, and I bended through my knees to pick them up with Mike still held in front of me like a big heavy lump of sweating ham. His perspiration was starting to soak right through his soggy overall into my shirt, making me feel like a soddin sponge of really bad odours. After I slipped the four sets of keys into my back pocket, I dug my hand into Mike's trousers, looking for his keys. I found them, held them in front of Mike's bloodshot eyes and asked nicely which one it was that I needed to get out of this soddin cage. He was most helpful after I reminded him of his growing flesh wound.

"What are you going to do?" Mike panted as I backed away from the guards and the lunatics, still clutching on to my human shield while I inched my way out. He had calmed down a bit and wasn't yelping any longer, though I rather had he still was. "You can't get out of here! The place is completely locked." He swallowed and I lifted up the harsh edge of the shard somewhat from his throat so he wouldn't cut himself any deeper.

"You can't get out. There's no place you can run to."

"I know." I said, and pushed the key into the rusty padlock and twisted the soddin thing. "I know I'm mad. I know I should stay right here for everybody else's sake." Mike looked at me then with the tiniest spark of hope that I would give up and surrender. That there was still some proper sense left in me to see that this was only going to end in disaster.

But really, that bloke gave me far too much credit.

"I know, and I'm sorry for being this bloody crazy. But I have to do this."

I pushed Mike away from me and he fell, head down first on the worn-out linoleum. Then I grabbed hold of the gate and shut it, my hands trembling as I turned the key in its lock, just in time. Three of the white-heated orderlies rushed over, half tripping over the floor on their paper slippers, moving with all the elegance of a horrific train accident. They all smashed into the wires, their fingers were clanging onto the rust coloured mesh and they were shaking it fiercely.

"You little weasel! Unlock this immediately!"

I watched how they pressed their plump red faces onto the lattice, choking on their anger like mouth foaming dogs, and I grinned.

"You sick little worm! You nutcase!"

"Yeah." I said. "Out of my mind. Back in five minutes."

"Wait till I get my hands on you, you sick shit! You stupid little F*! You F* son of a B*!"

By the time they got to the real nasty ones, I was already halfway down the corridor and on my way to find Buffy.

SCENE 4

"What do you want from me?" She asked. She tried to be calm. Or at least to appear calm. Her eyes followed the gun that he held in his hand with an almost morbid fascination.

"Are you sure he's not coming back to disturb us?" Angelus asked, ignoring her question. "That Mike guy is rude. I don't tolerate rudeness." He fooled around with the gun; aiming it at the glass panel where only a couple of minutes before, the orderly's shadow had appeared when he knocked on the door, asking for the young doctor.

"He won't come back. I told him I would go down to the ward after our meeting."

"And what in hell's name did he need you for again?"

"William. He finally woke up." Her eyes parted from the weapon and gazed up at him for a brief moment. Liam was still somewhere in there. She thought. He must be. Perhaps telling him about his younger brother would bring him back to -

"Will? Is he really back from the dead?" He laughed. "Must be quite an ordeal for the boy. I didn't mean to fuck him up this much. Really, you have to believe me here. There is no fun in getting your cock hot inside a catatonic mental patient. It's no better than violating a rigid corpse."

"Mike asked me to go see him. William needs someone right now to help him to get grounded." She continued in a shivering voice, trying hard not to listen to Angelus heartless comments. She wasn't trying to speak to the vicious monster. She was trying to reach William's brother. "It's not too late. William can still get better."

"He's fucked." Angelus snarled. "One way or another. Liam dumped him like a hot lump of coal, went off for a long quiet stay in denial-country. And soon, you're not going to be around anymore to help him recover. Not fucking likely if it was up to me at least. No, I'm afraid my poor little boy is going to spend the rest of his life as a drooling nutcase."

"He's is your brother." She tried. "He's your family."

"William is my childe. My possession." Angelus leaned over to her. His eyes were dark. "Mine! To break. To destroy. And he's NOT worth anything to me unless he's suffering or in constant pain to amuse me." He gripped her chin, fingers digging into her flesh like claws. "So stop talking about the stupid little shit like he's worth a whole bunch to me. Only a naïve bitch like you would see anything in him."

Numbness spread over her like a blanket. He traced the soft curvatures of her lips with his finger, gently. Almost lovingly.

"What do you want?" She asked again, but now the strength had completely drained out of her words.

