CHAPTER THREE

I followed her to my stolen car. She giggled in spite of herself at the sight of it as she ghosted inside. "It's stolen. You know this isn't my style," I said, her amused expression getting my back up. She just smiled and I sighed. "Am I heading to the college?"

"You're not a drooling idiot after all." She smirked.

"I'm beginning to know what Angel felt like when he was behind the wheel and I was the ghost riding shotgun. There's no way to give you the punch in the head you deserve."

"Oh, I'm sure you were more annoying. You always were."

"You know, for a woman who needs a huge favor, you sure are a mouthy bint." I started the car, or more appropriately, coaxed the wheezing, backfiring thing to life.

"I'm putting Angel in your debt. Don't tell me that doesn't give you warm fuzzies." She was back to the wry look.

I grinned. "Okay, so you aren't so bad at making people feel better."

"Just because I left comforting you to Drusilla doesn't mean I don't know what makes you happy. I made a career out of knowing what makes men happy."

Now there was a euphemism for being a whore if ever I heard one but I let it pass before Darla decided to go straight to Angel with this. I was curious as to why she hadn't but I wasn't about to ask and screw myself over. I had an idea anyhow. Angel didn't want to know whatever it is she was about to show me. He might not listen to her. Peaches was really stubborn when it came to stuff like that. Instead I asked something I really hadn't intended to but out of everyone, she would know how I had felt those weeks I spent in the state she was in now. "Are you afraid, Darla, of what waits when the Powers That Be pry you from this place?"

She looked at me curiously. "Sometimes but I don't regret giving my life up. It was worth it. Connor is the one good thing Angel and I ever did together."

"Didn't you say the boy's name was 'the Destroyer'? How good is that?"

"Depends on if he's aimed at demons or humans." She covered her face for a moment and I thought she might actually cry. That would be something to see, since she kept stuff like that from me. She never showed me weaknesses. "Spike, if you and Angel are capable of being redeemed then one poor broken boy can be, too."

"Never was one for redemption until the whole thing with Buffy." I fished for my cigarettes again. "And even then, sometimes I wonder was it just a prize to me or did I really honestly want it." "She must be an amazing Slayer to derail both Angelus and Spike," Darla said. "I'm less surprised she got you than I am about Angel."

"Why do you say that?" I lit up, taking a healthy drag.

"You've been in love with Slayers since you first learned about them. Tell me you wouldn't have fucked them before you killed them if you could have?"

"Who said I didn't?"

She rolled her eyes at me. "You haven't met a Slayer you didn't want to possess entirely until you tired of them."

"I didn't want to possess Buffy," I lied. I had. I tried. I failed and in the end, I honestly didn't want to possess her. I wanted to love her but my love has never been pure or innocent and I think she knew that. That's why I didn't believe her when she said she loved me at the end and a good part of me didn't want it to be true. She deserved better than either me or Angel.

"Stop here," she cried suddenly as we passed a closed drug store.

"Why?" I obeyed, swinging back into the darkened lot.

"Disposable cameras," Darla said. "You can't walk into an open store looking like this. You're missing half your face. We'll need to get a camera so you can make Angel believe you."

"Makes sense."

"It wasn't hard to break in and snag two of the throwaway cameras. I didn't know much about them so I picked up the ones that were supposed to do well in low light. When we got out on the road again Darla was silent, thinking about something, probably worrying about her kid. It was something I never expected to see in her and damned if it wasn't contagious. This tiny bit of goodness in me had been there even before the soul. It made me keep Dawn safe. Now that I have that sodding soul to go with that itty bit of natural goodness, I could feel Darla's pain, just what I didn't need on top of my own.

She directed me to a parking lot then led the way across campus. There were more crowds to avoid than I was expecting. Stupid, it was a weekend, parties, keggers, senseless shagging, all the stuff the old Spike used to love. Colleges were a favored slayground of mine. Part of me still longed for it.

As I followed Darla's lean body - I always did see why the Poof kept her around - I pulled my ball cap down low and kept to the shadows the best I could. Even without a mirror I knew I had to be horrific looking. Darla knew exactly where she was going, cutting across the grounds to a tall ugly building surrounded by hedges and loitering teens.