SCENE 5

The place was a maze. Every turn I took, every hallway I ran into, they all looked the bloody same. But I kept running, till my legs started to burn and my heart was a mad clattering hump of painful flesh. Till I could hear nothing else but my own blood throbbing through my veins. It wasn't until I reached a point in my reckless escape where I stumbled upon a locked gate, that I realized that I had no soddin clue where Buffy's office was. I had been there only once for one of those private Freudian sessions, and I had spent most of my visit on her plastic covered, stain resistant sofa, ailing on all those nice little pills they had given me to keep me as docile as a cow. Couldn't recall much of the trip getting there. Couldn't remember much of that entire afternoon and the room she was working in apart from that it had a very large window with Venetian blinds. She had slightly parted the slats so I could take a peek outside if I wanted. And I remembered seeing clouds drifting by.

Darkness appeared and disappeared in a flinch, like I had just blinked with my eyes wide open. Somewhere, from the other side of the gate, I heard voices coming.

"How many of us are in there?"

The voices grew louder, and I recognized the Watcher's haughty Oxford accent. Quickly, I slipped behind a trolley filled with laundry, left behind by some lazy nurse. The world blinked again, and I was thinking that there was no soddin way that they were not going to see me sitting here trying to be wall-decoration if they happened to walk by.

"Mike, Greg, and Barry. The whole lot supervising ward D. William Byron locked them up in the recreation facility together with the other patients. Denny is in there too. He went down to check on things and he was the one who made the emergency call."

"What's the matter with these lights? Why are they flickering like this?"

The next thing I knew, everything went black again. Only this time the lights didn't come back. Hunched down, trapping my breath in my lungs, I glared around a heap of acid smelling bed sheets and realized that neither the watcher nor me could see a bloody fag around here. Keys rattled, hinges shrieking as the gate blew open, footsteps of the whole soddin Cavalry of Captain Giles, coming to the rescue. Some bloke almost tripped and cursed loudly.

"Bloody hell! This is just perfect. First that vicious harpy's predictions become reality and now this, a bloody power cut! Honestly, this place is a madhouse."

I stayed where I was and waited till they were all gone. After they galloped right pass me, coming so close that the air they moved brushed like a draft over the hairs on the bare parts of my arms and legs, after the clapping sound of their paper scandals died down, and after I allowed myself to breathe, that was the very daft moment in which my very own personal torment demons decided to show their tight semi-translucent Victorian asses again to complicate things even more.

"Going somewhere William?" Priscilla Schnubly asked. Her eyes narrowed till they were tiny reptilian slits. From the corner of her puss infested mouth hung the naked tail of a mouse.

"You're not trying to get out, are you?" Steven Rathbone asked, carelessly twisting the tips of his ridiculously large moustache while pale maggots fell out of his one dead eye. They landed just before my feet, and I wriggled my toes uneasily.

"I have to get to Angelus." I said, not knowing exactly why I bothered to explain it to them. There was only so little time. I wrapped my fingers tighter around the broken piece of glass. The blood that seeped between my knuckles was nice and warm.

"Oh Steven, my dear, I know what this mischievous man is up to! He's trying to save her!" Priscilla giggled in delight. "That girl with the harlot lips and the blond hair. He's trying so very hard to find her before his Sire -"

"Before he's going to do what?" I asked, a bit frightened.

"You poor, delusional fool." Priscilla cooed, treacherously gently. "Poor poor William. Did you forget how Angelus was in his pre-soul days? Why, wasn't he even a bigger monster than you ever were?"

"Your Sire was very gifted in obliterating lives." Rathbone said. "In destroying hope, leaving nothing but darkness in the hearts of his victims. How else, you reckon, did Drusilla ever become this mad?"

I stumbled back on my feet, half dragging myself up, leaning on the trolley.

"I must find her! Tell me where I can find her!!"

Priscilla smiled coldly at me. Not talking much.

"Please! look, I'm sorry I left you like that so you had to suck your meals through a straw for the rest of eternity, I'm sorry for stuffing you full with rodents! But whatever grudge you hold against me, you cannot let him hurt her! My wrongs got nothing to do with Buffy! The punishment is mine to suffer! I'm the one who needs a good caning! But please, I beg you. Leave her out of this. Tell me where I can find her!"

The black ends of the thread that I had used to sew her lips together started to crawl over the raw flesh like worms, digging in and coming out again, sealing her mouth shut. She put a bony finger on her lower lip, a gesture meaning that she would forever keep her silence and then she vanished.