She steered me deeper into the shadows and I saw a young woman sitting down on the lip of some stupid looking modern art sculpture containing fountain. Eve, is there ever a time she doesn't look like someone ready to shag you and climb over you to get one rung higher on the ladder? She had on a pink wool sweater to keep out what passed for winter chill in southern California. She was dressed for a night of romantic dining and maybe some theater.

Punk Boy came out soon enough without his crowd of loser friends. His hair was combed into a more sedate, unspiked style, looking almost deadly dull in its normalcy. I preferred the other look just because I knew it was probably making Angel's skin crawl, go kid, go. I couldn't see Darla or Angel in this boy but still I believed Darla's story.

I half expected Angel to be hanging around but I didn't spot him. He probably had followed me the time he caught me here. Eve didn't waste any time getting down to the dry humping with kid. I was waiting for them to fall backwards in the water. They didn't notice the flash of my crappy camera or any of the students hanging around. Doubt the kid had anything going on in his mind beyond the obvious, fucking Eve's arse off. I mean the boy was gagging for it, but what kid his age wasn't? Darla shifted nervously beside me and I glanced at her. She seemed highly embarrassed. Guess she noticed the kid had a lazy lob on. Eve sure as hell knew it, what with the way she fondled him.

Eve opened what I thought was an ugly purse but turned out to be a soft- sided cooler. She pulled out some beers. What teenager could resist that? I almost missed what her hands were doing. She dropped something into the bottle. She gave it to the kid, teasing his crotch a little more, not a safe thing to do to a boy. What kind of control do they have any how? Of course she wasn't concerned about that, obviously since whatever she drugged him with hit like a sledgehammer. He was barely able to sit up on his own. She had to keep him from tumbling into the fountain. She got him to his feet and they were off toward the nearest parking lot.

"Where is she taking him?" I asked.

"Away from here."

"I can't get back to my car in time to follow them," I said.

"You don't need to, Spike." Darla hustled back the way we came. She suddenly faded from view then flickered back again. "Being able to do that allowed me to follow them previously. I know where she's taking him."

Darla was tense once we got back to the car, snapping out directions but otherwise not talking at all. When we got there, I could understand why. There was a subtle Wolfram and Hart symbol on the building but I had never seen it before. I wondered if Peaches even knew it existed. She pointed up to the fourth floor. Usually scaling a wall wasn't so hard but given my burns it was fairly agonizing and slow going. But I managed to perch on a sill. Darla hung in the air next to me.

I looked in the window and found myself staring in at a lab. They had the kid hooked up to all sorts of shite that I couldn't begin to fathom the purpose of but I recognized Knox. Either he didn't give a damn about using a kid as a guinea pig, par for the course from what I could see of Wolfram and Hart, or he thought Angel's brat was something other than human. I knew I wouldn't have time to get many pictures. I turned off the flash and snapped as many as I could. I didn't want to risk being spotted in the big window.

I kicked away from the wall and dropped, hitting the ground running. Darla was in the car when I got there. I peeled away as best as the old banger was capable of then ragged it down the street. The purple monstrosity shuddered and creaked but it did its best to run. No one seemed to be following. I guess they hadn't seen me after all. Good. "Where to now?"

"24-hour Wal-Mart," she said.

"One hour photo?" I looked at her, waving a hand at my face. "I can't exactly walk in there looking like this."

"Leave that to me."

And I did. Just like Fred had helped me to concentrate enough to pick up things briefly, Darla managed it to pick up the camera and go inside without me. She looked exhausted as she ghosted back into the car.

"Spent too much energy?" I asked.

She nodded. "I have enough to go back in and get the pictures."

"Guess that leaves getting money to me."

"I'll help." Darla looked ready to drop off to sleep but I knew from experience ghosts can't do that. "And in case I forgot to say it, thank you, Spike. I know you don't have to do this."

"True, and you didn't forget."

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. "Can I tell you something?"

I lit up a cigarette."We've an hour to kill."

"You really aren't a drooling idiot." She smiled.

I snorted, smoke curling out of my ruined nostrils. "Occasionally I am. Probably right now, agreeing to shove this in Angel's face. If I get staked before he sees these pictures, I'm going to haunt you."

"Can you haunt a ghost?" She shrugged. "Haunt Angel again. It'll make you feel better." I nodded. "Its appeal quickly wears off. Did you know he liked my poetry?"

"No. I didn't care for it," she said unapologetically. "But I liked that you thought to write it for Dru. I always did like how loyal you were to her, how you treated her like she was the most precious thing in the world. Just once, I would have liked someone to treat me like that."

She sounded very sad and it occurred to me that as long as she had been alive or undead or whatever, that no one had really truly loved her. That was tragic somehow. I always did think Angel kept her around because she was his sire and that she was considered a prize because of her bloodlines.

"Maybe the Master did and I've just forgotten it," she said softly. She glanced over at me. "Why do you really want the shanshu, Spike? Just because Angel does?"

I hesitated. I honestly didn't know any more. That was certainly part of it. Part of it was to be human for Buffy and I knew that was stupid. If I were human, I'd end up like Riley, dumped to the side because I just couldn't keep up. "I don't know why I want it, Darla. I'm not even sure I do want to be human again. Angel said it was partially a curse and he could be more right than he knew. He never knew Anya. She was a vengeance demon who ended up human again. She was so scared of being mortal, of suffering pain and not being able to just rid herself of it with magic, of dying. She and I used to talk since who could know what it was like to have such a long life, to have seen as much as we have. Who else could understand what it was like to be so evil and now have to be good? She's dead now and I miss her," I said, knowing I was babbling. I shouldn't have lifted the lid off this can of suppressed emotion. "I think that's why I'm still here, Darla. Angel and I are alike in some fundamental ways, different in others but we share a history and a future whether we like it or not. When you get down to it, who else can understand our position in the world? Who else do we have to talk to?"

She brushed her hand against my fingers, passing through them. "For now, you can talk to me."

I stared at her like I had never seen her before. Darla the ice queen, the bint who always made me feel like I wasn't in her class, the one who was as responsible as anyone else for me picking up a low-class persona just to throw it in her face, was asking me to talk. For a moment I hesitated, then I started talking, telling her everything I would have shared with Dru had she been here, things I couldn't tell Angel because we were both too close to some of the people and events involved. She listened with minimal interruptions and most of those were soft words of solace. Spilling my guts inside a pathetic excuse of a car should have made me feel embarrassed or unmanly but it didn't. Just having someone to talk to, someone who could relate, made me feel better so much so that I hardly noticed the physical pain I was still in. Darla could be very tender and sweet when she wanted to be.

Darla's hand found mine again. This time she had substance, cool like marble. I squeezed her fingers. "The hour's up, isn't it?"

"And daylight will be here soon." We both got out of the car. Darla found a lone woman trying to get her packages in the car. She had a weary air, some poor working woman coming off a graveyard shift buying diapers and baby food before heading home to some too-small apartment, no doubt. Darla was crying on about losing her puppy and had the woman seen it running in the lot. It was enough to distract her until I could get into her purse and take a twenty. She had more but I didn't feel right taking it. Hell, I am turning into a righteous wanker.

Seeing me move in back toward our car, Darla thanked the lady for her help and let her go on her way. I slipped the money into Darla's cold hand and she went back inside. She reappeared quickly. Half way back to the car I heard coins falling to the ground and the slap of something heavier. Darla couldn't hold onto her cohesiveness any longer. I went out and retrieved the change and our pictures. In the sickly glow of the parking lot lights I examined the pictures. They were dark and grainy but clear enough for our purposes.

"I'll go right now to Wolfram and Hart and show him," I said, knowing that was a great risk. Angel could have me put out into the sun and in this shape I wasn't sure I could fight him.

"She'll be there tomorrow night with our son again," Darla said.

"I'll tell him," I said and Darla faded away.