I screamed in utter frustration, barely able to muffle the crazy sound of it as I forced a hand on my mouth.

"Don't despair like that my good fellow. You still have the chance to save her."

I turned to the ghost of Steven Rathbone, he was still drifting in front of me, shimmering with this faint pale glow in a darkness that seemed to have swallowed up the whole place.

"Please." I muttered, definitely begging now. "Tell me. Tell me where I can find her."

Rathbone shook his head, grimly. "I can't tell you that William! Priscilla will be furious. I'm afraid you have to find her yourself. However, I can give you this."

He grabbed the end of the spike that was buried in his skull with one hand, laid his other on his deformed eye and pulled. A flood of maggots and disgusting unnameable black gore gushed out of the wound, and they fell on the ground with the same clatter as good shower hitting the streets.

"Here."

He pushed the murder weapon in my hands. The sharp piece of glass that I held was gone. The railroad spike was blackened by crusted blood, and in the shimmering blue light of Rathbone's ghostly manifestation, it looked like its metal was bleeding as my hand was covered with oozing gashes, keeping my palm and fingers drenched in blood.

"A friend of yours told me to give this to you. She thought you might lose of it after you made the transition."

Luce. Good ol' Luce. She told me she would take care of things.

"This isn't gonna help much, is it, if I've got no soddin clue where to find my peachy Sire to shove it through his heart!" I raged.

Rathbone's features turned pained, and that was when you could make yourself to ignore the large pestering hole that was now in his face.

"William, my dear fellow. I can't help you more than that. You know how Priscilla is."

"Pure bitterness and out on sworn retribution. Got that already."

"She's going to nag me right out of my grave if I told you."

"Please, you have to give me something."

"William."

"A tiny hint. That's all I ask."

Rathbone looked at me and sighed, then rolled his eyes. "All right. Go to the elevators. Go up. She isn't on this floor. Besides, you've been running in crazy circles for the last ten bloody minutes. Seriously my dear lad, your sense of direction is utterly -"

Before he could finish his sentence, the floor split open from right where he stood and a terrible shriek came from beneath the widening cleft, till it had grown into what it seemed like a bottomless abyss. Blinding cobalt light flooded into the corridor. A hand appeared that was more a claw than a hand, yellow skin wrapped around the brittle looking bones like an ill fitting glove made out of dry paper.

"Oh Priscilla!" Rathbone screamed before the vindictive claw-thing grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him down to join her. To nag him into a second death, I reckon. "Priscilla!" He said. "For God's sake! Stop being such a drama queen!"

And then he disappeared, the opening closing swiftly behind him.

"Right." I mumbled. "I have as much sense of direction as a headless chicken. Guess you're right about that." But there was nothing left in the darkness for me to talk to. Only myself.

Harris would call this an early sign of dementia. I knew better of course.

Following the green, lit up signs of the funny looking stick man running to the exit, my left hand tracing the wall and my right clutching on to the railroad spike that kept bleeding warm blood, I moved, as quickly as I could, into the direction of the elevators.

SCENE 6

The green track of pictograms ended near an unlocked door that lead into a dimly lit stairwell with a seemingly endless flight of stairs. Next to it were two elevators. Their metal doors were closed. The red digital signs indicating the current floor number were giving two very puzzling zeros. It made sense though. A power cut meant that there was no electricity to run the soddin elevators. I figured I had to take the stairs.

But then the elevator at my right swung open accompanied by the civilized ringing of a little bell.

Didn't even have to push in any buttons.

The small, mirror panelled space inside was lit by a sickly fluorescent glow. I stepped inside, my nerves twitching. Swiftly, I glanced over the penal with the neat rows of numbers. There were thirty-four floors in total. Thirty-three ways for me to screw things up and get her killed. How the hell could I know which button was the right one to push?

"Please." I muttered, aware I was talking aloud again and that there was nobody else around, but I got a gut feeling that someone would be able to hear me despite that.

"Please. You made me come this far. At least have the soddin decency to help me out just this one last time."

The doors shut themselves and from the thirty-four possible destinations displayed on the panel, only lit up. Number twenty-six. I recalled the clouds drifting by her window. At least it seemed that the little information I had matched with what Luce was offering. Maybe she was really trying to help me save Buffy.

The whole thing started to move.

SCENE 7

What happened after came so quickly and so many horrible events took place in such a short time, that he had difficulty remembering, even in the agonizingly long weeks afterwards, when he was finally committed into Dr Walsh ward and had all the time in the world left to let the realization of what he had done, haunt him and drive him into desolation.

First, there had been a terrifying scream. That he could remember. It shattered the silence outside in the darkness as soon as the mechanical doors of the elevator slid open and he stepped into the blackened corridor. His hand stretched out from his side, trying to find his way, he tried to run and stumbled like a blind man. His fingers brushed the surface of several doors that he passed, then a long stretch of tiles. After he made a turn, another scream was heard. There was no doubt in his mind that it was Buffy. The second part of the hallway was dimly lit. The doors here all had frosted glass panels, leaking in a small amount of daylight that flooded from windows inside the rooms. Behind the third door on his right, a tall shadow loomed behind the glass.

He didn't hesitate, rather lifted up the railroad spike, bracing himself for what was to come, and with his other hand he pushed open the door.

The room was shrouded in a gloom with the blinds rolled down and shut. There were loose papers and files scattered carelessly over the floor. A chair had been thrown over. Somewhere in this mess he found the remains of a telephone, its plastic case completely smashed to show its ruined wirings.

She sat on the plastic covered sofa, her hands and feet tied together with torn pieces of her lab coat. There were bruises on her face and there was a long red slash running all the way from her left cheek to her neck. The moment she saw him, her glazed eyes grew wide and she started to scream.

"William! Get out of here!"

"Buffy?!" His mind was in absolute confusion. He couldn't perceive anything else but her presence.

"HE HAS A GUN!"

A loud blast, a sound like thunder when Angelus drew his .357 and fired. Finally, William's instincts kicked in and he flung himself down to the floor. The bullet missed his head by an inch as he went down and it exploded above him, sending bits of wood from the damaged door flying through the air. Another shot followed, and another, both aimed lower now. William covered his head in fright and tried to crawl underneath the great oaken desk in the middle of the room to find shelter from his tormenter's violent onslaught. One bullet nearly hit him in his leg and blew up a part of the floor merely a foot away from him.

It was like he had died and had been cast into hell.

"William!" Angelus roared, his voice dripping with joyful malice. "Glad to see you lad! Already recovered from my little punishment, I see." He fired a shot just when William dodged under the desktop, huddling his body into a shivering form to avoid the deadly bullets. It hit the edge of a beam close to his right ear and the frightened young man let out a shrill cry.

"Stop this!" Buffy cried, she had watched with growing despair how Angelus was cruelly hunting him down like an frightened animal in his ruthless game. "You heartless monster!" She shouted. "STOP SHOOTING AT HIM!"

"One more shot." Angelus suddenly ceased fire and with a calm pace, walked towards him. He was still huddled underneath Buffy's desk, both hands pushed against his ears to block out the horrible explosions, more or less paralysed. Angelus saw that his deranged boy was clutching on to something, a blackened piece of metal with a wedge-sharp point. His hands, shirt and trousers were smeared with blood. His fingers were covered with cuts. He was panting loudly and his eyes showed nothing else but crushing fear. It was then that Angelus was struck by a cruel sense of delight. For a moment, he had been afraid that the boy would become a threat to him, to his liberation of his moral counterpart that he loathed and hated with his whole black heart. But as he observed him now, this trembling heap of misery, this broken human being with such a pathetic state of mind, he could merely laugh at his own ridiculous idea. William could not be a real threat to anyone. He was too insignificant and weak. Angelus looked down at his boy and grinned.

"One more shot." He repeated. "I've always loved to watch the crazy inmates dance in Bedlam's dungeons." His gun roared as he fired a series of shots, all aimed at William's legs. His victim tried to avoid them, frantically moving his limps, struggling backwards on his hands and buttocks while facing him with large frightened eyes. "Dance for me boy!" Angelus shouted above the thunderous sounds, showing a hateful smile.

When one of the three bullets that were fired hit William in the side of his leg and scattered his joints, the pain of it struck his body with strong convulsions, and the fear, the deadening gripping fear that he had felt ever since he entered the room and was forced to face his demonic Sire was simple surpassed by immense agony and the rush of adrenalin that took hold of him. William let out a wretched cry. It startled Buffy, who was now struggling up from the couch only to fall half way down on the floor as her restrains withheld her from being able to walk or even stand.

"No! Don't! Don't you hurt him! Stop it! STOP IT! STOP IT!!!!"

Her cries were shrill, full of rage and drowned in tears. Angelus merely ignored her, spun the gun around, and used the solid handle to hit William with it on his head. He struck him full on his temple, and William collapsed, his head sunk over his chest and his body fell limply to the ground.

"Such a useless, spineless boy." Angelus mused, and struck him again. "Always a weakling. Even when you were still a real vampire, not the neutered little bastard that you are now."

The back of the gun smashed on his cheeks.

"All those times in the past that you dared to defy me."

The metal came down on his throat and he wheezed and coughed, tasting his own blood on his tongue.

"All those ill-prepared attempts to escape from me."

William's head swung to one side as he was struck on his other temple. Blood was now dripping from one ear.

"You crawled home to me just the same every time after you proved yourself to be a total failure."

The beating had stopped. William was hardly aware of it. Angelus stood there over his bloodied victim, breathing loudly through his nostrils, his chest heaving. He grabbed hold of his Childe's arm and dragged him from underneath the desk toward the couch. William kept entirely still. He was like a ragged doll or a corpse. Not moving. Hardly breathing or making any sounds. He left some blood behind on the papers that lay spread out around him and he only blinked once when he saw his name printed on a file. Patient 17, he read, William August Byron. Initial Diagnosis: Schizophrenia.

Family: One Sibling. Liam.

Quickly, he averted his eyes away from the document.

Angelus looked down at him, cold and forbidding. Then he crouched down beside his broken body, his lips twisted in grin.

"What did you think you could do to stop me?" He was close to him now, glooming over, panting his hot breath down on his wounds. His chest was still straining from his efforts to chastise him. There was this smell, this scent of freshly ploughed earth and wet moss-covered stones; the memory of graves. The very scent that hung around him on that unfortunate night (or was it fortunate? Luce whispered.) he bumped into the vampires of Aurelius. It happened so very long ago, but it was still a memory that was all but lost.

"Please. Don't hurt him anymore. You're killing him. Please. You're killing him."

Angelus looked up for a moment, gazing at her with amusement. Buffy had forced herself on her knees, her cheeks damp with tears. The pain that tormented her was plainly written on her face.

"Well, isn't that striking?" He said, addressing his childe, while his eyes devoured her. "Isn't that just fucking ironic? This girl, she really does feel something for you, doesn't she? She really does love you. First I thought it was just some overdeveloped nursing instinct that had driven her into all of that stomach-turning behaviour, but now I'm really convinced. I mean, look at her!"

He gripped William's chin and forced him to look up, and he gazed at her with a lost look in his eyes.

"All those tears, all that suffering, just because she saw you suffer. Just because she cared. Wasn't that what you had always wanted? Somebody who truly cared? A girl that you could love and who was not prejudiced or mad or simply sick of you enough to turn her back on you?"

There was a slight flickering in his eyes and a weak movement in his throat, but except for that, there came no other reaction.

"You must be one lucky chap to find this crazy dimension. Really. I mean come on, admit it boy! Where else in this whole fucked up universe are you gonna find another manifestation of the Slayer who's willing to love this sad miserable evil thing? This monster of a man!"

The hand-muscles around the railroad spike strained. He had been clutching on to it, even during the merciless beating. It was like it had been stuck to his skin.

"It must break your heart to see her like this. Just as you are breaking hers."

Angelus came really close now, his face half hidden by its own shadows. His eyes narrowed, and for a moment, William thought he saw them flashing gold.

"How would you feel if I used her? Do you remember Dru, my boy? Remember how I used to force you to watch? As I penetrated her. Tore her insides open till she screamed and cried and blood was flowing all over her legs? Imagine that happening to your Slayer. Imagine how that would make you feel."

William squeezed his injured hand around the metal, and dark blood oozed out of the many cuts.

Angelus' eyes lifted from him, and he looked at the girl with all the malice of a hungry predator, ready to devour his prey. "Imagine it now you still can. Soon enough you'll be forced to watch it for real."

A single moment of distraction was all he needed, and suddenly William came back from his unresponsive state and thrust the railroad spike straight into his demonical Sire's heart.



TBC

One more to go. Please be patient, working on it already. Meanwhile, go to my author's settings page, I've got a little announcement to make.

Cheers R